Teachings of Jesus: Matthew 10:5-15

Posted on February 24, 2018 by ehurst

Most people don’t quite get what’s going on here. First, we have to understand something of the religious behavior of Jesus’ day.

Jesus was an established rabbi; no one questioned His status. He probably wore a distinctive rabbinical garment. We believe that many rabbis wore a sort of uniform marking them as such, though the details are in dispute. But it makes sense they would mark themselves because there was a large number of itinerant rabbis in Palestine at that time, traveling from village to village and spreading good words of encouragement.

This is important to understand: There were two primary types of teaching. One was all about the law itself, called halachah — commandments and legal rulings. There was also a body of less formal teaching referred to as haggadah, a collection of parables, narratives, proverbs, psalms, etc. These latter were designed to uplift and encourage, to feed one’s faith. It was not unheard of to call this sort of stuff “good news” or “gospel.” And it so happened in Jesus’ day this was by far the most popular message offered by rabbis — popular with audiences and rabbis.

There were also a large group of preachers who didn’t qualify as rabbis. A significant number of them were known to be disciples of one rabbi or another. The business of a traveling rabbi calling a number of disciples to accompany him was quite common. Indeed, it was a recognized act of piety for a Jewish man to take leave of his normal vocation and spend some portion of his life as a disciple of some rabbi at least once. This sojourn could last a few months up to several years.

On top of this, we have to keep in mind that there was a broad ferment of Messianic excitement bubbling throughout Jewish society. It had been like that for some years, not least due to the likes of John the Baptist. A great many itinerant preachers reviewed the prophecies in Scripture, along with some mystical visions and whatnot keeping this ferment alive. Quite a few were less than reputable, just looking for a way to avoid actually working. In the mix was all kinds of heathen mystical nonsense; Persian Zoroastrianism was a popular source at this time, as were all things drawn from legends of the Persian Empire, by then some three centuries gone. The ruler who executed John the Baptist attempted to model himself on Persian royalty.

Jesus was sending His disciples out as preachers professing Him as their rabbi, but with a specific message that the Messiah was on the verge of announcing Himself. They had seen His miracles first hand and were going to perform echoes of them as the means to establishing their authority to preach this very different message of good news they had heard Him preach. The context is very clear: They were going forth under Covenant authority to their own Covenant brethren, and within the area of Galilee. Notice that Jesus warns them again preaching to Gentiles.

They all had ties in that area, so it was likely wherever they went that someone would know someone who knew them. Finding at least some limited support was highly likely on those grounds alone. Some relative or friend of the family would put them up and feed them. They were not cast out on the kindness of complete strangers. Thus, they were instructed to avoid any of the common precautions against starving or having to rent a room from total strangers. This was a bit of testing for their faith, but that still misses the point.

This is the Messiah sending His messengers to prepare the way. He was planning to come along behind them and confirm this new message of Messianic authority, both in His unique teaching and in His miracles. It was to mark out the places receptive to His message. If any community rejected His message, they didn’t get to meet their Messiah. They would risk exclusion from the future Messianic Kingdom. This was a matter of testing whether these people could sense the truth with their hearts. Would they welcome the Messiah as He really was, not as a bunch of hucksters tried to imagine with wild propaganda? Would they recognize the implications of the Torah in what these messengers presented? Will their shalom find a home there?

It would be a big mistake to presume these instructions apply to Gentile preachers of the gospel message today. The context is radically different. There are clues for us today, but we need to rightly divide this passage as resting wholly under the Law of Moses.

Let me offer this interesting link for some added depth to Jesus’ rabbinical background.

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Nebuchadnezzar Was a Good Guy

Posted on February 23, 2018 by ehurst

So why was it God depicted Nebuchadnezzar as the golden head of the statue in Daniel’s vision?

Some things are obvious. The most popular answer from Western Christians is that Neb was simply fulfilling God’s plan. He had utility and played his part. And we also have that time when he went mad as punishment against his fleshly pride, and repented by humbling himself before God (Daniel 4). I note in passing that the Babylonians were unique in not boasting of their military conquests. We have precious few records of their martial exploits; it seems they frowned on such pride. The Sumerian Empire, which the Babylonians admired so much, provides a clue where that comes from, referring in official inscriptions only to their monarch’s piety and building programs, despite external records of major military conquests.

What we do have is a strong record of Babylonian libraries, a penchant they picked up from their Assyrian predecessors, who in turn had taken much from the more ancient Sumerians. Most of what we have today from Assyria and Sumer is found in the remnants of Babylonian possessions. We also know from these records that Daniel’s training for imperial court service included studying a lot of this stuff. We have a rough outline of his degree program, which included: language and literature, history, mythology, math and science, and administrative procedures. But it was more than a mere course in culture; Daniel had to learn to think like a Babylonian. More to the point, he had to understand his employer, Nebuchadnezzar.

You can get a decent introduction to Babylonian learning from Western academic sources. What would be exceedingly difficult to find is someone who can teach you what it would all mean to a Babylonian of that era. What we do understand is that the Babylonians themselves would insist you can’t get it without a certain broad outlook, an underlying approach to reality itself. Precious few Western scholars can help you with this. Oddly, those who know it best tend to be somewhat careful sharing it, because of the basic hostility they endure from the inveterate fans of Western Civilization. Once you really grasp the Ancient Near Eastern outlook, you find yourself pulled into that world, and no longer at home in the West.

Keep in mind: This is the world of Abraham and Daniel, among many other biblical heroes of faith. Daniel and his Hebrew pals didn’t struggle much because we know of a certainty that it wasn’t so radically different from their own Hebrew approach to things. Not in the peculiarities of revealed religious truth, but they shared in the broader intellectual background, those basic assumptions about reality. The Babylonians were part of the heart-led ancient past, same as the Hebrews.

In the passage in Daniel 4, the prophet is careful to note that Nebuchadnezzar was restored by praising God as he knew him, an ancient name we generally anglicize as El Elyon — “the Most High God.” Neb didn’t call Him “Jehovah” (or Yahweh) as the God of Israel; Daniel made that connection. So Neb clearly remained pagan, in the sense that he didn’t convert to serving Jehovah. This is the man God referred to as the golden head of the statue in Neb’s own dream, the same dream later revealed to Daniel. The whole business of how someone could recognize a dream as a divine revelation, and not be able to recount it, is itself a part of ancient lore Westerners find incomprehensible. It comes off as miraculous mumbo-jumbo. But to someone who understands the Ancient Near Eastern approach to life and reality, it’s not at all surprising. Two men could have the same dream if they shared a cultural background, plus a certain kind of moral receptivity and a sense of divine calling.

That was the objective of Daniel’s Babylonian education, to share a frame of reference consistent with his earthly master. And the whole objective for any Babylonian man’s delving into the ancient literature was to open up a higher faculty of moral reasoning not restricted to mere intellect. Daniel and his pals got that faculty as a component of their Hebrew faith; it was built into their religion. Theirs was due to a clear revelation from the Creator of all things. Babylonians had to wade through a lot of crap contained in ancient literature in hopes that some clue would seize them and make them able to see from that higher perspective.

Despite his pagan orientation, Nebuchadnezzar was enough heart-led to see in terms of moral truth and be used by God. We can see that he struggled to pass on this depth of moral vision to his heirs. The end of the Babylonian Empire saw the throne passed through increasingly incompetent hands until Belshazzar, who wasn’t even related to Neb, so far as we can ascertain. Belshazzar’s father was a decent soldier, seizing the throne by assassination, but had no talent for rule. We note that Daniel says the golden head of the statue is Nebuchadnezzar himself, not his dynasty.

Nebuchadnezzar’s moral probity in God’s eyes is hard to grasp from a Western viewpoint. The Babylonian sense of moral value conflicts with those of the West. But apparently Babylon’s was a lot closer to the Hebrew’s version of morals. This is why we cannot hope to understand what God calls “moral righteousness” unless we take the time to dig into the culture and orientation of the Ancient Near East.

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Transportation Update 1

Posted on February 22, 2018 by ehurst

Here’s where we are now. The car fund stands at $2K. We are looking for something usable at that price while trying to add more to the fund. I’ve been working just a little, but unless we get more clients, that will run out of gas this week. Still, we are trying to save it up as much as possible. Our combined income is too low for any kind of reputable loan, so it has to be what we can pay directly.

Pray with us as we seek the Lord’s guidance.

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Reviewing Daniel’s Statue

Posted on February 22, 2018 by ehurst

Review the prophet’s vision of the statue in Daniel 2.

As with any proper parable, the image has meaning that branches out into all directions. It bears applications of divine wisdom to far more than one element in human existence, but we do understand that the ostensible point is a moral evaluation of human government. All things are measured against the standards of Biblical Law, and in this case, it’s the Covenant of Noah.

Granted, the passage in Genesis 9 that we associate with Noah’s Covenant doesn’t seem to say that much, but it must be read in the context of assumptions that gave it meaning. What Daniel offers as high praise for the Babylonian Dynasty represented by Nebuchadnezzar is couched in a wealth of background quite foreign to our western world today. That’s precisely the point we find Daniel making, if we can embrace enough of this context to understand the message behind this vision.

In this dream, God depicts the Babylonians as the golden head of the statue. Starting from that point in history, it had strong moral value in God’s eyes. Stop and think about that for a moment. Does not the Hebrew nationalist fervor brand Babylon with hatred for their pagan idolatry? Hebrew thinking was not so simple minded as that. The Babylonian culture arose from the same soil as the Hebrew; Abraham was called out of the Sumerian Civilization, a predecessor of Babylon. The indelible imprint of Sumer still shaped Abraham’s thinking. It wasn’t a wholesale rejection of everything that God demanded of him in calling Abraham to a nomadic existence in Canaan Land; it was the necessity of pulling in elements of wilderness sheikh culture to modify his urban Sumerian background. Anyone familiar with the peculiarities of Mesopotamian Civilizations would recognize much similarity in Hebrew intellectual heritage.

A primary reason Babylon was gold in the vision is the moral value still present there as measured against Noah’s Law. Remember, the Law Covenants as a whole are all about reclaiming a measure of redemption in this life; it’s part of the Flaming Sword guarding the way back to Eden. This is how the Babylonians themselves saw the issue. Their vast libraries of collected works from ancient times were all considered critical resources in seeking harmony with the Created order. Their underlying assumptions about reality were the roots of biblical religion, and the very frame of reference for divine revelation. Yes, there was a good bit of idolatry in all the various applications of those assumptions, but the assumptions themselves were not the problem.

We know that the silver portion of the statue represented the Medo-Persian Empire. It bore a somewhat less valuable background on which to build human government. That’s because the Persian philosophy introduced a critical element of materialism. Still essentially mystical in orientation, it had that one flaw of pulling worldly wealth into their calculations. Though not central, it was still significant. Thus, their philosophical assumptions produced a somewhat less consistent result in terms of God’s moral valuation. Still useful, but not quite the high quality of what came before.

The bronze portion of the statue was Greece, the Hellenist Empire. Bronze was far more durable and less malleable than silver and gold, so it had it’s uses, but it’s not the best government men could have. We must note here that the Greeks themselves, as a whole, were still considerably more mystical than Alexander’s tutor, Aristotle. What we now regard as the anti-mystical Hellenism of his time is more a matter of long-term effects, not their current reality. It’s the effects of Aristotle’s teaching we see today, not his actual beliefs. So in terms of military conquest, Greece’s underlying philosophy was more effective than the Persian approach to things, as humans view such things, but the resulting government was far less rich in helping people recover the path back to Eden.

And the iron legs represented Rome’s unyielding crush of all opposition. They conquered the world easily, but had nothing to show for it in terms of cultural enrichment. Sure, Romans had their great wise philosophers, but only in terms of what made Romans powerful. Their philosophers had very little grasp of moral richness. Again, it wasn’t the matter of their pagan idolatries, but the utter lack of moral grasp in their whole orientation on life. That’s how God saw it. The feet of mixed iron and clay is the natural result of a bad trend.

So the real problem here is that no one quite grasps that the feet represent just about everything since the days of Rome. The Western Crusader “Christianity” has no moral justification for proclaiming itself the stone mountain in the vision. Rather, that false brand of Christian religion is just a mixture of Roman harshness and efficiency with the mud of Germanic tribal heathen blindness to moral truth. It’s not that Western Christianity has crushed its predecessors once and for all; it’s nothing more than a very weak derivative that will itself be crushed by something eternal, something entirely natural and consistent with God’s creation.

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Don’t Go There

Posted on February 21, 2018 by ehurst

I suppose someone needs to state the obvious.

First, let’s establish that I don’t give a rat’s patootie how this all turns out. Over and over again for the past twenty years I’ve steadfastly warned that the US was doomed and nothing would change that. It’s not because things cannot be changed, but they will not. You know it; I know it. Let’s stop pretending. The wrath of God has already begun and there is no saving it. So it doesn’t matter what you might wish is the future of the US; somewhere in the next few years the US as we know it will cease to exist.

Now, let’s get this out in the open: There is no way on this earth that privately owned firearms in the US can be confiscated. You may succeed in drumming up enough political support to change the laws on gun ownership up to a certain point. However, we have just about reached the limits. Any more changes will provoke senseless bloodshed on a scale that will dwarf the occasional school shooting. It has nothing to do with what I want or what you or anyone else wants.

I can promise you the FBI is striving hard to become worse than the Gestapo (real or imagined), and the leadership of the FBI would like nothing better than to disarm the American public of all private weapons. They hate the 2nd Amendment, but that’s because they hate the Constitution as a whole. They’ll protest that this is not so, but it’s a lie. As far as the FBI is concerned, we are all criminals who haven’t been caught yet. Their sentiment is shared by a great many other federal law enforcement agencies. But they all know better than to imagine they could pull off a gun confiscation in America. They are outgunned and outnumbered, and they know for a certainty they would all be dead if they tried it.

You can bet that all of the law enforcement agencies federal and local in the US together know better than to imagine they could do it. Some are crazy enough to want to try, but most know better. A certain segment of the federal bureaucracy, led by a number of plutocrats, have been trying for years to reduce the number of people allowed to legally own guns, but it hasn’t made much of a dent. But the problem is not that there are several million legal gun owners; it’s that a tiny minority of those gun owners are just itching to go to war against anyone who imagines they can confiscate guns on any terms. I’ve met some of these people, and they are rabid about this. They are quite dangerous and will not hesitate to kill any number of government agents coming for their guns, along with however many people who stand in support of such a confiscation.

It won’t matter if you vilify them. It won’t matter if you talk all day about how immoral you believe they are. Those people are here in the US and they live all around you, and they have military experience in using weapons, very efficient killers. They outnumber the cops and the US military, as well. At some point, when you cross that invisible line, they will consider it a declaration of war. If you keep pushing, it’s not just a bunch of cops that will die for your political beliefs; you and your family will become targets for agitating for more gun control. Are you willing to take a bullet for your politics? Most of those gun owners would, but not until they’ve fired off plenty at the their enemies.

I’m not a part of them and I’ve done everything I can to put some distance between them and me. I want no part of their agenda. But I also want no part of the gun-grabber agenda, either. Both are nasty, despicable creatures who will face the wrath of God in great measure. That’s because both have made this one damned issue divisive enough to provoke a destructive civil war. And if you think the first one was bad with 600,000 dead troops, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

This isn’t the voice of fear; my trust is in God. It’s not a trust in guns or laws, but the God who made all things. There are plenty of other things you can do to make the world a better place, but this business of gun control is the wrong battle. The whole dispute plays into Satan’s hands. However bad you might think it is now, it can only get worse. It will never get better.

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Bits and Pieces 31

Posted on February 20, 2018 by ehurst

We have freezing rain and sleet today. When we got up early this morning, it was 68°F (20C) — almost sweltering. By mid-morning a cold front blew in and the temperatures plunged. It’s below freezing now.

And I’m fidgeting just a bit. It’s almost mid-afternoon and our mail carrier hasn’t shown up yet. I’m waiting on a new video card for the tower. The old one works until it has to actually do some work; it’s heat sensitive. It uses passive cooling, whereas the new one has a very large fan built into it, and it’s own exhaust vent on the end.

One of my tech support clients, a well-meaning older lady, gave me a little newsletter in the shape of a small magazine. It’s Zionist propaganda, but at least they use some of their funds for actual mission work. It’s just that they do so under the cover of Zionism. It does no good to tell ladies like that that I don’t favor her brand of “Judeo-Christianity.” For them, favoring the modern State of Israel is part of the definition of Christianity. It’s all I can do to point out that I’m not at all interested in politics, including her right-wing keyboard activism. But every time I make a house call to her place, I get a dose of Rush Limbaugh.

It depends on your own sense of calling, but I try to take the measure of who is ready to listen to what I might have to say. In most cases, I’m doing good just to warn them of genuine threats to computer security. It takes a bit of doing to explain why Windows does the crazy things it does.

Have you noticed the extremist rhetoric coming from the lefties, lately? Major figures are suggesting it’s time to start murdering those they condemn as fascists and racists. Most of them don’t have the guts to actually do any of that, but they wouldn’t hesitate to turn the police into left-wing death squads. I’m wondering if/when the rhetoric will stir some of the more violent activists, though. The problem for the left is that this is pretty new to their culture, so there are very few trained to actually carry out serious violence beyond just basic thuggery. It’s the right-wingers who train and carry guns. As for the police: 30 states have proposed or enacted some 50+ new laws restricting protests and such. Never mind basic left-right orientations, state and local governments tend to act right-wing when it comes to turmoil.

For those of us outside of that whole dispute, it’s hard to watch the hatred and violence. This stuff isn’t likely to just break out suddenly one day; this time of tribulation and wrath on the US will take several years yet. That’s the hardest thing to get across to most people: how slow it’s going to move. We get so conditioned to what we see in movies and other forms of entertainment that we expect things to happen in a matter of a few days. You might get that locally in a few places, but the overall picture is one of slow decline.

Update: I pulled out the original video card and it stinks of overheated plastic. It was just barely functional. The new one is an entirely different type of card, but the same brand. For the computer hardware geeks: I had a Quadro NVS 290; now I have a GeForce GT 730. It’s working fine with the proprietary driver from nVidia.

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Covenant Changes Everything

Posted on February 19, 2018 by ehurst

There are endless debates about what is in the best interest of the people, the country, what is just, etc. Let’s get one thing straight: Unless a divine covenant is involved, none of it matters. It’s all lies without a covenant. As long as this country is not a covenant nation, nothing we think, say or do is good or right. Nothing.

For example, don’t talk to me about the moral justice of letting poor oppressed immigrants come to this country so they can find a better life. Nor should you talk to me about defending the borders from invaders who are determined to destroy the materialistic culture that makes our prosperity so inviting. Neither position holds water without that covenant. The one and only thing we can talk about is promoting the applicable Law Covenant for the US — Noah’s Law in this case. Every other conversation is pointless.

Because we know already that no one in America is willing to hear that message, the only thing left to discuss is how America is doomed under God’s wrath. Here we do have some profit in discussing the various mechanisms and problems that will naturally contribute to the destruction of the American way of of life. There’s nothing frivolous about observing how it will all come to an end; that’s how we can be alerted to opportunities to infiltrate on behalf of that covenant law and shine the light of God’s glory and truth.

Don’t talk to me about patriotism and justice on any other terms. The one and only thing in anyone’s best interest is Biblical Law. We recognize Noah’s Covenant as a particular expression of Biblical Law. Noah is the practical application of Biblical Law that God granted to nations and countries until the End of Time. Only Israel has a unique covenant different from other nations, and you can plainly see she’s not interested in her covenant, either. Still, that such law covenants seem impractical serves only to point out just how far away from truth the world has drifted. By and large the human race refuses to bow the knee to Our Creator.

Of course, this means churches are no better. There may well be individual congregations in this world doing it right, or doing it well enough to provide a safe harbor for your earthly existence. For myself, I’ve yet to find one that will tolerate the doctrine of covenants, which means they don’t tolerate me. You can be sure I’ve tried every way I know, but right now there’s no place to rest my weary soul. I’m not hostile; they are. I’m quite willing to work with any group that will let me stay and operate by the faith and conviction that burns in my heart.

So this blog was started with the purpose of fulfilling my duty to that divine fire. A few of you have expressed a desire to join me “outside the camp,” here at the foot of the Cross. We have established a fresh covenant as the basis for our shared faith, a basis for cooperation. On the grounds of our Radix Fidem covenant, we will reclaim the vast bounty of shalom our God has poured out upon this earth.

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Feeding a Need: Teachings of Jesus

Posted on February 18, 2018 by ehurst

I’ve gotten some feedback on the Sermon the Mount series, though not much. What little I have gotten suggests it’s feeding a need. So for now, I’m going to continue marching through the teachings of Jesus as recorded in Matthew. My aim is to keep it fresh; I’m running more off inspiration. I don’t ignore scholarship, but I’m trying to breathe life into the presentation. I want you to feel like you were there in the narrative itself.

So for now, this will be the Saturday lesson notes that I publish here in preparation for my Sunday home worship. I’m not that much into polished oratory; I know how to do it but there’s too much manipulation involved. It would be better if there was interaction; that was permitted in the Old Testament synagogues. I try to write in a style that reflects a more informal presentation.

There’s a certain moral power in teaching the revelation. We are striving to break down the false expectations of the intellect so the heart can speak loud and clear. It makes no difference at all if the Scripture passage at hand addresses some specific current issue. The removal of the barriers means you are open to the truth in your own context. You’ll know what to do because of that living connection between heart and mind.

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Sermon on the Mount 20

Posted on February 17, 2018 by ehurst

Jesus uses another common parable from the Talmud. It was widely known in that part of the world that during rainy season, it could fall in torrents, rinsing the rocky places bare and flooding the wadis. Jesus could have easily cited the place where He sat teaching for this parable. Keep in mind that, while we cannot be sure of the exact location of this sermon, there are few steep craggy places near the northern Sea of Galilee where He had been ministering. Most of the likely sites were gently sloping hills composed of stone, left standing above the surrounding terrain because neither wind nor rain could remove them. They frequently had buildings on them, or ruins from past structures.

Thus, those who studied the revelation of God and obeyed it were likened to those who built on such rocky hills, and the heavy rains had no effect. Those who studied but did not obey were like those who built down in the wadi. Not just a shack, but these two were building a whole house, a large building with two stories, an exterior wall and inner courtyard with rooms all around. By extension, this house represented his household, his family and the legacy of all his work. This was his very life in this world, everything that mattered in the minds of Ancient Near Eastern men.

It’s obviously more than mere individual existence that counts here. But it’s also far more than just one’s own immediate family; it’s a picture of one’s contribution to the covenant community. How will you be remembered? What will your descendants have to live with when you are gone? Did you build shalom and divine justice, or did you fritter away your existence simply playing by the rules? It’s not enough to know the revelation of God and take the path of least resistance. We are obliged to put work into it and strive against the human moral entropy we inevitably encounter in this fallen world.

The shalom is far more than just the product of wise social science. It is the power of God to ameliorate the Fall. It is the favor of God and Creation itself, finding us delightful because we truly believe that it matters. Give your heart to God. Commit yourself to His ways and His wishes. That word “faith” means a heart-led commitment to a person.

It’s critical here to notice the reaction of Jesus’ audience. They were used to rabbis quoting previous rabbinical teachers and lawyers. Jesus taught from the Living Law burning brightly in His soul. Yet the people recognized instinctively the inherent authority of someone who had become the very living expression of God’s revelation. His teaching called out to their hearts and they recognized the truth of what He said.

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Divine Wrath: The Big Picture

Posted on February 17, 2018 by ehurst

This year the US government will borrow more than a trillion dollars. This money isn’t borrowed the way you and I might borrow from a bank or other financier. Government debt has to sold in the form of bonds. That means people and agencies with money have to agree to purchase a bond today against future redemption with interest.

There are several factors at work here. The basic interest rate has been low for a very long time, so there would have to be some other good reason to buy a bond like that. The good reason has been that investing your money that way in government debt has been safer than a lot of other investments. And if you just hold your money, inflation would eat it, so it’s better to put that into some kind of investment if you don’t need it right away.

That worked for a while, but it’s not working too well now. The biggest bond buyers were countries like Japan and China, and they are actively reducing their US bond holdings. They used to have an excess of dollars to get rid of because we kept importing from them more than they bought back from us. But they are trying to get rid of those dollars other ways (like buying up real estate and facilities and businesses here in the US). Part of the problem is that every country in the world is already in deep debt themselves, just like the US (only they aren’t so profligate), plus they have too many dollars already. There are better ways to invest them. On top of that, the climate of US aggression abroad is making people look for ways to hurt us and slow down that aggression; dumping US bonds is part of that. Our pushy demand that everyone else trade in dollars was sucking up their economies and benefiting only ours.

So that means the US government has to offer those bonds at a higher rate of return to entice other investors. That means the basic interest rate on all debt in US dollars has to go up with it — the Fed has to raise the basic interest rate for all loans. We know from experience that means the stock market goes down when the interest rates go up. That’s because rising interest rates mean consumers and businesses are going to be more careful about using debt to buy stuff they need, and all the stuff we manufacture is less likely to be selling quite so fast. It slows the entire economy down and stocks are less profitable because the companies behind them will be less profitable.

Nobody can tell you when these things will be noticeable, but they will be, as sure as the earth keeps spinning in space.

I wish I could show you how this works with charts and so forth. I sincerely wish we had the time to sit down and talk about this stuff so you’ll understand it. This is what happens when there is political pressure on governments to borrow and spend more than they can grab as taxes. High taxes also crimp the economy. And you could ask any random person on the street; they could think of ways the government wastes money on things they don’t believe the government should be doing. It won’t matter whether you favor one agenda or another — the government absorbs way too much money. The lie is coming apart that stirring economic growth will cover the debt. That growth simply has not kept up with the massive over-spending.

When government inserts itself into the economy, by becoming a major conduit for spending, it distorts the natural economic activity. Worse, the government is by far the most inefficient handler of money. No collection of private or corporate entities, nor even criminal enterprise, is as wasteful as government bureaucracy. The government absorbs outright more than it passes on to others as healthy spending. It sucks down vast quantities of economic activity without putting anything back into the system. It freezes assets that can never be used for any profitable purpose.

But try to reduce government spending and the political unrest will be impossible to contain. There are too many vested interests unwilling to see the greater common good. So it’s going to break, and the really smart people figure it’s coming this year. To be more precise, it’s already broken, but the ways that we measure such things don’t yet register as broken. It’s a huge system and it won’t explode, but crumble — the millions of little breaking points won’t break all at once. By the time it’s obvious, it will be too late. Stuff has already begun to break and it will take easily the next few years for all the other parts to break down. The mass of our national political will is to play it by ear and look for the best chance to plunder. Nobody is thinking about how to actually do something in the national interest — nobody with any real power to act, that is.

We can discard “national interest” as a factor in our reckoning here. There’s no saving this country. There are plenty of helpful things we can do on a smaller scale, so if you feel called in that direction, focus on state and local. Try to rescue what you can reach. Of course, with Radix Fidem, our focus is divine justice in the first place, which in turn encourages a local focus. This is what we do by moral instinct.

We who understand Biblical Law can see how US government violates everything God intended for us. We see how reality itself is sorely abused and violated by our system of government. So reality isn’t going to tolerate this much longer; it will turn around and destroy things. This is the wrath of God justly falling on a morally degrading force too large to ignore. And if you understand how this is all wholly justified, then you are ready to see with your hearts how to pass through this time of tribulation by seizing opportunities to reveal His divine justice in how we respond to injustice and wrath.

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