Above the Conflict in the Thick of Battle

Posted on February 18, 2017 by ehurst

(This continues the background narrative to explain something that God has commanded of me.)

We are staring in the face the end of Western Civilization. Instead of one big, all-encompassing cataclysm, this will be the death of a thousand cuts. That is, Western countries will all be radically changed in all kinds of ways, and none of them will be Western any more. Keep in mind that the transition won’t be patently obvious; there will be no clear line of demarcation. Rather, it will be the bleeding away of those traits that combine to distinguish Western Civilization from previous and future civilizations.

Don’t pick out a few details and imagine that you understand the West. This requires a much bigger picture. For now, just keep in mind that it’s not enough to hold the remnants of Greco-Roman Civilization, but Western identity also requires the peculiar outlook and morals of the Germanic Tribes. For the most part, it is the end of the Germanic culture that matters most here. In other words, it is the end of Euro-Caucasian and Anglo-American culture (the two are siblings).

Here in the US, it is the peculiar tensions inherent in Anglo-Saxon mythology that will explain the final destruction of our nation’s American identity. The dreary world of Beowulf will become a historical curiosity and some of us will not miss it when it dies. In previous posts I wrote about the latter day cults based on the conceptual conflict in Anglo-Saxon mythology between male and female. The point here is how that conflict will be the means of destruction.

Keep in mind that it’s not a question of counting noses but of noticing the trends of demonic influence and how that works. The demons serve as the whip-hand of God; their activity is His wrath. Their power arises from humans leaving their lives open to them; they fail to secure their lives from demonic influences. Demons are at home in their lives and assert Satan’s authority because nothing keeps them out. We know that what disarms demons is our heart-led obedience to God’s Law. Their influence is highly restricted by holiness.

Further, we should realize that such demonic influence works through people, so that, while our war is against demonic forces (Ephesians 6:10-20), we end up having to face human interference and resistance to a holy life. That bogus male-female conflict is inherently contrary to the Law of God. His Law resolves all the conflicts and puts things in their proper place. While the actual concrete results will vary, those of us who walk in His Law will escape that wrath, though we shall surely be splattered by the resulting mess around us. The world is going to Hell, as it were.

A prominent manifestation of that Hell rising into our human space is the fundamental cultural conflict between the idolatry to false deities that characterize the conflict between male and female in Anglo-Saxon mythology. Some commentators (1)have noticed (2)this conflict. Fred Reed is 1, and Scott Adams is 2; Reed talks about the concrete danger, while Adams tries to keep it cerebral.

I prefer to characterize these two sides for now as focused on process versus outcomes. Please keep in mind that generalizations are useful, but never totally accurate. They help us see the bigger picture, but don’t take offense or pat yourself on the back either way.

Focusing on the process places the ultimate moral value on playing by the rules. This is an attempt to objectify reality, so it encourages folks to accept uneven results because that’s the way things are. It’s rather grouchy and heartless. This makes a god of “the rule of law.” Keep in mind that the devotees of this cult draw the images of law and objective reality from a mixture of Germanic mythology and some pretense to pure reason and logic. We call this the “right.”

Focusing on the outcomes places the ultimate moral value on keeping everyone at peace. However, it tends to make mountains out of molehills, focusing on relatively minor differences the way children do. It’s a peace that is harshly enforced in the external details. It’s a highly materialistic approach that seldom fully grasps the actual causes of problems and attempts to enforce desired outcomes at all costs. This is where we get the pushy demands for bizarre accommodations of various disadvantages, both real and imagined. It approaches “the ends justify the means” as the deity they serve. This is labeled the “left.”

There is no reconciling these two as long as they remain on the human level. Both are highly materialistic in approach, so that it’s all about mechanisms instead of wisdom and foresight. One side cannot admit the logic of the other as each arises from a different god at war with the other. There can be no discussion of fundamental values as variables; they are sacred and immutable. As we can see looking back upon the nature of the political conflicts, these two sides are diverging further yet, and the tactics against each other escalate. There has already been bloodshed and it will get worse.

Yet again, this does not characterize the actual elite rulers. Rather, the elite portray the world this way for their constituents. It has worked rather well to keep the little people busy while the elite engage in rape, pillage and plunder behind the scenes. The problem is that this ruse has run its course, as the tension has reach the breaking point.

Unfortunately for the left, it is the right that has gained dominance at the critical moment. It’s easy for us to sit back and point out how these two sides violate the Law of God, but we had better understand how they operate and why they do what they do. That way we aren’t caught off guard by how this battle goes. We can remain aloof from the basic conflict even as we infiltrate the system and prepare to exploit things for God’s glory. We must show ourselves untouched by either side’s insane idolatries and demonstrate a preference that undercuts both.

Nothing prevents us employing divine wisdom in asserting God’s Law while serving folks devoted to either side. Nothing prevents us serving the elite, either. As noted in Ephesians, people are not our enemies; demons are the enemy. We are truly neutral and it really doesn’t matter where we serve; the most important thing is the exposure of our moral truth. We simply must engage the world one way or another, and at the risk of appearing at times to be taking sides, we don’t shrink from appearing to some that we lack any principle, because we know that they labor under a false dichotomy. This offers us a chance to say so and make our bold and outlandish claims to a higher realm of existence.

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The Norm of Miracles

Posted on February 18, 2017 by ehurst

Before anyone starts to ask the questions, the answer is mysticism.

We can wrap our answers in reason, but the fundamental issue remains, “Thus saith the Lord” who made all things and determines how reality works. Further, He has not been silent; there is a massive record of His dealings with humanity. But that record is opaque to the human intellect. It makes sense only when you read it with your heart. Without that heart-mind awareness, reality isn’t supposed to make sense.

Thus, we start with revelation and build out an understanding. Yet we also assert that no two of us will build the same understanding. We deny that there is an objective reality. The expectation that we could produce a consistent answer that fits all of us is just another deception of the fallen human reason. We answer that it’s utterly impossible to agree on everything and therefore a sign of healthy fellowship when there are at least some minor differences. We don’t school each other on the particulars, but encourage each other in the commitment to our convictions and our faith to trust in God.

It’s not that we use no reason at all, but that we use our reason as the means to dragging all the noise around us back to our faith. We submit everything to that mystical union with God Almighty and with the whole of His Creation. Because of that divine clarity of the heart-mind, our reasoning capacity is actually far better, at least potentially, than the sharpest minds of those who rely on reason alone. That doesn’t mean we can break through their moral blindness, but that we need not fear the power of their ideas. Our spiritual truth is greater than their best and brightest logic.

Again: The demands of faith are imminently unreasonable. We make no bones about it. At the same time, we have the all justification in the world we need to take this path because our God reigns and pours out His blessings so abundantly we have to leave stuff lying on the ground. He’s not wasteful, just generous.

It also means that in order to catch as much as we can, we discard a lot of things that He says aren’t necessary. The discernment is not a matter of reason and human need, but His glory. His glory is our ultimate good. There is nothing that can compete with that.

How many miracles does the Bible tell about? How often has God shown that He offers exceptions because there really aren’t any hard-n-fast rules? We know that, under most contexts, you don’t grab a poisonous snake with your bare hands. We also know Jesus promised that, when it serves the Father’s glory, we can do that anyway (Mark 16:18; Acts 28:1-6). It’s not that we would fling a challenge in God’s face and dare Him to let us die in the middle of our calling and mission, but that we simply allow Him to decide such things. We take our own demise in stride.

But when the time comes, we cast out demons, heal broken bodies, call fire down from heaven, walk on water, instantly move great distances without traveling, turn the clock backward in time, fill thousands of bellies from a handful of food, and all kinds of things we can’t even imagine. But we don’t do it casually as if we are somehow so very special and virtuous. It’s not frivolous and we don’t test it out just to prove a point. We receive these things when His glory shines, and we also don’t receive them for His glory at other times.

Learn the Law of God; learn how Creation works. Make Creation your best friend. No two of us will ever know exactly the same things about Creation, but we can all testify that God is not constrained by our human grasp on what’s “normal.”

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Glory on the Far Horizon

Posted on February 17, 2017 by ehurst

In our study in Psalm 119, we’ve seen the psalmist use several terms to indicate the revelation of God. One of those words translates as “testimony” — a record of something that actually happened as reported by eye witnesses. If you seek with your heart to see the consistency in the Bible, you’ll find it. Your heart will affirm it for your brain; the brain’s job is working out how to live according to that conviction. A critical element in understanding the Scriptures is precedent: You need to see what God says about various events, to discern His judgment of things. What does this narrative indicate about how God works?

There’s Job. His time was well before Israel, and probably before Abraham. His testimony indicates something about how we know God regardless of the trappings of the Covenant of Moses. Before his calling, Abraham knew of Our Lord by a different name, and was called to leave behind the other deities he knew. That was a tall order, given that Abraham seems to have been a member of the priestly noble class of pagan scholars in the Mesopotamian Valley. It was a scholarship that is buried in myth and legend for us, but it’s clear that Jehovah by another name was never completely forgotten once we were expelled from Eden.

To support that theme is Balaam, the scholar hired from Babylon by Balak to curse Israel during her time passing through on the way to Canaan Land. Balaam knew how to address Jehovah and got very explicit answers of what God intended to do. He also knew enough to teach Balak how to get Israel in trouble with her God. So when Balaam couldn’t curse Israel directly, it was simple matter of incurring God’s wrath on Israel by way of suborning to sin. It worked quite well, we are told. It had to do with an ancient heathen rite that involved an annual offering, wherein the women all offered their bodies for ritual sex. And you thought modern politics was dirty.

Israel was led by Moses on that Exodus and we know that his father-in-law was a high priest who served the same God. Jethro served to restore to Moses a sense of awareness of the Semitic lore of faith and religion, something that seems to have grown dim in the minds of Israel after several generations in Egypt. They got into Egypt because God sent Joseph there to become a prominent figure in Pharaoh’s court. We know that required Joseph to engage in pagan rituals, and that Moses as an adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter was schooled in the same Egyptian background. So Jethro helped to restore Moses to his nomadic Semite heritage, including that peculiar way of knowing God.

Far down the road, we see Daniel thrust into a much later Babylonian imperial court with an obligation to learn another big wad of pagan stuff, including much of what Abraham had known, and a lot more. Babylon was famous for preserving all the ancient literature it could find, and most of that was a matter of copying sacred texts from every temple library they encountered during their imperial expansion. Daniel remained in contact with the Hebrew leadership as they were sometimes under his authority as he served in the imperial bureaucracy. Among all the other stuff he revealed, his chief contribution to the Hebrew heritage was a prophecy of how God intended to do things on a broad scale, and what place Israel served in all of that. He also introduced a very firm concept of the Messiah.

Let’s not forget that God used Paul, steeped as that man was in the Hellenized perversions of Hebrew religion. If there was anyone prepared to help the churches discern the fatal flaw in Judaism, it was the man who had once stood in line to become a senior figure in the Sanhedrin. It was Paul who knew precisely how the Judaizers would work to subvert the churches, though he had plenty of help from the writer of Hebrews. While Paul insisted that Jews had a great advantage in their ancient Hebrew heritage, he also bluntly pointed out their national covenant was dead, thanks to their choice to jettison the core of that ancient heritage. The Jews no longer knew God; they rejected His Son. In effect, Judaism has become a pagan religion, and Paul was an expert on that.

I don’t amount to a callus on the foot of any of those men. The only way I can see anything at all is by standing on their shoulders. There is ample precedent from their lives to show that some of the things I write about do matter, despite the appearance of a secular interest. Take a moment consider: Is not our postmodern secular world just another brand of paganism? I’ve spent my adult life soaked in studying that secularism from different angles. By no means a real expert, I believe I know enough about it to be useful to God. In the midst of this, I have this burning desire to warn you of some dangers that apparently aren’t too obvious.

I don’t see too many other folks warning about the particular dangers I see. And maybe what I see doesn’t apply to you, but it certainly applies to me. It’s not possible to be silent (Ezekiel 33). Jesus in Matthew 24-25 warned His disciples to be aware of cues in the world around them so they’d know when it was God’s timing for them to scatter away from the incubator of faith in Jerusalem and take their message to a wider world. Paul was hardly the only missionary; there were churches planted all the way to modern India, places in Africa, across Central Asia, and into Europe. We really don’t even know all the places they went, but we do know that these former Jews-now-Christians went even farther with the faith itself, never mind starting actual churches.

It’s not for me to decide how this imagery applies to you, dear readers, but it should indicate something. At least for those of you living with me in the US, there’s a lot to watch for as God pulls this world into a new reality. This isn’t about fear any more than was Jesus trying to scare His disciples. It was all about having confidence in how God the Father does things in a world that chooses not to know Him. And just a little bit like Daniel, I have been granted some limited vision of God’s plans regarding that herding of cattle. It means passing through some troubling times, but His glory shines bright on the horizon.

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Biking in Glory

Posted on February 17, 2017 by ehurst

cityviewI’ve been riding this week. The rides weren’t remarkable. Indeed, I went out mostly for the exercise, having no particular complex questions in my mind. I took only a few pictures; these were rides I’ve taken before dozens of times on familiar routes. No remarkable stories to tell, they were just a case of me doing my thing.

It’s all about God’s glory. He has revealed His glory; that revelation indicates how we can participate in His glory. It begins by trusting Him and His revelation. It’s far more than belief; more than merely giving mental credit to His claims. It’s a life devoted to walking by conviction, developing a habit of awareness that we call “heart-led.” It means taking action based on that awareness and in defiance of the world in which we live. We call it “faith” in the sense that it’s a full commitment of our being.

We claim to see things invisible to the intellect, sensible only to the heart-mind. We claim that our faith demands things impossible to reconcile with sensory data and reason alone. Faith makes demands that are imminently unreasonable, and we revel in that. We find that the voice of Creator and Creation is unified in hiding from human perception alone, but within easy reach of faith. We claim to speak with God as a Person, and we find that Creation is both one voice with His, and at the same time a million voices of unique individuality and personhood, sentient and willful each in their own right.

cormorantsAnd in this way of addressing ourselves to the life we live here and now, we taste far greater things that simply cannot be told. We gain an acquaintance with that realm in which the Creator lives, a place prepared for us and just discernible through the veils and shadows of this life. We aren’t fleeing reality; we are seeing reality through a world of deception. What most of the world calls “reality” is false, and we know it with a sense of assurance that exceeds all the rest of what this world imagines it knows. It brings us a knowledge that is inexplicable and more demanding on us than all else. We live by such conviction, and we call it “faith.”

stockpenThe center of that other, higher reality is our Lord and Savior, a Jesus the rest of the world does not know. We see His glory that way. We make this claim in the face of two thousand years of history and heritage that leads to all kinds of other answers, answers we can’t accept. Let them have what they calls to them; we have to answer to our own convictions.

This is the context for what I write. I make no special claims to superiority of faith; some of you surely outclass me in this. I’m not claiming to lead you; I claim to know where I’m going and some of you observe my pursuit of this vision. I “lead” in the sense of being blessed with the ability to tell you something about the experience. It’s the essence of shepherding: I call out with my voice and some of you come along to share the green pastures and still waters.

riverviewIt’s a blessing to write these things, and some of you tell me it’s a blessing to read them. Not everything I write is going to be useful to all of you; that’s a given. Our Creator doesn’t use a cookie cutter on us. There is no one right path for all of us. I’m just a participant in the divine glory that shines in all directions, visible to anyone who turns to face it. I’m just a one reflector. I want you to shine, too.

So I’ll tell you the stories of how I seek His glory, and I know that He speaks through those stories. That’s how He’s done things from the beginning. When we claim the promises of His faith, it serves to reveal to others that those promises are real, and that His revelation is worthy of trust. Let your heart discern for you the message for your faith.

One of the things I do in that pursuit of faith is go out on long bike rides. Even the choice of where to ride is heart-led. God has a habit of touching me in special ways, revealing His glory out there on the roads and trails. There are chapels of habit and chapels like the Burning Bush — just somewhere out there in some random spot that is holy for as long as I am there meeting with God. Sometimes I can tell you about it; often there are no words for it. And while I know that He can speak through some of the pictures I take, it’s really between you and God whether this or that image means anything to your faith.

danielsstandI’m going to ask that you click on this image to the right and open your heart-mind to the larger display. This was taken Tuesday and something huge happened to me. It took a couple of days’ worth of contemplation to make sense of it. It will take some time, more than one post, to share that with you. Be patient with me, because this is not easy.

Let’s start by saying it made me feel just a little like Daniel. Not the painful and perplexing vision that took three weeks for an angel to come and explain, but in the mission of Daniel, called to serve in a context few of his fellow Israelites could understand. He was soaked in pagan religious knowledge older than anything we know today, absorbing enough to qualify for a PhD. He stood in the presence of two pagan emperors and found favor with them in that place, yet never lost the favor of his God. I’m hardly worthy to wash that prophet’s feet, but I sense that my future mission will in some ways shadow his service. That was the vision that struck me while I stood in that otherwise mundane place that hundreds of other bicyclists pass by every day.

More to come.

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The Humble Shepherd King

Posted on February 16, 2017 by ehurst

It was a high and festive day when King David brought up the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. He set up a proper Tent of Meeting in the courtyard. Keep in mind that the city was still rather primitive at that time. The “palace” was still part fortress and not all that large. David had built it up somewhat from the old Jebusite fortress he had captured early in his reign, but it was still rather small. It was a walled enclosure standing on the lower extension of a much larger ridge, but this lower extension had the advantage of steeper sides and was relatively narrow, very easily defended. Even better was the presence of a fresh water spring just below the the crown of this ridge.

Still, his small fortified palace was sumptuous by the standards of his day. And here was the Ark of God’s Presence out in a tent in his courtyard. Surely he could honor his God with better accommodations? God sent a prophet to inform David that this was not the time for such things. At this point a significant portion of David’s kingdom still lived tents. Indeed, his little capital was growing fast, with tents clustered all around, the housing of choice until more permanent structures could be built. This was a nation born of nomads serving a God who owned all Creation. For now, the symbolism of God’s “house” as a tent was appropriate.

David was chosen to establish something more important than mere walls; it was his job to assert the authority and power of God on behalf of Israel. When every nation around them had been subdued and/or turned into supporting allies, it wouldn’t matter what your house was made of. God promised to deliver all of this into David’s hands, but it still required him going to war. That was his job. This divine presence in the form of shalom in its fullest meaning as the one place on earth where mankind could see and know God was far more important than what any mere man could build. There was time enough for the symbolism of a fancy city with a fancy temple later for David’s heir.

It was not lost on David that this meant God intended to establish a dynasty after his name and to favor the whole nation through this arrangement.

Then King David went in and sat before the Lord; and he said: “Who am I, O Lord God? And what is my house, that You have brought me this far? And yet this was a small thing in Your sight, O Lord God; and You have also spoken of Your servant’s house for a great while to come. Is this the manner of man, O Lord God? Now what more can David say to You? For You, Lord God, know Your servant. For Your word’s sake, and according to Your own heart, You have done all these great things, to make Your servant know them. Therefore You are great, O Lord God. For there is none like You, nor is there any God besides You, according to all that we have heard with our ears. And who is like Your people, like Israel, the one nation on the earth whom God went to redeem for Himself as a people, to make for Himself a name — and to do for Yourself great and awesome deeds for Your land — before Your people whom You redeemed for Yourself from Egypt, the nations, and their gods? For You have made Your people Israel Your very own people forever; and You, Lord, have become their God.

“Now, O Lord God, the word which You have spoken concerning Your servant and concerning his house, establish it forever and do as You have said. So let Your name be magnified forever, saying, ‘The Lord of hosts is the God over Israel.’ And let the house of Your servant David be established before You. For You, O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, have revealed this to Your servant, saying, ‘I will build you a house.’ Therefore Your servant has found it in his heart to pray this prayer to You.

“And now, O Lord God, You are God, and Your words are true, and You have promised this goodness to Your servant. Now therefore, let it please You to bless the house of Your servant, that it may continue before You forever; for You, O Lord God, have spoken it, and with Your blessing let the house of Your servant be blessed forever.” (2 Samuel 7:18-29)

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Announcing New Elder

Posted on February 16, 2017 by ehurst

Welcome our new parish elder: Jay DiNitto. You can get to know more about him by hanging out on his blog. It was an easy choice for me to invite him onboard and you’ll discern why quickly enough. He’s different enough to add some variety to our expression of faith here at Kiln of the Soul online parish and some of you will find yourselves closer to his unique character than you might be to mine.

Welcome aboard, Jay!

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What’s Going On 06

Posted on February 15, 2017 by ehurst

Just a little administrivia:

I’ve finally finished the review of my notes on Matthew’s Gospel. I’ve posted it here. I have a copy archived. You can save that single webpage as a file and all the formatting is included.

I’ve also added a new permanent page here on the blog. It’s the “Linux” tab above and consists of a rather simple advertisement for services to help folks migrate to Linux.

Tomorrow will be a coordinated announcement of the new elder coming on board here. It’s an odd thing about the nature of virtual ministry like this, where elders are more critical to operations than someone fulfilling the priestly role. There’s almost no way to engage worship ritual in this format, but I’d welcome anyone who felt called to try. In that sense, I still hold out hope that our virtual parish can find a real pastor, since I regard my calling as elder. Granted, there’s a certain amount of missionary presence that combines the roles of priest and elder. I’m trained as a ritual worship leadership, but I’m at the point where I feel called to train others for that work, so consider it a prayer request that God raise up someone to take on the official role as pastor here.

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They Will Say They Had No Choice

Posted on February 14, 2017 by ehurst

Civil war, a revolution, is unavoidable.

The biggest problem to understanding this is the false image of a two-party system. The elites have managed to keep the population distracted by a false dichotomy between left and right. While that may reflect the actual cultural divide at the street level, it has had little to do with how this country was ruled. In broad general terms, the cultures of the left and right have been fighting each other for a long time. The US has been polarized between two implacable ways of life, two irreconcilable cultures seeking to destroy each other. We were never united in any sense of the word, except by a false appearance of holding to a system of government. Meanwhile, the government has never been either left or right, but has been two groups using folks who thought of themselves as left or right.

I stand by my previous analysis: The globalists and imperialists were the ruling elite parties, able to work together with limited bickering and competition over some details. They took turns at the feeding trough. The globalists steered the left, while the imperialists controlled the right. Both sides have kept their constituents in the dark about their true agenda. Both ruling elite groups have pretended to give their constituents something those folks believed they wanted, but it was always what the elites wanted. Policy has been rape, pillage and plunder painted as largess.

But then, one of those sides eventually lost their grip; they lost control of their slaves. The chains were never real in the first place. Somehow a few key folks on the street level figured out what was going on and that awareness slowly spread among the masses until they quit believing the lies.

The imperialists have lost their constituency on the right. It’s not that cut-n-dried, but that’s the nature of the change. While the elites struggle to maintain control through the existing system of governmental channels, it’s slipping and generally failing. The globalists are still in control of their slaves on the left — just barely. The globalists managed to crush their own popular revolt during the election, so this makes things uneven and messy. It turns out the majority-in-effect is nationalist and nobody has been protecting their interests, left or right. Once they came out of the shadows to declare their agenda, it drew a lot of folks who had previous played both sides, and some very thoughtful folks from the left. The nationalists are now the majority-in-effect at the street level, and are actually neither completely left or right, as nationalism is another category entirely, useful to both left and right agendas.

The man they elected remains somewhat a cipher, in part because there is virtually nobody in the system who really agrees with him. Yes, there is some overlap, so he’s not a total outsider, but he isn’t part of the existing system, either. Too many of those eager to work with him don’t actually share his interests. That much is obvious, even if we don’t know his long-term game plan. On top of that, it’s pretty obvious he is flexible instead of doctrinaire about a lot of issues. We cannot estimate to what degree his pragmatism will allow the imperialists to hang around. But what we do know is that the majority-in-effect on the street does have a pretty clear objective. As they see it, the system has been rigged by those who pull the strings to favor the left.

In their minds, this requires a genuine revolution. You should understand that, while their president is a serious threat to the existing order, they are an even bigger threat. They are the ones who will break stuff and kill people. However, they will do it in their own way, while the folks on the left will do precisely what they falsely claim the right will do. The so-called “antifascists” (AKA “antifa”) are the real Brownshirts here.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t favor either of the dominant cultures. Both are reprehensible, rooted in materialism. The common labels are all misleading in that sense because each pretends to some higher moral value, when it’s really all about who gets the goods. The pretense of balanced competition is gone now. There will be a civil war and how it plays out is already determined by the peculiarities of each side and how they tend to fight.

Both sides are deadly and violent. There is some overlap in that sense, but they approach the use of violence differently. Neither holds the moral high ground; the point is to understand how it’s going to turn out based on the peculiarities. What we are up against is a very massive misunderstanding about the whole thing because the globalists have dominated the public media in favor of the left since before most Americans were born. And that side is going to lose. The left is not organized that way at the street level; their self-identity is limited opposing a single man who isn’t their real threat. They are attacking a ghost, a false image, and doing it from a minority position.

Dear readers, the only reason this isn’t going to turn into an apocalypse is because the side that is going to win has a strong self-identity and is well organized. The new nationalists aren’t really on the right any more. They have seized the reins of official power. The left will balk and throw up obstacles, trying to claim the moral high ground, but this will fail in the long run. The greatest weakness of the left is their globalist leadership. This is no longer a game played by the rules between globalists and imperialists; both of them have lost. And they are not really in a position to unite against the nationalist rabble in the streets.

The imperialists still stand a chance of hijacking this thing eventually. They understood to some degree the weakness of their position. The globalists didn’t see this coming. Instead of losing gracefully, the globalists have panicked and provoked a bloodbath. They thought they had already won the friendly competition, but have overplayed their hand and lost it all. They hitched their wagon to a megalomaniac. They could have likely won by playing it smart as a group and reading the high enthusiasm behind the honest socialist. But they allowed the whole thing to become a personal battle of one woman’s will and it was too painfully obvious to everyone. So it was all or nothing and there was no possibility of reorganizing and strengthening themselves for another day. The frustrated socialists with a nationalist streak are no longer behind them. What’s left is a very weak weapon of paid rioters who can’t do any real damage.

Meanwhile, the globalists within government are at risk. Quite literally, their days are numbered. This is becoming a common thought among folks on the nationalist right:

If what it takes to break the stranglehold this cult has on society is a dictator willing to toss a few judges from a helicopter, then sign me up for dictatorship. I’d much prefer to live in a society where me and my neighbors meet once a month to govern ourselves and our community, but that’s not on offer. What is on offer now is the post-modern theocracy that uses the corrupted and degraded tools of 18th century liberalism to maintain its grip on society. Squads of government men rounding these people up in the middle of the night sounds pretty good right now.

Totalitarians attempt to change the world and human nature, by controlling all aspects of society, including the granular aspects of the political system. It’s what makes reform impossible as we are quickly seeing with the opposition to Trump’s policies. It’s not that they object, on policy grounds, to the very mild reforms that are being proposed. What is at issue is the very concept of the all encompassing world state. To permit reform is to permit questioning and that can never be tolerated.

The only way to break the totalitarian stranglehold may be with a an authoritarian willing to bust down doors and crack some heads. Authoritarianism is only concerned with political power and as long as that is not contested it gives society a certain degree of liberty. You can still have judges falling out of helicopters as we saw with Pinochet, but the people can still go about their lives, free from the hectoring of secular fanatics living off the tax payers. Trump ordering the execution of the 9th Circuit is not ideal, but it beats the hell out of being ruled by angry lunatics from San Francisco.

The guy who wrote this is representative of the nationalist right. Given the sense of betrayal on the nationalist left, they won’t likely resist much. This is what the majority-in-effect is thinking, and many are starting to admit it. Whether it plays out the way he describes remains to be seen, but if not the man in the Whitehouse, his supporters are ready and willing to do it for him. And they’ll do it in such a way as not to disrupt the life of ordinary folks because that’s how they do things. The senseless riots will stop because the leaders who enable the left will be dead.

It will be a rather quiet revolution.

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Elder and Judge

Posted on February 13, 2017 by ehurst

Eldercraft is my term for the collection of skills and experiences necessary for being a biblical elder. We define “elder” as half of the leadership team described in the Bible as God’s Two Witnesses: priest and king. A biblical king is the elder over his entire nation. It can be a simple birthright because we naturally presume a godly elder will raise decent sons, but with a biblical background we also presume God’s veto. Sometimes that veto could be voiced through the combined acclamation of all the lower ranking elders, under the presumption that they speak for their clans and households. In other words, there is no one precise protocol. It’s tribal and mystical.

In the New Testament, Gentile churches inherited the Hebrew pattern of simply recognizing the church as your new covenant family household. Elders were built in, and the presence of Jewish Christians helped guide the process. The process is hardly mentioned because it was assumed everyone understood it — elders were organic to any family structure across the entire world in those days. It was a common element by law in that part of the world that whatever served as your civil government was required to work through the head of household, and very rarely work directly with any individual member of the household. Cultural meaning might vary widely, as did the symbolism used, but in the Old Testament, it was the image of a shepherd and that carried over into the New Testament. Elders weren’t appointed or elected; they were just presumed to be there. Somebody has to take charge of the earthly human organizational aspects of a family household. Priests (often translated “pastor” in the New Testament) were appointed, ordained in some fashion by other priestly figures, and priest and elder were expected to work together through a generally recognized division of labor — spiritual shepherd and earthly shepherd. Each enabled the work of the other.

In our context today, just about anyone is liable for taking up the shepherd’s staff sooner or later, and holding it until they simply can’t get the sheep to follow any more. It’s not something amenable to ambition, but is a duty thrust upon folks who often had other plans. Then again, if you are endowed by God with a spark of leadership, you can probably see it coming. Still, most elders don’t spend time preparing for the role except as they add their divine talents to the same teaching and guidance given to everyone else. The difference is that God provokes a certain kind of grasp of the teaching that builds a shepherd’s character. It is not about paying your dues, but a matter of winning confidence so that others naturally follow. About the closest we could come to making it a craft is that one elder discerns someone else coming up in faith who can carry the burden.

(Side note: An apostle as missionary performs both functions. He’s not a ruler, but a powerful emissary of our Divine Emperor. An apostle acts as both senior elder and high priest in practice.)

A critical element in the role is playing judge. While there is some sort of “separation of powers” in effect, it’s only in that an elder/king would not be caught dead without advisers to help him see beyond himself. Solomon made it a custom to include the presence of his own mother as a feminine element to balance things in his council. Do you think I would ignore advice from my own mother? But in our virtual parish setting it made much more sense to recognize a female “Mama Elder.” Anyone who makes their talented presence felt here may be called upon, male or female, because I refuse to imagine that I’ve got it all figured out. I need the input from others who can help me to judge more righteously, and I pass this on as the legacy of eldercraft.

Unlike rabbis, we don’t echo each other slavishly. Don’t memorize my stuff; give it a listen and take what you can use. My eldership rests entirely on your voluntary cooperation; that’s what “covenant” means. My judgment is not binding on you, but rests entirely on the authority of the Holy Spirit to make it real to you in the convictions of your own heart.

For example: I keep running into a particular issue with email and offline queries about Muslim migration into the US. In order to touch that at all, we have to establish a baseline: America is horribly corrupt socially and legally, defying the Covenant of Noah in more ways than most of us can point out. Noah applies to all human governments so long as there are rainbows in the sky.

One of the single biggest errors of American social culture and law is interference in the family. The State is not Mama/Daddy; it has no valid claim to wield authority on behalf of some imaginary social consensus. That “consensus” was never valid; it has always been manipulated for the convenience of those in power. Those in power have always been folks with a highly immoral lust for power. The system has never conformed to Noah at all.

However, God is permitting the current system of government in the US to run, so we are bound to play along on limited terms. Much of our compliance is under protest, but even that is subject to tactical considerations of knowing when to speak out and how. Meanwhile, since we know that Noah’s Law is wired into reality, to include a certain amount of human instinctive consciousness, we should hardly be surprised at certain trends in how American society proceeds under this awful system. A certain amount of defensiveness about any immigrants with radically different cultures is entirely normal and we should never disparage that.

The same thing applies to Muslims migrating into the US. They bring their own brand of partial compliance to Noah, and I’ve already noted some of that here on this blog. In some ways, they are closer to Noah than America could ever be, having the advantages of being a tribal society with an instinct for tribal government, and having a cultural inclination to sometimes operate by the heart-mind. Their Sharia Law is basically an example of tribal government and is far closer to Noah, not in particulars, but in form. The reason Muslims agitate in favor of allowing them some Sharia Law is so they can carry out their moral obligations to keep a secularized intrusive government out of their family business. Honest Muslim men have admitted that the primary issue is how they handle their wives and children.

I fully understand that most Americans bristle at the idea that we can’t use our legal and social system to protect what we imagine to be civil rights for women and children, for example. But we also bristle when CPS takes our children, or when a judge awards custody of children based on some Byzantine process. You can’t have it both ways, Americans. You either have to allow Muslim men to treat their wives as property according to their customs, or stop bitching when the State treats your family as its property.

It doesn’t take much more wisdom to work out the high probability that God will use the invasive nature of Islam as part of His wrath against Western Civilization. Once you let that sink in, you are in a better position to discuss what we should do about this mess.

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Utopian Madness

Posted on February 12, 2017 by ehurst

We saw it coming.

Just to remind you, several of you agreed with me that we could all sense a shift in reality, that God changed His plans for us. Because there were a number of us who rediscovered the heart-led life, and because we made it a conscious teaching, it opened the door for options He had previously kept back. Among other things, those options include a collection of blessings, miracles, signs and wonders in a way not seen on the earth in a very long time. This was all His initiative; we receive the blessings because we took Him up on His offer. He was looking for someone — anyone — who would seize this fabulous heritage of faith, and there is far more for each of us than we could ever understand.

From the Exodus we learn how God can distinguish His own from the rest of humanity, because we have the Blood of the Lamb on our coming and going. The image of that sacrificial blood daubed on the door-posts hearkens to embracing His mercy on our sins. The death from rejecting His ways will not invade our lives. He has broken the Curse that blinds us to His ways and His blessings. It releases a flood of power in our lives, protecting us from the zombie existence that consumes those who reject God’s ways.

Part of the signs and wonders of His covenant promise is the polarity that makes things obvious, in order to show His glory. The polarity is that some of us can discern this vast shift in the moral sphere and have some idea what to expect, whereas the rest of humanity runs smack face-first into this shift in reality. Not so we can laugh, but it is so we can see the high cost of sin. It’s so we can see His hand of wrath and bear testimony to what we see. And while it always comes with a deniability factor for those who are morally blind, we cling to the truth revealed in our hearts. We refuse to limit ourselves to a viewpoint that ignores the moral sphere. We choose what others call “delusion” in order to come face to face with the Lamb of God.

So now we see the inevitable madness that comes with that shift in reality. Now that it is possible for people to learn and understand heart-led living, it is also mandatory for living here on this earth. For some time in human history, the heart-led way was lost to broad human awareness. A system arose that excluded it; that time is ended. Whatever system God permitted during that time is no longer applicable. A more fundamental element of Noah’s Covenant is again available, ransomed from Satan on some grounds we cannot comprehend, but it’s out there and it applies. Without the heart-mind consciousness, without a sense of walking in your convictions, the world will seem to have become warped and unreliable versus previously seeming reliable in some ways.

Because we are a virtual parish, a big part of what we can teach and do is here on the Internet. If you’ve been paying attention, you probably have seen all kinds of bogus claims. I’m not talking about people who have always been out there on the fringe; I’m referring to the mainstream starting to spew the craziest nonsense. It’s not just mere propaganda meant to mislead, but the wildest airy-fairy perversions that these people actually believe. They come up with the most improbable explanations for things they cannot account for under normal mainstream expectations. It’s no longer just the usual partisan bickering any more, though it still includes that. It’s not just the obvious moral degradations. The Net is dominated by mentally unhinged wacko proposals for explaining what’s happening.

It helps if you are conscious of your own social biases. We all have them. I tend to be libertarian, perhaps in some ways almost theoretically anarchist, only because I know that current political systems are so horribly wrong. And nobody proposes what God requires under Noah. Some of you, given what you have on your blogs, are quite progressive, perhaps even socialist or communist, though I hope you don’t buy into the materialist assumptions behind a lot of that. Being lefty doesn’t make you my enemy; I’m against some of the same wrongs. There’s room for all of us in this parish, because God calls people with varying missions that make us naturally favor organizing things in ways that seem to resemble one or another political theory. My point is that we dare not take ourselves too seriously. We must be able to recognize who we are and never assume our way is the one right way of God.

What’s left is to recognize what God is up to, and most assuredly we need to see what He is allowing to happen for reasons we could never comprehend. Our Lord is allowing the political globalists to be crushed. He is allowing a right-wing backlash in a lot of countries. It’s going to look and feel racist to some of you, but don’t get the idea that it has to be stopped on those grounds. God has ordered Satan to execute a lot of punishment, to loose the hounds of recompense for sin. Surely we who walk by the heart know that a lot of noise about “racism” misses the point, that the only real solution is one-on-one. You cannot simply wish away the Curse of the Fall. You also cannot dream up your own solutions to human problems.

The only solution to the madness is embracing the heart-led existence. This is our message to the crazy world around us. This is how we discern the pitiful attempts to explain reality gone wrong. It’s wrong because people keep proposing all kinds of answers when they don’t even understand the problems. Utopian myths never die until they are killed by wisdom of the heart.

And we can see clearly that it’s only going to get worse.

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