Towering CLI

Posted on May 5, 2018 by ehurst

My tower is now a CLI machine. I thought it was an easy update from Xubuntu 16.04 to 18.04, but all I did was expose a problem with the hardware. I tested several other things, and while the sensitivity varied, every Linux distro experienced lock-ups on the GUI. So I installed Debian 9. The lock-ups were less frequent, so I was able to get everything installed and my files restored from backup. Then I switched away from the X session and I’m using the commandline interface.

This will be a good way to reacquaint myself with the CLI. As we say, I’ll be renewing my membership in the Brotherhood of the Commandline. The computer works perfectly fine otherwise, and I have no trouble at all logging in from the laptop via SSH or Filezilla (SFTP protocol). It makes a good file server so I can keep the laptop uncluttered. It’s like having my own cloud at home.

My testing indicates it’s something wrong with the motherboard. As long as it keeps running, I’m not worried about replacing it for now. I can get everything done on my laptop.

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Photography: Yukon and El Reno

Posted on May 4, 2018 by ehurst

My car is working much better now, so I tested it by driving west on US 66. Once you get past Lake Overholser, the next landmark is Yukon, one of the biggest Czech cities in Oklahoma. By the way, it’s also got lots of old money, so the city has a pretty big budget for its size. This first shot is what you’ll see approaching Yukon from the east.

The local high school mascot is “The Millers” — maybe you can guess why. This landmark remains standing mostly empty. The even bigger grain elevator across the street (behind me) is also mostly empty. Grain isn’t such a major crop in this area any more.

The big historical thing about Yukon is the Chisolm Trail; it runs north/south through the town. In fact, Jesse Chisolm’s grave is not too far away, north and west of here near the town of Geary. About forty years ago I hunted his grave down; folks living two miles from it didn’t know it was there, hidden out on some dirt road and barely accessible to visitors. I haven’t been there lately, but they tell me it’s a little better now. This park had almost nothing of historical interest, just a pretty park and a huge artificial mound, on which I stood to take this picture.

The countryside is mostly flat out this way. It was just a 12 mile drive to El Reno from Yukon. This is the southern entrance on Route 66. This is a pretty big town built from the same agribusiness as most towns in Oklahoma. West and north from OKC is mostly flat plains for a very long distance.

This is a sample of the old buildings downtown. That “haynes” sign has been there forever; it’s a photo and bridal shop. It was hard to find parking because there was some kind of festival preparations blocking some of the streets.

El Reno’s best stuff isn’t even on Route 66, but a few blocks west along the railroad tracks. There’s a whole museum, and while generally neglected, it’s open and worth a visit. I didn’t have time to go inside and try to setup for flash, and some of the buildings didn’t turn out well. This is the original HQ from Ft. Reno. The stone monument talks about General Sherman using this thing; it was moved here from the Ft. Reno site west of town.

This is the old hotel next to the train station, still standing and serving as part of the larger museum exhibits. You can find the original Red Cross canteen that served the US Cavalry out in these parts, the original train station, a petrified tree trunk from some tiny village nearby, and all kinds of neat stuff.

This is one of the better examples of the old homes still standing in El Reno. This one is for sale, by the way. It stands in a rather historic district near the old rail station, loaded with older architecture like this. One thing distinguishing El Reno is that the agribusiness is still very much alive. At least half the grain elevators are still in operation as grain storage.

In fact, the huge federal prison out here is known as “the Ranch” because it hosts a large cattle operation as a means to inmate rehabilitation. This view is from across El Reno Lake. The lake is unremarkable, except that it smells clean. There’s no sewage leaking into it anywhere, so it smells better than most of the lakes, creeks and rivers I usually visit.

The total round trip was almost a hundred miles.

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Photography: Draper and Etc.

Posted on May 3, 2018 by ehurst

These are some random shots collected so far this week on my rides. First is the trees screening the river, now almost fully greened up.

This is a sample of the clearing they are doing at Draper Lake in preparation for the new bike trail. Keep in mind that a bike trail can be more variable than is allowed for road building. However, you can be sure the crews will eventually fill this in some and install drainage pipes under the trail surface.

Farther around on the north side of the lake is this sharp drop. I took this shot for the sake of comparison later on when they get the trail more developed. There is a lot of other spots like this where you have to wonder how they will handle it. I can report that the preparatory work runs from the western end of the dam and northward just beyond the marina. That much is pretty well ready for the lime and such that gets mixed into the soil to make it firmer. That’s already started down near the dam. Much past the marina and it quickly ends so that all they have is the bear first clearing of trees and maybe some initial landscaping with a bulldozer.

Meanwhile this is wildflower season. Those tiny lavender flowers grow along the River Trails. These bright yellow blooms I spotted around Draper Lake. There were others, but they were too far off the road in the tick-infested deep grass. I’ll wait for more to sprout close to the road.

Tomorrow I’m planning a road trip to test some fixes I made on the car. It seems to be running better now.

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A Toothless Lion’s Roar

Posted on May 3, 2018 by ehurst

Were you aware that megachurches were suffering the same political turmoil as the rest of America? From time to time I’m asked to comment on this or that big scandal.

First and foremost: The first churches in the New Testament had them, too. Granted, the scandals were of a different nature, covering a different range of problems, but they were there nonetheless. This is part of our fallen human existence. To pretend that churches are immune to the same political manipulation as the rest of society is inexcusably stupid.

Satan is like an old toothless roaring lion, seeking to frighten the game out of the bushes and into the waiting jaws of younger stealthy lions (1 Peter 5:6-9). That parable suggests that if you aren’t standing in the power of the Spirit, his roar will frighten you out of your safety in obedience, and into places where you aren’t protected. Let him roar; that’s just the background noise of our existence.

Which brings up the second answer: The problem is not with religion, but with religion that stands too close to the secular society. Here in the US, our social structure is the symbol of all that’s wrong with Western Civilization in the first place. The Christian religion here in the US is nothing more than an echo of that same abomination. Every mainstream church is vulnerable to Satan’s attacks because they do not stand in the center of Biblical Law; they do not abide by the Covenant of Christ.

Let’s look at just one of the major failures — a biblical church is ruled by elders and guided by a priesthood. Why do you think the Apostles were so adamant about not getting involved in the politics of feeding widows (Acts 6:1-7)? It was an organizational matter and the pastors have no business getting bogged down in such matters. This reflects the ancient pattern of dividing the task of moral shepherding between king and priest, the Two Witnesses of Zechariah 4 and Revelation 11. And throughout the New Testament we are reminded that pastors are appointed, but elders arise organically from the body of heart-led people seeking God’s way. That’s how the Spirit works in the church.

A religious body that is not organized like an ancient Hebrew extended household is not a church. Creation itself is feudal; humans are hard-wired to live in a feudal social structure as family within a single household. This Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) feudal structure was God’s original design. Any other organizational structure is inherently sinful. We don’t expect societies and governments to understand this, much less embrace it, but believers have no excuse.

The magisterial organization of some churches was stolen from Germanic tribal heathens. The presbyterial council is a perversion of Roman politics. The democratic church structure was derived from pagan Greek culture. The only thing God will bless is His own design: ANE feudalism.

So American Christian religion will continue to flounder and embarrass Christ until believers start from scratch and get it right. What we see in the confusion and chaos of scandals is what we should expect as long as people reject the Covenant of Christ. Getting it right won’t stop scandals, but it will reduce them to just background noise while we stand secure in the Word of the Lord.

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They Can See It

Posted on May 2, 2018 by ehurst

We often point out the contrast between what the world values against what our faith values.

It’s a huge difference. We view reality from the heart, and what really matters to us is simply not visible to anyone relying on their senses and logic. Yet despite the vast difference, the world can see at least some of what we cling to; there is some overlap.

The world can grasp our sense of bliss in those moments when the Lord provides some promised blessing. Folks around us can understand that there are some things worth dying for, even if they reject our different choices. On at least some theoretical level, they can understand our rejection of politics. They can get our refusal of the activist way of addressing human needs.

Most of all, the world can understand a commitment in faith. They know what it means instinctively. They can grasp that we are driven by a conviction that makes it possible for us to push through impossible odds. They might struggle to understand how we can be at peace with what appears to be failure, but they aren’t so foreign to the idea that peace can be found in trying to do the right thing, regardless of outcomes.

This is what’s behind Deuteronomy 30:11-14 and the quote in Romans 10:6-10. We are designed to understand faith even when our minds are closed to our hearts. There really is no excuse when we stand before God in that final Day of Judgment.

Understand that they may reject our message, but any claim that they just don’t get it is false. This is why our testimony of visible faith works; it is sufficient as God’s plan for revealing Himself. He is just in all His ways.

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Otherworldly Mission

Posted on May 1, 2018 by ehurst

This life — this prison of fallen existence — is not precious. It’s consumable, disposable. What truly matters is the Father’s glory and death is our friend. There is no sting in death because it’s our final victory over our sinful natures. What follows is indescribable, but the parabolic language has the obvious meaning that we’ll be in the Presence of the Lord as a family member to face eternity in what Jesus on the Cross called “paradise.”

It’s not that we serve our time, but that we serve our purpose. Sure, it’s possible to fail so badly He decides to bring you home early to prevent further damage to His plans. It doesn’t change where you end up, but you sure do miss out on a lot of blessings.

Endure, brothers and sisters. In 2 Corinthians 1 Paul warned his readers that if we plunge into a life spent in pursuit of His truth, it means tribulation. Worse, it’s tribulation that the blinded world does not experience. The more we strive to serve Him and endure sorrow, the worse it gets.

What kind of reward is that? It’s the reward of grasping that human sorrow is part of the blessing. You have to redefine what you expect and what you call “good.” Biblical Law is its own reward, and you stop seeing sorrow as a bad experience. Instead, you rejoice that you were found worthy to enter the mission of Christ.

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Bits and Pieces 32

Posted on April 30, 2018 by ehurst

It was a bit of tribulation upgrading the tower from Xubuntu 16.04 to 18.04. But it’s working now and I’m looking forward to feature updates that should fix some of the nagging deficiencies. I think the new laptop will stay with 16.04 awhile until Dell comes up with firmware packages to match the newer version. That appears to be a function of when Dell’s techs get around to installing it as default on newer equipment.

I’ve restarted my heavy workout in the park. Of course, that means I’ve modified all the exercises that resemble the motion of a push-up. The right shoulder now makes quite a bit of noise, but after five months off, it hurts a lot less now. To be honest, my body missed the vigorous exercise. I strained a couple of muscles that haven’t been used to the challenge.

The Volvo is acting naughty. I went through the procedures for cleaning the mass airflow sensor (MAF) and the throttle body (ETM). They were very dirty and needed cleaning, but the improvement was marginal. It still runs with some hesitation, and seems to be “seeking” the proper RPM level at idle. It was bucking during hill climbs. There’s no way I can afford to replace the ETM; it’s hundreds of dollars plus requires a special computer to make the system accept the new part. If I can’t get it to smooth out, I can only drive it locally and that means no photography of distant landscapes.

On the other hand, the proliferation of new bike trails around the county is very heartening.

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Standing in a Different Context — Epilogue

Posted on April 29, 2018 by ehurst

Not every conspiracy theory is wrong. But most conspiracies have failed to accomplish all the conspirators had hoped, so there’s a lot of confusion about them. What follows is my personal take on a few examples to indicate how we can use the teaching of this series to avoid the greatest conspiracy of all times: keeping believers away from their divine heritage.

JFK was murdered by CIA assassins. While a lot of folks assisted (like the FBI) for various different motives, the CIA ran the operation because JFK didn’t support them as much as they wanted. Consider the Bay of Pigs fiasco; they blamed JFK for that. The underlying motive was the rabid anticommunist obsession still with us today. It’s not that communism wasn’t a threat, but that no one bothered with a realistic assessment of communism.

9/11 was an inside job. It came very near to complete failure in its fundamental intent. A lot of awful stuff was done and the cover-up was transparent, so it comes down to grinding blatant lies told by government and the MSM. The public reaction was strong, but it didn’t yield the results the conspirators really wanted. They had to settle for a fragile thin cover over some of the crimes they hoped to hide in the process. The ongoing confusion about methods and whether an actual plane hit the Pentagon is part of and continuing effort to extract the last few possible advantages of such a horrific crime.

But it couldn’t be used to justify the full Which Path to Persia? conspiracy (see this for an explanation), only the part about invading Iraq. Now that, too, has failed. We have a strong skepticism about the ongoing US occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, plus more recently Syria. Whatever it once may have been, this whole thing is a thin veneer over Zionism. There are lots of folks on board because of the petroleum and other resources in the area, but the real goal is simple Zionism. Israel wants those countries weakened; no other motive matters.

Operation Northwoods was real, but the Report from Iron Mountain is another satire like the Geneva book by Joly. It’s accurate in a different sense. It echoes what government officials do instinctively behind the scenes as their general operating assumptions. It’s just another part of the failed dreams fed to people by the Devil.

At any rate, there will be more false flag operations here in the US, for sure, and likely elsewhere. But for now, I suspect Trump is unlikely to support using them, unlike Bush with 9/11. They’ll come up from inside the system, and this carries a different set of challenges. It affects what is possible and requires manipulating the POTUS in ways that may not work too well.

Please notice that this is running up against a whole raft of things already failing and breaking apart purely as a matter of the natural course of things. The US economy is mostly false front; the system could collapse any moment. The polarization of the public is well along, but the biggest problems are hard to see unless you approach it from a heart-led perspective. You can’t rely on history to indicate what the people will tolerate and what they won’t. You’ll hear a lot of noise on the Internet about what some folks imagine would be a breaking point, but it will be wrong. You’ll have to sense directly the hand of God, because He’s the only one who knows.

My point is that humans by their combined abilities cannot accurately assess how things work. They start out misled by the Devil, and cannot hope to succeed long term. Small conspiracies tend to work better, but the longings of the flesh don’t lend themselves to moderation. Satan seduces people into believing they can take it all. And God has revealed the certainty that He won’t allow that to happen according to their fantasies. It may appear that things come close to it, but the Lord will not allow things to deviate from His divine will. The Tower of Babel signals God’s sovereign will never to allow humans to unite around a single ideal. The only thing fallen men have in common is endless appetite for things that cannot satisfy; they can never agree on how to pursue those appetites.

Don’t fall for the Devil’s lies.

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Teachings of Jesus — Matthew 12:38-50

Posted on April 28, 2018 by ehurst

We can easily see how most religions in this world seek to make converts. The adherents consider it their duty to share what they regard as the ultimate universal religion for all humanity. The Hebrew Scriptures are loaded with prophetic commands to live so as to demonstrate God’s revelation to the world, to expect that a miraculous life of shalom would see the world beating a path to the doors of the Temple. But the prophetic messages also warned this would not work if the nation was not consistent in their faithfulness.

Israel failed this mission. They were too busy scrabbling for what they felt God owed them to worry about enlightening the Gentiles. And it didn’t wait until Jesus’ day to consider it treason to bear the message to foreigners. The prophet Jonah refused God’s call to preach in the Assyrian capital; he wanted them to die and go to Hell. In this, Jonah was typical of his nation. If anything, the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day were even more hostile to the Gentiles. One of their false Messianic Expectations was seeing the Gentiles come submissively to be their slaves, bringing all the treasures of their nations with them as an offering to the Hebrew God. They were in no hurry to convert Gentiles and dilute their mythical inheritance.

So when yet another delegation of Pharisees came to Him asking to see one of His miracle signs so they could evaluate His claims, Jesus flatly refused. His generation was incapable of recognizing a genuine sign because they were morally degenerate and adulterous — another way of saying idolatrous, worshiping just about anything except Jehovah. Instead, He told them they would see no miracles until they understood the message of Jonah. They didn’t get to pick and choose upon whom God would have mercy; that was God’s prerogative alone.

And just as Jonah was three days and nights in the belly of the beast, so the Messiah would be three days and nights in the grave. Jonah was thrown into the sea as a ransom for those on the ship he had wrongly involved in his rebellion. Jesus would be thrown into the earth as a ransom for all of humanity. Like Jonah, Jesus would then return from His prison alive and prepared to spread His message in ways Jonah could not have imagined.

Jesus wasn’t shy about warning them. The Ninevites repented at the word of a foreign prophet; the Jews rejected the message of their own Messiah. The Queen of Sheba traveled far in her own discomfort without waiting for an invitation to meet with Solomon; the Jews couldn’t be bothered to recognize their new King born in their midst.

Then Jesus refers to something poorly understood in the modern West. Demons would occasionally leave their victims just to play with their minds. We saw it with Saul, for example, or the Gadarene Demoniac. When Jesus got involved, they were evicted permanently, but when the Pharisees claimed to have driven one out, it was likely just a case of short respite. They would recognize the situation Jesus described here, where a demon would leave, then come back with a vengeance. He was saying here that the Jewish leaders were still at the mercy of demons, unable to free themselves permanently because they had no moral authority in the first place. Bear in mind that walking faithfully in the Covenant is what kept demons out, and it was the failure of Jewish leadership to keep the Covenant that saw so many demons infesting Jewish people in the first place.

Apparently He was somewhere indoors during this exchange, because we see someone outside trying to get His attention. He was told it was His mother and siblings. In general terms, they did not follow His teaching, and certainly didn’t take seriously His claims to be Messiah. Jesus pointed to those inside the room who did follow Him. They couldn’t bring themselves to step inside, in an atmosphere where the presence of His disciples would prevent them treating Him as someone needing their guidance. Jesus said, “This is my real family. These are the people who are faithful to my Father in Heaven.”

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Standing in a Different Context 05

Posted on April 28, 2018 by ehurst

The Antichrist in Scripture is a symbol, a demonic spirit that motivates people to be hostile to the gospel.

The failure of every big conspiracy theory is not taking the Bible seriously. These theories allege a higher intelligence and ability to organize and plot things with an inhuman precision and breadth of detail. This is inconsistent with what the Bible teaches. Whether a theory posits some superhuman intellect or nonhuman intelligence doesn’t matter; there simply is no such thing. There is only Satan, his demon hordes, and the poor lost souls who follow his guidance.

It’s the same lie from that sad day in the Garden of Eden, that human intelligence is capable of handling everything. The arrogance of human reason is unbounded, but the capabilities most certainly are constrained by God. Thus, it’s just as sinful when some conspiracy theorist alleges that he can detect with his own brilliance some nefarious master plot to rule the world. It’s all the same Satanic lie.

There is no human agency capable of pulling it off. Fallen humans are incapable of executing most of what they imagine. Every fictional plot is shot through with holes. So even if there are groups of people out there who imagine themselves brilliant enough to take over the world through some deep and devious plan, they are simply lying to themselves. And those who try to beat the game by insisting that the plotters are super-intelligent non-human aliens, it’s just side-stepping the Word of God. Creation itself is not fallen, only humans. If they are human, they are fallen. If they are not human, then they are not fallen and not evil.

The Devil does not control nature, only so many humans as submit to his lies. And not one of those humans has ever been capable of holding together a master plan across multiple generations without it all coming apart sooner or later. Nor will humans ever get any smarter; instead they are getting progressively more blinded and deceived as we move toward God’s final endpoint for this fallen existence.

Nobody has a valid master plan to rule the world. God will not permit it. That was one of the lessons from the Tower of Babel. What will continue to rule the world until Christ returns is a very intelligent Devil whose mission is to build false hopes and then destroy all the dreams of brain-led humans. Living by your reason and intellect guarantees failure. It is simply not possible to understand reality that way. It requires the heart-led consciousness.

And if your heart is not committed to serving God’s glory, then He’ll make sure it can’t lead you anywhere that matters. A great many people have demonstrated a level of insight into the mechanics of reality consistent with the heart-led perspective, but they didn’t bow the knee to their Creator, and so always were led astray about the ultimate meaning of things. A heart of darkness cannot know the truth of God’s Creation, which is reality.

With all the advancements of human technology, about the only thing we’ve accomplished is burning out our dreams, schemes and plans quicker than ever. Those dreams that drive fallen humanity ever forward are sourced in the Devil. The only super-human intelligence involved in such aspirations is his. And his hands are bound by God’s authority on his mission. He cannot work outside Biblical Law because that is God’s Law of reality itself.

So while a handful of Zionists dream of taking over the world, it will never happen. They’ll be driven down false paths because that’s the Devil’s job. The same goes with other globalist and imperialist plots. Humanity is nationalist by nature; it’s in our DNA. We cannot be made to cooperate with such plans by any amount of deception, manipulation and force. Reality itself will prevent it. Satan is not allowed to make it happen. Defying Biblical Law is defying reality and it simple will not work. So the likes of the Protocols looks like a plot that is working, but in the end it must fail. Zionism is a demonic spirit and will be around to the end of humanity, but Israel will last only as long as it serves its limited purpose.

Typical Western visions of Apocalypse are loaded with Satanic deception. John’s Revelation was meant to help us understand the nature of fallen mankind and precisely why no one can successfully oppose Biblical Law. John never expected anyone to take his prophecy as literal. It’s Hebrew mystical symbolism; it’s parable through and through.

Don’t buy into the lies. Learn to recognize the hand of the Devil, and distinguish it from the hand of God.

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