VA Trip: Adventure

Posted on February 7, 2017 by ehurst

The unseasonably warm weather encouraged me to ride my bike to the VA this morning. When I left home at around 6:30 it was about 45°F (7C) and felt even warmer. The only thing I did differently was add a small headlight I keep just for that purpose. The taillight has long been mounted, so it was just a matter of turning it on. I arrived in about 45 minutes. The tough part is that I can’t eat anything until after the initial blood draw in the lab. I opted to eat in the cafeteria and it was just like old times with typical military food — tolerable but not memorable. Still, it was slightly better than schlepping food up there with me on the bike.

So my primary care doctor basically said the lab report looked good, better than most he sees. He understands my distaste for medication and works with me. For all the testing the cardiology clinic did, there was nothing in their records to indicate any particular cause the tachycardia. It’s just something I have to live with. For some inscrutable reason, the trauma to my body in the bike crash gave me a new sensitivity to caffeine. So the best the doctor could tell me was to be ready with the Valsalva Maneuver whenever the pulse racing starts.

He believes I’m well ahead of the curve on the knee healing up. When I mentioned riding 50 miles yesterday, he looked a me with envy, saying, “I wish I had time for that sort of thing.” He’s a very conscientious physician, always taking it upon himself to carry the background load of paperwork and coordination to ensure patient records are complete and up-to-date. Otherwise, it’s unlikely to happen. You should never doubt the power of large bureaucracy to screw things up; the more people involved, the worse it gets. Everyone feels the urge to justify their job by meddling and complicating simple processes.

The one part of my visit that went quite well was the bicycle parking. It’s an enclosed courtyard off the main entrance and few of the bikes there were even locked, yet nothing ever happens to them. It was quite entertaining to see the variety of chain-driven machinery people can find. I got back home about mid-morning and for some crazy reason felt exhausted, falling asleep as soon as I sat down. I never seem to notice how much work it is spending time at a big government-run hospital. Of course, it’s the only time I see any significant amount of stair-climbing — I don’t like using elevators with that much pedestrian traffic. The stairwells are generally quiet and empty. It’s not that I don’t like people; I love them. What drags me down is having to hang around that much human misery when so much of it is self-inflicted.

It’s bad enough when things happen to harm us; that’s just the way it goes. But I see hundreds on every visit who don’t take the minimum of self-care. I realize I don’t know much of what goes on in their lives, but when I do sit and listen to them talk, it’s highly consistent in revealing how silly people can be. And then, on top of that, some of these folks are just desperately lonely, even as they commit themselves to choices that isolate them. My experience has taught me that it’s quite rare when something I can say might actually do them any good. They are too busy telling their woes to listen. They aren’t bad people, just horribly lost and misguided.

It’s a visit to Hell, in a sense, but without the chance to free anyone. It doesn’t harm me, but it wears me out.

Posted in personal | Tagged , , | Comments Off on VA Trip: Adventure

Fitness Test: Giant Loop

Posted on February 6, 2017 by ehurst

My pictures didn’t turn out at all, so you’ll just have to use your imagination.

Tomorrow is my annual checkup at the VA. I wasn’t too worried about the doctor yapping at me about much of anything. Still, but I was personally unhappy with how that brief period of taking beta-blockers just about killed my metabolism. My waist sized swelled just a bit and kept swelling even after I discontinued them. So finally I got tired of it and dropped all sweets. Keep in mind that I had no trouble eating them before the collision last year and right up until I had so much trouble with tachycardia that they gave me those nasty pills. Suddenly sweets were a problem, but it wasn’t obvious for a while. So I dropped them last week and started into a different exercise regimen to kick up the metabolism from wake-up throughout the day.

In the process, I discovered that my knee is better than I thought. I took a 2-mile hike, wearing a compression brace, of course. With the brace I was able to keep up a fast road-march pace. And when I got back, there was none of the usual pain down inside the joint. I was tired and had ordinary workout soreness, but none of that dull ache that nags for two or three days.

It gave me confidence to try something really big: Today I saddled up and rode the Giant Loop. That’s the Katy Trail to Persimmon Hill, up to Wilshire and all the way in to Nichols Hills. I zig-zagged back down to Grand Boulevard and rolled all the way out to Hefner Lake. I stayed on the south edge, noticing that the lake was down by at least six feet (almost 2m). Boats in the mini-docks were suspended a good bit above the water. By the time I got to the canal, I could see it was flowing into Hefner Lake, which is backward from typical. Then I followed the canal to Lake Overholser. It was quite a drag facing the stiff breeze head-on for two miles straight on the stretch alongside Wiley Post Airport. When I crossed the pump house at the gates over that end of the canals, I could hear the electric pumps just humming away. Overholser has a good water level. I also spotted a car nose down into a tree on the bank of the dam, but it was pretty well hidden from my camera by foliage. I guess whichever agency is responsible just didn’t think it was worth removing the wreck.

There was another two miles of headwinds along Overholser and a little beyond on the West River Trail. Eventually I got around to facing east and it was very quiet and solitary riding the curvy trail to Meridian Avenue. Just before I got to that point I spotted a whole flock of solid white pelicans huddling on a sandbar out in the river, at least two dozen of them. But taking that shot would mean shooting into the sun and I had the wrong camera for that. The crossover at Meridian is just about done, and already quite usable. From there I began to encounter more traffic, mostly pedestrians. I started making much better time, and was zipping pretty well all the way to the Eagle Lake Trail, but stopped at the bridge again. Then I climbed up out of the riverbed area and onto Reno, but dove into the back streets to avoid the heavier traffic. By the time I got home it was about 5.5 hours — really slow, but the fact that I made it was cause for rejoicing.

Addenda: After a quick attempt to calculate the distance, I found it comes close to 50 miles (80 km).

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Fitness Test: Giant Loop

How Bad Will It Be?

Posted on February 5, 2017 by ehurst

If you examine the record of Scripture, you can discern a thread of moral propriety in dealing with other nations. The starting point is to leave folks alone. In truth, this is the broad instinct of the Children of Israel. They weren’t very war-like. Indeed, coming out of their Egyptian bondage, they were pretty whiny about having to relearn their ancient nomadic ways. It required a firm resolve to defend their people and what God said He entrusted into their stewardship, and they were consistently reluctant to fight back when attacked.

So they spent forty years in nomad boot camp until the whiner generation was dead. They were tougher then, though still reluctant to execute God’s judgment. The consistent testimony of Scripture is that the Land was theirs by divine grant, and the folks living there were the most despicable creatures God ever confronted in His lordship over Creation. Indeed, every pagan culture that encountered them agreed that the Canaanites were so depraved that it defied description.

God said quite emphatically that He would deliver them into the hands of His People. Even then, Israel simply didn’t have the toughness to carry it through, and ended up having an infestation of depraved people in their lands. But even when all of that was settled and in place, the issue of foreign relations remained a matter of letting folks keep what they had until they tried to take something God gave Israel. And it wasn’t so much a matter of the land borders as it was the borders of shalom, the essential social stability that rested on trusting God to provide reasonable prosperity, safety and health, and a generally peaceful existence. Obey the Covenant Law and these things are yours, said the Lord.

The only time it went wrong was when some portion of the nation began to lust for things God said they didn’t need, and which He had not given them. Their sin broke the covenant security, and it gave the demons permission to stir up neighboring nations over any number of false grievances to come and prey on Israel. The whole idea was for Israel to prove the power of the Covenant by living it and remaining in shalom regardless of what troubles existed in other nations. An obedient Israel could defeat overwhelming numbers of massed troops simply by sending out their Temple Choir to battle.

But when Israel was disobedient, their overwhelming numbers couldn’t defeat an old lady throwing rocks. They had no power, and all of Creation was against them.

At some point, Israel’s penchant for unfaithfulness to God’s revelation crossed a critical line and it was all over with. The record of the Covenant of Moses remains an inspiring source of how God operates in this fallen world. It helps to explain the much more sparsely recorded Covenant of Noah. By comparing the notes within Scripture, we come to understand what Noah means by using Moses as a subset, a particular instance of Noah — that people, that place, that time. Noah applies to all humanity, wherever they go, until there are no more rainbows anywhere on earth.

We know that Biblical Law is winsome in practice, winning however many hearts are capable of seeing how beautifully it brings shalom. But the Bible was not our culture; it was added into a preexisting heathen culture, first of the aging Roman Empire, and then the Germanic hordes that overran Europe. The Bible was pulled in and its message perverted through a raft of false assumptions brought to the Scripture.

What we in America have inherited is the heathen cultural spite of the Anglo-Saxons. The religious mythology has deeply infected our churches to the point that Christianity bears little resemblance to the teachings of a Hebrew Christ. The USA was founded on a form of “trade” that insists the other party must swallow wholly the entire Anglo-Saxon way of civilization. Otherwise, trade consists of the US invading in various ways and simply taking whatever it is we want from the other parties. If they resist, we wipe them out. If they can’t change their ways, we make them slaves. If they choose to buy into our culture, we treat them with some grudging respect and just do business.

As General Butler once said, our entire military history is massing troops against everyone who won’t play by our rules. Even our Christian missions were tainted with a cultural message that overpowered the true gospel. The missionaries were often little more than agents for espionage, or even invading troops. Thus, while the troops we send are motivated by that ancient Anglo-Saxon cultural arrogance, the real issue is seizing all assets for our Big Business elite to exploit at their profit.

This is the substance of everything we’ve done with our military — everything. The only difference it makes in where we fight is which particular crop of industrial oligarchs are pulling the levers in government at the moment. Up until recently, it was a matter of Hollywood and Big Technology, and their leftist allies. Now it’s Big Oil and Military Industries pulling the levers. On top of that we’ve got a very take-charge President such as we have not seen since Jackson, but this one happens to be a businessman himself. Whatever it is masquerading as “Democratic Party” is essentially serving Hollywood and Technology, while the faux “Republican Party” serves Oil and Weapons. It’s a fight over whose business interests will prevail and control the profits of national trade and production.

Meanwhile, the only friends the US has in this world is a scattering of countries that bought into that Anglo-Saxon culture, plus the one country that donated said culture to us. Everyone else is either a conditional trading partner, always looking for a better deal, or one of our many enemies, whom we have provoked endlessly. US foreign policy will slowly shift over to serve the interests of the new status quo, but it’s the same spiteful abuse it ever was.

I submit that, if you can see it from this angle, all the political posturing and grandstanding is a lot easier to understand. Indeed, it becomes fairly predictable. Granted, there are some details I’ve left out in this painting with a broad brush, but if you already know about them, you are smart enough to get what I’m saying.

The US has defied God pretty consistently. Not once have we stood up for His Word and we have never really had much shalom, just some poor substitutes that never satisfy. We can see that much as a mere matter of Noah’s Covenant. God’s wrath is upon us; we were never in compliance and His patience is gone. The only question is who gets to knock us down and how badly we will hurt when we fall.

Posted in sanity | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on How Bad Will It Be?

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.

Posted in teaching | Tagged , | Comments Off on How a Virtual Parish Operates

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.

Posted in bible | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Psalm 119: Resh 153-160

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.

Posted in eldercraft | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on War on the Horizon

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on The Prophecy Stands

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Why Tribulation?

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.

Posted in eldercraft | Tagged , , | Comments Off on God Is Hiring Prophets

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.

Posted in sanity | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on The Fallacy of Human Rights