Trust Your Heart Alone

Posted on April 15, 2018 by ehurst

You cannot simply turn your mind off. The heart-led way puts the heart back on its proper throne, making the intellect a mighty servant. Without your mind, you cannot organize and implement obedience to what the convictions of the heart demand.

But you cannot trust your mind. This is why we teach that you should make a conscious effort to move your awareness into your heart and watch over the mind. I’m sure there are no words for exactly what’s going on with that, but using such words a parable serves to indicate something upon which we can act. Your mind is not you; it’s just a part of the bigger whole. Do you understand that your intellect will die with your fleshly body, and that our new bodies in Eternity will have a different kind of mind altogether?

Invest you sense of self in your heart, because that is your eternal nature.

Do you understand that this is technically illegal in the US? You’d have to read a selection of court rulings, but all the way up to the Supreme Court, American judges have said you are responsible before the law of the land to act on your intellect and not trust in divine revelation for decisions regarding matters over which government says it has authority. No, really; those rulings say that. You are obliged before the law to live as a rational being.

So I’m actually promoting something illegal here. It’s the same thing Jesus did in His country. He spoke out against the laws of the land as established by human reason, and insisted that we must obey revelation from the heart of conviction. It was illegal for Him to teach that; it got Him killed. It got a lot of His followers killed later on.

Granted, US law currently lacks a system for coming after us, at least for now. Instead, the illegality of what we do comes out in court during prosecution. And here at Radix Fidem, we would never teach you to stand up in court and use your religion as a legal defense. We teach that it’s pointless, since the entire system of US government, starting from the day the Constitution was signed, flagrantly denies the truth of God’s Word, even as it pretends to cite Scripture. “In God we trust!” Not.

Indeed, if the US government trusted God, it would obey the Law of Noah. The US government doesn’t even want know about the Law of Noah. The US government trusts people who have been highly conditioned with lies to love and die for the system. I do love the people and I’m willing to die for my fellow Americans, but I’m not willing to die for government lies on those terms. And it’s not the same thing, but if I have to explain why, you’ll never understand. The government hasn’t been the people since that Constitution was signed; it’s two entirely separate people.

But that doesn’t justify hateful actions against government or its agents. It means we aren’t deceived about what’s going on around us. For the most part, we play along because Jesus never called anyone to fight the government. That’s part of what He told Pilate. Jesus pointed back to a long line of mystical tradition where we simply don’t get involved as if human government actually mattered; it doesn’t. We get involved as infiltrators who serve a far higher government on a different level of existence. We are here on loan from God; He decides under which human government we’ll serve His glory. It’s just background noise and we don’t take it seriously. We play along because that’s how do our mission work.

And don’t make the mistake of thinking there are other agencies and people you can trust. You can’t even trust yourself, so never get lost in false trust. Sometimes you’ll use what’s at hand because that’s what God wants. But if there is any person or agency big enough to do anything useful, you can be sure their motives are tainted.

For example, were you aware that Glenn Greenwald has never really published very much of the stuff Snowden passed to him? No, Greenwald was using it as leverage to elevate his own reputation. His boss at the time he began publishing under The Intercept was Pierre Omidyar, a former CIA spook. There is zero reason to imagine Omidyar is no longer working with the CIA, so you can bet he had some hand in preventing Greenwald dumping everything he had. Most of it never saw the light of day.

Instead, several other leakers jumped in and made sure stuff got out. At last count I noted there were four, maybe five, leakers beside Snowden, all apparently unknown. One or two are still active. And no, I wouldn’t trust Assange and Wikileaks, because they’ve been caught holding stuff back, as well. Assange is all about himself and his chosen path of glory.

And so on; you get the picture. Again, don’t trust humans and their agencies. Play along if it seems right under your convictions at the time, but know that they all suffer some personal interest. And while we are at it, the US government is currently one of the biggest and worst liars of all time. It’s rare then it bothers to tell the truth about anything. If some government official says the sky is blue, you need to go out and see for yourself. This is the mark of a dying beast.

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Teachings of Jesus — Matthew 12:1-14

Posted on April 14, 2018 by ehurst

We have noted often how the Pharisees had added quite a few restrictions to the Law that were not required by Moses. They had done so as part of their shift to Hellenized rationalism, which turned their Hebrew mysticism into legalism. It meant a usurpation of the heart-led way, firmly planting the intellect on the throne of the soul. Jesus accused them of laying heavy burdens on the common people while exempting themselves through all kinds of secretive loopholes. They no longer understood God, nor His divine moral character, and so they had no real clue about the meaning of Moses’ Law.

The Law of Moses insisted that the people of Israel treat their fellow Israelis as family, and God was their ultimate head of household. While it’s never okay to rob your brother of his livelihood, it’s certainly okay to expect a certain amount of sharing essential life support. So the Law of Moses said if your brother Israelite was walking through your field of ripening grain, he couldn’t do any damage, but he could eat as much as he could process with his bare hands as long as he stopped when he left the field. This was permitted on the Sabbath, because it was a simple matter of getting and preparing the food at hand. In this case it meant plucking a head of grain, rolling it between your palms to break the husks, blowing on the chaff to remove it from your hands, then eating the exposed grains from the stem.

But the Pharisees and their oral traditions had built up an unnecessary hedge to “protect” the Law from transgression. They treated the Law as a fragile princess whose honor must never be sullied. They called these actions reaping, threshing and winnowing, unlawful labor on the Sabbath. It was missing the point entirely, as Jesus showed them. With their carefully constructed, intricate restrictions on human behavior, they couldn’t account for several famous events in the Scripture.

When David was on the run with his handful of closest bodyguards and lieutenants, he stopped by the Tabernacle and asked the attending priest if they could have the old showbread (1 Samuel 21:1-8). It was perfectly legal for them to eat that, since the fresh bread had just been put in place that morning. In other words, it was a simple matter of the priest sharing his portion of the leftovers, something that was probably barely palatable at this point. He was unlikely to miss it much. His restrictions were reasonable.

And don’t the priests have to perform hard labor in the Temple on the Sabbath? Nobody complains about that. If what His disciples did was profaning the Sabbath, so was what the revered King David did, and so did the priests up to that day.

But that wasn’t what made them angry. It was when Jesus affirmed that His authority was higher than the Temple, about which they had become institutionally OCD in protecting its precious honor. (Did they forget it was built by the most paganized and immoral king in the nation’s history?) Then Jesus quoted Hosea 6:6, “For I desired mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.” The Pharisees didn’t know Jehovah, didn’t have a clue to His ways. The rituals always took second place to knowing God because they were meant as nothing more than symbolic indicators of how God viewed things in certain specific contexts. If you don’t know God, you can hardly extrapolate from one instance how He’ll act in another. The Sabbath was a blessing, not meant as a burden.

The Jesus poked them again, saying He was the Messiah and was Lord over the Sabbath observances. It was for Him to judge what was and was not lawful before God. We can only guess at their shock because they failed to seize Him immediately for saying such a thing. Instead, He kept on walking with His disciples and went into their synagogue. The Pharisees plotted to catch Him in front of more witnesses. So pretending to take His rabbinical status seriously, they asked him a question about the finer points of the Sabbath Law. Is healing on the Sabbath unlawful labor? By this time, the bogus oral traditions had ruled against it. Here was Jesus the Miracle Worker in a chance encounter with a man who had suffered his whole life from a crippled hand.

Take a moment to consider: Why were there so many diseases like this among the people of God? Where was the shalom? It was hindered by the leadership of the nation. They had gotten so far off track as to deprive the common people of the benefits and blessings of the Law. They were hateful and abusive to common peasants. The promise of shalom included guarding against most diseases. So it wasn’t this man or his family who had sinned, but in effect, the Pharisees who had sinned and made this man miserable, and now they were going to deprive him of his one chance at healing.

Jesus slapped them hard. “So, you have no trouble rescuing your domestic herds from trouble on the Sabbath, but you want to keep this Son of Israel in his misery because of your silly and unlawful legalistic reasoning? Is your brother Israelite not more important than a mere animal?” His comment implies that the only reason they could offer for their position is that their herd was their money, but healing this poor wretch wasn’t going to help their bottom line. So Jesus healed the man right there.

And all they could think about was how personally insulted they felt, shamed about the real issue of holiness in this man’s life. Instead of rejoicing that a brother Israelite was freed from his bondage, they began plotting how they could have Jesus arrested.

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Photography: Arcadia 1

Posted on April 13, 2018 by ehurst

Now that I have my own car, I’m hoping I can start taking one photography trip each week. Now, I probably could have ridden to Arcadia on my bike, but I’m not sure I’m ready for that distance yet. I most certainly would have seen more granular detail on the bike, and could have stopped more places because parking is not an issue even on those narrow back roads. Of course, today offered very high winds in our area, and last night’s storms did come back in little patches while I was out. To be honest, I figure a small dirt bike would be ideal, but I’m at least a couple of years from having the money for something like that.

Most of these images will be self-explanatory. I just stopped where I safely could around the area and shot whatever I could see. I used my tripod quite a bit to steady for telephoto shots. For example, that first one was cut from a panorama that required using the tripod for consistency’s sake. Just to the right here is Coffee Creek, a major tributary to the Deep Fork River.

If you tried to tour this area using Google Streetview, you would miss most of the stuff I found. I’m sure I missed plenty myself at driving speeds. Still, it’s an image-rich landscape and quite hilly. The ridges are steep with quite a few rocky outcroppings and the foliage can be quite thick. There are lots of old ranches. This area has been occupied since before it was actually parceled out. The original name for Arcadia was Deep Fork Township. The founder is who built the famous Round Barn back in the 1890s.

The Round Barn has its own website. This place is a historical landmark and you can just walk in and look around for free. The lower floor is a gift shop and museum. The top floor is an event hall. The poor lighting made for a dark image, but I think you can make out what’s there. You can see how the rafters come together; they were cut from oaks along the river bank. They were soaked in the river, and then bent on a form and dried.

The museum includes a lot of old farm implements out front, each with sufficient labeling so you know how it was used. The little town does feature a few interesting historic buildings. Some are abandoned and collapsing, like this old farmhouse. The original Methodist church is well preserved. Some of the structures are simply kept up by the occupants.

This old stone storefront is now all house, so far as I can tell (Edit: Tuton’s Drugstore). There’s a batch of original structures from back in the glory days of old Route 66. There are several businesses still open in this cluster of log and stone structures. This little town is a favorite with bikers, of course, so one of the shops offers leather goods, including a lot of Harley Davidson logo stuff.

As always, some of the shots didn’t turn out well. I think Arcadia has a few more visual treasures to offer, so I’m planning to make another trip up here sometime in the near future. Maybe I’ll combine it with a look at Luther, just down Highway 66 east a few miles.

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Photography: Spring Flora and Fauna

Posted on April 12, 2018 by ehurst

Today’s ride was meant to be more like exercise. I focused on keeping a steady pedal cadence for the outbound leg of my ride. I started from home, worked my way to NE 4th, dropped down through Bricktown (no more construction on my route — yay), and hit the north bank River Trail. All the way to Portland I worked on the cadence, and then turned around by flipping over to the south bank. I pushed a little less hard on the way back, but didn’t see anything calling my name until I got to that lovely spot where the trees screen the river. Today the trees are beyond bud and into small leaves.

In the background of that image were some white cranes. I spooked them and had to wait awhile for them to settle before moving out to pick them up with telephoto. Unlike the geese, who wander all up and down the river in small herds all year long, the cranes are seasonal and tend to come back to the same spots every year. This happens to be one of their big favorites, just below the last dam on the rowing area.

I stopped to visit the mystery on my final leg toward home, in Ray Trent Park. While the red buds aren’t visible yet, they have just begun to appear. Meanwhile, the tree is in full bloom, covered in pinkish-white flowers. Some have already begun to brown.

It’s not so much a mystery any more. This close-up shows the distinct look of apple blossoms. The sweet aroma was also unmistakably apple, so we can confirm this is a type of crabapple tree. This tree has a friend nearby with a pretty chewed up trunk, but it’s the same breed of crabapple and it’s flower scent was even stronger.

Now let me switch back to my hike yesterday on the Barnes Park trail system. I spotted the evidence of beavers in the area where I used to do part of my heavy workout (recall the shoulder arthritis no longer permits such workouts). This section of Soldier Creek has a natural stone dam, so I don’t think there’s any intent to add an additional dam just yet. As I walked along both sides of the bank, I spotted other trees, all of them the same type, all with marks of beaver gnawing. My guess is they are preparing to build a lodge on this already damed section. The other end of this tree has large limbs chewed off. The teeth marks as you can see are long scrapes with large teeth and pretty deep, so it’s at least one full-sized adult, and probably a whole family or two.

I’m waiting to see if MWC Parks will leave them in peace. It’s odd to see Oklahoma beavers in an urban park like this, but not unheard of. Here’s hoping the dogs don’t mess with them. It should be an interesting project to watch their progress. I had a chance to study beavers a bit in college as part of biology classes; there was a large colony under watch by the teaching assistants. You may see more about this colony on Soldier Creek.

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Tribulation for Sure

Posted on April 11, 2018 by ehurst

This is a prophetic warning. It’s useful only for those who feel led by the Lord to pay attention.

Just a quick review first of the wider context. We’ve explained often enough what Biblical Law demands of us in terms of social and political structure, and that it ain’t likely to go that way in this world. We are not surprised to see the West tearing itself apart because it is wrong-headed on just about everything possible. You’ve seen how it starts with the fundamental assumptions about reality itself.

One of the most obvious false assumptions is about the nature of human sexual identity, for example. You could propound a workable theory that everything wrong with the West comes from the false conflict between male and female that characterizes our civilization. This has nothing to do with whether individuals can wade through the mechanics of relationships; it’s the fundamental false view about what it means to be male and female. Nor is it a matter of which of the two conflicting views are correct; they are both wrong. It’s a false masculinity against a false feminism.

This sets up a false conflict that pervades every issue that arises in the West. Every debate and conflict theoretically aligns between the false male versus female imagery, never mind whether it includes actual males and females. Forget the theory; in broad practical terms, you can see the flavor of every dispute falling into the false female versus male conflict. Examples: globalism, socialism/communism, progressive leftism — it’s all feminist. Imperialism, social and political conservatism, libertarians, rightie stuff in general — it’s all masculine. And on both sides, it’s all wrong in the higher moral sense.

However, the prophetic warning here is: God is going to crush the lefties in America. Not because they are somehow more wrong in theory, but because their position excludes the political majority. That is, the slice of American population most likely to act on a political and social inclination is majority conservative in sympathy. There is one primary reason for that: Only the political right is willing to embrace nationalism, and human instinct as created by God is inherently nationalist. When things come apart, those who have any idea at all how to handle emergencies and survive are inevitably nationalist. They may vary in their sense of who is part of their “nation,” but the basic instinct never changes.

The wrath of God is on America. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Our US government has been judged and God is going to destroy it. Not the country and the people so much as He is going to destroy the system of government, and that almost surely means breaking the union into smaller regional states. My point here is that the breakup itself will be catastrophic in the sense that almost no one sees it coming. Sure, there is some awareness that California wants to secede from a US where Trump is president, and I suspect the Left Coast could easily become one of those resulting regional states, but that misses the point. The breakup won’t be a clean political procedure; first must come a civil war.

Regardless how it appears to any of us at first, this civil war will be largely a right-wing backlash. It doesn’t work well to think of the lefties as having one big coordinated plot to take over the US. It’s more the matter of an instinct and orientation; to be a lefty excludes live-and-let-live. So while some of them do coordinate and plan, it’s not a conscious monolith. It’s just the nature of being lefty.

I can tell you, for example, that the teacher walkout here in Oklahoma is a manifestation of that broad general lefty instinct to seek moments to exploit for political coercion. An actual strike is flatly illegal, but as long as the school boards are supporting this, that language won’t be used. Would anyone be surprised that most Oklahoma school boards are leftist? Perhaps not all the individual board members, but the inherent structure and nature of what school boards do is leftist. It never has represented the will of the people; it cannot. The reason there is a conflict is that in broad terms, the state legislature does more closely reflect the will of the people of Oklahoma, at least in terms of a conservative orientation.

So this could be made out as a Democrat versus Republican thing, but that misses the point. There are tons of lefty Republicans and very conservative Democrats. The real issue is that Oklahoma’s educators are generally out of touch with the population. I know this for a fact because I was one of those educators for several years. I worked inside the system and it is designed to isolate teachers from reality, and hide the internal reality from the population at large. Oklahoma’s education system is frankly an invasive enemy, and everyone pretends otherwise. It has never served the people’s interests because it cannot. And while there are plenty of serious problems with our state legislature, the underlying conflict that resulted in this walkout has nothing to do with the propaganda. It’s a fresh leftist attempt to take over a right-wing state.

Again, I’m not promoting the conservative agenda here and suggesting that the teachers are evil. I’m simply observing the dynamics and warning that, whether the education system gets what it says it wants won’t make any difference. What’s going to make a difference is how this sets up the path that future conflicts will take. If this thing is crushed, the education profession will be bitter and seek other ways to destroy the conservative grip. Don’t forget that our public education system is hostile to the wishes of the population at large, but educators are going to blame those who wear the titles of authority. We can expect a long future of sniping and spiteful resentment if they lose. They will remain a hostile force within the state (unless they quit and leave).

If they win, it’s just one more thing to tear down or simply gut during a right-wing backlash. The problem here is that this whole mess is a false dichotomy. The education system was designed as a means of stealthy infiltration and take-over, but it was based on entirely false theories about reality. Though it appears to have gained ground recently, creating a generation of snowflakes easily offended into throwing tantrums, it cannot win in the long run. It can only destroy; nothing can be built from the inherent lies. The result is a flaccid mass of whiners with no coherent agenda.

God’s Word says it’s easier to grasp moral and spiritual dynamics by parable. The proper image here of His wrath is that Satan has been set loose to harvest a crop of human misery. The Devil’s only real interest is keeping us from shalom by keeping us from embracing Biblical Law. The whole foundation of Western Civilization was to exclude Biblical Law from human consideration, and it has worked beautifully. Not because the Devil is fighting God, but it’s his job to deceive, kill and destroy shalom for those stupid enough to listen to his lies. God says it’s not completely tilted against us, and that He is in no way hindered by whatever Satan can do. God can still break through if we but take the offer of redemption, so there’s nothing unfair about letting Satan weave together something like the West. But such systems have a distinct life-span and then they die. The resulting human suffering is a delight to Satan.

As a part of the decline of the West, the US as a system of government was first unleashed to take over most of the world. In the process, the US has sinned mightily against all God has commanded. Satan used America to make life insufferable to much of the world. So America, as the pinnacle of what it means to be Western, will be crushed first. We shall be rendered powerless. Think about what that means; consider the implications. To prevent that power rising again, there will be some upheaval, some fundamental changes to our way of life. What will prevent us reuniting for another run at taking over the world? The fractures must create new, implacable differences between the resulting smaller countries. That means there has to be unforgivable acts of violence and destruction. This requires a lot of demonic work provoking such harsh divisions as to make it impossible to negotiate, a lasting visceral hatred for each opposing side (rather like Turks versus Greeks).

The set-up for this kind of conflict will be a very harsh economic collapse. You can bet the powers that be will try to harness that misery for external warfare, but that will also fail. The result will be to make things worse. No, this is not an apocalypse coming, but there will be tribulation for sure.

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Photography: South of Draper

Posted on April 10, 2018 by ehurst

Here’s the story about OKC Parks and Rec building a proper bike trail around Draper Lake. I spotted the survey markers a couple months ago and first assumed it was a new water line. But then I saw it wasn’t trenched, but being packed, and neither wide nor heavy enough to support heavy motor traffic, I assumed it was a bike path. From what I’ve seen of the route so far, it should be fun to use.

Continuing to take advantage of having my own car, I carried my bike out to the Draper Marina today. My intent was to visit some of the area south of the lake. I took the regular ring road clockwise around the lake, but at Westminster Road I headed south a couple of miles to Indian Hills Road.

This is how hilly it is out there below the dam. This shot looks west from Westminster along SE 164th. At that corner was a collection of ancient farming equipment and tractors displayed. I picked out the most unusual item: A tow truck marked with the Goddard Concrete logo and a giant fishing float hanging from the winch. There other items like an ancient dump truck with the “Tonka” logo on the doors, various tractors and other things I couldn’t identify.

Some of the land out here has been occupied for at least a generation. This cattle pasture must have been cleared before I was born. The cattle tracks crisscrossing it were at least knee deep on me in some places. And did I mention how hilly it was?

My primary goal was to see how Elm Creek looks below the dam. It’s a pretty deep cut. This first image is upstream (north) from Indian Hills Road. The second is downstream. Our green-up is well under way. Most of the short grass and shrubs are already green, and the oaks are putting out buds and tassels (depending on the particular breed). These are softer trees along the creek bank and the budding leaves were quite visible to me.

This image from across a pasture on the valley floor called to me. In this, Elm Creek is like Hog Creek was in a previous survey. There is plenty of wide flat bottom with rich soil, surrounded by some very steep ridges — wait, I said that already.

I rode west from Westminster along Indian Hills Road over some big humps all the way to Douglas Boulevard. I turned north at that point and came back again to SE 164th. From this angle, it was a pretty flat ride to find the creek again. This is looking downstream from SE 164th. This next image is the same spot looking upstream. Somewhere just about 200-300 meters upstream from here is where East Elm Creek and West Elm Creek converge. Keep in mind that Draper Lake in its current form is also known as East Elm Creek Reservoir. Someday they will expand and add a West Elm Creek Reservoir. This was a lovely and refreshing spot where I stood for quite some time listening to the creek gurgling out from under the bridge.

(Edit: I was mistaken. The confluence is about a half-mile south, not north of SE 164th.)

It wasn’t too bad taking almost a mile of the mostly flat valley road back to Douglas Boulevard again. Then I turned right and headed up over the ridge and back down to the valley, this time with just West Elm Creek. I couldn’t find any vantage point to take a shot of the confluence of the two branches. This first shot is looking downstream. The next shot is looking upstream. My understanding is the plan calls for this spot to be roughly the bottom of the dam. It will run north-south just upstream a few meters. It would stand quite high, probably to match the current dam on East Elm Creek. I have no idea how high that is, probably more than 100 feet (30m).

There aren’t that many one-lane bridges in this part of the state. All the washed out bridges I’ve shot over the past two years along West Elm Creek were the same design as this, but somewhat older versions. When a bridge like that is closed, it’s first piled with dirt and gravel. Eventually the wooden deck rots through and leaves some interesting patterns of dirt humps and holes. I decided not to hide the obscene graffiti on this shot. I managed to ride straight north back up past the water treatment plants just off the Draper dam. From there it was a slow slog getting back to the marina where I parked.

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He Doesn’t Get Tired of Us

Posted on April 10, 2018 by ehurst

There’s no way I can compel you to do it. If it doesn’t call your name and make you feel hungry and thirsty for all you can get, there’s nothing any one else can do to make it real for you. What I may be able to do is use my feeble words to call attention to something that lies dormant in your soul.

But this is a time when the most important thing you can do is find yourself at least one place where you can commune with Creation and the Creator to fill up that moral strength and resolve we will all need to face the tribulation. You need a prayer and worship place, a natural altar of self-sacrifice to pour out your soul before the Lord and seek His power.

Tribulation is already here and it’s settling in for a long visit. Patience and careful planning characterize God’s wrath this time; it’s not a sudden response to some provocation. This has been a long time coming and it won’t pass over quickly. Unlike the Exodus, this is not primarily about setting a covenant nation free to serve, but about destroying all the things that have steadfastly frustrated the covenant. Those things will be removed. Whether anyone learns from it is another matter.

I can agree that we are up against a very massive mountain of lies. It’s lying on multiple levels. Can you count the number of knowing deliberate lies the US government has told just today? But that’s one kind of lie within a system of deception. The entire Western mythology is the real lie of concern here. God is crushing a civilization that has struggled mightily against His revelation. At the same time, and on a different level, He is crushing America for an endless list of sins against what little she does understand. She can’t even be faithful to an imaginary covenant.

So it’s really very tough for us to discern how we can spread this truth revealed to us. If this thing isn’t a bonfire in your soul, you don’t have it. This truth must spread abroad. We are reclaiming the lost heritage of faith, the shalom of God, and it’s joy is only increased in sharing. If you don’t have some fidgety urge to say something to people around you, then whatever you have isn’t shalom. A critical element in the ancient heritage of faith is growing a bigger community of faith. But we surely cannot use the methods worn thin and threadbare by people who have sought to propagate a cerebral religion.

No, our primary means is simply living that shalom and letting other people see it. There is no particular method; just walk in His blessings and let people decide they want it for themselves. As things get worse, they are going to get increasingly desperate and they will see the good works the Father has given you. They’ll come to you sooner or later.

Or the Father Himself will create those teachable moments when silence is not an option. But trust me: You’ll know when those moments come. You just focus on doing shalom and everything else will take care of itself. It has to own you in order to work.

Pray long and often; be in the habit of chatting with the Lord all throughout your day. It will help you remain conscious of serving Him. He’s looking forward to it.

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Cycling: Will Rogers Trail

Posted on April 9, 2018 by ehurst

I carried my bike in the backseat, minus the front wheel. It was a tight fit, but it was better than having it rattling in the wind on my cheap bike carrier. The Will Rogers Trail opened just a few weeks ago, running from the River Trail (north bank) at May Avenue to the connecting trail on the south side of Lake Hefner’s trail system. The first leg is under Interstate 40 and across a busy intersection at Reno and May, but the bike trail is nicely merged into the traffic controls so I had no trouble crossing.

This was the most expensive bike trail so far, in part because buying the right-of-way was more expensive, but also because it required substantial engineering changes in several places. This second shot shows the east side of the State Fair Grounds. Trust me, the fair grounds are ugly now, because half of the stuff has been removed over the years. There are a few exhibit/event buildings, but almost none of the historic attractions. Who would imagine here in the Midwest, they would tear down the motor race track? That’s un-American!

As the trail heads north from the main north entrance to the fairgrounds, it takes over one whole lane of a regular street, and stays like that up to NE16th. There it crosses over Interstate 44 (AKA, Will Rogers Parkway) and then winds along the western side of that highway all the way up past NE 36th, not quite to the old US Route 66 at NW39th.

Along the way, the trail runs on the eastern side of Will Rogers Park. (Get the idea of a theme here?) Aside from a couple of fixtures and the landscape, this park looks nothing like it did when I came to visit as a child 55 years ago. Getting across the old US 66, they took advantage of an existing crossing at Saint Clair. Again, it was merged into the traffic controls nicely and drivers tend to be tolerant. I had no trouble crossing.

Heading north, I noticed that an entire mile of brick wall was built just for this trail to block out freeway noise and so forth. I’ll bet the local residents like that. At one point I had this view of the NW OKC skyline. On the far right the burgundy framed tower was formerly the infamous Penn Square Bank that went belly-up in 1982. Just a bit left of there is the famous Founders Tower, previously the tallest thing out this way for quite some years. It was standing when I was just seven and I can remember my Dad pointing it out to me when it was new. Most of the tall structures left of that all belong to our famous third hospital cluster. The main attraction was once called “Baptist Hospital” but is now Integris, famous for its heart research and treatment center. Off screen to the left is Deaconess Hospital; it and Baptist were out here alone for decades with just a few houses. More houses came, and then the medical industry exploded and so did the towers out this end of town.

The trail runs through the medical buildings on the west side of the freeway, then connects with Portland, up to the NW Expressway, then west along NW63rd to Meridian. From there it’s north to the lake. Along the way were miles of new wood fence as the bike path is mostly a wider sidewalk where sidewalks normally rest, in this case along the backside of a bunch of houses. It’s been a few weeks since I could take a long ride, so I didn’t feel like chasing all the way to Lake Hefner itself. This new trail ends where it connects to the Hefner trails system. I took this shot standing in the shade of a fragrant pine with this long look toward the golf course. Then I headed back the way I came.

On the way back I took this gratuitous shot of a rather nicely camouflaged mosque. It’s called the Islamic Society of Greater OKC (ISGOC). There really aren’t that many Muslims in Oklahoma (roughly 35K), but lots of Muslim money. You can look this one up, but it’s famous for offering an accommodating approach and blending into the local society as much as possible. They’ve made a lot of noise denouncing ISIS, for example.

The path is well done and very well protected. I think I may stop chasing the Katy Trail and Grand Boulevard on my giant loop 50-mile rides. This new trail is much more convenient and still runs about the same distance when I include Lake Overholser.

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Keep Your Escape Pod Handy

Posted on April 8, 2018 by ehurst

Here’s the foundation: God’s revealed will for the human race under the Curse of the Fall. His Law Covenants speak to us of how reality was designed and how to get the most from a bad situation. We can mitigate the Curse of the Fall, but we can’t escape it until death. We continue in this life by having an attitude of winning our release into death by each of us completing our unique mission calling to glorify God.

We teach that there is a significant departure between what God says will work versus what we can figure out for ourselves without His revelation. Further, we teach that you cannot even discern that departure, the deep level of deception, without taking the heart-led path. If you do not shift the core of your conscious awareness into your heart, there is no way you can obey God’s revealed will, because you cannot understand it.

Is anyone surprised the US is in such a big mess? People give lip service to obeying the will of God, but the system under which we Americans live is hostile to the heart-led way. So we have any number of “experts” asserting that this or that agenda is “God’s will” or something equivalent, when any heart-led person can see it’s not even close. So we find in His Word several references to how He herds the nations that ignore His will and uses them without their full awareness. There are people utterly convinced they are doing His work in our government, and they don’t have a clue what He wants.

The heart-led path leaves you understanding that the US cannot do anything right, except wholly by accident. We can approve of some choices as better than the alternatives, but there is nothing morally right about the wider agenda choices. All of them are founded on something other than revelation. You cannot stand along the sidelines and cheer for this or that agenda or candidate, but you can go along with it because the real work of God is somewhere else. Since the US will not bow the knee to God sufficient to obey His will, we have to take an alternative path of infiltrating and seizing opportunities for His glory. They will be small glories because this not a covenant nation in a position to gain big glories.

In prophetic terms, Trump is God’s agent of destruction. Think that through: Destruction has been decreed. Trump is not a good guy, just the clay vessel carrying the fire to consume this nation. Work along with the broader plan of God; don’t get wrapped up in Trump’s ideas and plans. The Devil has been granted a harvest in the US, so Trump is working for the Devil. But those who oppose him can’t even claim that much. They aren’t working for the Devil so much as just pawns in his game. They are slated for even worse destruction and torment. They are going down first.

So there are no virtues in anyone’s agenda. Antifa? Red commie terrorists with another label. Progressives? Whiners who stir up the people to disguise their own corruption. Conservatives? Not whiners, but still taking advantage of the common deception to pad their own pockets. Their primary deception is claiming to offer what people instinctively know is better for human life. One more time folks: God’s will for the human race includes nationalism, not empire or global government. We are supposed to be hundreds, if not thousands, of little nations. That’s a primary lesson of the Tower of Babel. However, not everything associated with nationalism is right, so that’s perverted, too.

What’s left for us is watching this gigantic process of destruction and realizing the whats and whys because we can see the nature of the failures in terms of God’s Law. For example: Why does socialism/communism always fail? Because it assumes materialism as truth, not as a perversion and human failing. In communism, material progress is god, and humans are nothing more than collections of bio-chemical processes. Morality is a delusion for them, which is why they are so terribly immoral.

Globalism rests on socialism/communism. It’s enemy and closest associate is imperialism, because the imperialists serve Mammon under a different delusion, actually believing in higher values, whereas socialists know they are lying about that. But either way, they are false values based on non-biblical mythology. They might tell themselves the values are from the Bible, but it’s a value system read back into the Bible.

And neocons are just Zionists, and Trump’s handlers are various flavors of necon. The recent changes in Trump’s staff simply clarify that issue. The neocon/Zionist agenda is how the Devil is going to destroy the US. God has not granted us the leverage to stop this train wreck, so our mission is to get off the train as much as possible. Some things we will lose, but our discernment is ours to keep. Thus, we know what the result will be and need not panic. In general terms you can see what it is you cannot hope to keep, so you can learn to treat it as just a temporary tool. What really matters is how we glorify the Lord with our resources. They can’t take that away from us.

This brings us back to our fundamental otherworldly position. Don’t get wrapped up in typical human concerns. Show mercy and use your empathy. Mercy and empathy are ways to walk alongside someone in misery without getting entangled in that misery. It’s where you can stand to pull them out when they are ready to be rescued. You can’t really help them until they are ready to take the path of the Kingdom and get off the path of worldly destruction. The path of the Kingdom assumes this world is slated for destruction.

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Teachings of Jesus — Matthew 11:20-30

Posted on April 7, 2018 by ehurst

Jesus compares the three cities where He spent most of His time and performed His most noteworthy miracles, against three Gentile cities most noted for their depth of heathen depravity.

Sodom was destroyed in the massive volcanic explosion that superheated the local salt crystals and turned them into a rain of fire. Tyre was destroyed by Alexander the Great building a great stone causeway out to the island fortress. Sidon was humbled repeatedly by a string of invading armies. Nothing of the former glory of those three exists today. So it is with those three cities where Jesus had invested so very much, having spent the bulk of His ministry living in those cities. Capernaum was eventually destroyed. Today it is a tiny village surviving only because Medieval churches kept track of the place, while both Bethsaida and Chorazin are buried ruins.

In our Western culture, we struggle with the idea that a whole city could be punished like this. What kind of moral failure would justify such an extreme measure? Jesus explains quite plainly. He fed the 5000 at the isolated fishing village of Bethsaida; three of His disciples came from there (Peter, Andrew and Philip). He lived in Caprunaum; it was His home for most of three years. He visited or passed through Chorazin countless times, just a few kilometers north of Capernaum. The three towns were magnets for huge crowds traveling to receive His teachings and miracles. The bulk of the inhabitants never considered Him the Messiah. They couldn’t even be bothered to accept the simpler of His teachings about the meaning of the Covenant. Their hearts were closed to Him.

They could even gather a committee to ask Jesus to heal the Centurion’s servant because he paid for the building of their synagogue in Capernaum, but they couldn’t embrace Him as the Messiah. How had they become so jaded? Had he performed any of those miracles at Sodom, Tyre or Sidon, they would have understood immediately what such power meant, and would have embrace Him as some kind of deity. And they would have repented and accepted whatever covenant He proposed.

In each case, we can be sure it was the towns’ leadership that balked at giving Him due respect. They had a vested interest in maintaining the system as it was. Who is going to listen to His message? Jesus rejoiced that it was the nobodies of His day. It was people who had everything to gain and nothing to lose. They were the ones who received the teachings of Jesus — the marginalized “poor” received the gospel message.

At this point, Jesus reaffirms the teaching that He was one with the Father, that He was the Son and Heir to the Kingdom of Heaven. Nobody understood the Father like the Son did. He called for the world of oppressed and outcast folks to come to Him for recognition and redemption. This was His future Kingdom, and unlike every ruler they had seen for several centuries, He promised to restore the promises of the Covenant. Anyone can read Moses and discern what low taxes and regulation they had to live with, the depth of personal warmth from their Lord, and what grand promises were attached to the Law of Moses. The burden of serving in His Kingdom would be the best life anyone could imagine.

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