Dominion of Divine Wisdom

Posted on June 14, 2017 by ehurst

Jesus told His disciples (Matthew 19:3-9) that, under the Covenant, God tolerated a certain amount of hardening in the heart against the divine moral character. The Mosaic Code on divorce was a practical solution in the context. The best souls wouldn’t need a loophole like that, but without such loopholes, government would be impossible in a fallen world.

There has always been a conflict between ideals and human failure, and this is why the sacrificial system existed in the first place. It was a way to keep alive the consciousness of our fallen nature. God didn’t need sacrifices and bloodshed; we need to make sacrifices to learn humility and keep before us that material wealth is not our god. So it became a very important element in eldership and general wise government that we expect some tension between the ideals and what people can actually accomplish. It’s utterly necessary to present good moral ideals; it’s utterly typical that we expect a measure of failure and make provision for it.

Bad government begins with that loss of tolerance. That is, tyranny is rooted in a failure to exercise God’s gift of mercy and the awareness of our need for mercy. Tyranny is always a matter of fantasy — the tyrant imagines a perfect world and determines that he will wring it from the people he rules. We see this in the US with the nit-picking details of our legislation and regulation. Instead of presuming that people will fall short, and making some allowances for moving forward and keeping the community alive, they lock down presumed outcomes. Instead of building a culture that presumes the value of social stability, it raises an impossible standard that constitutes a challenge to find new ways to beat the system.

Did you know that the US Army has a written regulation that attempts to describe in detail how soldiers must lace their boots? And you have to get written permission to use zinc oxide for shaving burn because it might be noticeable as an unnatural coloration of your skin. A majority of US military regulation is just like that: An impossible demand that cannot tolerate one iota of individuality. That’s a reflection of most legislation of civilian life, as well. The whole thing is designed to instill fear, so that you cannot possibly walk through life doing the most ordinary mundane things without technically violating some law on the books somewhere.

But in a world where this is the mindset under which everyone operates, you end up with a limited tolerance in those governed for excessive regulation. And it’s possible to push too far and face a revolt. And if your governing system makes no proper allowance for that, you guarantee bloodshed. Never mind the bogus mythology — “of the people, by the people, for the people.” It’s never been like that, and never will be. Good moral people don’t want to rule, so we don’t force them to; we let evil idiots rule instead. We merely pretend that the people running for office are good moral people, and the pretense is preposterous. The whole of our government system is composed of people who generally failed at everything else in life.

So for example, black markets eventually become the real market. When you prohibit too many things, you end up with no ability to actually enforce anything at all.

For many years, I’ve described black markets not as the evil danger to economies that governments profess them to be, but as predictable and sensible reactions to the overregulation of official markets.

Pick your priorities wisely. Smuggling isn’t immoral, just illegal. Laws can be evil, too. And if your proposed government agenda pushes impossible social demands too far — as with the Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) — you’ll get various kinds of push-back from sensible folks. And because SJWs are absolutist tyrants, not only will they not get their way with others, but they and their ways will be destroyed as intolerable, not allowed to enter the marketplace of ideas. Progressives don’t know when to quit.

We who represent the Law of God should understand that such divine justice is its own reward. God’s own standard of enforcement is pretty lax compared to Western expectations. God has said it Himself in so many words: If you don’t somehow sense the joy and love within His Law, then you’ll never obey it in the first place, and you’ll reap none of the blessings that give the Law its body.

We are each feudal vassals in His invisible moral empire. He grants to us a certain domain of divine calling. Those who enter that domain fall under our dominion to varying degrees. A critical element in all of this is a certain amount of volition; people have to voluntarily come under our dominion on certain conditions. It’s a covenant; it’s alive and constantly changing and growing. Every day brings fresh micro-negotiations without words, and sometimes bigger negotiations with words. Sometimes there is a break in the covenant where the boundaries of dominion end. Again, it’s a living thing that occupies only so much space. Yours is a micro-government, a vassal shepherd sheik of God.

Seek the wisdom of God on when to push and when to pull, when to ignore things and when you must crush dissent. It will always be an art, resting on your own sense of calling and mission. You cannot possibly copy someone else, but you can adopt mentors and learn how to emulate their talents in your own way. Carry that wisdom into your considerations of the world around you, and recognize how divine moral character — woven into Creation itself — will affect the aspirations and follies of mankind. You can begin to understand why tyranny always fails on its own, but you also begin to see why and how it fails.

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A Consistent Moral Logic

Posted on June 12, 2017 by ehurst

Over the past 15 years or so, the central core of my ministry calling has been on the Internet. While it did get off to a rough start, here we are after those many years with a viable virtual parish. This parish has been my primary calling from God.

That will change. The convictions of my heart tell me that this virtual parish will take a back seat to something else soon. Indeed, I have a vision telling me that there will be a meat-space community of faith that will become my central pastoral burden. That same vision indicates that some of you will soon be involved in new heart-led communities of your own. That was the thrust of yesterday’s post: My teaching has been aimed at preparing some of you to get involved in starting a covenant body where you live in meat-space. I’ve had a prophetic vision telling me that the context of our daily lives will be changing as social and political changes come in fairly rapid order very soon, and those changes will manifest in souls ready for harvest.

Granted, for some of you, this virtual parish may continue to be all you have for heart-led fellowship. You won’t be neglected; you can always get hold of me personally via email, phone and text messages. I’ll still be your elder and acting pastor. However, the amount of time I devote to this blog will reduce. That will change the frequency and length of my posts. There’s no way to avoid that.

But the legacy of what I’ve already written here should still be available. God alone knows how, but I look back over the things I’ve posted and it seems I’ve reached a strong level of consistency. I suppose it won’t ever be complete, but the teaching seems to have come together into it’s own form of logic based on moral discernment of the heart. When people poke at it by asking questions, I have no trouble seeing how it all fits together like a living thing in its own right.

That’s what your religion should be. It needs to live, to form a driving force that stands when you fall. It’s your living covenant with Christ. It has to be wholly your own or it’s not worth sharing. You can’t carry around my religion as a proxy, because it becomes an excuse not to know Christ personally inside your heart. But you can refer to my religion as an example of how to approach Him.

In a private exchange with Brother Jay, I noted that the library of the Ancient Near East (ANE) was actually people. While they had written documentation, their most important records were inside the heads and hearts of people, and the languages of the ANE were structured to preserve and transmit moral narrative. That this was their primary intellectual pursuit. The precise details of the story might vary just a bit between any number of people who witnessed a single event; that’s normal enough. But the same person might feel compelled to tell the story differently in different contexts because what mattered was the moral impact, not the precise details. They did understand facts and precision, but it wasn’t always important in their narratives. Their whole intellectual orientation was on moral significance, not the factual events.

That’s because there was a fundamental assumption that it was utterly impossible to establish historical events with any great precision; they could not have embraced the notion of objective reality. They would snicker at such a juvenile concept.

So if you read the comments attached to my previous post, you’ll discover that I’m not worried about someone somewhere managing to do levitation. Their seemingly unnatural powers don’t change my faith and my mission in Christ. Maybe it was real and maybe it was fake, but it won’t matter. I wasn’t there, and who can say what I might have experienced if I was? What matters is that I know God’s calling and mission on my life. I know what prophecy is for me, and I’ve tried to teach how I do it. Someone somewhere can issue their own conflicting prophetic revelation and it doesn’t bother me. They have to answer to God, but if my heart tells me I can’t use their narrative, then it’s just so much blather. I don’t have to call them liars or crazy; their visions have no bearing on my life.

And none of you are bound by my visions, either. I know what God tells me, and I’m hoping you learn how to hear from Him for yourself. I want you to gain the same faith and confidence to act on what is in your heart.

This is consistent moral logic; it doesn’t have to make sense to intellectual reason. Faith is like that, often directly challenging what your senses and reason can handle. For many of you, the primary core of your training here is finished and you can now graduate on to bigger and better things. What has been posted here is pretty much the limits of what I can offer. Future posts will continue with some prophetic statements and rehashing some of the same teachings from a slightly different angle, but the majority of you should get to work and read here only if/when you have time and inclination.

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Anchorage of the Soul

Posted on June 12, 2017 by ehurst

Here’s the picture as I see it: The left-right paradigm is false. There is no left and right, only a collection of minor disagreements between two brands of elitist plutocrat controls. In a certain sense, the entire range of government is some variation on leftism. It’s all socialist, with some minor dispute over which plutocrats gets the plunder from policy. They are two competing teams wearing the same uniform. It’s more like an eternal scrimmage between the offense and defense, appearing on the field with reverse color schemes. The difference between globalist and imperialist is very thin. Nobody in government is actually nationalist by any means. But the population as a whole is instinctively nationalist, always seeking someone to represent their interests, always hoping that someone will come close to matching the rhetoric of typically deceptive courtship of elections.

Trump is just a figurehead; most of those still running around making noise in his favor actually represent the nationalist campaign promises he made, whether he keeps them or not. Those activists represent the nationalist ideal, which is neither left nor right as those terms are commonly used. It’s not that Trump is their messiah, but that he hasn’t openly disavowed all of his nationalist promises, so the voters are still supporting him as their figurehead. They are the majority-in-effect of American citizens and they are rising up in revolt against the establishment.

The Antifas are part of the establishment. If you pay attention to the mainstream media, the Antifas are supposed to win. They are just poor, beleaguered protesters trying to have their say against the unquestionably evil morals of the revolting rabble. Except, it’s all false. The only genuine hatred and bigotry is coming from the Antifas. The Trumpites aren’t looking for violence, but they are increasingly willing to answer the violence of the Antifas. As this conflict becomes more bloody, the nationalist majority will be forced to assume the role of revolutionaries. Once they embrace that, we will have our full throated revolution. It’s called by many a “civil war” but it’s nothing of that sort. It’s not two ostensibly equal establishment sides; it’s a revolution against the established order.

I remain utterly certain that this will not bring us an apocalypse. It will be messy and loaded with inconveniences, but it won’t be a total destruction by any means. The turmoil will be the result of decentralizing controls — for some, a total catastrophe in itself. However, while regular daily commerce will change, it would hardly cease. I believe I have God’s promise on that. It will be more of a very highly disorienting social shift. While there will be blood in the streets, the harshest warfare will be in terms of norms and expectations. This is why I insist the greatest weight of warfare will be online where such things take shape these days — and that in itself is the revolution. This is the rise of the Networked Civilization, and part of that is the breakdown of the old social order and it’s concrete centralization. The concrete system will be shattered and replaced by a virtual system. The unifying factor will not be in meat space, but will be rooted in virtual space.

And as some of you have already discovered, the very essence of online society is radically different from meat space. While there remains a dominant social etiquette, it is totally different from meat-space etiquette. To those of us old enough to remember not having an Internet, this new social order seems totally fragmented. The mixture of what is uniform among participants is shocking. From the old viewpoint, there are no social norms at all; you can get away with almost anything. But that’s not true. The newer generation that grew up with the Internet simply approaches the whole question from a different angle. The definition of “rudeness” is vastly different.

So a critical element in the social revolution is a rapid displacement of the old order with the new. The tension between them has risen to the breaking point. It’s not that the new generation is so much more nationalist; it’s that they don’t pay attention to the whole question. The kids are ripping off the reins of the old system of control. The means of control has shifted into a different realm and old order refuses to adapt. The new generation is focused on an entirely different range of issues, so the nationalist revolt that has been smoldering since the very beginning of humanity is now breaking out into open conflagration. It’s two different kinds of revolt on two different planes of awareness, but they do have overlapping effects in the lives of individuals, and in the broader social mood.

I want you to see this because this is the future of our shared faith. If you haven’t noticed before, everything I teach is designed to take advantage of this new state of affairs. However, I didn’t arrive there through a conscious effort, but realized afterward that where my heart led me was to meet the coming changes. The religion defined by Radix Fidem [PDF] arose from my internal moral compass, but it just happens to be a good fit for the Networked Civilization. This is how God works.

And those of you who find a home in Radix Fidem will be ready to evangelize to that foreign land of souls waiting to hear God’s truth. For the most part, they won’t be crushed and oppressed in the flesh so much as disoriented by the collapse of everything they once knew. With the collapse of the old political order comes the collapse in the old religious order, too. Some part of their awareness will realize that they are in a different world, with a different language and different social rules. American Christians will be outside their comfort zone, and if they can’t raise up their old home church atmosphere in this new land, they’ll need a new religion altogether. Their souls will be seeking some kind of anchor of identity that gives them stability and makes functioning possible in this foreign land. We have that anchorage.

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How to Tribulate

Posted on June 11, 2017 by ehurst

The image of faith I’ve been trying to paint for you should conflict powerfully with the mainstream of social mythology. Within that mainstream mythology are a collection of false options, in part as a means to funnel normal human passions into predictable channels. There are plutocrats actively working to make it like this. On the surface it appears as conflicting visions, but underneath you can see that it’s all one thing. I’ve tried to help you see that, for example, feminism versus the new men’s movement is simply the same old conflict from ancient Anglo-Saxon culture, characterized by the confused modern day cults of Oester and Odin. It’s bad scholarship about the actual mythical figures and bad social politics, too, but it remains rooted in the tension that always existed in many ancient cultures. It’s not two different worldviews, but a yin-yang thing from within a single worldview.

Instead, I’ve been offering a biblical counter to all of this. It’s not as if we aren’t individually affected by the observable natural cycles of human social behavior, but that we aren’t slaves to it because we see it for what it is. A critical part of this has been teaching you to see how the biblical outlook maintains an awareness of on a different level. We don’t pretend we can disengage the world around us, but we engage from a different level.

At various times, and in various ways, it is wholly proper to get right into the thick of things alongside everyone else who doesn’t see what we see. At other times we pull away, and in yet other contexts we oppose it quite directly. It all depends on who you are in God’s plans; it’s a question of role, of calling and character. Where are you supposed to stand for His glory? The main point is that we are involved without being entangled. Don’t get lost on this lower level of human operations.

Among the options you see offered by our world, there can be none that genuinely claim to be Christian or biblical. I’ve made much of the Law Covenants to clarify this point: God’s politics are tribal. And while that is utterly preposterous in the eyes of our world today, we struggle against a massive flood of deception just trying to nudge folks a little closer to God’s standard by suggesting nationalism as a good alternative. Not a single major political force active today is nationalist in character. That is, while the grassroots may be nationalist, none of the leadership represents their views. They are all globalist or imperialist in nature, though at times the imperialists claim a thin veneer of nationalism. Yet the image of nationalism is painted with all kinds of false hatred, so that it seems to justify unreasoning hatred from those who espouse the other two agendas.

The Cult [PDF] doesn’t care whether you prefer to be a sucker for either globalist or imperialist lies, but they are threatened by nationalism.

Here in the US, the false division between Democrat and Republican is the single biggest lie we face every day. To folks conditioned to think by that lie, we are deeply confused. My affinity for Creation as a personal friend makes me look Green to anyone who hates Democrats and Progressives. That, despite my utter dismissal of Green theology. And I’ve very much in favor of caring about the unfortunate and want to use resources to reduce human suffering. But I’m hardly in favor of the nasty materialistic social welfare agenda. I offer warnings about how the economy simply will not support the wish list of the left. So among the leftists I’m branded as a fascist because I’m not willing to force people to follow the Social Justice religion.

And it’s even worse within the sphere of organized religion, but we’ve talked about that enough elsewhere. By the way, in case you haven’t heard, there’s a new Antichrist figure on the scene at the UN, named Danny Danon. You can look him up, but he’s basically trying to take over the UN with the help of people like Nikki Haley. The religion of Zionism has hijacked a lot of things.

All of this points back to my primary mission here as virtual elder of our virtual parish: I’m warning you to be aware of Satan’s sneaking around behind the scenes. His power among us is deception, not any actual means of hurting us. Those who listen to his lies will be trapped in conflict with God’s Word; a major element of his deception is social and political propaganda. Our victory is learning to hear the Holy Spirit in our hearts. Toward that end, I strive to untangle current events so that you can recognize the threads from which it’s woven.

Don’t be afraid, but don’t be blind. Know what divine justice looks like in your hands and make it happen. Creation will support your choices and you’ll see the miracles of God sparing you from the plagues sweeping across the land. Learn what you can afford to sacrifice for His glory and what you must fight to protect as His domain delivered to your hands.

***********

As a note in passing, I’ll remind you that I am still held by the conviction that I have yet one more mission adventure in front of me. For now, I envision serving as an assistant to someone with political influence, rather like Daniel served under both Babylon and Persia. I’m actively preparing for this in accordance with the sparse outline that I see. So far, it seems that my Linux skills will play a major role. But it all means changes are inevitable as time progresses.

Sometimes it’s little things. I’m less interested in long bike rides and more inclined to walking, which takes a lot less time to get the same effects. I still have a strong desire to get out and explore, to take pictures and share them, but I’ll need a motor vehicle for that. So it becomes a prayer request — nothing specific, just something between a motorbike and a truck. The bicycle will become simply transportation in the mean time. I’m no longer that interested in messing with videos, but I’m not going to close my YouTube channel yet. I’ll log in often enough to keep it active, but it’s on the back burner as other things loom larger for me. Maybe I’ll do some vlogging later. I get the feeling I’ll be working more often under a time crunch in the future.

But there are bigger things. I am utterly certain my work in this blog will change, but I’m not yet sure what it will look like for you as readers. Rather, I’m called upon to contemplate the meaning of my relationship with the Internet itself and its place in my Kingdom service. It’s a called burden of care to watch the bigger trends in technology, particularly in the influence of human behavior on it, and it on human behavior. I have to carefully consider how I will engage the Net with the proper balance of using it as a tool without compromising the mission. There are changes coming upon all of us, and I have to make sure I’m in the right place when the Lord calls for action.

Pray with me about these things. This is also a good time for you to share with me your prayer requests.

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Psalm 135

Posted on June 10, 2017 by ehurst

This song is verbal clip-art; it is a collection of quotations from other psalms and songs from the historical books of the Old Testament. Artfully woven together in this new format, it was probably a responsive psalm, but there is no solid consensus among scholars on the voices and parts. Still, it clearly offers a rousing thanksgiving celebration.

The first line is an imperative: Praise Jehovah! The root meaning of the verb “praise” is to draw a sharp contrast, to make something stand out. We exist for His glory. It is our power to live and nothing can answer the deep need of the human soul like rendering praise to our Maker. You need a reason? He has chosen us as His special treasure on the earth.

Keep in mind that this all stands in the frame of reference where Jehovah is the imperial ruler, a feudal sheik. The psalmist forcefully claims to know this Lord personally. Is there any other sheik like Him? Who else could have his whims from Creation itself? Who else could devise the cycle of precipitation with the added glory of lightening? Who can hold or release the winds upon the earth at His whims?

For all the deep, ancient and mystical powers of Egypt and her vast pantheon of deities, Jehovah was able to put them all to shame. He ravaged Egypt like a weak young girl and none her deities could do a thing about it. Nor could any of the other gods along the Exodus stay His hand from taking what He wanted; kings died with their whole armies. Then He distributed the plundered land as an inheritance to His own tribe.

The earth could fade away into mist, but the reputation of God as Master of all Creation will stand eternally. Nobody can challenge His jurisdiction, and He ensures that His household gets special treatment in His justice.

Look at how the Gentile nations bow to things they have made with their own hands. God made those materials, and the hands to shaped them. Those deities only look like people, but they are blind, deaf and silent. They don’t even breathe, and you have to wonder about what kind of people would fall down and worship dead gods like that.

So the psalmist calls for the whole nation to confess their allegiance to Jehovah, and they echo back to the priests and Levites to do the same. If His eminence burns in your heart, how can you do any less? Is this not the God who has gathered us around His Temple here in Zion? Is there any other deity claiming to come and live with us this way? There is no room for loyalty to any other.

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More on Meta-religion

Posted on June 10, 2017 by ehurst

What holds us together? We have no ideal.

At least, we have nothing that most humans would recognize as an ideal, because our aim is otherworldly. Our union is communion on another plane. What holds us together is not in this world, so we present very few identifying marks. Paradoxically, we each present all kinds of characteristics, a batch of marks that make each of us unique from others. But that’s the whole point: We don’t point.

Every time I set down some list of things that might sound like shared values, one of those values is that you don’t have to share them with me. That is, I might find your list just a valid as mine without much overlap at all. I’m evaluating such lists from a basis outside this world.

Thus, my list of characteristics is just an advertisement for fellowship, not a basis for taking you seriously. I’m inviting you to join in a banquet by indicating the ingredients. If you aren’t allergic, then you can come feast with me. Otherwise, go in peace; you will surely find others who share your own moral diet.

I’m not here to present a universal religion; I’m here to present religion itself as a thing to discuss and study. That’s why I call it “meta-religion” — I’m presenting my beliefs about belief as a human activity. What holds us together is a very cynical tolerance of things we cannot share, but looking for things we must share because doing it alone is flat out contrary to our wiring. But just as wrong for us is conformity. That’s a primary belief about belief; it’s meta-religion.

We share in the study of how to evaluate religion. So there is no ideal organized religion, only some that might work for you, and a whole bunch that won’t. The thing we evangelize is ourselves; we seek to share a way of sharing. We believe God has said He would reveal Himself as a person to persons and you can’t steer the friendship of other folks. You shouldn’t want to.

I consider it bad religion to tell folks “God won’t do this or that.” It’s good religion when it sounds more like, “God won’t let me do this or that.” That’s so you’ll know it’s a waste of time to press me for some element of religion that we don’t share. It’s only our fallen nature that demands we see in others a mirror image of our own soul. That’s the worship of self; don’t take yourself so seriously.

We don’t build ideals; we grow what’s possible. Most of it isn’t in our hands in the first place. A critical element in what I do here is teach you that there are boundaries and limits, but they are discovered, not devised. They live and move and change on their own, and we have to live with them. It’s all personal. If it works for you, great; I’m glad to give it away.

We share ourselves.

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Another Lesson in Prophecy

Posted on June 9, 2017 by ehurst

It seems a good time to offer another lesson in prophetic ministry. Here the main point is time, in that our fallen nature handles it very poorly. One major element in the Curse of the Fall is a high sensitivity to time-space limitations. We are so deeply tied to this that we simply cannot step out of it, even in theory, to get a look at how the rest of Creation experiences it. Time passes for the unfallen world around us, but it’s not at all the same as it is for you and I.

So when God begins to speak to your heart in prophetic terms, it requires a bit of unlearning for us to make sense of it. One of the biggest things to unlearn is timing. At a minimum you should understand that our fallen nature makes us very impatient. The Hebrew culture of the Bible presses upon us the necessity of patience using the parable of ripening fruit or other natural associations. We are often given prophetic signs, but some of them are entirely non-literal.

We are taught to live faithfully and mind our own individual calling until the Lord tells us to move on. Jesus wanted His disciples to remain active on the scene in Jerusalem until the last minute, so in Matthew 24-25 He first corrects their misunderstandings about what would happen and in what order. The main point is that they were not going to see His Second Coming any time soon — stop worrying about that. Instead, they were told to keep an eye on the political scene involving Rome so they could leave before the coming siege traps them in the city. Instead of telling them the number of years, He painted an image of the signs when the fruit was ripe for destruction of the City.

Thus, God wants at least some of us to pay attention to secular politics, so we can gain some prophetic insight into protecting His servants from needless sorrow. Somebody has to notice when the Pillar of Cloud lifts and start packing up the camp. And when we pay that attention, there has to be a prophetic element. We have to see these things not in common human terms of those around us in the world, but in terms of when moral fruit ripens.

This is part of my effort to raise up the image of a moral sphere of awareness, a vision for things invisible to the naked eye. Your heart can see angels and demons; individual sensitivities vary, but it’s part of our wiring from Creation. It’s the Fall the blinds us to moral reality so that we see less than we should. A prophetic eye sees the trend of things within the moral sphere based on an awareness of God’s moral character. It’s a case of “this is how God does things.” The Bible offers plenty of examples, so we aren’t left to guess about it. It starts with knowing the Law Covenants, but then it extends through that knowledge to a moral vision of how reality is wired with God’s personality.

For someone whose divine calling includes a prophetic service to others, there are times when God will move in your heart in such a way as to provoke a strong reaction. It’s likely to reverberate in your emotions, but it will not come from there. It will be rooted in your convictions, something that overwhelms your human nature with far more power than mere thought and emotions. From there, you must learn to analyze in your heart and let your mind learn from it. Sometimes it will be painfully obvious, because that overwhelming sense will be connected to something that gets your attention in the flesh.

In that case, what’s happening is that your sensory awareness has bumped up against a moral conviction that was already there. It’s a triggering recognition that gives moral significance to something your mind receives through the senses. This is related to what I call “bouncing things off your conscience.” The heart responds to a query about something practical. The important thing is not the specifics, but to absorb the moral pattern into your intuition. The idea is to change your instincts about things. The more you do this, the greater your moral wisdom about the world around you.

So the prophetic gift does call for some study, contemplation and prayer. We go through life expecting those moments with the Burning Bush. Those moments are likely to be far more subtle than such a blazing vision, but we strive to become sensitive so we don’t need to be slapped upside the head. We are seeking the expertise to slice sharply in dividing joints and marrow (Hebrews 4:12-13). We are told to seek that kind of discernment because that’s how God works.

I’m learning how to discern when something in my experience is just a human emotion, and when it is sourced in a move in my heart. It’s not always obvious. My most recent prophetic message about a war coming seemed at that moment very urgent. However, the urgency was in the power of the message, not in the timing of events as our fallen nature measures such things. The move in my spirit hit me first and established itself as a major issue. Afterward I ran across the news about the political spat between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and recognized that as a manifestation of my prophetic burden. Nothing in this suggests a time period, nor even a pattern of events. However, I note that the news of the political ruckus is a sign of what I’m sensing. I am utterly convinced this will entangle the US government so that we eventually get involved in a war with someone who will hurt us militarily.

The experience itself was a little slow for me. I woke up feeling alienated from everything around me. My first instinct was to step outside in the dawning light and pray for insight. As the day wore on, the image took shape. It developed into a vision of doom that didn’t affect me directly, in the sense that it wasn’t my personal doom. Rather, it was a matter of bloodshed and destruction on a wider scale. By late afternoon, I knew it meant going to war, and that whoever was on the other side would have the means to hurt us militarily. That was my conviction, not simply a matter of wild imagination.

This was what lay upon my mind when I encountered the news that Qatar and Saudi Arabia were in a dispute. My heart seized upon that story as a sign of the prophetic warning I wrote about the previous day. At this point I have no worldly wisdom about how it will lead to that sorrowful vision; that’s not part of the prophetic warning. Rather, it’s a matter of conviction that they are connected. I believe this will hurt America whatever is going on, with all the background that I could not possibly know, and all the secret maneuvering behind the scenes among the various governments, and without knowing who feels they might have a vested interest in this thing. I’m convinced it will bring Americans a lot of suffering.

So my mission here is a warning to you, dear Readers, that these events are a sign to us. They will have an effect on what we do in service to God’s glory, particularly if you live in the US. Consider what kinds of political fallout come with a military loss of any significance. I don’t have any specific warnings, but I can imagine a tsunami of political repercussions arising from such a fiasco. Especially in the context of the growing political unrest we already have, this could be the final provocation to a civil war that forever ends the republic as we know it.

I can’t tie this all up in a neat bundle for you. I’ve been held by a conviction that the republic was doomed for at least the last 20 years. That naturally includes a vision of civil war. I’ve been expecting for a few years that America would attack Iran and get whipped badly. For at least a year I’ve had convictions that Trump’s election was a sign that these things were near. It’s not all clear-cut in prophetic terms; some of it I surmise from a more subtle awareness of things in general. This is why I keep injecting verbal warnings that I could be wrong about some of this. The gift of prophesy is much more than messages dropped into my heart from Heaven; it includes a general insight into the moral character of things to go with it.

So I don’t know when exactly, but it seems to me a lot of this stuff could easily be this year, maybe mostly during these summer months. Because God is a Person who responds to devotion and rejection, some of what He plans is conditional. Some of it is surely carved in stone. I’ve already tried to convince you folks that He does change His mind about things, and that we have already seen that once last year, with that shift in reality we experienced.

I’m not presenting myself as some all-knowing guru of God’s truth. Don’t follow me; pay attention to where I go and learn how I decide to take that path. You need to discover your own path. The core issue here is your peace with God, regardless of what happens in this crazy world.

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A Working Model

Posted on June 8, 2017 by ehurst

I can’t tell you how to read your own convictions. This is something already wired into your consciousness and unique to each individual. It’s written into our very nature as creatures made by God. The question is one of awareness; you must pray and seek God’s face to heal your blindness. This is what redemption is all about.

It’s possible that I can use words to help you build a working model of what’s there inside of you. I can tell you that you have emotions, signals emanating from your physical being. They are informative, but should never be trusted to tell you the whole truth of things because emotions have a very poor grasp of moral truth. They aren’t designed for that in the first place, plus they are under the Curse of the Fall. But what you feel about certain things can serve as a useful clue to what’s deeper, things hidden in your soul from your conscious mind.

I can tell you that your have an intellect or mind that is part of your fallen nature, but that it doesn’t like to acknowledge that. It is loaded with the arrogance of its own wisdom and reason.

You also have a separate facility we can call “the will” that can assert its own authority. Once you are alerted to that possibility, you begin to build a confidence in what the will can know and do. You discover that your will holds the very core of your unique individual identity as a living being, a person — this is where you find your convictions. I can’t prove any of that; it’s just a conceptual model.

But I can most assertively affirm to you that your convictions exist and that they can be read. This is a universal human trait. It has nothing to do with your eternal destiny; this is God’s free gift to all humans born. You can do this; you can discover the connection inside of you that links your mind to your ultimate will. Everyone can know their own moral convictions.

And such knowing is a process, not a one-time discovery. There are layers upon layers of deception in your mind about what’s in your convictions. As part of helping you to delve into yourself, I also try to offer a better cultural model than is common in Western Civilization. I’ve tried very hard to introduce the Ancient Hebrew model because this makes better sense of what the Bible says about God’s desire for us. I talk about how Western mythology makes the heart some murky quasi-emotion thing, but in the Bible the heart is the seat of your will, the place where your moral convictions rest.

This is what we mean by the term “heart-led” — not some shadowy and ill-defined quasi-emotional force, but a very clear and sharp source of moral clarity. It’s an awareness of things you simply cannot ignore without a serious risk of neurosis or psychosis. Your convictions tell you what must and must not do lest you fight reality itself. Your convictions are the voice of God.

Thus, the question of sin against God or holiness in obeying Him is a matter of searching your own heart. It’s not something that can be settled in the mind, but must be sourced in your will. Your mind is there to implement that decision written by the finger of God on the bedrock of your personal identity. Redemption is clarifying in your mind what the heart already knows. It is obedience to God’s divine purpose for you individually. God is the one who made it and He is not hiding Himself; He is hidden by our fallen inclinations to ignore Him. He is hidden by the mind’s willful disregard of the heart, an arrogant assertion that intellect and reason is the best way to discern ultimate truth.

Fortunately, you have within you something that is not precisely your mind, but a separate faculty of conscious awareness. We have no cultural image for that, no theoretical model in human behavioral science. There is a traffic cop inside of you that is linked to the mind, but is not the mind itself. Consciousness is not confined to the brain; we don’t have the language to support that concept with any depth, except to call it “the soul.”

So making you aware of that model itself is the best I can do here. I can encourage you to begin by testing things. Stop and consider; don’t assume your mind already has the right answer. Assume that your factual knowledge — reason and perception — is unreliable, and that you must build the habit of bouncing things off your convictions. Somewhere down the line, it can become a reflex so that you instinctively listen to more subtle leadership from your heart.

It is in your heart that you discover real communion with God and His Creation.

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Another Prophetic Rant

Posted on June 7, 2017 by ehurst

I’ve been asked by several people to refresh some of my positions on certain issues.

America as a cultural entity is utterly Anglo-Saxon. Never mind the civilized veneer; it’s a false front. Anglo-Saxons are arrogant, spiteful and brutal. They assume themselves the angels of God on this earth and will not discuss the relative merits of their a priori assumptions of superiority. When America deals with other nations, whatever it is that we think we want from them is God’s own will, and they had damned well better go along with it. Otherwise we will shred their people and their stuff and take what we want. That is America’s foreign policy.

But these days we seldom have the balls to be honest about that, unlike our raiding and pillaging ancestors. We hold up a massive false front that our way of doing things is the definition of “civilization.” Everyone who does things differently is “barbaric.” And anyone who stands up for their own culture with the same arrogance is “evil.” Today’s favorite term for evil is “terrorist.”

Terrorists are everywhere. Some are allies, so we call them something else, but only because it pays. From anything resembling an objective viewpoint, the difference between an enemy terrorist and an allied terrorist is nil.

For example, we have the Zionist State of Israel. They aren’t just as bad, but far worse. They are slimy in their arrogance. They know better than to take on a foe who could theoretically resist, so they use even more layers of deception and propaganda. They make war by deception. But their underlying assumption is that the whole world by rights ought to be their slaves, and they imagine that all human wealth on this planet was stolen from them. This insane mythology is derived in part from a very perverted reading of the Old Testament. They imagine that they are God’s Chosen

We also have some allies who are Islamic. Never mind what The Prophet wrote, it’s what they do today that makes them despicable. We have allied ourselves to the worst of the worst and keep them propped up against all enemies simply because they are willing to pretend we are their friends. At the very moment the balance changes, both Israel and all the Muslims will turn on us. When we need their help, you can bet they will shit on us if there’s even the slightest chance they’ll get away with it.

Go ahead and look up the Barbary Pirates, and discover where the US Marines came from. Think about what I wrote in The Cult [PDF]. The problem here is not Judaism as a religion, though it’s bad enough. Nor is the problem of Islam as a religion. The problem is Zionism and political Islam. And their problem is not Anglo-Saxon mythology, but American politics. And our problem in the midst of all this is the Anglo-Saxon stupidity in believing that we are running the show. We are merely useful idiots for a very much more ancient, wise and crafty cultural background shared between Jews and Muslims.

This is the nature of human political activity in a world that rejects God’s Law. Never mind how they continue to reject His Son and eternal redemption; the world rejects what God offers every human before they die and go to Hell. There is a better way of life possible under God’s Law, but no one wants to submit. So instead, we have arrogant cultures like political Islam, Zionism and Americanism.

Let me warn you about something: The US is about to come apart. God’s wrath is upon this country. It’s also being poured out on Israel and some Islamic countries, but those are not my prophetic concern. My mission is to America. Most Americans are perhaps willing to learn and do better, leaving behind the worst aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture. Unfortunately, we have allowed a bunch of crazies to worm their way into controlling positions in our political system, and to a large degree, in our social control systems. We are under the domination of both globalists and imperialists who represent the worst of Anglo-Saxon arrogance and brutality. If Americans are to have any hope for a future, it will require destroying those who keep the brutality alive.

It’s sad, but the only way to stop the bloodshed is to shed the blood of those who keep us involved in wars, who keep us tied to the schemes of Islamic and Zionist politics. Our ruling elite won’t risk their own blood, but gladly send us all into senseless battles for their profit. They’ve been slaughtering us for two centuries. Americans will have to turn on them and literally slaughter them. That’s the only way to do it.

And we can pretty well guess that it won’t happen until nothing else is possible. You see, the majority aren’t that bloodthirsty, so they are reluctant, and it’s a good sign of their moral base. Indeed, it would be impossible to provoke them to such level of bloodshed without a horrific crisis coming down on their heads. They aren’t going to be prodded into it by anything less, so don’t even try it. There’s nothing anyone can do to provoke a civil war on terms that favor the people; it has to forced on them from above. When nothing else is possible, that’s when there will be a civil war.

There’s nothing wrong with trading among Islamic nations or with Israel. There’s something very wrong with letting them steer us like donkeys, and that’s what they are doing now. There’s also nothing wrong with slaughtering either of their people when they try to push us around like that. But we first need to clean up our own house, and that means waiting until the evil of the globalists and imperialists has run its course. That means waiting until their manipulations reach an unbearable level of pain, and we aren’t there yet.

But we are getting a lot closer.

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We Want More

Posted on June 7, 2017 by ehurst

Let me attempt to draw a picture here.

I very much want a community, a fellowship based on shared beliefs. Not conformity and uniformity, because a primary doctrine at work here is the necessity of seeking to share what can be shared and working through the inevitable tension of holding a unique calling from God. It’s a doctrine that avoids painting God as some logical ideal, but as a real person who knows each of us as Our Maker. Our doctrine says that God never intended us to emphasize any kind of cerebral unity, because what the mind can accomplish isn’t worth much. God’s power works through the heart of conviction.

Ideally, such a community of deep moral conviction would include some meat-space communion. Indeed, a critical element in the whole thing is breathing life into the Covenant of Christ by observing the Law of Noah and all of the assumptions behind that law. We long to see a genuine covenant community of extended family based on shared spiritual DNA, never mind the variation in fleshly heritage. We want that tribal atmosphere; that’s what God reveals in His Word as the ideal for fallen humanity.

But we know that, in the foreseeable future, it won’t happen except on a small scale. And for most of us up to now, it’s only been through a virtual communion. We are burning with a longing that may never be fulfilled until we meet in Heaven, though we know with deep conviction some measure of it is quite possible here and now.

I suppose about the closest we could come to the common expectations of our age would be something of a movement, though hardly of the activist sort. But if we then begin to work toward a movement, we go off track. Get your eyes off the movement itself. The whole point is not getting people to join, but letting people discover something they already wanted, whether they knew it or not. It has to be a communion from which they can’t stay away. This thing builds itself or it doesn’t happen at all.

So it’s not for any of us, me least of all, to draw boundaries. We include people who want to include themselves. We work to make allowances and exclude only when their presence hinders something we cannot sacrifice. Again, it’s functional, not doctrinal. There is no orthodoxy, only certain obvious indicators that people belong — and only for as long as they are able to belong.

I raise two such identifiers, not as your leader, but as one setting the example of how it’s done. First is that moral affinity, that shared moral character of God by which we discover a communion that exists despite any cerebral reasons in favor of division. The Spirit of God draws people together, but He also polarizes. He draws those who are Spirit-born, whose hearts are awakened as master of the soul. The second identifier is a natural extension, for that same sense of recognizing moral kinship means we would share a sense of accountability to the Scriptures. If you cannot see past the words (in whatever translated language) to the moral depth of God’s Person, then you do not know the Scripture. If you fail to manifest either of these two identifiers, I am simply unable to take your fellowship seriously. That’s a limitation on me, a weakness I cannot shed in this life.

Nothing prevents you hanging around here and trying to be friends. That common human friendship is a step on the path to spiritual communion. There is room for a long sliding scale of acceptance on lesser levels, because we are constrained by that same Holy Spirit to demonstrate His compassion until such time as He breathes life into their souls and opens their eyes. Even when we must make some violent response to intolerable transgressions against our individual callings, we do so with an eye to compassion for the sake of God’s glory, not some obscene hatred. We don’t defend ourselves, but we do have a zeal for God’s purpose. The standard is mere pragmatic measures to preserve our domain as granted by God; He has commanded us to maintain the covenant hedge. Anyone lacking such a threat is welcome to hang around and feed off the gracious and abundant supply of God’s blessings poured into our lives.

We know that we are one with Creation. We know it as the swelling joy and peace that comes from our personal connection to God, as He wove His personal character into all things. We would like to be one with more people, too, because they are part of that Creation. They are blinded to that from birth. It’s the Curse of the Fall, but redemption is through the Flaming Sword at the gate of Eden — the revelation of God. We press forward in the covenant life that breathes in Scripture. We can’t get enough of that shared affection, so it’s natural we reach out to those we encounter, hoping they’ll see the source of that love in us.

Our agenda is moral communion; our hope is that it provokes the rise of fellowship.

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