The Law of Kings

Posted on April 5, 2025 by ehurst

We are pretty sure David studied the Torah on a regular basis. It’s hard to imagine he would not have kept the law, in particular the passage in Deuteronomy 17:14-20.

When you come to the land the LORD your God is giving you and take it over and live in it and then say, “I will select a king like all the nations surrounding me,” you must select without fail a king whom the LORD your God chooses. From among your fellow citizens you must appoint a king — you may not designate a foreigner who is not one of your fellow Israelites. Moreover, he must not accumulate horses for himself or allow the people to return to Egypt to do so, for the LORD has said you must never again return that way. Furthermore, he must not marry many wives lest his affections turn aside, and he must not accumulate much silver and gold. When he sits on his royal throne he must make a copy of this law on a scroll given to him by the Levitical priests. It must be with him constantly and he must read it as long as he lives, so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and observe all the words of this law and these statutes and carry them out. Then he will not exalt himself above his fellow citizens or turn from the commandments to the right or left, and he and his descendants will enjoy many years ruling over his kingdom in Israel.

We could be sure David carried out this command, by copying this section of the Torah in his own hand to read daily. Near as we can tell, this command did not refer to the whole Torah, as that would have taken a couple of years and a lot of scrolls for a non-scribe, but copying this passage is not so far fetched. It’s fairly simple with four rules: No stable of horses (chariots), no tolerance for any talk of returning to Egypt, no harem, and avoid accumulating silver and gold. To keep it fresh, read it daily (procedural matter, not a rule).

It takes knowing the broader context to figure out where to draw actual limits on three of those rules. The issue with horses is actually tied to returning to Egypt, since up through the Conquest, the only place to get horses was Egypt. The real issue wasn’t the king having a chariot, but of having commerce with Egypt so soon after the Exodus. It would be a trap.

There is actually no numerical cap on how many wives any Israeli man could marry, so that wasn’t the real issue. The business of not accumulating wives had to do primarily with marrying foreign wives to form political alliances. This passage is not too far from where Moses also reminds the people not to marry outside the Covenant (Deuteronomy 7:3-4). Thus, the real problem was the risk of a foreign wife remaining pagan and tempting the king to idolatry.

The issue of precious metals is not about material wealth in itself, but the way silver and gold as a means of exchange provide the temptation for receiving bribes, internal or external. Kings would be expected to have their own agricultural enterprises, animal husbandry in particular. But when people exchange these things, it’s quite open and obvious to everyone. Gold and silver could be exchanged in secret. It’s the business of petty bribes that destroys justice. The prohibition is that the king should avoid seeking to build a private treasury; a royal treasury to fund government business was necessary.

Notice something: Solomon broke all of these rules. He began doing business with Egypt, started importing horses and chariots, and collected such a large harem that we can scarcely believe it today. And for sure, we are told his wives did sucker him into idolatry — 1 Kings 11.

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Placed in His Company

Posted on April 5, 2025 by ehurst

Three things that are so critical that they warrant special attention.

1. We’ve taught this for years: There is nothing any human can do to change their eternal destiny. If you pay attention to the Old Testament narrative, you’ll notice there is precious little comment about eternal matters. That’s because they understood things correctly, that humans have no business trying to talk about eternal things outside the narrow parabolic content that God revealed.

If you understand the thesis of the Unseen Realm (Eternity), then you realize our place in the scheme of things. Jesus died on the Cross to open the Covenant to all the Elect from all nations. The point was not getting more people into Eternity, but to open up the promises of God for this life to all the folks already predestined for Heaven.

God’s Elect are going to Heaven; that is eternal truth. The Devil and his allies never could have done anything to change that. The Elect were always God’s Chosen. What the Devil could do was convince the Chosen to abandon their divine inheritance in this world. His aim is to provoke us to so disobey that God would look like a fool for not giving the Elect the same sentence as God gave Satan.

That concept is a basic assumption of the teachings of Christ and His disciples. Stop teaching about going to Heaven as if it were an option humans could choose. Instead, talk about doing what’s right in this life so as to glorify Christ. The emphasis is the Covenant and harvesting its blessings. Don’t talk about going to Heaven; talk about manifesting Heaven in this world.

Sure, those who are not Elect can and will be moved to join in a community where the sacrificial love of Christ is manifested. We welcome them for the simple reason we have no means of identifying them. That is, we cannot identify them except by the means of raising the standard of love-as-law so high that only the power of the Holy Spirit can get us there. Sooner or later, the Damned will precipitate out of that atmosphere. The issue is raising the standard for ourselves so that they can’t keep up.

Meanwhile, they will be blessed as much as they are going to be blessed just by hanging out with us. Don’t let them drag the standards down. Assume they are Elect folks who don’t understand yet, and keep working with everyone until they rise or drop out. The gateway to church membership is feudal submission to Christ and His Covenant in this life.

2. If you can grasp that, then you understand the place that human reason has in the scheme of things. When reason serves faith, it’s not a bad tool. When reason tries to trump faith — it always does, sooner or later — then it is bound in chains for discipline. It is not allowed the freedom to decide certain things our Lord reserves for Himself.

Thus, let reason strive to work out the implications of the Law of Christ. Put it work engineering and implementing the moral framework revealed from Heaven. We do everything we can to reduce human suffering, but we never allow reason to direct the definitions of “suffering” and “what we can do about it”. Compassion must be an expression of God’s priorities. His priorities are quite different from those of this world.

3. Of all the stuff I’ve read lately, there are few articles that match this one for coming close to divine priorities and slicing out the nonsense with the Sword of Truth: Why Did the FDA Hide Vaccine Injuries? I’d say it’s worth your time to read this article, with the caveat that RFK Jr. is no angel, nor are any of Trump’s other appointees.

Notice that I’m not saying this article is gospel. I am saying that, out of the cacophony of propaganda demanding the public’s attention, this article comes to the closest to pointing out the lies on a human level. The writer lays out a good frame of reference for explaining why we should distrust the medical industry versus medical service. While the former has taken over the latter for the most part, the latter is not the problem.

Empathy can be faked, and the motivations of the medical industry are the same as any other: profits not people. They use their profits to purchase government policy that forces the public at large to act in ways that increase industry profits. It has nothing to do with human health but corporate financial health. There are a whole bunch of losers in power over our medical decisions who don’t give a damn about us.

Your flesh belongs to Christ. It becomes a matter of faith to reject yet another attempt by the Devil to distract us from pursuing holiness. We expect servants of the Devil to keep on serving him, as this is the Devil’s realm. We are an invasive presence. Jesus Himself set the example: We make no attempt to seize from the Devil his control over human affairs; God has granted that to him. But we also do not allow Satan to seize control over our human lives, for God has granted us to Christ. Christ’s authority trumps the Devil’s on the individual level. If that means we are crucified with Him, we rejoice that we are found worthy of being placed in His company.

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Assuming Saved

Posted on April 1, 2025 by ehurst

No joke: In the Bible, the term “salvation” doesn’t mean what most western Christians imagine it means.

It’s a Hebrew concept of being rescued, redeemed, pulled out of a bad situation. It meant that with most pagans, including those who spoke Greek. The western concept is derived from the Roman idea of justification before a magistrate. Note that this is not what the Apostles meant by “justification” either. They were referring to a common image based on a very personal form of feudal justice.

To be “saved” is not an impersonal judicial arrangement. It is not a status. It means being pulled into God’s personal favor. The concept arises from a world where your “government” was someone who was related to you by blood or covenant. The concept of government in the biblical world excluded strangers.

Granted, invaders could seize the reins of government, but everyone expected that, at the earliest opportunity, the oppressed would throw off the foreign invaders. Even the invaders expected it to come sooner or later. And until it did happen, they would never condescend to get involved in the daily affairs of a subject people. They would exert their control through the organic leadership of the people.

So, you must ditch entirely the image of impersonal law and justice. Being saved means you have made peace with the feudal master, and that feudal master is your relative.

As a theological concept, it refers to standing in God’s favor in this world. It refers to all the promises of covenant life in the here and now. It could imply an eternal destiny, but that’s rarely the first thing you should think of when you read it in the Bible. Thus, it’s more a concept of living in covenant relation with the Lord as a fallen human.

This should remind you that the Calvinist-Arminian debate is nonsense. The Lord offers redemption to people who are not Elect (“all may come”) through the covenant community and what passes for a Christian law code. You aren’t supposed to ask the question of whether this or that person is Elect. You cannot know; it remains a part of the Eternal Realm with all the other ineffable truths. We can talk about how Divine Election works in some contexts, but when it comes to church people doing what they do in Christ, Election is hardly an applicable concept.

All we can say is that, if you can hang in there, you look like the Elect.

What matters is a demonstrated sensitivity to what it means to love each other as Christ loves us. That’s our law code. It is meant to be defined in the context of your daily life, so it will look different in different groups. Do you think Election was a factor in the parable of the Good Samaritan? Nope. What Jesus was saying is that, if someone walks in the Covenant, you must assume they are your brother/sister.

Now, concerning the reference Jesus makes in Matthew 24:23-24, the point He is making is this: We know the Elect have His Spirit. We know that no one else does. People without the Holy Spirit can be fooled more easily by something with spiritual implications. Thus, the issue of false Messiahs is that they would strive to look like the real thing, trying hard to sucker in even the Elect.

Keep in mind the setup here. Satan’s primary mission is to keep us away from the Covenant and its blessings. He profits from stealing our divine inheritance on this earth. He could not possibly gain from keeping us out of Heaven, and is unable to do that in the first place (the Elect are elected by God). He may not even know who the Elect are, so he targets everyone who appears to be walking in the Covenant. A major effort would be to raise up false Christs to mislead.

What Jesus is saying in that passage is that our Enemy is using everything he’s got because he knows only what he can see. It would be really sad if the Elect were pulled off course, because then everyone else will be, too.

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Training Ride 02

Posted on March 31, 2025 by ehurst

You may recall some photos I took one day in the Wheeler District, a new bike-friendly neighborhood built atop the defunct Downtown Airpark of yore. It’s also the site of the big ferris wheel the city bought from Santa Monica Pier. Added to the multi-colored housing fronts is some new construction that is already four stories high, and quite massive in ground space off to the left. I took this from across a nearby field for the sake of perspective.

The upper dam on the OK River Recreation Area is being refurbished. Four gates have been removed, I assume because they were too far gone and needed major work. The other two have workmen scraping and cleaning them on the side you can’t see. It’s lots of grinder whine and patch welding work. Naturally, I would expect the same kind of maintenance on the two dams below this eventually, but before the competition rowing season this summer.

Right now the redbud trees are in full blossom here. I couldn’t ignore the striking color. It didn’t hurt that there were a couple of Canada Geese in the shot. They live here most of the year under strong protections, and the population is growing fast, so that we can expect the bike trail to be decorated with ever more of their fertilizer.

The above shots were taken Saturday, March 29. It was the last training ride of the season on the BMX knobbies. I had used them all winter for obvious reasons, and apparently my system for tire maintenance is working — no flats all winter long. The knobbies are softer and easier to take care of, but they also offer noticeable roll resistance — a good training effect. It’s time now to start running the smoother treads so I can make longer distances with less effort. For now, I’ve elected to put the original tires back on because they have sufficient tread still (before and after shot here). They run at higher pressures, which makes them a little more finicky to maintain, and more catastrophic when they start to leak. Hopefully the new thorn straps and the injection of slime in the tubes will reduce the likelihood of pin holes. If this set up works well enough, it will make it a lot easier to ride cross country on Oklahoma roads.

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The Covenant Perspective

Posted on March 30, 2025 by ehurst

Our Creator is at work. We can understand that work well enough to hold forth expectations that match reality, but we also have work to do gaining that understanding.

I want you to gain a more biblical understanding of how this world operates from a Hebraic perspective. That’s the point of view that God revealed in His Word. With God’s reign over reality, it’s nothing like our bureaucratic government system. He does have a massive staff of beings far above our level, but the protocols are ANE feudal, inherently personal. There is a sense in which His staff already knows what He expects.

This is true even for Satan and the rebelling members elohim council. This is a dispute playing out along established protocols, and God will take whatever corrective action He sees fit when it suits Him. It will make no reference whatsoever to our sense of time and sequence, because He operates in Eternity, not under the time/space continuum. The higher beings will not overstep certain boundaries.

This imagery is as close as we can come to understanding a context in Eternity, in terms of how it affects us here. God reigns, but it’s quite rare for Him to get involved hands-on and personally in most human affairs. According to His own revelation, He doesn’t get personally involved outside of the Covenant. You can say, “God is at work” and that would be accurate, but most western people tend to envision things according to their own cultural biases, which results in false expectations. And based on their false expectations, they are praying for things God simply will not do. The Holy Spirit keeps prodding us to move to a much better place closer to God, but too many believers simply cannot see that place because they cannot conceive of any place they don’t already know.

There is a shocking disconnect between what God is doing and what even the followers of Christ are expecting because very few of them are oriented on the Covenant. It’s necessary to embrace the Covenant and the mindset that comes with it. It’s not that you can simply shift your brain into a Hebraic mode, but that you must become aware of the differences and work at getting a feel for how it’s different from our western orientation.

And if it is so challenging for the Elect guided by the Holy Spirit, how hard must it be for humans without the Spirit who don’t even embrace any covenant?

It is not a question of what are the right policies for human government. Ideology is by definition inflexible and unable to respond when God’s management through His staff have plans outside of the human range of reasoning. Right now, God has His servants pushing things in a certain direction, and only a tiny minority of folks in our US government have a clue to His plans. They don’t walk in the Covenant, don’t understand what Scripture really has to say, and are simply plowing ahead with something that isn’t going to work. That includes the whole gamut of American history, not just where we are today.

It may appear to work because of the standard human frame of reference, with horizons far too close against the ageless pattern of what God has revealed in His Word.

Thus, it’s not a question of whether the Trump administration is “doing the right thing”. Not one particle of their ideology matches what God has revealed, what is plainly visible from His hand for those who seek to understand this world from the Covenant. The Trump regime is pursuing policies that take no account of God’s eternal agenda.

If you get stupid and start measuring everything from simply a competing ideology, you are no better than Trump, and probably far worse. The long-term effects of what Trump is doing are only one tiny increment better than what his predecessors have done. He’s not working with the hand of God. Stop trying to gauge what is a “good” or “bad” policy choice based on ideology. Learn to discern just how far off course is the entire human race as a whole.

See the full scope of human history from a Covenant viewpoint. Given the whole picture, we are headed for some major man-made disasters. Only Covenant people will understand how to stay faithful to divine revelation in the midst of this apocalypse.

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Holy Spirit Required

Posted on March 29, 2025 by ehurst

Most of you remember the incident in Acts 3 where Peter and John were entering the Temple and ran across a lame fellow begging at the Beautiful Gate. They healed the man and he came dancing and shouting into the worship service, probably for the first time in his life. The lame were never permitted in the Temple, but everyone recognized this fellow as the one who used to be lame.

After the Temple service, Peter and John with this new friend went out to the larger courtyard around the Temple called Solomon’s Porch. A crowd gathered quickly and Peter addressed them to answer the question of how this man was healed by the name of Jesus. During this message, Peter referred (v. 18) to the Messianic prophecies: “But the things God foretold long ago through all the prophets — that his Christ would suffer — he has fulfilled in this way.”

When did Peter come to the realization that it was necessary for Jesus to suffer and die? So far as we can tell from the Gospels and Acts, Peter didn’t figure it out until after the Resurrection. Remember when Jesus met with them in the Upper Room after His arose? He breathed on them so that their minds could be opened to the Scriptures’ message about the suffering Messiah. Then He proceeded to explain it. And He explained on the road to Emmaus, and repeatedly throughout the next forty days He was with them.

Indeed, He had tried to explain it both before and after the Transfiguration. The Transfiguration is in Luke 9:28-36 (Matthew 17 and Mark 9). But back in v. 20-22 He tried to warn them. In Matthew’s version of that incident (Matthew 16:21-28), Peter rebuked Jesus for saying that kind of thing. They went up on the mountain for this vision, and promptly upon coming down, Jesus explained again that He must face betrayal. Later, in Luke 18:31-34, He explains He must go to Jerusalem and face serious trials. Their minds were closed to this message. You can’t just blame the Talmudic influences; nowhere does the Old Testament say bluntly that the Messiah would suffer and die. Rather, it was hidden in bits and pieces, scattered across the prophetic terrain in little clues here and there.

This was intentional, but not to confuse humans. Those who truly sought the Lord’s face could have eventually figured it out. Jesus Himself realized it as part of His own study of the Scriptures. The whole point was to keep Satan and his allies out of the loop. Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 2:6-16 that, had the powers of this world (both human and eternal powers) known that was the plan, they would not have carried through the crucifixion:

Now we do speak wisdom among the mature, but not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are perishing. Instead we speak the wisdom of God, hidden in a mystery, that God determined before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood it. If they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

The Devil and his allies in rebellion had cut themselves off from the Holy Spirit, and were unable to discern the clues in Scripture. The glorious plan was there, but it required divine guidance to see it. Paul goes on to explain that in detail. Remember that the Wilderness Temptations were in part an effort by the Devil to suss out what Jesus was up to, and Jesus didn’t tip His hand.

This is why so many argue against Election, or try to define it to mean something else. Without the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit, you cannot embrace that truth. You may struggle even with His Presence. Everything critical to understanding the Unseen Realm depends on the enabling power of the Holy Spirit.

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Training Ride 01

Posted on March 28, 2025 by ehurst

I’m starting a new series on the blog. My knee is cooperating fairly well so far this year as the riding season starts rather early. I’m hoping to train up to bikepacking rides again. Today’s opening image celebrates the early spring with a shot of henbit covering a large area of the Pecan Grove Park in Midwest City. It’s part of the Barnes Regional Parks system where I train twice each week to keep my knees in shape.

I’ve shown this view of the dam several times. I’m standing near the Eagle Lake Trail which has recently reopened after the construction of a new connection track between two heavily used rail lines on either side of Eagle Lake Park. Over the visual horizon on the left stands the new OKANA Resort; more on that in a moment. The reason the flow of water over the dam is relatively high is because the city is draining a portion of the river upstream for some maintenance work.

The OKANA Resort project is far enough along that I was able to ride on the new bike trail part way behind the hotel. The trail is still blocked while the crews are working on a related project: a pedestrian bridge over the river. In this shot, the crew was doing some final landscaping work to accommodate the ramp up to the bridge. Spectators can stand on the bridge to watch the longer rowing events hosted here. The good new is that I have not been forced to ride along the railroad tracks any more; I can cut across the OKANA property safely as the final bits of construction work wind down. The curse is lifted. OKANA is officially opened now.

When I approach OKANA from the other direction, you can see that the huge memorial mound hides a considerable pile of remaining equipment and supplies from the construction. I still can’t ride through here safely, but I can go around behind it far off to the right of this image. There’s a large grassy field that is open and connects to the paved driveways running through the resort. I’ll keep an eye on this and offer a comparison shot once all this stuff is gone.

Let the training commence!

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Balaam’s Teaching

Posted on March 22, 2025 by ehurst

In John’s Revelation, among the seven churches to which the Spirit of God has him write is Pergamum in chapter 2.

But I have a few things against you: You have some people there who follow the teaching of Balaam, who instructed Balak to put a stumbling block before the people of Israel so that they would eat the food sacrificed to idols and commit sexual immorality.

He goes on to compare that with the teaching of Nicolaitans. We can only guess at the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, but we do know a thing or two about Balaam.

The primary narrative of his actions are in Numbers 22-24. The Hebrew name for his town is ambiguous, but a good guess is a city mentioned in Assyrian records as “Pitru” just a few miles from Carchemish, on one of the tributaries flowing into the Euphrates. The problem is that the name of the town itself can be taken to mean “diviniation”, so maybe Balaam was part of community that did such work. Still, we have nothing else that comes close.

A working map in your mind should be the Jordan River and the Dead Sea for the initial scene in Numbers. Israel had hiked way around Edom and Moab because God insisted He would not give them into the hand of Israel. However, He did not declare protection on Ammon, the nation that arose from Moab’s brother (the sons of Lot).

At this point, the Amorites had more or less seized some of Moab’s ancient lands on the northeastern shore of the Dead Sea. They moved in and occupied ruins and so forth, wedging themselves in between Moab and Ammon. If you recall, the name “Amorite” is rather like calling them “Gypsies” — not so much an ethnic identity, but a type of people who survived as raiders, reselling what they stole, and setting up shrines for ritual prostitution. Somehow, we also find that a portion of the Midianites lived in this area, and may have qualified for the term “Amorite”.

Thus, when Balak of Moab sees Israel down on the floor of the Jordan Valley east of the river, he is almost certainly standing near a shrine on some high peak overlooking the valley. He confers with the local Midianites and suggests they go in together on calling a diviner from up in Pethor. This is no quick journey, but took a couple of weeks minimum.

There is some back and forth and Balaam eventually gets permission from Jehovah to go, but then nearly gets executed by an angel. So, his onager gets to talk to him about the situation and he is fully aware he cannot branch off on his own, seeking his personal benefit.

We know that he fails to curse Israel, but blesses them. Then he prophesies of how other nations were doomed because Israel had come. The text says Balaam went home, but then we learn later he stopped to teach Balak and his friends how to mess with Israel, removing their covering and invoking God’s wrath. The next chapter of Numbers (25) we see the results of Balaam’s suggestions. The Moabites declare a festival and seduce some Israelites to join in pagan offerings and ritual sex.

We have the scene where Phinehas nails one couple to the ground with his spear. The plague would have most likely been some kind of venereal disease, since that would have been common among a people who made so much of ritual prostitution. You can imagine what this was such a threat to Israel, because most of those ancient venereal plagues were harder on men than women.

Jump forward a few chapters to 31 and we see God instruct Moses to mobilize against the Midianites who helped Moab, without attacking Moab. They wiped out that particular bunch of Midianites, which were probably only distant relatives of Moses’ father-in-law. In the process, the Israelites also executed Balaam.

We hear more about this in Psalms 106:28-31. The festival was in the name of Baal of Peor, at a shrine that may have been in disputed territory at the time. This is why the Midianites would have been a major sponsor, since it may been in their hands. Again in Micha 6:5, the prophet recounts how this all happened right before Israel crossed the Jordan, and they really needed all the purity and strength they could muster for the conquest.

Back to the opening reference to John’s Revelation: We get a picture of how a church could have an infestation of people claiming that it’s okay to eat food offered to idols and make use of ritual sex. While the ruins of that ancient city include temples to Zeus and Athena, there was also the one for Dionysus. You can imagine what a major temptation it was to join in the local festivals there.

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Sources of Truth

Posted on March 17, 2025 by ehurst

There’s a booklet length article on Zero Hedge that you will likely find boring: What If the America You Pledge Allegiance to Isn’t the One Running the Show?. It’s loaded with references to legislation and court cases, and some of them are frankly impertinent, if you ask me. I’m still reading through it. It’s the opening paragraphs that grabbed me:

What if the America you pledge allegiance to isn’t the one running the show? This investigation examines how America’s governance system fundamentally transformed since 1871 through a documented pattern of legal, financial, and administrative changes. The evidence reveals a gradual shift from constitutional principles toward corporate-style management structures — not through a single event, but through an accumulation of incremental changes spanning generations that have quietly restructured the relationship between citizens and government.

This analysis prioritizes primary sources, identifies patterns across multiple domains rather than isolated events, and examines timeline correlations — particularly noting how crises often preceded centralization initiatives. By examining primary sources including Congressional records, Treasury documents, Supreme Court decisions, and international agreements, we identify how:

  • Legal language and frameworks evolved from natural rights toward commercial principles
  • Financial sovereignty transferred incrementally from elected representatives to banking interests
  • Administrative systems increasingly mediated the relationship between citizens and government

This echoes what I wrote about Trump not being a politician at all, but a businessman running the US like a corporation. It’s all wholly consistent with the system of US government. It also explains how a technocracy not only could take over the country, but already has. The only real question is who gets to profit from the business.

This article seeks to stir up a renewed commitment to Enlightenment principles of government. A key passage:

In his 1887 essay “The Study of Administration”, Wilson explicitly advocated for a government run by “experts” insulated from public opinion: “The field of administration is a field of business. It is removed from the hurry and strife of politics… Administrative questions are not political questions.” He argued directly that “The many have no business with the selection of technical administrators any more than they have with the selection of scientists.” These writings reveal Wilson’s profound belief in governance by unelected technical experts rather than democratic processes — a vision that laid the groundwork for the modern administrative state.

This philosophy of governance — creating a permanent administrative class operating independently of elected officials — marks a profound departure from the constitutional system established by the Founders. James Madison’s writings in the Federalist Papers explicitly warned against exactly this type of arrangement, where unelected officials would hold unchecked power over citizens. The relationship between Colonel House and Wilson point toward questions about the intentionality behind administrative systems developed during this period. As we’ll see later, this vision would eventually extend beyond domestic agencies to reshape global governance itself.

All true, but largely impertinent to our concerns. Some years ago on this blog I looked at a scholarly paper on the formation of the American bureaucracy. It was the birth of the “weebees”, the bureaucratic response to elected officials: “We be here when you come and we be here when you go.” The elected officials have virtually no real influence on the system. The linked article is simply a clear declaration of what we already know had happened.

What President Wilson lied about was the expertise, which turned out to be virtually non-existent from the start. The hive-mind appeals to the weakest candidates; real leaders and thinkers could not tolerate working in a bureaucracy. This is why our military is so hollow. The majority of the commanders are bureaucrats, not genuine warriors.

Trump has declared an intention of changing this. That part of his message is mere propaganda, a sales pitch. He remains a CEO, not a statesman by any means. The citizens will benefit from a portion of his agenda in the same way any business works better when you cut out the excess overhead. That is, it’s “better” if you think in terms of marketing strategy and consumers instead of governing people.

The biblical principle is to bloat any operation with those under your covering, within your domain. You are supposed to bless as many people as possible inside the operation, spreading the wealth across your household of faith. We should be glad to see the dismantling of systems that exclude the covenant lifestyle, but not so it can be replaced by a heartless and dehumanizing version that simply favors a competing team.

We don’t expect anything really good coming from all of this. It’s simply the routine changes in the background against which we project the gospel message. Under the globalist regime, we faced a broad hindrance of our message, in the sense that every step of the way we encountered friction and vague threats. That evaporated once Trump took office, pretty much connected to clobbering USAid. But we are starting to see in its place a harsh crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism. I’m waiting to see how that develops.

Our community does not support Palestinians, but we also don’t favor Israel. There are no good guys in that conflict; it’s just another mundane human war. If anything is going to bite us, it is our insistence that Modern Israel has zero claim on God’s favor. We remind everyone that Jews rejected the Covenant of Christ and refuse to accept that God ended their covenant on the Cross. They aren’t special at all, just another human nation, peculiar only in their cohesive spite for the rest of the world, and their long noted intent on ruling all of humanity. We don’t hate Jews; we simply don’t trust them because we know they hate us.

It’s possible that the political tension between pro-Palestine sentiments versus Zionism will keep them too busy to notice us. We will take advantage of this opening to press the Covenant message. We envision preparation for greater tribulation, making people stronger in faith through our message so they won’t need us. We aren’t creating a dependent audience, but building a divine empire of faith people who are themselves sources of truth.

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NT Doctrine — Conclusion

Posted on March 15, 2025 by ehurst

I’m not going to say that John’s Revelation doesn’t contain any doctrine, but that doctrine is not the purpose for writing it. It is prophecy in symbols, all reaching back to echo the symbols of the Old Testament. Its content does not fall under the purpose of this study.

Our purpose in this study was to show fairly concrete statements in Scripture that point out the continuity between the Old and New Testaments. Not so much in the particulars, but there is a clear continuity in assumptions and expectations of how God works and what He requires of us. The Scripture flatly states the Gentile believers are not bound under any particulars of the Law of Moses, but then references fundamental concepts of morality behind that law.

I have made my case. You can decide whether any of it matters.

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