How a Virtual Parish Operates

Posted on February 5, 2017 by ehurst

We do not trust the intellect alone to arrive at verity. The mind is self-deceived, holding a truculent insistence that it can be objective, yet the very structure of its efforts aim to please the fallen nature in all of us. This is what John calls “the boastful pride of life” — a clumsy translation, but we get the point (1 John 2:16). It is the arrogance of truculent self-assertion, that one can arrive at ultimate reality through one’s own talents and powers of reason. It is the siren song of being one’s own god. We have found this false; we have discovered that there is a higher faculty lying quiescent in the soul of humans. It is quiescent until it connects to the Source of all things, our Creator.

For us, relying on biblical imagery, we refer to this higher faculty, brought to life by that eternal link to our Maker, as the heart. We find that it holds to an entirely other form of logic, a reasoning that asserts a moral sphere of perception that is not within reach of senses and mind, but requires the superior sensory powers of the heart itself. Even then, it’s just a parable of how these things work, because it’s above knowing and telling. It is the mind’s best estimate of how to deal with that higher moral reasoning. We start from the assumption that we can’t really know, only that we must proceed with some fear and trembling, knowing that the results will always bear the mark of our fallen nature.

The mind quite naturally reconnects to the heart and can instinctively submit to that superior guidance. It’s just that the mind must unlearn that boastful pride of life, and its previously stained trust in the lust of the eyes and lust of the flesh. We must break down the old structures of authority and operation (2 Corinthians 10:5). The heart takes the intellect captive, and drives the mind to consider all reality from a different angle. We call it heart-led living.

It’s not just words, either. We insist that implementing this will force a radical change in perception and action. We are forced to confront a whole world of idolatries. In the final analysis, we are forced to pull away from the majority of organized Christian religion. Those organizations would inevitably find our teaching a threat. It means dissolving the authority structure on which they rest, and by which their leadership controls the identity and actions of the organizations.

The path we propose makes each and every individual responsible for their own religion. It elevates the individual believer far higher than any other way of doing religion. We don’t even really have leaders in the traditional sense, just people who seem to have a talent for telling their own story of faith. And a part of that telling is the assumption, if not the bald assertion, that this is my story, not yours. Overlap as much as you need, but you hold a duty before God Almighty to tell your own story.

In this mess of life after the fall and centuries of human activity struggling to displace God from His throne, we find that there are things we can share even with this radical vision of uniquely individual faith. We form bonds with each other. It’s the paradox of lasting warmth and friendship mixed with the tentative nature of shared experience. That is, we always recognize the essential nature of this thing that requires we huddle together against the Darkness even as we realize no two of us will have the exact same way of resisting it.

We find that what has come before in terms of church — the gathering of like-minded believers — has been too restrictive and too regimented. It’s less like a household and more like a corporation. We are repelled by the way genuine heart-led faith has become captive by far too much compromise, and how the organization enforces a range of compromise that is no longer quite voluntary. It seems to us that the tools of subtle manipulation have raised false choices based on the old fallen brand of hyper-competitive tribalism.

That’s a form of religion that pulls faith too far back down into the fallen human mind, making individual believers excessively dependent on mere human resources. We cannot allow what we do to represent yet one more ball-n-chain in a world that is itself a dungeon. We intend to set people free. In the process, we build a religion that openly encourages people to come and go as they sense their own leading from God. No one is really in charge beyond the barest necessities for acting together as one body at any given moment. Somebody has to lead when human bodies gather in one space so that we can avoid chaos and physical harm, but that does not mean anyone leads in the resulting decisions of faith.

In our online setting, it means even less control, because there are no herds of bodies involved. It’s just one guy running a blog and folks coming to read as they see fit, and associating more closely or not on that same basis. Thus, we link to blogs run by other guys and gals and who, for as long as they see it appropriate, link back to this one. And de-linking need not signal anything more than that it’s time to move on to other things. Whatever set of human circumstances that bring about that decision really isn’t important.

When I announce that some Brother or Sister is an associate elder with me, that’s not to compel your trust in them, but to signal my trust in their expression of faith. It signals that we are close enough in religious thought and action to work together in helping others find their own unique faith. It’s entirely practical. And from one hour to the next, the vagaries of human response to the call of faith might mean that our level of human closeness may vary in the normal range of emotional intensity.

So here’s a reminder: Kiln of the Soul is the organized ministry of a handful of people who associate closely as a covenant family. It’s rather like the name of your local parish, and the label that appears on the meeting house. It signals a closeness in thought and expression, a long term community of shared faith. We stay together because we can tolerate each other quite well enough to make the most of shalom in a single household, as it were. It builds an interdependence that none of us easily departs.

Radix Fidem is the label we put on a far wider association of people who tend to approach the basic question of religion in similar fashion. It’s our virtual denomination. We may not be able to easily harmonize our daily activities together, but we get along well enough to be friends. We take each other in smaller doses, but are still bound together in faith. Goodness knows, writing style is so critical to what we do online that it is sufficient by itself to justify being closer to, or farther from, anyone.

Again, it’s just a matter of pragmatism. Nobody should be painted as a sinner for moving farther away, regardless of the reason. We reserve negative labels for those who actively attack, and seek to hinder, our freedom in Christ to seek His glory. Nobody is morally superior for appearing to move closer, since they could be an infiltrating agent. All the more so in a virtual parish like this one, the whole thing is a living and growing creature that morphs daily in one way or another without asking anyone’s permission. And by all means, you should never trust my judgment without taking your own second look. My meat could be your poison; you have to discern that on your own heart-mind linkage with the Holy Spirit.

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Psalm 119: Resh 153-160

Posted on February 4, 2017 by ehurst

This is the path of Divine Dependence. While an English translation of this octet sounds a little repetitious with the rest of the psalm, the emphasis and tone are quite different. The psalmist tells God he has no place else to go.

He calls for the Lord to notice how pressed down he is, but what he seeks is not mere rescue, for the word also implies pulling up from helpless and arming someone against future attacks. It’s the image of a man who may have lost his armor, but not the Law of His God. The second verse here begins with the verb form followed by the noun form of the same word: “Contend my contention!” It’s a call for God to show Himself as his Father, to fill the role of kinsman redeemer, as He promised in His revelation.

The wicked could search their life long, but genuine moral safety is far from them. That’s because they aren’t searching the one place where safety stands, on the foundation God has established. It’s like a massive fortress standing in plain sight, filled with the mercies of God. The judgments of Jehovah are the source of life.

Everywhere the psalmist goes in this world, they are either nipping at his heels or blocking his path of service, but they cannot force him off the ancient way of God. He could see plainly the fools who thought they were being clever and sneaky. He detested them, trying to sneak past the boundaries of truth instead of guarding those boundaries.

Using the same word for seeing plainly, the psalmist asks that the Lord examine his own heart. Did he not long for more of the divine teachings? God’s divine favor brings a vivid life of glory. Search back as far as the deepest human memories, and anyone can see that God’s truth has stood from before Creation. The long string of Jehovah’s judgments against sin and in favor of righteousness runs off into eternity in every direction.

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War on the Horizon

Posted on February 4, 2017 by ehurst

This is just an intuition, a perception based on heart-sensing the mood of the people: We are going to war.

I realize there’s been lots of media noise about likely targets of American military force, but it’s just noise. It really doesn’t matter in the sense that there’s a big false perception that fouls the moral sphere. The mood is one of scanning around to find someone to blame for certain problems. The target will be the one caught in the cross hairs when the dam breaks.

It also makes little difference where this feedback loop started; the net result is the thing we face. There is a powerful moral interaction between the Whitehouse and the majority-in-effect. If you can understand the moral climate, then you’ll also realize that the opposition is part of that feedback loop, as well. Don’t get hung up on individuals; this is a matter of demonic influence.

Let me confess that a part of me was hoping for a shift to more sensible government, at least in some old sore spots. What I never expected was that those particular symbolic issues being done right would come in the same package with such blistering insanity. I knew there had to be some trouble coming with this change, but I had no clear idea what kind of trouble. Once I got past the shock of seeing just what it was, I began to discern the nature of that demonic influence.

This is how fascism works these days. It’s a movement that offers relief to the majority, tired and beaten down by a loud and pestiferous activist minority. But the real problem is the false dichotomy between these two, the communist-socialist lefties and the smothering middle-class righties. They are both rooted in materialism, with radically different plans on how to get that wealth and what to do with it. It’s a tug of war that runs in cycles, and the current swing is to the right.

So we would have had war either way, but the warning here is that, instead of a high probability of nuclear exchange and some kind of apocalypse, we are facing something far more complex and damnable. Instead of wiping out huge populations, they’ll be left to live in slavery. And it’s a slavery all the more depraved for being so perverted and mind-twisting, a soul-eating prison that should make you imagine The Matrix.

Yet this thing is so very easy to break out of, unlike the image in that popular movie. It’s pervasive, yet the “red pill” route of escaping the matrix is just a matter of opening the eyes of your heart. Salvation is right there inside of you already.

One thing you should expect is that the economy really will start churning again. You should understand that our economic troubles will defy the expectations of economists. That is, despite all the reasons why things should just lock up and fail, it won’t happen like that. Some portions of our economy will surge to fresh levels of activity. It’s going to look and feel like some sort of recovery, even as the numbers indicate recession, depression, etc. And it won’t be mere propaganda. Things won’t be peachy, but it’s not going to come crashing down, either.

There will still be plenty of unjust slaughter; that’s what war is. But most of the human activity will take a different focus. It won’t be the simplistic stuff of yesteryear. This is going to be the strangest thing anyone has ever seen on the surface. Sure, you can read historical references back into it in places, but that would miss the point. Our real Enemy is seeking a very big harvest, and this is what we need to see clearly. At the same time, Our Creator is offering redemption in heart-led freedom on a much wider scale, in the sense He’s building a context where it will be much easier to grasp.

Let’s keep our heart-eyes on the moral sphere.

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The Prophecy Stands

Posted on February 3, 2017 by ehurst

It’s time to renew the warning of my first prophetic message from ten years ago: God will not allow us to mess with Iran.

I suspect some of the noise we hear about this is just tactical propaganda. We need to see the whole context. The Whitehouse is plagued with leaks, so the apparent inconsistency arises in part from playing head-games with the sources of those leaks. The other element is a form of shock therapy that disrupts the plans of the opposition. It’s immoral, but we should at least understand how it seems entirely logical. So when it comes to the issue of US relations with Iran (or any other country, for that matter) take the noise with a grain of salt. Wait and see what actually happens.

The experience of receiving this prophetic charge is hard to describe. Part of that experience was seeing a vision during waking hours: American troops and equipment lying destroyed in a desolate place in the country of Iran. It hit me very hard with weeping at the shock of what it meant, and it took a day or so for me to feel sure I was required to share it. It was the first time the gift was stirred to life in such a dramatic shape. There had been hints previously, but it was too easy to associate them with simple knowledge of the Bible. This one stood starkly alone on no other ground than the work of the Holy Spirit.

I stand by my prophetic warning; nothing in my spirit indicates that anything has changed. Back when I first offered this warning (on a now defunct blog elsewhere), it was hard to justify against my own military and political understanding at the time. Moreover, I can think of no particular reason from Scripture as a background to explain it. Still, it was a relentless driving power in my soul that demanded I declare that warning: God will not allow the US to successfully attack Iran.

As it is now, we have seen the development of Iranian military power and the support she receives from some powerful allies. At the same time, US military power has degraded noticeably. It would take way too much time and writing to bring out all the details, and some of it is subject to debate. However, my point is that my vision of our troops and equipment lying scattered and smoking on the ground is now far more plausible in human terms than it was ten years ago.

The only particular mystical linkage is that it’s the boundary of where God will allow Israel to push us. I suspect that Israel is also forbidden to attack Iran again, but that’s not part of my vision on the matter.

Right now, I’m not in a position to get this message into the ears of the folks who will make the final decision either way. Part of the problem is credibility, of course. Can you imagine sending a letter to the Whitehouse when I reject the bulk of religious notions of just about everyone in America? I’m not fearful about it, just frustrated on the human level. Plenty of prophetic messages in the Bible were aimed at a different audience than the one named in the message itself. This is a warning to like-minded believers to prepare accordingly, if this message speaks to your heart.

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Why Tribulation?

Posted on February 3, 2017 by ehurst

This shouldn’t be too hard to understand if your mind knows your heart: Divine justice was never punitive in nature. It was always redemptive. Sure, you could cross some threshold and be taken from this world. The manner of execution would always fit the broader redemptive needs of the community involved, so you shouldn’t imagine that it always has to be quick and merciful for the perpetrator. Still, it was never aimed at dehumanizing the bad guy or gal. They could always confess their sin and may well be received into Heaven afterward. You may struggle with that if you still have a wealth of Western notions of “justice,” but if our Creator approves of something you don’t like, then the problem is with you.

I’ve worked closely enough to the American penal system to know it intimately. It’s wrong all the way through. It’s foundation is built at the Gates of Hell. It arises from the world of Beowulf and the cold, spiteful world that spawned such literature. It presumes a world where the deity is lazy and not really interested in people; that deity was intensely selfish. That’s not Jehovah, and the American penal system devours both the guards and prisoners and the society that spawns such a system. It turns everyone into a Grendel.

Once again: The Covenant of Noah, including the vast wealth of cultural and intellectual traditions of the Ancient Near Eastern world, is reality. That covenant rests squarely on the fabric of God’s own moral character. The petty anger of an offended, vengeful and fearful Western society is contrary to reality. That’s on top of all the things we make illegal that aren’t even a threat to us. You have to understand that the entire legal system is designed to protect government privilege, nothing more. Under the pretense of objectivity and “rule of law” it simply pampers government officials. It turns bureaucratic inconvenience into a sin, and the people be damned. When you fight reality as God created it and revealed it, you gain His wrath.

His wrath serves one primary purpose: His glory. It shows His holiness and purity, that He cannot abide sin. However, His wrath is always structured to offer a chance to repent and be made whole, restored to the proper place in a world of shalom. So the wrath of tribulation is God doing things His way, offering the only path to restoration. That a whole civilization of people refuses to understand is their fault. You cannot hold Him accountable to make it easy for you to take it the way you would prefer. His revelation is more than adequate to meet every human need.

The first step in restoration is confession and repentance. That is the gateway to rapprochement with God. It’s personal; it’s between you and God. Then comes petition for terms of restoration. That presumes you will seek to heal the damage you have done to His reputation and His Creation. This includes a presumption that you would meet with the victims and strive to clean up the mess. Yes, in our world that would probably never work. It requires heart-led judges who know God’s Word to moderate, especially when the victims are Westerners full of vengeance and spite. Westerners pickle their whole world in excessive and unjustified grievance. In the end, God is the final Judge decides what is just recompense.

Did it ever occur to anyone that the biblical Cities of Refuge were their version of “pre-trial confinement”? You can’t leave safely, but your restriction is pretty generous. You still have to behave yourself to avoid trouble with local government, but it’s far more sensible than anything we do now. And the trials were nothing like ours.

It’s always possible that there is no path to restoration in this world. Sometimes the perpetrator remains spiteful for whatever reason, or perhaps the harm was simply too great. That’s covered in God’s Law. They still get a chance to confess and repent, but about the only thing it changes here is the manner of execution. That has to fit the nature of the problem, as a symbolic demonstration of divine justice. One size does not fit all, and Western notions of what’s “humane” are based on that same heathen world view from Beowulf.

For example, if the crime was murdering someone, then the victim’s family is obliged to take the criminal’s life in a manner similar to the crime. They can be merciful, but they cannot do worse. Yet Noah’s Covenant demands that they be given the chance to execute; they have to do it themselves. In some instances, the only realistic answer is that the family of the perpetrator has to carry it out on behalf of the victims — and they have to do it themselves. The people closest to the crime are the ones God says should handle the execution. When Genesis 9 says something about taking the life of those who needlessly take human life, it presumes we all know it means either victim’s family or the perpetrator’s family have the burden of acting to execute.

Sometimes the nature of the crime brings it up to the attention of a higher jurisdiction of the family-clan-tribe involved. That should be obvious from the context. A pagan or secular government sins against God when it interferes in this divinely ordained protocol. In God’s eyes, there cannot be such a thing as crime against a secular state, aside from a very direct attack on the government officials and system itself. Even then, it depends on whether the attack was justified under God’s Law. That’s because a secular state is fundamentally contrary to His Law. The New Testament warns that there’s not much we can do in practice to avoid submitting to such a government, but that’s another matter. We are discussing here the ideals of God’s Law.

This is why every nation and civilization comes to an end, and why it always involves tribulation. None of them are just in God’s eyes, so at some point His holiness demands an answer. In our case with the US in particular, and the West in general, it is the relentless anti-heart-led approach to life that calls down His wrath. It is the endless spiteful rejections of God’s revelation that calls for destruction. Pointing out the vast chasm between God’s justice system for fallen men versus the filthy perversion that is called “justice” in the US is just an example. It strikes at the very essence of God’s way versus the world’s way.

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God Is Hiring Prophets

Posted on February 2, 2017 by ehurst

The virtual world knows no borders; you are either online or not. Our parish ministry here reaches out to everyone who engages the virtual world. Somewhere in the mixture of things I try to make sure people see through my peculiarities to something big enough for all of us.

The prophetic element of what I do is limited to the US. That is, I am called to prophesy against the sins of my nation. If you are going to understand the message, you’ll have to be familiar with life in the US. It’s the same with the Bible: We have to understand the context of the ancient Hebrew world to make sense of what those people wrote. That’s how God reveals Himself.

The world needs many voices within each context and I can’t do that for you. Some of you need to take up the prophet’s mantle and speak the truth to your own world. Not on my say so, but I hope to awaken what lies quietly inside your soul. This is the time; if you have that gift, bring it out. The Apostle Paul told us that, of all the various spiritual gifts, a prophetic voice is one thing you should pray for (1 Corinthians 14:1-5)

Apply now to Our Lord for this mission.

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The Fallacy of Human Rights

Posted on February 1, 2017 by ehurst

The modern Western concept of “human rights” is a heathen idea. It does not come from Scripture at all, though most Westerners read it back into the Bible.

It’s part of this whole idolatry of The Great Man, the type of the pivotal figure that so consumes our attention every day. Again: It’s idolatry. It arises out of the hero legends of Western Germanic tribal mythology. In Scripture, it’s never the man, but the role and the moral influence.

Let’s break this down: In the Spirit Realm, the individual covenant is the foundation — you and God. It is volitional in nature. Yet it is God who then becomes the center of all life, and He makes all Creation into one big family household with Him as Father.

The Fall creates a problem that changes how things are done here below. In the fallen realm of human existence, the extended family household is the keystone that holds it all together. Each household is a kingdom unto itself. That’s how the Covenant of Noah must be understood. Everything the individual needs, and all the blessings of shalom, hang on the membership in a household of faith.

As always, please note that a covenant bond takes priority over blood kinship, because the former is volitional, but the latter is not. Either way, the fundamental element of divine moral justice is in the way households interact, the relations between those little kingdoms. When an individual sins, the moral shock waves strike the family as a whole. The family with the sinner must atone to the aggrieved family. There’s not that much about one-on-one justice. It’s the biblical image of “covering” for sins, where the role of elder/chief/king is the primary starting point for dealing with human frailty.

Nor should you imagine that it’s all about the head of household as it would be in Western feudalism. The ANE shepherd image is a clear departure from the way things are done in the West. This is why I keep making it a point to frequently write the whole phrase: Ancient Near Eastern feudalism. That’s where the family is “property” in the sense of treasure, and real estate is just where you sojourn for the time being. Movable property is just a collection of tools that can be replaced.

And if you bother to wonder, I won’t simply suggest it, but flatly assert: The whole human race would be far better off if we lived a primitive nomadic existence. It might be less comfortable and less entertaining, but our souls would be so much richer, and a lot more people would live a life consistent with God’s revelation. And with God’s revelation as the key to our existence, we would typically live far longer, if that matters to you, in harmony with the rest of Creation. In a symbolic sense I could say that such a life would make the population of Heaven a lot bigger once this plane of existence is finished.

That simple life is an ideal, but not a real option for most of the human race, so we approach it as closely as we can. One of the ways we do that is to recognize that there is no such thing as “human rights” in God’s sight. Thus, your moral discernment must include that rejection as a prerequisite for pondering what God really wants. And that rejection is utterly necessary when you feel the burden to make a prophetic denunciation of sin. Any modern government that uses individual rights as a bludgeon against that individual’s family is fighting Noah, fighting reality, fighting God.

His wrath will be no small thing as it passes through our world.

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Don’t Lie to Yourself

Posted on February 1, 2017 by ehurst

The greatest folly is believing lies about your threats. Satan loves to inflate our imagination about his powers. His powers are great, but not what popular mythology suggests he can do. But the same goes for just about anyone who is a problem for you. I have said Trump’s presidency will bring us problems, but if you keep blindly buying into the media crap about him, after you already know that they despise him with passionate hatred, you will not understand how to handle the real problems he brings. I suggest you take a look at this analysis by Scott Adams to understand how Trump operates. This is not meant to glorify Trump, but to help us clarify what we should expect.

For example, his travel ban was not on Muslims. Lots of Muslim from other countries are still coming into the US. It was a ban on seven countries already identified as sources of trouble under Obama. In fact, many of the people making the loudest noise in Congress have already promoted, even signed bills with the same exact ban in the recent years. The only difference is that Trump is making it stick, whereas the others were just making noise. It’s a stupid ban, but let’s evaluate it for what is really wrong with it, not scream and yell about something it isn’t.

This is the propaganda war I warned about. This is why Trump’s noisiest opponents are going to fail: They keep criticizing a ghost who doesn’t exist, a mythological Trump they imagine and one they want to hate. None of their noise will have any effect on him, but it will eventually make them out to be lying scoundrels. Meanwhile, as nearly as anyone can tell, the majority-in-effect is happy about the ban. And we surely know the enforcers are feeling vindicated by Trump’s generous support. Get real folks, and let’s discuss what’s actually going on here. Otherwise the Father cannot guide us to His glory.

At the same time, let’s recognize another issue of moral blindness: Islam has distinct advantages in the culture wars. First, they remain in a largely tribal social structure. They are fairly close to the original human default of ANE feudalism. Further, without even using the terminology, they tend to operate in heart-led mode. We might not agree with their convictions, but they are more likely to act on theirs than most Westerners do. Their odd approach to religious and social law does at times reflect parts of Noah. However, some of what you see is often too close to Talmudic legalism, but we see that mostly on fringe elements among the extremists. The vast majority of Muslim believers aren’t literal Jihadists.

So your average randomly chosen Muslim in general is closer to Noah’s Law than almost anyone in Western society. Their real problem is that they don’t know God; their version of Deity is taken mostly from an ancient Arabic Moon god. Thus, He still herds them like cattle, but they do have some advantages. You’ll notice their instincts for tribal occupation is rather close to the Bible. They understand instinctively the tribal domain boundaries and the obligation to protect them. This is why the military destruction of their cities and economic infrastructure doesn’t defeat them. No Western army will ever change their way of life. Their convictions are stronger than death.

You can wipe them out or you can enslave them, but you cannot change them wholesale. Only God can do that. Would that our own faith were that strong.

As I’ve said recently, our only problem with Muslims is letting Israel run our foreign policy in the Middle East. Those seven countries Trump banned are typically places where Israel has demanded we intervene on their behalf to generate instability. While the finer points of Trump’s game have yet to be seen, it’s not quite fair to say he’s slavish about pampering Israel. But he is far, far too solicitous.

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Cycling: Little More Poking Draper

Posted on January 31, 2017 by ehurst

mapIt was pretty warm by the time I got out on my bike — 70°F (21C). Somehow I knew this wouldn’t be much of an adventure, and I didn’t run across a single place that called my name. Still, I wanted to see for myself so I’d know what was there. You might want to click on the map and see it full-sized, because this was a three-pronged sally down from the north end of Draper Lake Drive.

01washoutflatComing in on the Sooner Road corridor, the starting point is the new defacto horse trailer parking area. That’s where I see them most often these days. They can pulling into that big gravel circle on the upper left corner of the map image and enter the trail system. The first thing we encounter south of that loop is a very large flat washout area. The peculiar thing was the how flat it was; you could see where the water from heavy rains gets pushed out wide as it slowly runs down into the gully on the west side. I tramped down a couple of trails just a short ways.02pt9lagoon Lovely single track, but it’s not really for bikes.

I went back out and dropped into the valley, then turned right at the top of the next ridge. This entire ridge is called Point 9 and it’s the only part of the entire recreation area with signs insisting on a no-wheels policy off the pavement. Only feet, hooves, and paws are allowed because Parks and Rec is trying to restore the area from abusive damage.03rockyshore Oddly, this place is shot through with well-used foot paths. I locked my bike to one of the signs about no wheels at the end of that long paved road and poked around the trails. The first and best used trail ended in a dangerous drop over the shore bluff. So I poked around a bit and found out how to get out on the east side of that lagoon you can see on the satellite image. Today the water was up, so it was just a sheltered cove. The most picturesque thing was the exposed rock facing above that lagoon.

04lagoonelmcrkBack to the bike and back out again to the main road. Turning right once more I headed down to the actual East Elm Creek valley alongside the Douglas Boulevard entrance to the recreation area. I picked out the old track running along the east bank of the creek. I really wasn’t all that interested in riding out too far, but I wanted to see the flood pond on the east side of the creek bed. It was quiet and showed signs of fisherman all around it, but today it was just hot and felt desolate. I could have easily ridden farther along that track, but it didn’t seem too inviting. It runs up to an inlet that separates the fancy accommodations farther south from the wild stuff.

So I ground my way along the sandy bumpy trail back out and took Douglas Boulevard northward all the way to SE 15th. The traffic was just light enough to be tolerable.

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Heathen Religious Wars

Posted on January 31, 2017 by ehurst

Let’s understand things in terms of what will actually work. Keep in mind that anyone who adheres from the heart to God’s Law will harvest a blessing of shalom. The difference is academic between God’s direct personal intervention and Creation’s standard response by design. Either way, the whole business of shalom rests entirely upon embracing the divine moral character of God; this moral character is the fabric of reality itself. We can state it in other terms: If you obey the Law of Noah from the heart, you will gain God’s support for what you do.

That support includes a grant of dominion over some aspects of your daily existence. You will have a better savvy about how Creation responds and you will exercise an authority denied the vast majority of humanity. In biblical terms, you will “occupy the land” on which you live. This assumes that you truly know where God wants you to abide geographically. This is all within the imagery of ancient nomadic tent-dwellers who occupied a certain amount of real estate in pursuing God’s glory.

This all holds true despite the Westphalian Treaty law of the modern secular state and its boundaries.

The whole picture requires that you assert in your domain, granted by God, the manner of life and heart-led existence that He requires of you as His feudal servant. It comes in a form that includes your customs and culture. This is part of our teaching that you have a duty before God to build and maintain your own way of life. There is no “one holy and righteous” culture. There is only you and God working out what your culture shall be where you are.

In the Ancient Near East (ANE) you would be presumed to adopt the culture of your extended family-clan-tribe (or nation) in terms of what we today would regard as ethnic identity. Some of it would be genetically determined, as science is now finally discovering, but much of it would be a matter of the context into which you were born. Nothing hindered you from taking that culture and adapting it to fit changes in the wider context. So, for example, Hebrew musicians adopted musical instruments and styles of music from neighbors, conquerors, etc. There was nothing wrong with this, so long as the result didn’t confuse the issue of who was their God and the boundaries of their covenant with Him.

So if you like socialist economic policies in your tribe/nation, that’s between you and God. If you prefer a libertarian leaning, that’s equally okay. So long as your choices are not some kind of civic religion that competes with God’s Law and calling on your life, it really doesn’t matter. As long as that form of economic policy does not hinder obedience to Noah, it doesn’t make any difference. The whole point is that you all pretty much agree and adapt to what it requires. It’s not as good as a conscious obedience to Noah, but it does work out in practical terms.

When your governing leadership in your local or national secular state transgresses Noah, it’s not going to work. There may be some kind of equilibrium because the local population has adapted to it, but God will not protect it from disturbances except as it suits His whim. You are not under any covenant protection at all.

When your secular governing authorities invite immigrants, it is a requirement in Noah that these immigrants understand they can bring their culture with them, but they cannot afflict the local culture with demands for change that suits them. There will naturally be a certain amount of negotiation, but a violent demand for change is not going to work unless these immigrants are powerful enough to invade and take over as conquerors.

If Europe wants to welcome invading hordes that refuse to adopt the local culture, then they have surrendered their land and people. You can talk about “cultural enrichment” all you like, but the facts say otherwise. It becomes some kind of Orwellian lie that you can absorb refugees, but if they bring their culture and assert it over yours, then you haven’t absorbed anything at all. You’ve simply abdicated to invaders.

Nobody should have a problem with Mexicans or Muslims or any other group who accept the Noahic terms of coming in and finding their place in the existing social structure. We tell them: You can stick to your religion and culture within your enclaves as long as you don’t provoke the residents who were there before you. You should recognize that those differences will lead to your folks not fully participating in the economic system because the economy always rests on the dominant culture. If you learn to exploit the differences without predatory abuses, that’s just dandy. If those Mexicans, Muslims, etc., take advantage of the differences in a predatory way, they are invaders deserving of whatever forceful means of enforcement they encounter.

If the resident culture can’t defend itself, the invaders win. If the residents start shooting invaders who won’t behave themselves, nobody has any damned business complaining. Learn to negotiate. The incumbent hosts have zero obligation to bend more than they find comfortable. There is no moral high ground by which you can criticize them within their domain, unless you can cite a prophetic warning based on God’s Law. Don’t assume your blindness to your own cultural bias is an excuse to pontificate from an imaginary moral high ground. But by the same token, the host nation cannot sucker the immigrants in with their own predatory intent.

The biggest problem we face is when the resident host population has no firm idea what their culture actually is. Right now, Americans have no clue. They have consistently failed to consider this consciously. Here in the US, we have a long standing feud between two different brands of prissy frauds arguing past each other, with neither of the two dominant sides openly acknowledging the real issues. It’s not that there is no such fundamental cultural milieu, but that the issue is highly confused in the minds of too may folks. And it turns out that the minority is the one that fights dirtiest by intentionally obfuscating the issue and keeping it from conscious consideration. They simply assert their bias in the final result, refusing to discuss anything about the path to that result.

If Trump and his supporters go about this in a forthright manner, establishing a consciously considered cultural identity for America, and if they also manage to assert that culture through occupying dominance, then they win and everyone else has to find a way to negotiate their presence as resident immigrants. That is God’s Law; that’s how reality works and reality will back it.

There are still a host of other problems that we at Kiln of Soul can address prophetically, but we must prepare ourselves to live in the US as resident immigrants among heathens-in-effect. This is not our turf; we are not fighting off invaders in the guise of Trumpian nationalists. They are the hosts. The lefties who so hate him and his supporters are living in a fantasy world if they imagine that their cultural myth was ever the dominant host. They have always been a hated invader in this land. They never did us believers much good, either. They have hijacked a lot of things we like, but those things have become captive slaves to a much wider satanic agenda.

You and I can characterize this as the same old battle between the latter day Westernized Cult of Odin versus the Cult of Oester. We are not a party to this dispute; the whole thing is heathen through and through. But it is our duty to understand consciously where this thing is going. Given that most of American Christianity participates to varying degrees in that Cult of Odin, by imagining Jehovah in terms of that sort of grouchy and capricious Nordic sonuvabitch deity, we really don’t share much with them. Nonetheless, they are winning right now in their Crusade. We don’t justify what they do, but had better understand it and see that God is behind it as He herds the cattle of human politics.

The one thing we can defend in all of this is the increased trend toward decentralizing social controls. The lefties are welcome to their SJW enclaves, but they had damned well better not try to throw that shit on the rest of America. Meanwhile, the shit from the righties represents the stink of the the majority-in-effect. And while it’s just a few foolish lefty thugs who press their complaints with violence on the majority-in-effect, the failure of the other lefties to condemn the violence means they encourage it, and it will most certainly come back on them and anyone who fails to put some distance between themselves and the mainstream lefty leadership. I fully understand the anger, but I cannot condone the nasty rhetoric and violence that follows behind it.

Carp if you feel the need, but don’t expect God to turn this around for your convenience. Our duty to God under the Law of Noah is to find a place to stand and assert His divine dominion in whatever way is left to us. This way you can put away the carping and present a strong prophetic warning about how the dominant Odinites are chasing heathen dreams, same as the Oesterites. And by exercising divine moral character over our limited domain, we prove the justice of our message.

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