Another Vision of the Future

Posted on March 17, 2024 by ehurst

I did not foresee the American Redoubt coming. I’m not surprised that people fleeing the Blue States are heading to that region of the US. I expected Christian Nationalism as a political movement to show up there, but I didn’t expect such a strong religious movement to arise about the same time.

I had no doubts that the Gospel Coalition was a dead end. It smelled like worldly compromise a long time ago, and when the leadership began to embrace elements of wokism, it was no surprise to me. John Piper and his allies are now quite irrelevant. The center of gravity will move away from Bethel College. The Enemy was able to seduce that bunch because their model of evangelism is still rooted in Decision Theology. It makes them vulnerable to the necessity of gaining a positive impression with the mainstream audience. It won’t be so easy to subvert the folks in Moscow, Idaho; they aren’t interested in courting the mainstream.

God is going to use the American Redoubt. Let me suggest that, given all the factors involved, the American Redoubt portion of the US will quite likely survive better the coming global catastrophes. They will be insulated from the worst man-made political disasters, and the natural ones will be ameliorated by the geography and climate there. The US coastlands will be wiped out.

Make no mistake: I preach that civilization will be destroyed, and that the majority of the human race will die. Let’s not get bogged down in the details just now; it’s coming and God’s people can sense it on the horizon.

By force, our Creator will remove an awful lot of sin and temptation by crushing humanity down into a very weak position. Bare survival will be the all consuming concern. While the memory of global communications will still be around, God will enforce insulation and isolation on a scale that rivals the Tower of Babel and even the Flood.

This will be an act of mercy. This is how He designed us to exist in this world. We are supposed to be scattered and isolated. We are supposed to be tribal and feudal. This is the genuine “Big Reset” that humanity faces, not the silly artificial one planned by our rulers.

My fundamental mission and calling is to declare the warnings, and to suggest ways to be ready for both the catastrophes and what follows. If anyone else senses a call to join in, by all means, let’s work together as much as we can. But let’s be real: There are limits and we must discern and appreciate them.

My convictions say this is not The End, not yet. Yet, I suspect few of you reading this will survive. I’m certain I won’t. All I’m doing is planting the seed of how to keep the gospel witness alive for whatever tomorrow it is that comes.

I’ll reiterate that the American Redoubt is well positioned for a higher than average survival rate. Discussing the particulars serves little purpose; that I sense it in my bones is enough reason to believe it. God favors that general location for His own inscrutable reasons. If you sense the call to go there, be aware of what you will face, as the rising political power there will include a lot of Christian Nationalism’s influence.

Oddly enough, Christian Reconstruction is more of the Presbyterian/Reformed traditions, and that means it rejects the Dispensational heresy. Yet, among the Christian Nationalists also gathering in the American Redoubt, I won’t suggest an absence of Dispies, just not a full-blown Christian Zionism. I note that the American Redoubt leadership loudly welcome Jews to move there. Still, I believe Dispensational religion will take a major hit.

All the more so as I expect Israel to go away. I believe that lie is about to die. It will be hard to maintain the Dispie heresy when the object of their hope disappears. I still foresee an exodus from mainstream churches that rely on Zionism as part of their identity. I sense that Zionism’s power will climax just about the time Israel is crushed — whatever that means in detailed terms. All I can see is the absence of Israel’s false presence in the future.

But make no mistake, the Devil’s Chosen will still be around in one form or another, by whatever name they use in the future. It’s anybody’s guess how he will use them, but I seriously doubt there will be anything new.

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NT Doctrine — Ephesians 5-6

Posted on March 16, 2024 by ehurst

The whole point of this two-volume series is to highlight the continuity between the Old and New Testaments. One thing we notice is that the ritual conduct under Moses was far more stringent than the broader code of conduct. This is reversed in the New Testament. Ritual purity is not gone, just reduced to generalizations. Instead, the purity of heart is the emphasis, and thus, any code of conduct is structured quite differently. Insofar as there is a Christian Law, it is more strenuous, but is essentially a matter of asserting privilege to live above sin, not wallowing in restrictions.

These final two chapters of the Ephesian letter are mostly exhortation that sounds very much like a summary of Christian Law. The life of privilege looks like this. Walk worthy of Election. Insofar as there is doctrine to extract, that would be it.

Of particular interest is the strong statement about a Christian household, which runs over into the final chapter. The patriarchy is rooted in God’s revelation of Himself as a Father figure who also happens to be Creator and Lord. The way that Christ handled His own Body is how a man deals with his wife. His wife is his greatest, most valuable treasure on earth, but she is not a deity. He is worthy of her submission because of willingness to sacrifice for her.

The issue with children is very firmly rooted in Moses. It bears no resemblance at all to American society in which youth and childhood are sacred. Also, there is a very strong parallel between fathers/children and masters/slaves. It’s a two-sided sword; being a Christian means it’s not a one-way relationship.

But a softening of ritual does not mean absence. If there is anything I might highly recommend believers today should turn into a ritual, it is the “Armor of God” passage. It should not be something that turns into a trademark that everyone shares everywhere. Rather, believers should prayerfully consider making it song, or a prayer ritual that guides our awareness, particularly in times of difficulty when you know the Enemy is attacking.

The courier who brought this letter was Tychicus, someone who had spent time with Paul in his Roman custody. In those days, a private courier was the only way correspondence could travel. It was for sure this courier would then return to Paul with whatever response the churches offered.

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Sane Limits

Posted on March 16, 2024 by ehurst

Bear with me a moment, as this will seem at first like chasing a rabbit. The rabbit is running in the same direction we are.

Do you understand the inherent flaw of that academic discipline called Economics? It’s one unquestioned assumption is that economic improvement is an unalloyed good. That’s also its greatest lie. It’s part and parcel of the whole Satanic lie that our life in this world matters for its own sake. There is this permanent fundamental lie in mortal existence that better is possible, and that we have the capacity and wisdom to make it happen.

Yet, it remains forever out of reach. The theory is never matched by performance, ever. This because the theories do not take into consideration certain fundamental truths. Humans are fallen; they cannot possibly be repaired or redeemed from within the system itself. The notion that the Bible provides better information for a better human theory is a part of this big lie.

Instead, the Bible promotes a de-emphasis on trying to improve the human condition. The Bible teaches that this life matters only for its utility, the utter necessity of enduring it until something better is opened to us. There’s a paradox here: On the one hand, we must do it together in community. On the other hand, we must arrive at community individually. I doubt there’s an easy way to explain this. There is something fundamentally wrong with human unity that contains a fatal, toxic seed. The unity must come from outside the human sphere. It requires powers that humans will never hold.

To talk about “fate” is another false lead. It’s not as if nothing is in our hands. The question we need to answer for ourselves is just what part of the picture is in our hands, and to accept the very painful realization of what isn’t. This is why the study of economics is flawed; it assumes the only question is finding the leverage. It rejects a priori the limitations imposed by the Creator.

And this is true of every other academic discipline. They are all based on the assumption that humans are in a position to make things better, so let’s all study to see how. Nobody wants to talk about the inherent limits of improving the situation.

(And nobody wants to talk about how the situation itself is fundamentally variable, how unstable reality itself is.)

There is a Creator God, and He has placed non-human beings in positions of power under His hand. They make decisions with a certain range of freedom that we cannot imagine. And their power to have their will with us is, for all we can discern, is unlimited. Further, their plans and purposes are largely inscrutable, except for a limited amount of divine revelation that indicates things, but never clearly states much. We get a model that we can use, a fuzzy one with soft edges. It’s just enough to help us understand why things will never work out as humans wish.

The core of biblical Hebrew philosophy and culture is recognizing the limits of mortality. We might know something about improving the economic, social and cultural problems we see, but if that’s all we know about it, then we are wholly lost. There is an awful lot of power at work in our human situation that is not within our grasp. Fighting it is not simply foolish, but egregiously stupid.

Here’s the key to leadership from a strong Hebraic viewpoint, and worded in opposition to the typical western viewpoint: You cannot do it. There are things you can help with, but you cannot make it happen. You can only be obedient to your own calling. And when you are obedient, you stand in a position to receive guidance by Spirit and conviction that allows you to see the limits and stop trying to cross them, to call back fools under your care who try to go too far.

Do you see how Rigney’s contention sounds rather similar? He still assumes too much on what we can accomplish in this world, but at least he understands that we must assert the limits of what leaders can and should do for the individual. Perhaps to make his parable a little better, we should say that you cannot pull anyone out of their pit of sorrow. You can get close enough to be heard when you tell them how they can get out of it themselves, but you cannot get them out by anything less than the miraculous power of God. They are there because of how they react to reality, which includes that powerful operations of beings far above our level.

When economists tell us that international trade can create far more wealth to spread around, we can tell them that it also loads us down with problems we should not have to face, problems we cannot possibly solve. International trade should be a very small element in economics, not a massive false solution to all ills. We need a lot less influx of global problems, because we can scarcely solve our domestic issues. Humans are designed by God to live in small and mostly insular enclaves. I’m not saying closed off tight, but that the openings need to be a whole lot smaller than they are now.

No human, nor group of humans, is competent to control the flood of evil that must always come from with wide open borders. We don’t need and cannot use more stuff, more knowledge, more kinds of people, and the inevitable conflicts, etc. You cannot get one without the other. One of the biggest, fundamental commands from God is, “Mind your own business.” With that comes the command that you had better learn what your business is, and what isn’t.

The shepherd realizes that sheep may love the taste of foliage in the jungle, but that sheep are not made to face the threats of the jungle. There are already threats enough in the open pastures they were designed for.

The US must be broken up; it will be broken up. God has so decreed. Let the resulting smaller states develop their own unique cultures. Let them become harsh and difficult on the globalists who call for cosmopolitan mixing, since they are lying about how good it would be. And then, let us pray that the leadership of these new countries built from the broken shards of an evil empire some day realize that some things cannot be fixed. What we need is a better idea how to live within sane limits.

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Catching Stampede Refugees

Posted on March 15, 2024 by ehurst

Here is the prophetic part of this series.

The faith movement in Moscow, Idaho prefers the label “Christian Reconstruction”. The leadership there takes much from the old RJ Rushdoony school of teaching. Hint: Rushdoony was an Armenian deeply motivated by the way his people had been oppressed and slaughtered by Turks. He felt American Christians had not done enough to save his nation. He was very noteworthy for his frustration with the otherworldly faith of some previous generations of American Christians (this was before the sudden growth of Dispensationalism in the US during the 1950s). In other words, he rejected the outcome of something he could not control. His response was to build a doctrine of Christian religion that would put a burden of responsibility on westerners to do more to protect “Christian” Armenians, as well as other “Christian” peoples. To him, “Christian” was a human national identity. His followers have tried to hide this part of Rushdoony’s story.

He would despise my teaching on Christian Mysticism. That’s not to say he was evil, but I would say misguided. If you are curious, here are some of his books. I’ve read enough to know it’s not for me. There is a link between Christian Reconstruction and Christian Nationalism, but the current manifestation of the latter is not a good match to the former.

Again, I say that God is involved in the American Redoubt movement. His involvement manifests itself in various threads of the faith teaching growing in that part of the country, despite the Christian Nationalist movement behind the nascent American Redoubt. The collection of political movements that might be found under the flag of Christian Nationalism do not reflect God’s agenda. Rather, He’s using them to destroy something else.

I fully expect a measure of human success from both the religious and political movements gathering in the American Redoubt. God will use politics in the same sense that He’s used any previous empire or political movement to weave a far larger tapestry that humans cannot comprehend. He told Daniel that, in human terms, the Babylonian Empire and civilization was a gold standard of sorts, but it was clearly not a reflection of His Word. It was just an expendable tool, though a really good one. I believe it’s the same for American Redoubt and Christian Nationalism. They do not reflect His Word, rather a biased and superficial reading of it, but He will use them as really good expendable tools. And the Theonomy movement in Moscow will also be rather successful.

I mentioned Rigney’s take on empathy because it’s one of the better, less offensive representations of what the faith leaders in Idaho are about. In many ways, it represents the essence of rejecting the mainstream globalist idolatry, of offering a genuine alternative. There is a dire need for Christian leadership (in turn based on Christian manhood) that isn’t beholden to the mainstream. John Piper is mistaken as part of a very large movement among Baptists and allied evangelicals to compromise with the mainstream simply to avoid facing persecution. It’s cowardice, plain and simple. We need to call it out. It’s not that Rigney is right about leadership itself, but he does have something of a corrective that moves things in a good direction.

The mainstream is going to implode. It’s time is past, but it’s so very huge that the collapse will take a while. America will be decentralized by divine force, and the American Redoubt will gain a potent identity that will make its presence felt for a long time. This is why we are talking about it; this will become a significant presence in the lives a large portion of the American population. Bethel College and the Gospel Coalition will fade into the background; those people have shot themselves in the feet.

Look for a resurgent manhood identity image to arise in the American Redoubt; look up “Man Rampant” as a source on what to expect from them. It will not be wholly biblical, but they will claim it is. Knowing this is important; it’s why the Radix Fidem community spends so much time trying to expose the unconscious biases of western Christian religion. The Christian Reconstruction movement does offer a compelling logic, but only for folks who don’t understand that they are flogging a dead horse. Still, the flogging itself will become a thing, and a big one, for quite some time into the future.

Understand: This is a whole lot better than the mainstream globalism. A substantial portion of the American population is long past ready to see globalism die. This thing in the American Redoubt is a reaction to something truly evil, though it’s not the best we could do.

This too shall pass. There will always be people caught up in this stuff, dragged along because they happen to be there when the invasion comes. It’s not a question of fleeing to or from that region of the US; you should have already gotten a word in your convictions about where you need to live during this apocalypse. But you also need to be aware of what flavor of lie will invade your world and how to identify and cling to the truth. We need to prepare an answer to this twisted gospel message so that those whom God calls back out of it have a safe place to flee.

That’s what Radix Fidem has always been. We are the refuge for that small number God calls out of some stampede that isn’t right for them.

Just a little more…

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Empathy or Not?

Posted on March 14, 2024 by ehurst

I would never pretend to declare what is normative for Christianity itself as the manifestation of Jesus’ teachings. I’m simply stating my own convictions in reaction to this particular brand of Christian religion, regardless who reads or agrees with me.

God is working in the American Redoubt. The peculiar politics of Christian Nationalism is not the whole story; there is a sort of reformation or renewal of faith (called “Christian Reconstruction”) that isn’t really involved in the politics. Let’s be clear on that. Throughout history since New Testament times, we have seen a great many moves of the Spirit. Predictably, those that spread the most among people and across boundaries had good things in them, but somehow seemed to get off track, and even hijacked. I believe that’s happening in the American Redoubt.

That God is involved means at least some of the flow is sweet refreshing Water of Life. You may need a filter to remove the grit and debris of human obsessions, but it’s worth the trouble.

Here is one sweet swallow: The Sin of Empathy. The author (Joe Rigney) casts the linked article in the flavor of one of his favorite writers from a previous generation, CS Lewis. The article echoes The Screwtape Letters, in which CS Lewis seeks to show us something of the demonic motivations, in which a senior demon writes to his nephew who is an apprentice tempter. Under this dramatic cover, Lewis seeks to reveal truth from the backside.

Some of Lewis’s story is silly nonsense, filled with cultural biases that are not in the gospel message, but have been read into it by westerners like Lewis. Rigney’s replay of that theme does not escape the same flaw. Still, it offers one very interesting nugget: American mainstream images of empathy are not a good match for the compassion of Christ.

In sum, the mainstream whining demands that you sacrifice your identity and pickle yourself in someone else’s sorrow, lest you stand accused of not caring enough. This is the quintessence of left-wing political ethics. The individual must be dissolved in order for the whole of society to move forward to some ill-defined glowing image of Nirvana. Rigney gets it right, in that each of us keeping our God-given identity is critical. We cannot crawl down into the pit of suffering to save someone, unless we at least have ourselves tethered to some anchorage outside of the pit. We don’t join them there; we try to get them out.

This raises the question of the person stuck in the pit and holding them accountable for wanting to get out. Too many find their home in the pit; it becomes the source of their power over others. We call it “victimology” these days.

Thus, Rigney calls empathy (by that definition) a sin. He’s published other stuff based on this theme, and you can look him up online. He has a book on leadership, but I believe the article linked above gives us the essence of what he might have to say.

His association with the religious movement centered in Idaho was taken as support for Christian Nationalism and got him kicked out of his job as president of Bethel College and Seminary in Minneapolis, MN. Their loss, not his. Now he’s moved to a similar institution in Moscow, Idaho. The various influencers who control the purse strings at Bethel were embarrassed by the mainstream complaints that Rigney was racist, was the kind of man who would cover up “me too” complaints, etc. Rigney’s writing wasn’t consistent with the agenda of Bethel College and Seminary, nor particularly with Christian Nationalism. It was Christian Reconstruction, AKA Theonomy.

Side note: Bethel is one of John Piper’s projects, associated with Desiring God and The Gospel Coalition. Piper has become recently notorious for his apparent compromise with wokism. He promoted the vaxx, for example. There are counter-complaints from the Christian Nationalists aimed back at John Piper in particular, and Baptists in general.

Yes, Christian Nationalism is just an echo of the old Dominionist/Theonomy school of religion. But they aren’t the same thing; Theonomy can lead to Christian Nationalism, but doesn’t demand it. The latter is merely one application of the former. But they are hard to separate when viewed by outsiders. Both posit that human government is obliged to promote the gospel, and to suppress heresy, so that we can all return to Eden while still in our fallen state. Do you see how this echoes a lot of other older heresies? Christ dying on the Cross was not a political failure; He didn’t care about human politics in the first place. The Cross was a victory, and we all need our own crosses to follow Him. We must renounce this world, just as He did.

As for Rigney, I don’t argue against the notion that the mainstream brand of empathy is wicked, and results in great evil. But the word “empathy” itself does not indicate something evil; Christ also exercised empathy. His death on the Cross came with our sin and sorrow placed on Him. Without His brand of empathy, we cannot break through the barrier of spiritual isolation that keeps people away from the gospel message. Don’t tussle over the words; empathy can be done well and poorly. Like everything else in human baggage, it can be abused or it can be blessing.

I do agree that good covenant leadership requires that we be aware of how empathy is abused in the mainstream. But I also maintain that good covenant leadership does not seek to influence human politics outside of the covenant community. And that the only way to form a covenant community is by attraction, not by pushing outward and conquering others. The very moment someone is compelled, it is no longer the gospel they are obeying. A charitable reading of the Christian Reconstruction movement in Moscow, Idaho is that they are trying to form a genuine covenant community. We’ll see.

There’s more…

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Take Another Lap

Posted on March 13, 2024 by ehurst

Let’s agree on something: I’m a nobody. All I have is my own experience with Christ. I claim no authority other than that of the Holy Spirit. If He moves you to read my stuff, then it’s your duty. Otherwise, I’m just another bit of wind whistling in the rocks of the desert. Either way, I cannot be silent.

Christian Nationalism is a package of half-truths. It comes to Scripture with a preconceived notion of an end product that needs some flavor to identify it. Because it makes false assumptions about Christ and His Father, it is riddled with perversions of what the Bible has to say about life here. The basic principles of moral truth get twisted into lies. The people who promote it don’t know Jesus very well.

I have no doubt that, should my chatter come to their attention, I would be counted among their enemies. It’s not a question of whether they are honorable, have integrity, or any other such noble imagery. It’s a question of whether they are on course. I say they are not. I have no interest in calling their names and shooting at them. It’s not about the people; I’ll endeavor to keep this all about the ideas.

Within our cultural context, the best way to help people see Jesus is to make this about Him, not about those who claim to serve Him. I don’t want to provoke a “circle the wagons” response that serves no purpose other than to distract from the key issue. I’m claiming that they don’t really know Jesus in the first place. Whether they are God’s Elect is not the issue; they aren’t getting hold their divine inheritance from the Covenant.

The reason for discussing them is the recent surging of their combined voice calling from a different kind of wilderness: The American Redoubt. This refers to inland states in the American northwest: Idaho in particular, but including Montana, Wyoming and western counties of Washington and Oregon. It’s politics, not a genuine faith movement.

There is an actual faith movement going on at the same time. The center of gravity seems to be Moscow, ID. It is not my kind of faith, but I cannot deny the Lord is at work there.

This article describes things from the obvious political angle. It paints a picture of right-wing refugees from western Blue states congregating among their own kind in a defensible stronghold. Yes, I am acquainted with saner folks who moved up there, so realize that the linked article is at least partly hype. Be aware that there is a very large movement here that is quite diverse across a wide range of opinion about what it means to do things right. What gets mainstream attention is the political threat to globalist orthodoxy, which is meant to distract from the real issues.

Thus, the mainstream talks about this political manifestation as the core nature of what’s going on there in the American Redoubt. I can tell you quickly that this is false. It’s just the outward manifestation of something with far greater substance. But because it has a political face, any effort to research the movement will yield mostly comments about the internal conflicts.

The existence of internal conflicts is entirely natural, but it distresses those involved. They want greater unity for the sake of effectiveness, and that’s the fatal flaw. They are trying to exercise control over something God will not put in their hands. Their very worldly orientation prevents them from seeing how God actually wants to work in this movement — and He most certainly does want to work there.

The people involved in the political side are going to miss the miracles God is doing with or without them. They aren’t going to see where the miracles manifest because they don’t understand His plans, and don’t know what to look for. God is sponsoring the exodus, but everyone is carping about their comforts and refusing to see the greater joy in the destination. They are going to provoke God and end up taking extra laps around Mount Sinai.

There’s more…

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Christ Disowns It

Posted on March 12, 2024 by ehurst

I feel led to reopen a can of worms that has been unsealed for quite some time. This cannot be sufficiently addressed in a single post, simply because my answers are woven into my writing over many years. I’m hardly afraid to touch controversial topics and I start with a blanket condemnation of American culture in particular, and western thinking in general. The mainstream opinion is sewage in the first place.

But it is the mainstream, so we are obliged to deal with it as the path to biblical truth leads through it. This is infowar, and their info is lies. It’s our duty to point out the lies in whole and in detail, when possible. And one of the first things you might notice is that there are two mainstreams drawn from the same nasty basis. There’s the one that dominates the media and government, and another one that actually resonates with the population. Both are equally foolish, just in different ways.

Because the one that owns the press is total fantasy, the other side reacts in various ways to recover some semblance of reality. They still miss, but we need to understand it. It’s not a question of the various elements of the competing viewpoints, but that both are rooted in the same pagan background. And both are deeply and fundamentally committed to changing this fallen existence, as if God made some big mistake. They fight over the best way to save the world. I will not debate this: The Bible is all about escaping this world by embracing another world while we are here.

Jesus said we should take up our crosses and follow Him. You cannot skip that part about what happens when you arrive at Golgotha. This is a flat renunciation of human life itself. You cannot follow Him without committing yourself to a rejection of this world in the first place. I don’t know how people read that in Scripture and then proceed to work towards a political and cultural conquest of other people. The Kingdom of Heaven, whose head is Christ, is expressed in hearts, not human political arrangements.

Yes, the Kingdom of Hearts does manifest in changed human behavior. There’s no argument there among those who claim the Bible as their guide. But the issue is the focus, the motivation, and the expectations of what God will do. We change our behavior precisely to call attention to the Unseen Realm everyone else wants to ignore. For it is the Unseen Realm that is real, while this existence is a lie. And our mission is not simply to commit suicide and leave quickly, but to work our way through this life with a mission to destroy it. That work is mandatory, and your departure from this world is a promotion. What our flesh complains about in terms of sorrow is the mark of high privilege from Above.

There’s no virtue in sorrow itself, but virtue is defined as taking up Christ’s sorrows.

So the entire realm of Christian Nationalism is a fantasy of lies. Not for the reasons offered by the mainstream, because they are even more wicked. The concept of Christian Nationalism does at least get the necessity of changing our mental structures and our behavior. That’s a part of the battle against sin and evil. But it’s not enough by itself. If that commitment is rooted in staying here and making this world a better place, then it still belongs to Satan. The Devil will not be displaced or removed from authority over the fallen world. That is not God’s plan. Rather, this fallen mortal existence will run out of time and the Devil will then be condemned to eternity in the Lake of Fire.

This existence is the Devil’s turf, his private property. God delivered it into his hands for reasons, most of which escape our comprehension. But the imagery offered in Scripture includes the concept that it is his for as long as it exists. If you commit yourself to working for anything that belongs to this world, you remain under Satan’s authority. More to the point, all your ambitions will be among those Satan offers to keep us trapped here.

Christian Nationalism is not Christian. It is not following Christ; it is dodging the Cross. It is nationalism with a false Jesus face painted on the outside. It is still an obsession with building something that Satan will most certainly control. It is believing the lie that this world matters.

And because it is so, the proponents of Christian Nationalism will get everything wrong. Not entirely wrong, mind you, but sadly will promote a diabolical half-truth that leaves you trapped in the cares and anxieties of this world. It offers a false dichotomy. To reject the mainstream does not mean you are somehow part of Christian Nationalism, nor should you be.

Christ Himself disowns Christian Nationalism.

There’s more…

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Your Prince in Heaven

Posted on March 11, 2024 by ehurst

Someone asked me: “What happened to Michael?”

You may recall that Daniel, in one of his visions, spoke with an angel who mentioned Michael as “the prince of your people”. Thus, Michael was not an “archangel” but a member of the Elohim Council who had responsibility for the nation of Israel.

Well, when the Jews rejected their Messiah, the name “Israel” went with Our Lord. The Jews lost the rights to that name. It now refers to His Covenant Kingdom, AKA Christians or “New Israel”. Michael is the Prince of the Church, as it were. No, you don’t pray to him; he is not a deity. That’s the mistake the other Council members made, tricking their nations into treating them as deities. That’s the primary flaw of pagan idolatry, elevating lesser beings to God’s place.

And that is the primary sin of the Devil, trying seize some of God’s glory for himself. He persuaded the majority of the Elohim Council to joining him in this sin.

So far as we know, Michael is the only elohim given a recognizable name, and the only one that we know who voluntarily works with Jehovah on His agenda. To the best of our knowledge, all the rest of the Divine Council are allies of the Devil to varying degrees.

So far as we know from Scripture, there’s no particular interaction between us and Michael. He does his thing in Heaven and we do our thing here with the Holy Spirit. As Daniel tells us, his primary role is helping us unclog the Devil’s bureaucratic obfuscation that hinders our prayers being answered. The blessings of the Covenant include miracles and revelations.

These things belong to the Covenant, not to individuals. They are manifested often enough in individuals, but they belong to the Covenant. If nothing else, Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians gives us a solid clue about the single biggest hindrance to prayer: loving each other as Christ loves us. Don’t tie Michael’s hands by giving the Devil too much power over your life.

Covenant people, Michael is your divine administrator in Heaven.

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Why and How of Evil

Posted on March 10, 2024 by ehurst

We all agree that what Israel is doing in Gaza is evil. The question is, Why is it evil?

Keep in mind that, in the Bible, “evil” is defined in terms of context and outcomes. The word as used in the Hebrew language does not refer to absolute qualities. It refers to a result as defined from the limited perspective of the person speaking. It was always understood that way. Thus, what is evil for one person might not be evil for another. Evil was never some kind of thing that defiled the cosmos; it was just a very unpleasant situation for the person speaking.

The ANE in general, and Hebrews in particular, never dreamed of themselves or their situation as touching eternity; they didn’t take themselves that seriously. If things were evil for some individual, it wasn’t necessarily a problem for everyone in the rest of the world. It was not their concern. And in a broader sense, what was bad for Israel might not be bad for the world. Only a divine being could say what was bad for the cosmos, and it was simply not the kind of thing God ever said one way or another. That crazy binary absolutism is a western idiocy that didn’t infest Hebrew thinking in general, nor biblical thinking in particular.

God alone could speak for any entity larger than a specific community of people, and no Hebrew ever imagined that God would define things on a cosmic scale in human language. They were utterly certain He would not. When God identified something as “evil”, His declaration was limited to the context of His intended audience alone. If it were possible for something to be universally evil, no human could comprehend it in the first place. It was excluded by the status of being mortal.

Let’s get the scale of things first: The actions of the modern State of Israel are evil for Israel and for the Palestinians, but not for the whole world. The idea that Palestinian deaths harm us is not biblical. It harms only Palestinians, and for reasons I’ll clarify, it harms Israel. In a very limited sense, it’s a loss to Islam as a whole, and to Judaism.

The reason it’s evil for Israel is because it perpetuates a huge freaking lie that the modern State of Israel has a moral justification for being in that land in the first place. The question is stained with the lie that Jews have a special status among humans. Regardless how you define “Jew” — whether an ethnic or a religious identity — they are not unique in God’s eyes. They lost any hope of that when they rejected the Messiah. They are now unique in Satan’s eyes only.

The real problem is that, no matter what Jews do, they do it for Satan. They are uniquely the Devil’s lackeys in this world. No other human identity is so deeply committed to Satan’s lies as the Jews — by their mere existence as an identity group. God declared it dissolved on the Cross; to keep it going is purely satanic.

Thus, everything Israel/Jews do as a group is inherently evil. They are constitutionally unable to do good until they disband and all individually renounce the Jewish identity.

As for all the whining about the fate of Palestinian people, I can assure you that you would not want them in large numbers anywhere near your lives in the West. They are part of the human pestilence attached to Islam. Do you understand that Islam absorbed from Judaism that sense of entitlement that makes them so impossible to live with?

The war in Gaza is, in one sense, nothing more than two demonically entitled groups. The world would be a better place, for that matter, if both were gone. It won’t matter if “gone” means genocide or simply a change of heart. If you want a cosmic explanation, Islam was created by the false gods of the Middle Eastern peoples (AKA, members of the Elohim Council) as a weapon that mimics the power of Judaism for evil. It’s a case of two competing evils. Thus, I will not say that Mohammad was insane so much as he was led by what we call demonic powers in the Unseen Realm. Islam was created as a moral weapon against Christianity. That it often is in conflict with Judaism/Zionism is simply a feature, part of the design, the means to harming the gospel message.

And because these two beasts are sponsored by the Devil and his allies on the Divine Council, there is nothing we can do about them. That is, all we can do is trust the Lord to help us respond according to His glory. That’s the only thing that matters for us. So, pray always about what to do in your personal life, but don’t you dare waste time praying about the situation between nations and tribes fighting in this world. Pray only that believers will know what to do about it, not to change the situation itself. God is taking care of that and does not need our advice. It’s all far above the human level; there is no human solution.

You can take action to defend your domain as granted by God, but you cannot change the situation in the rest of the world. You should not care about it, except to notice how it will shape your opportunities to bless the Lord’s name. The same goes when I talk about American politics — there is nothing you can do that will affect the outcomes for others. All you can do is uphold your moral covering wherever it reaches. That is a solid Hebraic and biblical perspective on the madness around us.

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NT Doctrine — Ephesians 4

Posted on March 9, 2024 by ehurst

The primary doctrine in this chapter remains consistent with the rest of the whole letter. Once again, Paul paints an image of Christian unity borrowing from bits and pieces of what his readers had experienced in human politics.

First is the very subtle paradox of his position as a prisoner of Roman justice. On the one hand, Rome recognized by treaty the limited jurisdiction of various conquered kingdoms over their own people, wherever those people were throughout the Roman Empire. Rome was not yet willing to entertain a fresh treaty recognizing Christ’s jurisdiction over His people, since the same people were already claimed by other treaty partners. This conflicting claim of jurisdiction was why Paul was under house arrest in Rome; Paul had promoted a competing claim over some Judeans.

Whether or not Rome was willing to play ball was not the point. Paul had spread the gospel of a new identity that transcended human ethnic and national identities. The claims of Christ did not wait for human governments to play along; they were in force regardless because they rested on the authority of the Creator of all things. The Elohim Council couldn’t argue about it, either.

So, Paul calls for his readers to act according to the laws and justice of the Covenant realm of Christ: humble, merciful to the downtrodden, patiently putting up with those who hadn’t yet figured it out. This is your family, your true spiritual inheritance. We do not have the trouble most human kingdoms have with competing heirs trying to claim the throne. There is only one: Christ. He is our feudal Lord; there is no Jewish Messiah separate from the Gentile Christ.

And then we come to a passage that has stirred an awful lot of debate, about whether Paul refers to some alleged time Christ spent in Hell while His body lay in the grave. I’ve always taken the position that this is a bogus concept rooted in Greek mythology and read back into the New Testament, not in ancient Hebrew teaching. Paul halfway quotes from Psalm 68:18 but apparently modifies the image just a little so that it better matches the contemporary Roman parades when some general returns to the imperial capital with plunder and captives (the quintessential Roman civic ritual). These triumphal parades often heavily changed the local economy in the city because of the influx of plundered wealth.

Christ also rode home to His Father as a conquering hero, dragging behind Him the plunder He seized from the Devil’s domain. But His plundered wealth was not stuff, but people. Christ gave to His own domain souls rescued from slavery. Thus, says Paul, we now have excellent leaders from all backgrounds, not just Jews, but Gentiles, too. And they have all been given for one purpose: to help us come together and love each other as one nation under Him.

The Devil cannot play head games any more. We have our own bright souls to help us understand the divine truth. The whole image of growing up to be mature rests on one thing: loving each other the way mature people do within their community. The Jews should be eager to welcome the Gentiles home from their wandering in foreign places among pagan idols and sin. The people who messed around with that stuff are all dead; the people in the church are new creatures. The chapter ends with a lot of non-doctrinal advice and encouragement to do the one and only job church has: become a single family.

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