Covenant Faithfulness during Turmoil

Posted on April 5, 2017 by ehurst

This is in response to an offline conversation, and involves how to profit from the coming turmoil of God’s wrath on America.

The economy itself is not going to crash in the sense of freeze up totally. Certain elements of our economy will break, but not everything. What’s going to break? Think about God’s Law. What does God favor in human economic behavior? It’s the same in all human behavior in general: decentralize. And while God favors that for His people, there are times when He is guiding historical trends toward inscrutable ends and we have to be patient. However, if you are walking in His truth, and you are obedient to His calling on your life, you can bet that He will favor your efforts to decentralize in the long run.

Centralizing is evil.

Read that again. Human efforts to centralize are inherently evil. This trend in American History is critical to provoking God’s wrath. This is why globalism and imperialism are wrong. But it applies to every kind of human endeavor, not just politics. It applies to economics; unnatural monopoly is evil, too (some economic activity is naturally monopolistic or it doesn’t work at all). Centralized government policies that favor big market players is evil. Centralized control of debt is evil. Centralized control of data is evil. And so forth, you get the idea.

The folks who lust for power through centralized control want to invoke your fear. That way you won’t hinder their evil plans. They will lie to you about how, if their little empire comes apart, you’re gonna die. They need your dependence; you need to restrict your dependence.

God is crushing that centralizing stuff. It may take awhile, but that’s happening. One of the most important elements in this process is centralized financing and debt control. At some time in the near future, an awful lot of debt will evaporate. A lot of big money investment will become utterly worthless paper. So an awful lot of big money players will be broke. And when these operations shut down, anything that depends on them will also shut down. That means huge national companies with franchises in every big town will close their doors.

It’s already happening: Sears, K-mart, Payless Shoes, etc. They are dying first because they didn’t move with the market. Walmart tried to move and is still alive for now, but they are highly exposed for the next wave of debt failure. Meanwhile, thousands of new cars go unsold and the price on used cars is about to come down. All of these represent centralized big players. Because of how all market debt is interlinked, everyone who operates on debt risks being shut down completely. That means any business with a centralized means of loaning money and taking payments on those loans is on the verge of collapsing. A whole lot of banks will fail, but so will consumer lending operations.

This is the worst time to take out a loan on anything. If you have any sense at all, you will liquidate your debts to the degree possible. It’s just too complicated to explain it in any more detail than that. This applies to both personal and business debt. The one best hope to stay in business is to be independent of debt. That’s not the same as making no use of debt, but it means keeping things organized in a way where you can stay in business if you are suddenly cut off. Cascading debt market failures will happen quickly.

For long term plans, prepare for a market closer to home and in need of a wider diversity of products and services. That means you need to keep it local and do more kinds of stuff when the big vendors shut down. They will. And be wary of stuff that rests on frivolous fashion trends. Stick with stuff people buy when they live close to the bone.

Furthermore, there are provisions in Biblical Law that favor some less obvious moves. For example, restrict ownership (investment) to covenant partners. Keep your primary business operations under the control of a covenant family. You can hire outsiders, but they are just employees, not family. At the same time, you try to treat them like family so that they are motivated to act like it. Be wary, but open and honest. Don’t become partners with (dependent on) someone who doesn’t share your covenant morals. Don’t let someone use assets for injustice as discerned by Biblical Law.

Make things more personal. Don’t make this some sort of advertising slogan; actually make friends with your customers and vendors. If possible, prefer covenant family for all your business, but at all costs avoid letting things slip into some impersonal cash nexus. If you don’t operate like a shepherd, God won’t favor your business.

It’s much the same for politics. Keep it in the family; nepotism rules because the only political system God favors is ANE feudalism. But this assumes you aren’t living as part of a cutthroat family that eats its own. We are talking about a covenant family here. Shared values and morals are essential. Don’t allow this to slip into a presumption of objectivity, though. Don’t propose an agenda that can become a political football in itself. Promote solid moral ideals and policies and remain consistent, but not hidebound when you have to work with outsiders. This is not about rules but protocols. Avoid joining or creating a party if all possible; keep loose ties when you do. Don’t hire partisans; build a staff that is loyal to you personally. Cultivate personal ties and keep your closets clean.

Don’t get the idea that God requires politics remain austere, even as you prepare for that possibility. If you heart isn’t in the shepherd mode, stay out of politics. But if you are faithful to Him with His flocks, He will prosper you personally. David was not a poor king, nor a perfect king, but he did seek God’s favor from the heart.

Regardless of your pursuit, when it involves other people, expect treachery. It’s not a barrier to keep in mind how you’ll react if your closest and dearest go over the edge. That works in marriage, too. Love is God’s way of things and it requires a certain vulnerability, but not moral blindness. Without the risk of loss, you can’t do anything that matters.

In all of this, remain faithful to God and He will prosper you. This is what the blessings of covenants are all about: that shalom promise of Biblical Law.

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God’s Warning to Trump

Posted on April 5, 2017 by ehurst

The standard prophetic caveat: You need not take me seriously if this strikes you as objectionable. However, I regard this as a prophetic word from God and I cannot be silent.

In the end, we are all mere vessels. When our human purpose is accomplished, we will be shattered and return to clay. Some of us will during our lives hold treasures; others are chamber pots. A few will hold the fire or God’s wrath.

God’s wrath will fall on America because of sin. However, there are particular sinful problems that are worse than others, and these problems will be hit hardest. The people associated with those problems will get an extra heavy dose of wrath.

Trump is God’s vessel of fire and destruction. He does have some options: He can do it very well or he can do it poorly. Right now, he’s doing it poorly. His mission from God is a dirty business, much as Nebuchadnezzar and Pharaoh, but both of those men were much more faithful and focused. Whatever rewards God had for those ancient men, they received richly. Trump looks to lose his.

For whatever reason, Trump is not careful about his staff. He’s got some people very good at political warfare, but too many of them are not loyal to him or his agenda. Then again, it appears Trump is not too well focused on his mission in the first place. That mission will happen, but sometimes in spite of his bumbling. And instead of a clean and clear message that shatters his enemies, it will drag on and on with many questions that go unanswered.

This is going to raise the pain level on everyone. Whatever little bit of justice Trump might have given America, he lets is slip through his fingers. He was pushed into office by God on the power of frustration in the electorate. He will frustrate them further, and they will be forced to take matters into their own hands. This will make it far messier and more painful than is necessary. But it will come to that because Trump has not kept his hand to the plow.

If Trump had been more careful and pulled in a much tighter team, and pushed more forcefully the vengeance and dirty politics that are required, he would still be the hero who won by an electoral landslide. There may still be some time, but it seems unlikely because the window of opportunity has almost closed. This is why there will be right-wing backlash at the ground level. Trump will fail the right-wing masses. You should understand that God’s instrument of wrath depends on the raw anger of the right-wing, and this determines the flavor of that wrath.

So God is going to raise up smaller figures who will do this dirty work and make His wrath happen. The ones who do it best will be those who understand political OpSec (operational security), people who know how to work with a smaller team more personally loyal to them. So if someone has a mind to do something about it, this is the time to begin forming your team and committing resources.

The wise ones will recognize this for what it is and will stand close to the work of avenging angels. But this is the wrath of God and plenty of them will have dirty hands. The difference is not properly understood by American moral sensibilities, but it requires the moral truth revealed in the Ancient Hebrew culture as to what is right and wrong. Such is the culture God designed for His revelation. This is the culture we seek to understand, dear readers.

If you are going to watch this mess unfold, then the least you can do is see it through God’s eyes.

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Glory Is Not An Outcome

Posted on April 5, 2017 by ehurst

Don’t get tangled up in outcomes.

One of the biggest, most persistent and pernicious lies in Western society is that objectives or outcomes are the whole point of our striving. God’s Word says that it matters not how things turn out on the ground, but whether you have obeyed. There is nothing important to accomplish; there is only faithfulness. There is no objective or common result that matters; each of us individually before the Lord must give an account personally. There is no uniform code that fits every human.

Yes, I am aware of the way our brains are wired to seek satisfactory endings to things we do, and that we want the confirmation from others that we did it right. That’s part of the Curse of the Fall. It’s not that results don’t matter, but that they are secondary. Never let them move to the front. Results do not speak to us about how well we did something because we cannot possibly control all the factors. This is why we have this verse: “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28 NKJV).

This is why we are warned not to make highly detailed plans with long-range goals, but to wait upon the Lord and grant to Him in your life the authority to change your plans without warning (James 4:13-16). The bicycle collision that shattered my kneecap almost a year ago did not affect the command from God to stay fit; it simply changed the particulars of how I go about the task. Outcomes do not determine our future choices. We should understand that God’s call has nothing to do with how it turns out, but we are expected to die trying to obey.

God grants us cause-and-effect reasoning only for administrative purposes. It’s that same fundamental question of why we have senses and reason in the first place. We are designed to structure and implement things we have no authority to decide about, and certainly no authority to judge the relative moral merits of big decisions. You cannot get moral discernment from the intellect; it’s not designed for that. Moral values are written by the finger of God into reality and it is necessary that we develop a moral sensitivity someplace outside the intellect.

This is part of the utter moral failure that keeps people confused about Jews and Zionism. We have a boatload of competing demands from pressure groups and all of them together are wrong. Each tries to use mere human reason (and appeals to emotion) to establish what is our proper moral duty in regards to the issue of what we should do with them.

Facts first: Let’s not ignore what can be verified according to God’s Word.

1. Israel was originally chosen by God to live out His moral character via a national covenant that applied to them alone as a nation on this earth. It was that people, that time and that place. However, the Covenant makes it clear the identity was not DNA, but clinging to the provisions of the Covenant as the means to proper feudal and personal loyalty to Jehovah. Anyone who wasn’t born into the nation could join the nation with very few exceptions. The whole point was not the privilege, but the mission to reveal the character of God through obedience to the Covenant demands and harvesting the Covenant promises.

2. Israel eventually walked away from this Covenant. In accordance with the provisions clearly stated, they moved so far away from it and the God who granted it that He was compelled to replace the whole thing. It’s not about the people, but the mission to reveal Him, and the culmination of the Covenant was in Jesus Christ. The people God chose rejected their own Messiah, so they lost everything. The veil in the Temple was torn in two by God’s own hand; the Covenant ritual system was gone. From the day of the Cross, the only acceptable sacrifice was His blood.

3. God no longer claims that nation, but Satan does. So after Christ we have a long history of Jews as a whole both giving and receiving offense. They have outraged Gentiles and the Gentiles have outraged back. Jews have treated the world with contempt and it was dumped on their heads in return. It has nothing to do with who started what; this is the part they play in God’s plans by turning them over to Satan.

4. Nothing mere men have ever proposed regarding the Jews has been morally right. Aside from the clear facts that the Holocaust is not what they claim, it was a bad experience that their persecutors cannot justify. Nor can anyone justify the perverted logic of giving parts or all of Palestine back to Jews in recompense for the Holocaust. There is no justice either way. You cannot morally defend the current situation from either side.

5. We know from Scripture that as long as Jews maintain their identity as somehow special people in one sense or another, they will always belong to Satan. The only way to break that curse is to turn back to God. While the Covenant of Moses is legally dead, it still points to the power to live by divine justice. Jews could at least find some measure of peace if they just lived up to Moses. The Talmud is a nasty perversion of Moses; they would have to live by the Law of Moses as taught by Jesus. Or, if they are genuinely Spirit-born and enter the Covenant of Christ individually, then they can escape the curse.

Review Isaiah 5:1-7 and John 15:1-17; Zechariah 4 and Romans 11:19:28 — Both the vineyard and the olive tress symbolize the revelation of God. The revelation was supposed to bring sustenance, joy and light. The identity of the vine and tree root are now in Christ; end of story. It was meant for the Jews to be God’s Firstfruit on the earth, but they rejected it as a whole. Now it’s all a matter of individual covenant, not a shared national covenant. There are Jews grafted back in already, and they are Christians with advantages — they are closer to shalom by nature. But it also means nothing to be a Christian if you aren’t rooted in that original purpose of revelation (that includes the whole business of heart-led and rejecting Western intellectual traditions).

Don’t get involved in the mess regarding Modern Israel and Zionism. That’s a big swamp of lies every way you approach it. Stay out of there; God will drain the swamp in His own time. Don’t be drawn into the debate because there is no earthly solution. You and I cannot fix the outcomes in any way.

Instead, stay faithful to the mission of making His name glorious.

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05 The Sheikdom of Heaven

Posted on April 4, 2017 by ehurst

Paul was merely following the customs of his day when he wrote his letter to the Ephesian churches. Those first verses in chapter 1 string together a huge image, and in most English translations, it’s poorly rendered. That’s because it’s written by a Hebrew mind trying to stuff mystical truth into the Greek language, and this passage is one those where English just fails completely. You have to read it over a dozen times and toss it around in your head for a little while.

It helps if you avoid any translation that uses “dispensation” in verse 10. That is an inexcusable mistranslation, exposing a serious anti-Hebrew bias. Here’s the deal: Paul chose the Greek word oikonomia to capture the image of a very large Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) feudal sheikdom. You really need to move as far away as possible from words that permit Western notions to leak back into this picture. His words draw the image of a very powerful ANE nomad potentate living in tents. Someone like that doesn’t think in terms of real estate; he has the power to protect his turf and keep out folks who aren’t welcome. But it’s not a permanent occupation; intruders can have it once he moves on.

Rather, his true wealth is his people. It’s not even the flocks and herds, because that’s the means to keep his people alive and healthy. But his people are the real treasure, because good people can always produce more material goods. Being nomads, their needs are pretty simple in the first place. His whole focus in life is their social stability and welfare. His sole claim to greatness is his success in those terms. Wherever they travel on his business, they flaunt the richness of his provision. That’s his glory.

Paul’s point here is that we need that image to understand how God does things. His primary objective in what He does in this world is just like any ANE nomad sheik. He has His one Heir who has entered His co-regency apprenticeship, having performed the heroic act of winning back the rightful inheritance consisting of many souls. So there’s this transition period where He demonstrates His rightful place on the throne by carrying on His Father’s business. At some point that apprenticeship will be complete and the Father will call in all His vassals and settle up, ensuring that the Son knows precisely the magnitude of what He inherits.

Meanwhile, this is feudalism; the Son has called into His service all kinds of folks and adopted them as kin so that they can inherit their own share of interest in this sheikdom. People with a shared investment tend to act together with an eye to increasing value. And their whole business is to carry His fame throughout the world and attract more investors, people who will in their turn become vested family members, too.

All of that is in those first few verses of Ephesians, folks. This isn’t about you finding your personal peace and keeping it inside. It’s about showing off the glorious treasure of our Divine Sheik, flaunting His rare and fascinating symbols of wealth. We are so loaded up that we can afford to leave our loose change and small bills on the counter when we leave. In other words, we see no great need to correct people’s minds on some objective truth. Rather, we display our casual attitude about concrete reality in favor of what really matters — moral discernment. They can keep all they want of this world, but that means we know they aren’t moved by the implication that they could have something far better. If they want that better stuff, they’ll have leave this world behind, same as each of us have done.

Again, we are raiders of souls. We don’t intend to colonize; we don’t want this world. Let the dead keep their dead world. We’ll sneak in and flash His glory around until someone reaches out for it. Then we’ll hook them up with our Rich Daddy Sheik and keep fishing for more. Eventually our mission will end and we’ll go back home to our own noble household within the Sheik’s domain.

And somewhere way down the road will come that Final Day when the Son is finally paraded before the world as the Heir, and He’ll take possession of everything. Those who cling to this world and their moral blindness will be forced to stand in His Holy Presence with no protection of kinship. God alone knows what that will be like, but for the rest of us, it’s a whole new dawn into some blissful eternity none of us can imagine.

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Shalom Shares

Posted on April 4, 2017 by ehurst

I can’t say “no;” Creation itself demands I do this.

Let’s not even pretend it’s some kind of altruism. I’m doing this for my own sanity and peace. I’m embracing a mission with two prongs. First is bringing the joy of heart-led living to my fellow Christians who don’t have it. Second is the prayer that this thing grow and organize itself.

Do you understand that this thing is self-organizing? Sure, people migrating to this parallel society will need some guidance to begin shaking off the chains of moral blindness. Still, once people begin to share in this society I’ve proposed, they will tend to find their own path. And we can trust that God’s divine Presence will bring a spontaneous shape and power. It’s a structure and power that doesn’t require any one of us, but will surely include us so long as we live.

I’m committed to making this happen. I didn’t choose me for this; it was in front of me waiting all my life. It knew my name and kept calling until by some miracle I was able to see what it was. Even trying to say “no” would put me back into that Valley of Spiritual Death and I can’t take another round of that. I tasted it once a few years ago and three days was enough to make me suicidal again; the experience was connected with taking a wrong turn on the path. Trust me; I’m committed to this.

I’ll do what’s required of me. I don’t much care for fancy titles, but some of you understand that my role may turn out to be apostolic in nature. That’s not my ambition by any means. It’s a burden that will surely kill me at some point. But I’m utterly certain I won’t be working alone. At least one or two of you Dear Readers will join me in this task. The rest of you need to consider other callings and commitments.

Right now I’d love more than anything to be able to travel and meet with some of you face to face. Without a well-funded sponsorship that ain’t happening. Still, I’m praying that I get to meet some of you who have engaged me. Some part of me believes that if we could do this, both our lives would change radically and this parallel society will begin taking shape.

But the part of having people join us must rest in the hands of God. As previously noted, this is not a social context where preaching in public does much good, so we can’t ape the methods of the First Century churches. However, private meetings in the form of house-churches are quite valid. I’m praying each of you who take this thing seriously will somehow find yourselves involved in that some day. Right now, I’d say, is a good time to start praying toward that. Veloyce and I have been worshiping together at home for longer than a decade, sometimes with others. Often enough we’ve been alone, just the two of us before the Lord. Home worship is a skill set we all need to work on.

That Radix Fidem pamphlet project never went anywhere because not enough of you folks were ready to help. It’s an all-or-nothing thing using other writers, so I’ll end up writing it myself in the coming days. You can already download a tri-fold single sheet summary of it in PDF format. The longer booklet will be based on the same outline.

And frankly, if none of you bothers to tell me you are involved in some way in your own part of this world, that’s on you. There’s no way a lack of participation is going to hold be back. I’m content to push ahead and die without seeing any results. I’m not going to give you any instructions. Either you will be driven on your own path or it won’t happen. I’m just trying to make it easy. You can ignore all my output and come up with your own stuff.

Since I’m not giving any marching orders, the one thing I will not do is wait for you all to execute any part of this. It’s going to happen with or without you, so you can decide how to claim your share of shalom or lose out. Be sure of one thing: You can’t harvest your full share just trying to keep it to yourself. There’s no doubt going to be some lag time between stepping up with the resolve to go with it and the time we begin seeing fruit. It’s going to feel lonely and some of you will wonder if you will ever find fellowship in meat space.

This where I remind you that God does not fail in His promises. If we obey, the results are in His hands. If He provokes us to get to work on this, it can only be that He has planned to reach some folks through us. He’s not playing head-games.

How much shalom can you handle?

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04 The Lost Heritage

Posted on April 3, 2017 by ehurst

After completing the full loop around Draper Lake today, I stopped off at Daniel’s Hill. Removing my helmet and facing into the wind, I prayed aloud.

“Lord, I’m grateful for the way You have carried me through all the long journey to discover the vast riches of Your shalom. But it shouldn’t have to be that hard. How did we get like this? How was it that the churches surrendered so quickly and easily after the First Century? Is there some way we can make this thing more painfully obvious and provide a better hedge? And Lord, can we please include more people in this rich heritage of Your blessings in this life?”

Two things stick out in my mind: The Laws of Noah and heart-led living. I was teaching Noah years ago, and before that I was teaching how convictions in your heart are written by God and should reign over your reason. Convictions look just like the Law Covenants (Deuteronomy 30:11-14).

There is nothing legalistic in the Law Covenants. Legalism is something you have to bring to the Law, usually because of the influence of Hellenism. Both Moses and Noah are inherently mystical in tone. Anyone living at the time they were published would have presumed them a parabolic image of something far deeper. Both of them presume you are living from your heart. So if you walk in Christ, it’s going to look like Noah. And Moses is a particular instance of Noah, so the promised blessings are the same for both.

Thus, if you are living in communion with Creation through God’s Spirit, nobody really has to explain why you might, for example refuse to eat meat that hasn’t been properly drained of its blood. It’s a matter of reverence for the life in Creation. Draining the blood before eating meat is a symbol of that communion we all have with Creation. Blood is life and we offer it back to God who gave it as covering for our fallen nature. People in tune with Creation and Christ don’t consume blood as food, not intentionally.

But it’s not a nit-picky rule or law; it’s a symbol, a parable of truth.

If we are to build a genuine parallel society, we have to manifest a common departure from Western moral mythology. For at least the past two years I’ve been steadily trying to contrast Noah from Western assumptions. That most of Western Christianity adheres to the false, heathen moral assumptions of the West only complicates our message. So we have to distinguish ourselves from mainstream Christians, too.

Hellenism is the root of Western intellectual traditions. Aristotle was a key element in Hellenism, and he assumed that humanity has always been like this. Indeed, he figured that gods would be just as morally weak as humans. There is no room in Hellenism for the notion of the Fall, because Scripture posits a world aside from this world. The Bible teaches that it wasn’t like this in Eden, that we weren’t made for this. Jehovah, unlike the pagan deities of Greece and others, is morally perfect, the definition of moral truth. We know that we shall never experience that moral purity directly in this life, but we will become aware of it in rich living detail through our hearts.

But Aristotle’s assumption about human nature rears its head in some smaller Christian denominations (Jehovah’s Witnesses deny the Fall, for example). Most Westerners are convinced the only hope is asserting the power of reason over our whole being. Thus, regardless of what they may say, they all act as if the human reason isn’t fallen. Therefore, becoming less worldly to them means becoming merely more cerebral. All you need is a better content in your head and your own power to live by your reason. So legalism is entirely natural for them, because it constitutes a call to better knowledge and better performance. It doesn’t work too well.

Western Christians don’t have a lot of genuine shalom. We need to show them what it is and where it comes from. I’m hoping that we can present a fairly consistent witness that restores the heritage of faith to those Christ calls to spiritual life. We should naturally join with nature in crying out for someone to please ditch the false assumptions about faith and reality and join us in this eternal celebration of God’s glory.

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Just So You’ll Know When It Happens

Posted on April 3, 2017 by ehurst

Another change is coming.

As I glance back over the past year, I realize just how significant a change it was when reality shifted. That is, when God changed how He was going to execute His wrath on the US. Somewhere back there was a sharp turn away from Apocalypse and that’s no longer in the cards. But it’s still some pretty harsh wrath coming on certain parties.

It meant big changes for me, of course. If you look at it from a materialistic point of view, a lot of money I invested in certain kinds of tools, equipment and supplies went to waste. A lot of that stuff suddenly meant nothing to me, never mind what it might mean to someone with a different viewpoint. Burn the bridges because I’m not looking back. I’m not waiting to turn into a pillar of salt.

God has been most generous, providing what I need and a lot of stuff I simply wanted. There is no shame in asking Daddy for toys, so long as they don’t hinder our growth in the mission preparation. Austerity is not a virtue in the Kingdom of Heaven. We are ready for it should He choose it for us, but we should also learn how to do extravagance for His glory. At the same time, watch that your flesh doesn’t get in the way and start making silly demands for things that will hurt you.

For the past two decades I’ve been sticking my head deeper and deeper into the virtual realm. That was my calling during those years, the place where I could grow and learn and share. It’s not a question of the Net being good or bad; it’s just the place I was supposed to be. It will remain an important tool into the foreseeable future. However, I will have less time for it soon. I’ll keep writing blog posts and I will definitely answer email. I believe I have one more book to publish online (the study in Psalms), and perhaps one more exploration of my religion. My fiction is wholly unpredictable because I can only write it when it comes to me. And as the Networked Civilization arises to displace the West, it will become less useful to me.

If staying in contact with me is important in your own calling, then this is your chance to stake out some turf. (Email: ehurst@radixfidem.blog; you can request my phone number that way.) Whatever it is I’m doing on the Net will have to bring a higher yield in fruit. All of my resources will go to spiritual harvest, either in meat space or online. I’m not playing favorites, but the time has come for me to get to work in a different way. After this next surge of writing to establish something that I hope yields a stronger interest in making this something more than mere entertainment, I’ll be slacking off.

There won’t be any particular reason to feel obliged to write and post something every day. Instead, there will be a bigger focus on sharing what happens in meat space. The writing will tend to reflect attempts to organize my thoughts on what I’m doing. You can still ask questions, but that hasn’t happened much lately, so I don’t expect much in the future.

It also means I’ll have to cut back on some of my reading and research. It’s not just the time investment; I’ve already indicated that this propaganda war is getting messier so that it’s harder to filter out the distractions. I’ve also warned that the political shift to fascism — merging government and Big Technology — means less room for independent expression on the open Internet. Censorship is rising, and where that doesn’t work, smothering will. This is not going to be some golden age for the Net. Instead, it will require learning how to use the virtual catacombs to share without attracting too much notice from The Powers That Be. That means I expect blogging will change dramatically in the next few years, if not sooner.

So our little play yard here will close sooner than any of us likes, even if it takes a few years. We are creatures of habit. I’m going to be proactive and meet the future I see coming before it arrives. I know that God intends to use me in meat space and I wanted to make sure you understood the implications. If you need me, you’ll have to engage me more directly. Otherwise, I’ve really enjoyed having all 800+ subscribers, the dozen or so who have commented, and all the casual readers who have stopped by over the past eight plus years.

Don’t be surprised if it seems my blog gets quieter in the near future.

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Can You See the Vision?

Posted on April 2, 2017 by ehurst

It’s a parallel society.

Keep in mind that in most biblical usage, “the world” is the fallen human society without redemption. It’s the same Creation, but with a blinding veil of concrete reality, eating from the Forbidden Fruit of Knowledge and not from the Tree of Life. It is nature held captive by the Curse of the Fall; it’s the natural world dominated by moral blindness. It’s a world in which nature is largely inert and unstructured, and requires conquest and taming by human effort. It’s a false construct of human dominion with no useful moral discernment.

Those who follow Christ were supposed to infiltrate the world, not colonize it. We don’t want to take over because it’s not worth having and it cannot be fixed. Our only use for the world is a place to manifest His glory. We strive to live by that higher awareness, which on this blog is referred to as heart-led living. We are in communion with nature and see it as self-aware, active and alive with the character of our Creator. At the same time, we view all things in light of His moral character. To us, He is a real Person we get to know, not some abstraction that has to be taught.

Thus, we are in the world, but not of it. Our hope is to manifest divine glory well enough that God uses it to awaken other souls to a higher awareness.

It’s quite possible you’ll encounter folks who engage the heart-mind but don’t have Christ. They aren’t Spirit-born, but manifest that radically different sense of awareness about reality. Unless you hang out with some genuine pagan believers, you probably won’t see too many of these folks. Of course, they also exist in a few small pockets where it’s the traditional background in some parts of the world. But they do exist and are out there in the world.

Here in America, it’s more likely you’ll run into a lot of Spirit-born folks who aren’t heart-led. It’s a mess. They range all over the place in terms of moral discernment because virtually none of them have a conscious notion that there is such as a thing as heart-led. Further, their training and education tends to make them hostile to the idea. They still believe it’s good and necessary to defend faith rationally, instead of letting faith defend itself.

I’m not telling you there will never be a time to remain aloof and relatively withdrawn from the world. However, it requires a very well tuned moral discernment to realize when conditions make that necessary. I’m certain living in the US these days is not one of those times. Instead, we should take seriously the notion of creating an alternative, parallel society with distinguishing features. We should not withdraw into our own little world, an artificial construct that allows us to pretend the world doesn’t exist under the Curse of the Fall. We aren’t organizing to take over.

Yet, there’s a certain amount of this that is private, just as you would expect a family to keep some stuff behind closed doors. It’s not a secret, but without privacy, we are not human. There are parts of what we can and should do in believer’s communion that should be private, just as there are things between God and each individual member that cannot be shared amongst each other.

But Western Christianity has shoved far too much under that cover of privacy and created a very dysfunctional mini-society that is hardly less corrupt than what’s outside the walls. In many ways, churches are just mirrors of the rest of the world with restrictions, a supposedly better version. Given that you and I are members of a virtual parish, where we scarcely have any two of us meeting in the flesh, we cannot afford much privacy at all. Sure, write those emails, text messages or make those phone calls. But our Creator has programmed us to need a measure of physical contact to get the most out of shared faith. So with us all being so widely scattered over the face of this planet, we hardly know where to start. What we do know is that we cannot do what’s already been done.

If you understand heart-led communion, then you can probably see how this can at least begin. We can share things the world will never understand. It won’t matter how clinical I make my descriptions of things, without actually experiencing it yourself, you’ll never get it. But if you do get it, there is a strength of bond that we cannot share with anyone outside of the heart-led life. This places on each of us the burden of finding our way along this task of glorious living until God sees fit to add to our numbers in meat space.

You don’t have to join this little club, but what I want to do as elder is create a space under divine covering, a moral space without physical restrictions, that becomes our shared identity. I want folks who might have encountered any of us just once to recognize others with the same heart-led life that they might encounter elsewhere. More, I want each of us to be able to recognize each other should we ever stumble across ourselves out there in the world.

Rather than making wild promises, I’m simply going to state that I believe this is how we are wired to operate. Don’t just stand under the shadow of my covering as elder, but extend it so that it’s no longer just mine. Don’t mimic me in word of deed, but see the unifying power we all share. I want to be as inclusive as possible without losing the meaning of covering. By all means, let me recognize or ordain some of you as fellow-elders. If you can get enough heart-led folks in one physical space, we can start ordaining pastors, too. And you don’t need me there to do it; this thing works by itself, if what I believe has any validity. So I’m asking readers to give this some prayer and contemplation.

How about it? Can we create a distinctive parallel society — by whatever nickname folks decide to use — and become recognizable in the world as being consistent in offering a witness of God’s power? Look, this is no franchise; you need not share anything material with me at all. Nor am I looking for fame, so you need not mention my name ever. And if you cannot see how it’s not some power trip, I can’t help you at all. But I’d love to hear back from you. The one thing I admit I need is a little fellowship, a sense that there are some folks out there who see value in this witness and want it for themselves.

And this isn’t a call to fill up the comment section for the sake numbers. If all you have is “me too” that’s okay, but what I’m hoping is that some of you who haven’t commented much in the past could respond with just a few words indicating that we are prayer partners in this thing. Ask questions, too. More than anything, I’d love to visit your blogs or other social media accounts and find your witness shining that same glory, so post a link. But the one thing that we really need is for those who are in on this to know they are not alone. It’s not just me; this is to make yourself known to everyone else who hangs around this parish. I believe it’s time that some of us start finding other members who might be within driving distance.

Here and on Kiln blog (edit: now closed) I’ll be making some effort to provoke your hearts and minds to consider what I mean by building a parallel society in the world.

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03 Come and See

Posted on April 2, 2017 by ehurst

Your true will longs for something better than what society offers. The effect of moving your conscious awareness into the Spirit Realm means pulling your head along behind into a different space of moral discernment. You realize that the moral implications are the only thing that matters.

You realize that changing the facts of your situation is not a matter of human capabilities, but weaving yourself into the moral fabric within Creation. Change yourself and Creation plays along. There is a whole different universe waiting to be born into your life. Your flesh won’t appreciate the time lag, but your heart will know that time is measured in terms of ripeness, not scheduling. All good things from God come in His time, and our patience is strengthened. Your heart retrains your mind to believe in things your senses cannot perceive. You have to sense from your heart and train your brain to process it as truth.

God is not reticent with us. He has poured out revelation that could overwhelm the ability of all the world to receive. One of our regulars here has said that most people are caught off guard and don’t recognize a vision from God when it comes. It’s an image of a different reality that creeps into your awareness, confirmed by your convictions as the truth of God. It’s not a question of showing you something others may or may not see; it shows you things God wants you to see. But it still requires the brain getting the right message from it in order to act on it, and your mind will make some mistakes for awhile. However, when that vision gets stored as a persistent representation of what your heart knows is true, you gain the confirmation that you are on the right track.

We live in a world that is far, far away from giving credence to such things. This is why it is so very hard for many of you to make it work. For example, the term in Scripture translated as “a vision” need not register as visual, but can be any number of different impressions that mimic the five senses — any or all. It can be strong enough to seem utterly real in all respects, but it varies from person to person, and context to context. It’s intent is always to strengthen your moral resolve to obey the Spirit of God.

The obedience aims to manifest His glory in your conduct before a watching world. It’s not just that you do the right things, but that the sum total of your choices also brings a selection of blessings. Part of it is learning what is and isn’t a blessing. These things are poorly assessed by the flesh, but you have to see the interplay between what your heart knows and what human minds can pick out. They may not see a blessing for what it is, but looks for “good” that isn’t actually a blessing. Meanwhile, it takes a long time to get your own fleshly mind used to this way of doing things. So your failures are part of the bigger picture of His glory.

The one thing that no one can dismiss or dispute is your compassion and joy. Indeed, they cannot take that away from you unless you surrender it willingly. Not even Satan has that power.

This is why I make so much of turning on your sensory heart to nature. If you can just make that connection, then on a regular basis you can go into a quiet moment away from this world and hear that glorious celebration that is constantly roaring in nature. Catching a dose of that tends to put things back into their proper perspective and makes suffering seem light. God always makes a way for us to come out of the cacophony of fallen human distractions so that we can experience just a fragment of nature, and move outside of our fallen self for just a little while.

I know that for me, it’s more than reason enough for my persistent efforts at fitness. If my workouts serve no other purpose, that’s more than enough reason for the struggle. Getting out away from human noise, including my own inner noise, and tasting the ever fresh newness of praise in Creation is a joy unspeakable.

We live in a universe that this world cannot perceive.

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Psalm 125

Posted on April 1, 2017 by ehurst

A song of security, scholars suggest this was not originally meant as a pilgrimage psalm. However, it fits the theme well enough referring to the geography around the City of Jerusalem. One can hardly approach the city without climbing over at least a few mountains along the way because it sits in the midst of them.

Despite a few earthquakes now and then, the shape of Zion had never changed in the human memory. Those who trust in God are just as stable and solid. Like the mountains ringing the city, you have to get past God who watches of it.

For this reason, the psalmist is confident that no foreign invaders could permanently conquer the land. If something like that happened, there was no hope for keeping the people righteous. It would have to mean Jehovah had abandoned them.

So the psalmist prays the God would continue to protect and prosper the righteous. And if anyone in the land forsook the Covenant, let them be led away as prisoners to some other land. Thus, would the nation remain in God’s shalom.

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