Teachings of Jesus — Matthew 11:1-19

Posted on March 31, 2018 by ehurst

John the Baptist had preached repentance to the Covenant in the Jordan Valley because it was convenient for observing the baptism cleansing ritual year-round. In his preaching, he disparaged as sinful the scandalous divorce and remarriage of Herod Antipas. For a time, John languished in prison. He still had his disciples and they were permitted to meet with him and run errands. They brought him news of his cousin Jesus’ miraculous ministry. But there was no uprising and the Messiah didn’t march in and take over. So was Jesus really the Messiah? John sent two disciples to query his famous cousin about this.

Jesus had the two disciples follow Him around that day as He preached and healed. Then He quoted Isaiah 35, where the prophet rejoiced in a vision of restoring genuine love for Jehovah. The effects of sin would be healed and divine moral justice restored. It was considered a Messianic prophecy. Thus, Jesus was assuring them that He was the Messiah. The real question was whether they understood what the Messiah really was all about. His message through John’s disciples was to assure John it was worth being in prison for preaching the truth. He had fulfilled his commission as forerunner.

There is a reed that grew wild in the Jordan Valley. It would droop during the heat of the day, and rather quickly stand back up in the cool of the evening. It was a pastime in those days to go out and watch them rise like that, a social occasion for having a nice friendly chat in the evening. Jesus asked His audience: When you went out to the Jordan River Valley, was it just a nice couple of days out to watch the reeds do their thing?

Or perhaps they went out to see a scholarly man with civilized courtly manners? What did they expect? The wilderness of the Jordan Valley wasn’t the place for scholars to hang out. They usually serve on the king’s staff in his palace. So why all this herding of folks down the difficult roads to an uncivilized place? They went to see a very classic style of prophet, wearing the uniform adopted by Elijah and speaking a very challenging message. They went to hear a prophet speak about the coming Messiah, an obsession of folks who had too long lived under oppressive heathen Gentile rulers. There were dozens of such prophets running around in those days, and John was simply one of the biggest crowd draws because his ministry was more compelling than others.

He was the pinnacle of Covenant prophets. None of his predecessors were in his class; this was indeed the greatest of God’s prophets under Moses. But he was also the last of his kind. That’s because what follows is the final fruit of the long gestation of the Covenant, the ultimate realization of where the Covenant was pointing all those centuries. It would be the Kingdom of Heaven. Anyone who qualifies for entry into the Kingdom will have all the things John only dreamed about, in a yet higher class of closeness and communion with Jehovah.

People came down to the Jordan Valley in droves. They were full of zeal and ready to seize the moment to declare the Kingdom if only John were to claim he was the Messiah. They were ready to take up arms and die fighting the Roman troops to reestablish the reign of David’s dynasty. Jesus reaffirmed that His cousin John the Baptist was the prophesied return of Elijah, something they knew meant the Messiah was coming right along behind, but not the Messiah himself. Did they understand that John’s testimony about Jesus meant He was the Messiah?

Jesus then seized the moment to warn that His generation wasn’t ready for the Messiah. What could He say? He told a parable of children out playing in the village square. One group is fussing with another: Why won’t you play with us? What kind of game will satisfy you? You don’t want to play celebration and pretend to dance. You won’t play funeral if we sing dirges. Have you forgotten how to be children? Jesus was characterizing His generation as cranky, petulant children, impossible to please.

Here comes John the Baptist with his dark warnings of sin. He calls them to repent and leads the way with personal austerity. He was extra careful about obeying the Law of Moses. All the crowds came down to the Jordan, heard and saw the message, and walked away scoffing at his simplicity and zealous fervor. Jesus comes along celebrating the thing John prophesied and they say He’s not zealous enough like John. What does it take to get them to hear the Word of God?

He ends with a common figure of speech: You can tell a wise woman by how her children act. Whose children were these Jews, who were more like those obnoxious kids for whom nothing was good enough?

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The Risen Christ is Our Truth

Posted on March 31, 2018 by ehurst

There is nothing to gain by activism. It’s not that activism doesn’t accomplish anything; what it accomplishes isn’t worth it.

A recurring theme on this blog is how Satan deceived the Jewish nation. The record begins in the Old Testament and runs through today. It’s not about Jewish people today, but Zionism. Have you noticed that Zionist propaganda has eclipsed the whole issue of Judaism? Zionism seeks to redefine what it means to be “a Jew.” Instead of a long established religion, it’s a political agenda. It’s the ultimate end of the idolatry of Mammon (AKA materialism), the true god of Zionism.

Granted, Zionism does cite the Old Testament regarding their claim on the land of Palestine. They are responsible for the phrase “the Holy Land.” It’s supposed to be their grant from the God of the Bible in perpetuity. All their talk of eternity is within this world, with dreams of ruling the entire human race from their ancient home. But they have long ago ceased worshiping the God of the Bible. Judaism was a way-point on the path to serving Mammon.

I’ve said it often enough before: If the Jewish people actually repented and returned to their ancient Covenant of Moses, we would be first in line to support them. It would mean, of course, restoring the ancient Hebrew mysticism and completely dropping the legalism. It means tossing the Talmud in the trash and restoring the actual teachings of Moses. We hold no hostility to the Jewish people by any means. But we cannot support them as long as they cling to the Talmud, never mind Zionism. If they came even close to Moses without the mythology, we would be their best friends.

They won’t.

So we teach the truth of what happened to the Jewish people and leave it lying where it is. We focus our resistance on Zionism. Not in the sense of activism, but simply calling it what it is. Zionists intend to create a heaven-on-earth scenario, the ultimate lie of the Devil going all the way back to the Fall in the Garden. Never forget: The earth is Eden; it was never meant to be Paradise (by any definition). God created Eden as a garden; it was never His palace courts. What was spoiled is our own place, not His. Restoring Eden means removing the effects of the Fall, the curse of blindness that keeps us from clearly perceiving ultimate reality as God made it. Zionism seeks to confirm the Curse and keep us blind.

So the modern State of Israel is just a big lie. The biggest lie is that somehow God failed to keep His promises about the Promised Land. You can look it up; several places in the Old Testament it flatly states the God kept His end of the Covenant and granted Israel all He had promised. It also states outright that they never managed to claim that promise, so some parts of the Promised Land remained outside their authority until much later under David. The King won all the Promised Land and more. Indeed, His heir pushed the boundaries even farther. Solomon reigned over far more than the Promised Land. They most certainly did hold the entire promise of the Covenant, and traded it away for a taste of Mammon.

But even when things were holy and shalom was in abundance, it was only ever meant to be a manifestation of the true promise of the Covenant: a pure heart before the Lord. So when Jesus came along to declare Himself their Messiah, it was all about that pure heart, not some piece of turf in this accursed world. It was about restoring Eden in moral purity, the same thing the Law of Moses was all about in the first place. The Messiah died on the Cross and rose again — HALLELUJAH — and the Covenant is fulfilled in Him. In the final ultimate sense, He is now the embodiment of that covenant. It’s a continuum. There is no unfinished business prior to the Return of Christ.

It’s not Israel we oppose, then, but the lie of Zionism. We could care less who lives and rules on that patch of earth. Our whole point is that it doesn’t matter. Modern Israel has no claim whatsoever on any follower of Christ, nor anyone else, for that matter. As long as people waste resources, time and energy chasing Zionism, they can’t be doing anything good. And it’s critical that folks understand that Dispensationalism was concocted by Zionists to enslave Christians to the lie of Zionism. I can trace that out for you, but the whole notion of “End Times” was cooked up by Zionist agents seeking to deceive Christians. At every step of the way, Zionists have guided and funded the whole theology of Dispensationalism.

In this respect then, our mission is to simply point out the truth that Dispensationalism and Zionism is a damned lie. Chase it all you want, but you’ll never get to the end point. There will never be a Paradise until the Curse is lifted. That means erasing everything we know as a human race on this earth and restoring what we have long abandoned in the Fall. It means going back through the Flaming Sword of revelation; it means embracing and obeying Biblical Law as the frame of reference for doing good and moral things while under the Curse of the Fall. It means a focus on end of this massive moral blindness that holds mankind tightly in its grasp until all things are finished and Eden is restored to Earth.

Eden is not a physical fact; it’s a matter of moral perception. No other part of Creation is fallen except humans. The natural world is still Eden, but we can’t see it. So we chase all kinds of lies in seeking a paradise that we cannot comprehend. But one thing is for sure: Zionism is not the path to Paradise. Christ is.

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The Agent of Strife

Posted on March 30, 2018 by ehurst

A critical element in escaping lies is not just exposing what is false, but digging down into the root system and finding out where the lies came from.

You are no doubt aware that certain political groups wield the weapon of labeling folks “antisemite” to silence certain discussions. A recent example is when folks complain of the globalist agenda, the discussion itself is considered “antisemitism.” Thus, reasoned resistance to globalism is now a moral sin. There comes a point when you just have to ignore such shrieking and get on with the business of saying what you think.

I rather like Fred Reed’s take on why folks are so hard on Jews.

Jews with remarkable consistency have been described for centuries as smart, greedy, combative, clannish, “pushy,” exploitative, and arrogant. This is how I hear them described in Mexico, where I live. (I think of these as Middle Eastern traits, but never mind.) Then there is chutzpah. which in practice seems to mean “brashly walking over other people.” It can leave others feeling bulldozed, defeated, used. This bruising of the ego, of self-respect, arouses a hostility all out of proportion to actual damage done. It is, or so I think, a major cause of dislike for Jews. Such descriptions are dismissed today as stereotypes. A stereotype is just the aggregate observation of many people over time.

I recommend reading the whole article. Fred takes the time to write plainly about what should be obvious, but in the mainstream press, it’s a forbidden topic. It’s not that I endorse everything Fred has to say about it, but I do endorse thinking about it and talking openly about it. It turns out “antisemitism” is just a label for anything certain whiny Jews don’t want to hear about. We aren’t supposed to notice they aren’t like us until they tell us to notice. They demand total control of the conversation, the aforementioned chutzpah.

That it seems they are determined to rule the world should surprise no one, since every known ethnic group has manifested such a desire. Let’s keep this in a realistic context. For my part, I’ll remind you that The Cult [PDF] uses Jewish people as its primary front to stir up implacable strife.

It’s working.

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This Is Not an Organization

Posted on March 29, 2018 by ehurst

Our objective is not to grow in numbers.

That will inevitably happen as the Lord adds to our number, but our objective is peace with God. If this thing doesn’t call your name, then you can’t have it. There’s nothing anyone can do at a human level to make it happen. On the other hand, if it calls to you, there is a substantial burden of effort to make it work.

Not because it’s so hard; this thing is the very nature of what we were designed to be. The effort is to undo all the things that are contrary to that natural design. It takes a lot unlearning to get it right.

As noted in the linked article yesterday, we don’t see a big separation between the Old and New Testaments. Jesus was the natural completion of what Moses was all about. He was the ultimate living expression of the Covenant. His teaching was not a departure, but the final maturation of what started with the Flaming Sword at the Gate of Eden. We who enter into the Covenant of Christ can seek the exact same disciplines and blessings as what God wanted for Israel. There is no unfinished business on this earth. What we have today in Christ is the final stage before the end of this world.

And the end of this world will be one single event. When Christ returns for His people, there will not be some long stage of years while we are gone and this world cooks off. He’s coming back only once. What He’ll do is restore what we surrendered in Eden. We will be changed; the natural world is not fallen. Christ will wipe away all the works of fallen humanity and restore what should have been. Those who remain wedded to those works will pass with them into an indescribably awful eternal fate, which we can only characterize as living in the Presence of the Divine as His enemies. They will be fully aware in some final ultimate sense of their guilt and disfavor. The rest of us will live eternally free from the burden of the Curse of the Fall.

So we emphasize cultivating the otherworldly focus of existence. We are preparing for that eternal future of Eden restored. It’s a burdensome thing because we gradually gain a clearer view of what ought to be against a background of what now is. Yet it’s a joyful thing to see and participate in some partial restoration as Creation celebrates with us what is to come while we yet live here and now. It’s a thrill to rise into a heart-led awareness of how God sees things.

It is inevitable that people around us will see us in this blissful state halfway between the Two Realms of existence. They’ll see how Creation is our friend and God grants to us a measure of that future ecstasy, which we call shalom. At least, some will see it, those to whom the Father grants vision. They will be drawn to what we have.

All we really have to do is live what He grants us; He does the rest.

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A Lutheran Take-down of Dispensationalism

Posted on March 28, 2018 by ehurst

I won’t elaborate on this: Dispensationalism: What and Why Not. It might be a little long, but you can also grab a PDF version of the same paper to read later. It will show you that we are closer to the Lutheran position on such things. That doesn’t mean Lutherans would accept us with open arms, but they certainly handle this one issue pretty well.

(Hat tip and thanks to Bruce.)

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Dispensationalism: No Rest for the Weary

Posted on March 28, 2018 by ehurst

The wedge issue has always been Dispensational eschatology.

I came to full religious awareness while living in Anchorage, Alaska. It was about the time I turned twelve years old. My family was attending a particular Baptist church where the pastor wasn’t pushy about anything at all. Internal church politics kept him in place because he was just a figurehead; he didn’t interfere with those who had influence and an agenda. It was a relatively large church, so it was ripe for strong figures who wanted to spread their propaganda. They didn’t just show up randomly; I know for certain some of those big shots had influenced other movers and shakers to move their membership there.

One of those strong figures was a doctrinaire Scandinavian import who more than once got the church to allow him to set up displays in the fellowship hall. It was on particular evenings when the membership gathered for a fellowship meal or other festive occasion. One of those evenings he placed a large collection of posters, banners and printed pamphlets about Dispensationalism. That term wasn’t what stuck in my mind at the time; it was the phrase “End Times.”

This was the late 1960s when stuff like that was news to a lot of Baptists. I distinctly recall the initial mixed reception among the adults with whom I had any social contact. Among those with a positive reaction, it was very positive, urging me to take a copy of the most graphically illustrated pamphlet and study it. The whole thing became an on-going discussion among church members kicked off by that display.

I wasn’t aware of national politics, much less international relations, until later in high school when I was at risk for the Vietnam War draft. I don’t recall at all any kind of connection between that talk of End Times at church and the issue of Israel, but somehow I got the message. I was a full blown supporter of Zionism, insofar as I knew anything at all about it. Yet it remained in my mind two separate things for the longest time. Thus, I slowly moved away from Dispensationalism long before I realized it meant I had no reason to favor Israel politically.

Eventually, having moved a safe distance away from all of that, I was exposed to a critical review of the religious literature that promoted this stuff. I recall devouring Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth along with a couple of later books in that series. I recall how it all seemed so real. I knew nothing of the author and his shenanigans until much later. Virtually nothing in his books ever came true, and it was part of a longstanding genre of similar literature that rested entirely on trying to fit current events into some wild speculative doctrines. It wasn’t a question of whether Lindsey believed any of that stuff; I was disturbed by the underlying cynicism of hooking my generation so he could become a millionaire. Maybe it was just instinct for him, but it remains one of the best examples of marketing manipulation in American history.

Having studied the roots of this whole Dispensational nonsense, I am struck by one consistent factor across the entire range of major figures promoting it: Every one of them had an ulterior motive. There was not a single “true believer” willing to sacrifice for the sake of conviction, except at the lower levels. The leadership of this thing have always had their eye on something else, and this was their big tool.

Worse, there has always been a background of secret dealings behind Dispensational theology. During those years when I was seriously trying to break into the pastoral ministry, particularly among Baptists, there remained a strong conspiratorial element of things I was warned not to discuss with average members of the flock. This particular ethic was consistently stronger around the issue of Dispensationalism. We cultivated influential volunteers to spout the orthodox line, tossing out brief lectures at every Bible study or class meeting, but it was never more critical than with the orthodoxy of Dispensational belief. That’s because it was so fragile and so easily countered. It had to be maintained at all cost, and that cost was quite high.

Dispenational theology is not a reflection of genuine faith conviction. It doesn’t feed you in quiet moments and keep you strong. It presumes an adversarial stance because the resistance is so natural. Not natural from our fallen nature, but a natural resistance because it’s so freaking insane in the first place. There’s no room for “live and let live” on this issue; it doesn’t sell itself. But it can provoke a ravenous hunger once it is pushed just a little ways among less mature souls. Dispensationalist doctrine remains one of the single biggest draws in youth ministry. Teenagers, or those who tend to operate on a juvenile level of enthusiasm, eat this up. It’s been that way since I can recall. It’s cool secret stuff that beckons with a promise of answering everything logically. It does not lend itself to calm reflection; it’s always attached to energetic urges to “do something.”

This is what keeps so many churches from contemplative religious experience.

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Latter Day Pharisees and Sadducees

Posted on March 27, 2018 by ehurst

Sifting through my personal memories of various religious controversies, I see some distinct mile markers, break points where things changed forever after in my soul. I’m trying to match them with wider events recorded in American Church History.

One of the things that still bothers me to this day in my time at Oklahoma Baptist University was the complete failure of the professors to grasp the allure of fundamentalism. They came across as arrogant because they engaged in the smart-aleck rhetoric of attacking instead of offering any measure of sympathy for how that intellectual certitude felt so safe against the storm of uncertainty. Those professors lost the debate because they took the debate seriously, instead of shepherding and mentoring the students who felt pulled in both directions.

The fundamentalist influence in my time there at OBU was a groundswell among students drawing on outside influences. It offered a strong personal interaction, a sense of camaraderie that won over many of us. The whole scene was strange enough with a serious and sometimes secretive difference between the folks inside the college and all those people out there in Oklahoma supporting “their Baptist university.” Students who bought into the liberalism of the faculty were warned to be very careful what they said out among the churches. Those of us who tried to expose what we saw as a betrayal, of taking big money under false pretenses, were often silenced by very real threats against our academic standing. We students experienced it as a very elitist snobbery.

So the whole thing remained a matter of politics, and no one seemed to understand the real personal dynamic behind it all. There was nothing redemptive in the whole mess, with but a few exceptions. In later years, it was those few exceptions that made all the difference in the world to me.

One was the oddest thing of all: A proto-fundamentalist who was anti-Zionist, an elderly lady who had been there and established well before anyone else in the Religion-Philosophy Department of the school (Dr. Rowena Strickland). They couldn’t get rid of her, but did keep her at the bottom of the totem pole. Gaining her degree during the 1930s, she had watched the Zionist takeover of American evangelicals unfold, and recounted enough of it for me to remember later. The other was a genuinely pastoral man who was caught in a bind, forced to associate with the neo-orthodox without actually being one of them, but also clearly not a fundamentalist (Dr. Robert Clarke). He was awfully busy, but a heart-led man and it unlocked a door in my soul I would later walk through.

In retrospect, it’s a wonder the system didn’t crush the both of them. Meanwhile, the neo-orthodox theology of that day faded away, dying from a thousand cuts. The real debate is the one that slipped in the back door when fundamentalists arose early in the previous century. Almost the whole thing rested on the Scofield Bible, the primary means of transmitting Zionism to American Christians. Scofield was financially sponsored by an early Zionist agent, Untermeyer, whose influence and money bought the soul of America. Thus, there is a sense in which fundamentalist Protestant Christianity was pretty much created as the front for insinuating Zionism into American politics. By the time I attended OBU, the die had been cast and everything was tainted by this ugly conspiracy. The debate itself between neo-orthodoxy versus fundamentalism was conjured as a means to manipulate and grab everyone’s attention away from what really mattered.

Neo-orthodoxy is a term that describes a relatively liberal position. It’s as liberal as one can get and still be allowed to stay in an essentially fundamentalist denomination. It’s an attempt to create a “new orthodoxy” (neo-orthodox), alleged to come from more accurate research into the Bible and how it was formed. When you trace it out, the position is simply agnosticism with a pretense of not wanting to throw out the baby with the bathwater of primitive religion. It’s plain old communist social theory with a less threatening aura, the modern day Sadducees.

Fundamentalism is just another branch of Pharisaism.

While the underlying dispute is still there, recent generations of American Christians hardly pay much attention to the debates the ruled my world. The manifestations of the old battle have different faces and different topics, but they are still the same false debate designed to keep folks focused on the wrong questions.

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Organized Christian Religion Is Broken

Posted on March 26, 2018 by ehurst

We who share in the Radix Fidem covenant say that churches have gotten lost.

Instead of trying to fix this world, we believe the most important thing we do is help people to get out of it. The proper way to do this is to live as if we belong to another realm of existence. It restores the world in some measure to its original design prior to the Fall, a sort of return to Eden. The entrance to Eden is guarded by a Flaming Sword of self-death, a judgment against our fallen nature that we must embrace voluntarily. The focal point of that sword, the method if you will, is building a feudal-family relationship with our Creator. A critical element in building that relationship is acting in ways to elevate His reputation, not just as men tend to see such things, but building His reputation in the way He wants it done.

A primary element in shining His glory into this fallen world is to live in such a way as to harvest His blessings, His shalom. If we were to boil down following Christ to its essence, it would be lovingly seeking the Father’s favor by consciously participating in His design. That’s often translated into English is “obeying His Laws.” That’s a very unfortunate translation that carries many false connotations. Our Covenant in Christ is one of adoption as family in His household. We willingly engage His agenda for demonstrating how He meant for us to live in the first place. That’s the life of moral consciousness through the convictions of the heart ruling over the brain.

Sometime shortly after the passing of John, the last living of the Twelve Disciples of Jesus, the church leadership began to drift away from the ancient Hebrew mystical vision I painted above, and relied more and more on intellect and logic. At some point, the leadership was right for plunder. That is, Constantine was able to seduce the Christian leaders into willing bondage under government. Not just due respect for human authority as ordained and steered by God, but these leaders allowed themselves to be suckered into bringing the whole of religion under government management. These leaders believed they were being permitted to have a say in government, to steer government policy to favor Christian living, but it was a lie of the Devil.

Yet here we are today hearing the gospel highly diluted with the alleged dire necessity of helping shape government policy so that sinners are restrained. That was never the mission of Christians. By embracing the Flaming Sword, we have to come to realization that such a mission is utterly impossible in the first place. This world is fallen; it cannot be made unfallen. It is slated for destruction, not redemption. The only thing that can be redeemed is the individual soul. And the only way redemption can be amplified in fellowship and communion with others is to bring to life something this world cannot ever accept: subjection to God as feudal Lord and Father. The fallen world of man cannot even desire such a thing. The can be no such thing as a Christian human government.

So the primary flaw in current mainstream Christian religion, particularly in the US, is having traded the true mission of faith for a distraction that disembowels faith. Yes, we do understand the Law Covenants as manifestations of Biblical Law, but the latter is merely a name we apply to walking in Christ’s footsteps. Jesus is the living Biblical Law, the personification of the Father’s will. Sure, we could help advise human governments on ways to draw closer to the applicable Law Covenant, but we already know from prophetic warnings that they do not and cannot want such a thing. That was a part of what John tried to tell us in his Apocalypse: This world is inherently hostile to the Flaming Sword.

God guides His children as a doting but firm-handed Father. He herds the rest of fallen humanity like cattle, employing Satan as His cattle driver. We are strictly warned not to interfere in human government. In those rare moments, officials may listen to our prophetic word about Biblical Law, but don’t get suckered into thinking the Devil is simply going to let them go. He isn’t God’s enemy, but he’s our Adversary. He wants us in his herd so he can milk us for all we’re worth. Any hint of social and/or political agenda in the church is the work of Satan. Prophetic commentary is one thing; getting involved as if it could make a difference is another thing and wholly wrong. It is idolatry of human intellect, because God has said repeatedly that He’s not going to tell us all that He’s got up His sleeve for human government.

We should expect the broad system of American evangelical Christian religion to collapse because everything that system depends on is going to fall apart. The painted whore has ridden the Beast too long, and it will turn and devour her. A significant part of my calling from God is to watch and chronicle this sad story. It is a prophetic mission that will drive me until I’m in the grave; it’s the job I have to complete before I get to go Home — or at least try.

This is the foundation of this blog; it’s the primary source the drove me to start writing here. Everything else is a by-product of that mission. I still marvel at how many of you have come alongside to join in this work. We have no quarrel with anyone’s Christian religion, but we refuse to give our blessing to something that falls short of what religion is supposed to do: serve as a manifestation of conviction and faith. We belong to a higher realm, the Kingdom of Heaven. We are living invitations for anyone who can be touched by our demonstration of faith and our shalom to join us in seeking membership in the divine family.

This is Radix Fidem, the “root of faith.”

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Offerings to God

Posted on March 25, 2018 by ehurst

It makes a world of difference when you give to family versus giving to just about anyone else.

I actually like the article on tithing at Wikipedia. It corrects a lot of lies told by greedy clergymen. Nowhere is tithing taught in the New Testament; free will offering was the whole teaching. All this blather about discipline and economics is just cultural Christian Talmudism.

This is entirely a product of the West. In Western mythology, the individual is property of the government. Since we live in the age of the secular state, that’s the government that owns you. Everything else is fiction, a false cover to excuse the most abominable dehumanizing abuse. There is no such thing as a “family household” except as a term of economics and social control. In reality, each discrete human life form is individually property of the state. Keeping a family together is merely a matter of bureaucratic convenience.

The American evangelical church has openly adopted this model, but with an even thicker paint job to make it all sound nice. It splashes a false vision on the wall like the image from a projector. Behind the scenes, the religious leadership looks for ways to enforce the tithe via manipulation. It is no different from political campaign fund-raising. It’s uses are seldom any more moral or sensible than politics.

The whole thing is aimed at creating an institution consistent with the existence of the secular state. Once it gets past some invisible balance point, the mere fact that this thing stands there constitutes a demand to feed it and grow it. The thing continues regardless of who occupies the various offices. It’s about as depersonalized as it can be, and our society calls it “church.”

What would happen to Radix Fidem if Bro. Ed were to die? No, not the name and the blog — what would happen to the thing signified by that name? I think most of you might miss me, however much of me you have in your life. But the thing we are doing together that justifies this effort to organize, however little we have done it, will keep right on going. Some of you will lose it because you never really had it. That’s what happens in real life. Still, those of you who were seized by this move of God’s Spirit will go right on doing the same stuff, growing and discerning new ways to make it live.

I’m betting the forum would continue. It already stands independently of my efforts. There are a handful of folks who are quite capable of leading it and keeping it alive. That was the whole point: to move from this single point of failure called “Ed Hurst” and shift it over to a wider number of people.

But there’s no significant investment in infrastructure or institutional awareness. Instead, it’s more like family, which is what the word “church” is supposed to mean. Our covenant will stand because it never rested on organizational principles artificially instituted to become a non-living entity. If Radix Fidem isn’t first and foremost a covenant family, organic to our sense of human existence, then it was dead from the start.

Our teaching does not state clearly, but obviously presumes you know you belong to God as a feudal household member. That means all your stuff, too. By reflex we should have long gotten used to investing in tools for service, in the same sense that all of Creation is just a tool for our Lord’s glory. It’s a parable: I’m a tool, you’re a tool, everything we can touch is a tool. Granted, people are more complicated than most other kinds of tools, but in the sense of how we direct our resources, it’s all one thing. The resources together are another tool for His glory.

My wife and I recognize Easter as a secular holiday with pagan roots; we still keep Resurrection Sunday separate in our minds. We still do all the silly stuff with eggs, bunnies, pastel colors, etc. In our apartment building is a single mom with four delightful little girls. They don’t suffer from a sense of entitlement, so giving to them is a joy. We have prepared Easter baskets for them just because it’s a great tool for demonstrating the love of God. And we’ve done things to help the mom, to include working on her car and stuff like that. They don’t owe us anything and we aren’t keeping tabs on the cost. It’s just a matter of what we can spare at the time. According to God’s Word, all of that counts as an offering to Him.

The cars, computers, cameras, and all the other stuff your donations help to buy? Those are just tools in Kingdom service. That’s the reason we dare to ask for donations from time to time. You know where the money goes; that’s my minimum duty to you as family members helping each other. I treat the neighbors as family; whether they get any shalom from it is for them to work out with God. I’m in no position to push my teachings on them, but they’ll learn when they ask. I suspect they pick up far more than I could say. You get to be a part of that. Don’t make the mistake of thinking God doesn’t miraculously add that to your shalom, but I’m not a huckster trying to plunder you. I don’t have satellites to launch and real estate to buy, and there’s no political agenda here. I have another kind of legacy I’m trying to build.

All we have is our high positive regard for each other as family, and it’s working exceptionally well already. Keep your money until God tells your heart what to do with it.

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Teachings of Jesus: Matthew 10:34-42

Posted on March 24, 2018 by ehurst

Jesus continues the theme of otherworldliness. Here He injects a few notes from the Talmud, where it is predicted that the generation of the Messiah’s coming would see social chaos, a breakdown in the traditional shalom. But it’s more than a quote from the Talmud; it also echoes Micah 7, the likely source of the Talmudic predictions. Thus, Jesus asserts rather forcefully that He is the Messiah, and His coming is meant to uncover the hidden sins of His nation.

So His coming will not bring shalom until He first judges sin by pouring out the Father’s wrath. Don’t look for peace; look for a sword of judgment. Any hostility the disciples face from their own Jewish brethren on their mission would be quite normal, all things considered. The call of repentance back to the Covenant naturally brings turmoil where centuries of corruption have reigned. So even immediate family members will be divided over their varied responses to a restoration of ultimate loyalty to Jehovah. People who take the path of radical penitence will risk being kicked out of their own home.

But the Messiah demands that we put Him first. He is our true Head of Household; He will offer a new covenant of adoption, the fellowship of the Cross. Everyone in His domain will have their own cross of self-sacrifice. In no uncertain terms, it will cost you this life, and likely in the most unpleasant death imaginable. But if you aren’t ready for that sacrifice, you aren’t ready for the Messiah’s reign.

So as they go, the disciples need to remember that they represent His Kingdom. They are His emissaries, and protocol demands they be treated as if He Himself were in their entourage somewhere secretly watching the whole thing. And He in turn represents the Father, Jehovah God. How they treat the preaching teams indicates their loyalty to the Covenant.

There were established practices regarding the reception of a prophet or an innocent passerby. There was a long established practice of offering what is appropriate hospitality to just about everyone you might encounter in life. Even if it’s just a cup of cool water to the most ragged traveler of no reputation at all, there was something required of the host who had a knock on the door. If all he did was observe the ritual demands of the Law, he was safe from wrath. He might not win any awards, but he’s not a hindrance to the gospel of the Messiah.

The disciples were being drawn up into the moral frame of reference. Don’t get hung up on the details as they were taught by the Pharisees and Talmudic scholars, but to see beyond mere legalities. This was a matter of seeking a sense of conviction, and sharing that with others. It was seeing from the heart the essence of God’s Presence in His Creation.

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