Biding Our Time

Posted on April 19, 2016 by ehurst

A heavy rain pattern stands over the land where I live, so there won’t be any bike rides and pictures. Instead, I’m trying to be a good steward of the day and work on revising one of my Bible study books on the General Letters. To be honest, some of what I wrote then still grabs me. In regards to 1 Peter 4:

Eternity is always a mere step away from us. Starting with the Day of Ascension, it has always been just a step away, in a certain sense, and it remains so. Thus, he encourages his readers to live with the expectation that their time here will end right in the middle of faithful service. No particular task itself is so sacred that it has to be finished before the Lord takes us away, literally or figuratively. Rather, the calling is sacred, and we should walk in that sacrificial love of the Cross, as it will bury all our sins and help us not to suffer from sins of others.

Peter was teaching the Hebrew Christians to reclaim their ancient heritage of otherworldly focus, something the Pharisees threw in the trash in favor of legalism. Goals that satisfy our reason and our worldly sense of timing will blind us to God’s perspective on time. Ripeness is in the Fruit of the Spirit, not the fruits of our labors, so the harvest can be discerned only from the moral realm.

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Spirit Scouts

Posted on April 19, 2016 by ehurst

The Boy Scouts taught me: “Always be prepared.”

But we are Spirit Scouts: “Always be heart-led.” That’s as much preparation as we really need.

First off, let me reiterate that the Internet isn’t likely to go away anytime soon. As long as it remains possible, I’ll be here and you can find me if you need me. However, there’s too good of a chance that you can’t access the Internet at times when crisis strikes. You should work toward needing me less and clinging more to the faith and message. I’m no more the Messiah than you are; many of you are more than my equal. Let me lean on you, too.

Don’t just drink from the fountain — gush yourself.

Granted, I knew with divine certitude that I was called to blaze trails. That’s not everyone’s gift. My brain was tweaked to work like a shovel, digging up stuff long buried. But I didn’t do this so I could be alone. I dug it up so that others could find it, too, because that’s the way these paths should be. God laid the paths and has invited some of us to do a little trail maintenance because He intends that someone should live in the land of His blessings.

So take the path and get to know it. Explore that Glory Land and know it for yourself. Settle in, and then go tell others about it. By no means are we the only ones doing this, so don’t be surprised when you stumble across folks who seem to evince a familiarity with this Land of the Heart. God has been calling all kinds of people, dragging them in from under every bush and rock because the people who were supposed to come refused (Matthew 22). We are likely ill-equipped to decide who should be allowed to live there with us, so we allow the Lord to decide to eject whomever displeases Him and fails to wear the garment of holiness He gives to all who ask.

All you can know is what He demands of you, so draw your own maps. Learn to work as a Spirit Scout; don’t just follow others. Right now, the place is really wide open and just getting folks to take a few steps in the right direction is a monumental task. It’s a rugged and narrow way. Share your experiences so we can all know it better. It’s certain you’ll experience something others have missed. Learn to draw the maps for yourself.

Let’s build a new civilization, a new reality. The world still lives in the Shadowlands and won’t leave easily. Their reality is fake, but it’s all they know. It’s a tall order to push those familiar shadows aside and reflect the divine light. Lots of dirt and shadow to shed; everyone is born with a dirty mirror.

Sure, the preparation is never done. There’s always one more new experience — another merit badge He awards. In this way, crisis becomes mundane, another training exercise for something else. If He chose you, it’s for certain He intends to use you. If you are heart-led, you can’t keep it to yourself. Isolation is just a passing condition on the way to fellowship and communion with others. The only reason for being able to stand alone is so you can get enough space to build a new home for others.

Scouts out!

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Cycling: West Elm Creek Basin

Posted on April 18, 2016 by ehurst

01UpperWElmOvercast and rather cool all day. This wasn’t a hydrology study, so I wasn’t chasing the creek itself. I was heart-led to get a look at the area that would be covered by Draper Lake 2.0 (West Elm Creek Reservoir) whenever that happens. Today’s ride was full of surprises that indicated the water authority has already begun buying up the land. The first shot on the right is simply gazing down the very start of West Elm Creek, sourced just off Interstate 240; this is the view from the bike path.

02MidWElmCrkFrom the end of the bike path I stayed on Midwest Boulevard straight down to SE 104th — which is a designated bike route. This second image shows land that would likely be partially under water, viewed from a ridge on Midwest Boulevard. At the corner of SE 104th stands the derelict Draper Lake Riding Club. Sorry, no horses for rent today.DraperRidingStables SE 104th is paved all the way out to Sooner Road (AKA Highway 77H). Nice and hilly with a few homes and ranches. I cut through a rather old but expensive neighborhood and took the highway down to SE 119th. Kitchen Lake there is simply not remarkable at all. Rather, it was the surrounding terrain that was quite rugged, but screened with lots of trees and shrubs. Lots of crags of red sandstone still stand above frequent little creek valleys that cut deep. It was all gravel road from here until I got back to Sooner Road.

6600blkSE119thThis old barn stands on a high ridge, so it’s likely to survive, but access may be limited once the water rises up some of the draws I crossed on the way there.12500blkSAirDepot This is another view of the same ranch from its eastern side along Air Depot. I’ve not seen the most recent projections, but I imagine the pond is just above lake level.

The SE 119th and SE 134th entrances to the Draper Lake reserve were gated and closed. Actually, it all runs back through the current ATV trails section, but the officials require a permit, so they tightly control access to make sure they get those fees. However, there were several private roads also closed by the same peculiar painted pipe-frame gates used by OKC Parks and Recreation all over for several counties (OKC covers its own, and parts of several other counties).03AirDepotSE134th One led to an old housing development that was never fully sold. Several others were agricultural gates now covered in front by the Parks gates. That means they bought all the land that, just a couple of years ago, was actively used by private owners. This old bridge is partly disassembled and blocked by earthen mounds on both ends. It crosses West Elm Creek at what would have been Air Depot just off SE 134th. And SE 134 is now closed down here in the valley back east, and that came as a surprise to me.

6501SE134thSo taking advantage of a forced detour, I spotted these old barns up against one of those sandstone mounds. These mounds have a thin covering of red clay that has weathered loose from the face of the stone, but not washed off yet, held in place by grass and trees. So it was back out to Sooner Road again and another mile south to SE 149th (AKA Stella Road).

6500SE149thThis brick structure stands atop a ridge and I have no idea what it was, only that the brickwork is roughly a century old.8500blkSE149th SE 149th is just a series of steep hills and valleys, and down in the bottom of one creek was this long abandoned business. This will be under water someday soon.

WElmCrkDouglasBlvdI stopped for break at the corner of Douglas Boulevard. This bridge on the right, south off SE 149th should be just below the proposed dam. Back the other way should have allowed me to come back to Draper Lake near the water treatment facility, but the road was closed for construction. 15001SE149thFinally, at that corner is this ancient country church house. I can recall it being a Baptist church, previously white painted wood some years back. The new steel covering hasn’t been on there all that long, but a sign on the door indicates the OKC Parks and Recreation now own it. This is still just below the proposed dam, but it seems the water board is buying everything near the future Draper 2.0. And I’m guessing it won’t be that long now before they start pushing dirt for the dam. Say goodbye to the West Elm Creek basin.

So I still had a very long ride ahead of me, because the next nearest route heading north was two miles in either direction. Fortunately, all I had to worry about was just tired legs, as the new saddle has saved me much sorrow.

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Dona Nobis Pacem

Posted on April 18, 2016 by ehurst

I prefer amateur renderings of this song.

The title is a traditional Latin prayer: Grant us peace. It’s supposed to connect to the Old Testament shalom but few Westerners are aware of the connotations of the Hebrew word. While I often use the term “social stability,” that is a contextual image. The word shalom points to peace with God on His terms. So the Latin prayer is actually more like suing for terms of peace and surrender; that’s precisely the point.

We are convinced that our God made all things, and we call Him Creator to emphasize a different turn of mind than is common among Westerners. It’s not enough to acknowledge Him as the Maker of all things, but as the only one who knows what is going on. Our experience is that He generously offered as much revelation as we could possibly handle as humanity, and the rest is up to the individual to seize upon it.

I claim to have found this peace. Some of you share in that claim. It has become a driving force in all our blather about heart-led living, because that’s where the peace is found. It could not possibly be something static. The terms of surrender escalate as we grow to a greater understanding. In many ways, that sums up the whole of our religion. Paul wrote that he did not consider himself as having arrived, but that he is on the right path and climbing to the heights:

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14 NKJV)

The climb is the prize. Peace is in the process; the thing itself is alive because it’s just a facet of your own individual communion with God. You can’t package that and sell it. You can’t teach it in finite descriptive language. It’s not a proposition; it’s Life.

I prefer that amateur rendering of the song because there is no professional worship outside the act of leading others to the same thing. When I served as Church Music Director, I avoided performing solos. My whole calling was to draw others into the experience, not to show off my vocal talent. At first that was mere instinct, but now I’m fully conscious of what drove me through all those years when I worked, often as a mere volunteer. It’s one of the few things about my passage through mainstream Christian religion that I really miss. I could ditch all of my recorded worship music if there was a way to gather with some of you and share in the communion of worship. I don’t care if you can’t carry a tune in a bucket; I want to commune with people who grasp the nature of my faith as a reflection of their own.

Somewhere out there in the future possibilities and probabilities, I sense that the day will come when I’ll find myself among fellow believers without all the trappings of what now passes for organized religion. Until then, you are my shalom family. I suspect you will still be that along with some as yet unseen physical congregation, that we’ll all be one big happy family. And I pray you’ll find yourself in similar meat-space communion. This dream isn’t dead; it keeps growing and morphing in ways I could never predict. But its life does not depend on me. I’m just a participant, a branch grafted onto the vine.

Creator, show us how to live in peace with You.

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Election Prayers?

Posted on April 17, 2016 by ehurst

Let’s review: It won’t matter who wins the presidential election here in the US. The Trumanite bureaucracy rules and the president will always be a mere figurehead. Unless we get a president with the will and means to destroy the bureaucracy, nothing will change except that this slide will continued downhill. America is doomed.

So what could I pray for during this election? First and foremost, I pray that the utterly perverted “Christian” facade of Ted Cruz will be ripped away, exposed for all the world to see. There’s nothing to gain from wishing harm upon the man himself, but I pray God expose this fake for what he is, because it is major blasphemy.

Trump apparently has little to hide, so we can see his shady morals.

And while I could care less if she goes to jail, I want a similar full exposure of Clinton’s criminal conduct. Again, the single biggest problem is the facade. It should be the sort of thing no one bothers to deny, so plain and unavoidable.

Sanders has a few skeletons in his closet, so exposure would be considerably less dramatic for him.

And surely you realize that people committed to these various candidates won’t change their tune once everything is exposed. Rare, indeed, is the activist who actually works from the facts. It’s a form of idolatry.

This is precisely what we should want to see exposed — the idolatry. While I might toss off the standard noble prayer request that God revive our faith and heal our land, I want to avoid the vast load of bullshit that normally comes with that sort of pious language. I am praying that God’s moral truth be revealed in our land, which would naturally mean a torrent of wrath. There is no glee in human suffering, but it’s worse if sin can be ignored, so let Him reveal His judgment on this nation’s sin. The meaning I put behind “a national revival of faith” means very few current religious institutions would still exist. My deepest compassion is for the significant number of genuine believers trapped in a corrupt and politicized system that blinds them to the vast heritage of blessings our Lord holds for them.

I want God to win this year. Not in this election, but I want Him glorified against the horrific evil that our political process has become.

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Reminder: Your Elder Is a Clown

Posted on April 17, 2016 by ehurst

At least one person this week was not able to detect my sense of humor in what I write. Granted, some of my stuff does take on a somber tone, and I’ve been somewhat restrained during my sad season living entirely too close to some serious wackos. I’ve moved away from that place. But it has taken awhile to shed that sense of wading through a swamp and dodging alligators. (The new mountain bike is helping a lot!) I’ve always been a clown, but recent events have peeled away the straight-jacket and I’m starting to manifest my giddy, bubbly personality more consistently.clown7

So I guess this serves as a warning that it’s going to get worse.

Keep your eye out for sarcasm, parody and just plain old goofy nonsense. It’s not that this is going to turn into a joke forum, but that I tend to dramatize and entertain at points where it involves myself, at least. Is it really necessary to use quotation marks when I say that someone “attacked” me? If you’ve hung around here much, I’m willing to bet you don’t see me as fearful and worried about someone’s rhetoric. Say the worst you can about me and I might just grin and nod in agreement. And then warn you that you still have to live with it because I’m not going to go away. You can’t get rid of me that easily.

Is it really necessary to use all the common clues, completely lacking in creativity? Do you really need emojis, “LOL” and stuff like that? Ick.

I can yell and be angry, but in a split second still say something totally off-the-wall. Try to avoid seeing me through the eyes of our Western social expectations. I tend to violate that standard willfully. When you walk by the heart, human anger usually rises from some well-considered sense of threat, and fades quickly when the threat is under control. I might be wrong and I surely know how to grovel at the feet of anyone when it’s morally justified, but it’s been a long time since I felt genuine guilt about playing rough.

So it works best if you erase from your mind any part of an image of me that includes genuine hostility and threat. That sort of thing is not a part of my online ministry; there’s no way to give it any real meaningful use in the virtual realm. Yes, Zionists are a real threat in one sense, but until they start parking outside my door with thugs and weapons, or starting cracking into my computers and online accounts, we need not make any dramatic whispering plans and crank up the encrypted communications. The one thing they actually are likely to do is attempt censorship of our online message. So take that part seriously, but chuckle if I suggest anything else.

Oh, please, please, please, don’t hurt my widdle feelings! (Imagine dramatic pleading, bowing and scraping with outrageous sarcasm.)

And then I crack up, roaring with laughter. That’s the image I want you to have of me.

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Psalm 97

Posted on April 16, 2016 by ehurst

This is a coronation hymn for Jehovah as sovereign God over all Creation. It sounds exactly like what you might hear when a parade makes a ceremonial march before the ruler from the gate of the capital to the doors of the palace. In this case, the ritual would be marching the Ark of Covenant as the symbolic throne of God up to the Temple.

Because He is rule is all Creation, let all of the earth rejoice at the celebration of His coronation, all the way to very ends of human occupation.

What should you look for? Not some fancy carriage or curtained sedan chair. No, this Lord is hidden by mystery, as symbolized by the mention of clouds and darkness. Only those devoted to Him fully could hope to recognize Him; no one else can begin to comprehend Him. His throne — His power and authority — began with the revelation of righteousness and moral justice. The power of His justice provides no opportunity for anyone to resist. His revelation shines like flashes of lightening, always in the company of earth shattering thunder. Were He to but show His face, Creation itself would dissolve. So all of Heaven, the ineffable realm above us, celebrates Him as the very definition of moral goodness, and there is no excuse for anyone on earth to avoid knowing Him.

There is no doubt that mankind seeks all kinds of ways to find peace, imagining deities that answer their own thoughts. When God asserts His authority, these people tremble in shame at His revelation. All those gods, if they existed, would fall down before Him, too. But the people He called to the mission of His revelation rejoice at the mere thought of Him finally showing Himself so that no one could argue against His name.

If you claim to revere Him, then learn to hate what He hates. Trust Him to keep you out of the power of moral darkness. His reign is like planting a crop of enlightenment, with a harvest of gladness and joy in moral purity. This is our Sovereign, so rejoice!

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Cycling: Wilshire Saddle Test

Posted on April 16, 2016 by ehurst

ScreenshotThe map shows where all but one of the images were taken. It was stiff southerly winds, overcast with scudding clouds and occasional breaks of sunlight. Warm enough but the storms are headed this way. I really didn’t need a long ride; I just wanted to test the new saddle. It actually made my butt feel better, so that part was a success.01VestigialWalls I rode north on Midwest Boulevard and up to Wilshire Boulevard. Turing right it becomes a gravel road running east to the bank of the North Canadian River. The road is public and I am under the impression the county owns the little pocket at the end. Either way, it was all wide open and no signs or restrictions. The image to the upper right here shows some concrete block walls still standing, and it was visible on the satellite view if you zoom in really close, so I was curious.

02DownstreamViewClimbing over the construction rubble, I had a nice view of a tight bend in the river. The first shot here is viewing northward, which is downstream.03UpstreamView The second shot is southward, upstream. There really wasn’t a whole lot to see here aside from the ugly rubble, so I let some of it show in the frames. It’s present in massive quantities dumped in tall mounds for quite a ways up stream.

04SagAcrossFieldBehind me is the Canadian Valley Sod Farm. Would you believe nature seems to know when you have a camera and want nice landscape shots? My head is aimed around at random, but nature grabs my eyes and says, “Lookee here!” However, I can tell you my little camera loses just a little of the subtle nuances that cause the eyes to marvel. This is a sag that runs across the field just off the river; it was there before any farming activity. The original settlers didn’t bother with relocating natural drainage, but at some point during the previous century, when it became feasible and affordable, laws and regulations made it technically illegal without some serious hassles to gain a permit to change a natural water course. You can’t see this from across the field up on Midwest Boulevard.

On my way home was a stiff headwind. Now, Jeanette is different from the Edgewood. The latter was longer and heavier with less roll-resistance, and kept up a good momentum, making it faster on long rides. Jeanette is lighter and far more responsive, and encourages a more touristy, taking-it-easy kind of ride. So heading into the wind was only slightly slower because knobbies do offer just a little roll-resistance, but it was just a fun and patient pedaling while checking out the odd crap people lose that falls in the ditch. It ranges from mundane, to inexplicable, to sometimes actually still useful, and on rare occasions something even obscene. I’ve picked up some interesting tools lying at the edge of the roads, though. And frankly, I like the winds.

05SpringDressRehearsalAnyway, I just kept rolling along until I got back to the river crossing where all the work has resumed. Not much had changed visually, but I noticed a previous view I shot with winter brown is now showing a spring dress rehearsal with some green.

And on a future exploration, I could find myself back in that foliage somewhere since the satellite images show a trail back there.

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The Urge to Torment

Posted on April 16, 2016 by ehurst

Sometimes it’s not enough to say it comes from Satan; in our culture that can serve to dismiss any number of horrible sins and leave us no way to uproot them from our own souls.

The psychology of Christian Mysticism aims to recapture in some measure the state-of-mind from the Bible that we can use today. This is not a psychology limited to what behavioral science can detect, but presumes to explain a whole range of influences that are typically labeled “subconscious.” We seek to pull some of that into the light and offer norms that Western social sciences resist by relying on ancient wisdom common to folks before the West arose, because the Bible belongs to that pre-Western world.

For example, The Cult is a sample of typing psychology. It isn’t about a concrete entity, a literal group of people forming a cult. Rather, it’s a characterization of a psychological influence that can be discerned as consistent over long periods of human history. It works the same as a religion or cult, yet is not organized by people, but by its own nature. It manifests in other human organizations. You can tell when people operate under this influence and know what to expect. It’s a reliable predictor of future behavior and explains the motivations, etc. It also clearly separates between those who consciously embrace it — very few in number — and those who are simply steered by it — the vast majority.

A critical element in this influence is the perverse delight in tormenting others. But people who consciously embrace this influence seldom engage directly in torture, preferring to let others do it for them, as a means to pervert those who serve without full awareness. Most of the people who do the performing of torture are totally unaware what it does to themselves. A critical element is the compartmentalization of conscious awareness — it induces a kind of schizophrenia. It’s not psychopathy, but a deep perversion that remains in its own space and operates alongside the rather mundane and decent personality most folks manifest. Within the realm of activity ruled by the bureaucratic consensus, the actor is dominated by the evil self and there is zero conscious guilt of moral wrong. You should understand that grisly and horrific torture is just the outer edge of a singular tendency that often shows up somewhere short of that.

In other words, it is essential to bureaucracy itself. Where did it come from in our culture? It’s part of the worst elements of Germanic tribal mythology generally (Anglo-Saxon specifically), whose chief deity is that grouchy Nordic sonuvabitch we all recognize as the soul of the Western conceptions of God. Once you can make that connection, you understand how bureaucrats can operate with zero conscience and go home feeling morally approved after a day at the office tormenting their fellow humans. It’s not mischief; it’s perfectly normal for them. You deserve that torment. And if you review the history of this Anglo-Saxon middle-class bureaucratic cancer on the earth, you’ll recognize the relentless slow creep into greater dehumanizing depravity. It cannot help but get worse over time.

I feel sorry for those of you who work in a bureaucracy, because it is very hard work to remain sane. Stranger yet, working in that atmosphere is no insulation against bureaucracy you face when working outside your own. It really is a horrific, perverse thing.

So your response needs this kind of understanding. This is why I warn folks that legislation means nothing, because the folks who write and implement that legislation, and who interpret and enforce it, are all bureaucrats at heart if not in fact. How do you stop it? You don’t. God could if it matches His ineffable wisdom and planning, but we already know He confined Satan to this earth for a particular purpose. That you suffer personally is not the objective, but to make sure that sin reaps what it sows. Satan’s punishment is holding the job roughly equivalent to Potiphar in the story of Joseph in Egypt, though not Potiphar’s character. If most of humanity is confined within Satan’s dominion, then they are slaves to things they seldom comprehend. They are victims in their own right. Whatever we might do toward their redemption and release includes not taking it personally, but recognizing this world is no longer Eden. It is a fallen realm of Satan’s dungeon, in effect. Torment is built in.

Don’t get in a huff because that’s just the another feature of the same dungeon. It serves to enhance the torment if you buy into the idea of rights and laws as if they made any difference in outcomes. No system devised by humans will ever restrain this evil, because the systems arise from the same perverted atmosphere that allows torment in the first place. The bureaucracy is simply the latter stages of the same crop of fruit. Recognize the tree as poison and don’t eat the fruit.

Learn to discern the system and how it works.

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Persecution

Posted on April 16, 2016 by ehurst

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve tried to outline in the Answering Series things I might say in response to typical questions about what distinguishes my faith and religion. The purpose was to summarize what you can expect from me. Some of you share with me various measures of that summary, and this is what makes our parish. The membership is limited to those who can put up with me while using this blog and my writing as a focus of some kind of virtual association. Very few of you lack other means of fellowship and communion, so this whole thing will always be tentative. For most of the people who subscribe to this and/or the other blog, my blather is just a little something extra on the side and I’m happy to be a part of your world. I’m thrilled to have you in mine on these terms; you don’t owe me anything, nor should you feel obligated.

For now, there is no real-world parish for me. That’s not meant to make you feel sad; it’s the reality of my calling. You who commune with me here are the only “church” I have, so I would naturally have more of myself invested in this project than most of you. And a few of you have felt yourself called alongside for whatever reason, and I’m blessed by your company. It’s open to anyone, but investment of yourself naturally means you’ll have a stronger influence in whatever decisions are made. It’s that agape thing, you know: Don’t get involved unless you sense the power of the Holy Spirit dragging you into it. We are virtual family, sharing a spiritual DNA — that comes with privileges. Such privileges are of no value to anyone who isn’t held inside the bonds of communion.

That doesn’t mean our electronic noise here is of no interest to any one else. Some find the noise offensive.

Being a peculiar religion way out on the fringes of mainstream society, one of things that marks us is our reliance on otherworldly considerations — “the supernatural.” It spooks most people, but we take for granted a way of operating in this world that isn’t rooted here. We talk to nonhuman elements in our world and believe they talk back because we are convinced Our Lord does business that way. And I, for one, believe that God speaks through dreams and visions. To avoid sounding like a bunch of religion that is really not the same as mine, I tend to be reticent about dreams and visions until they suggest something that might affect you.

It’s not that I pay no attention to the vast wealth of information already available to us, but that I don’t trust it to cover everything. My Lord guides me to understand things of this world, but He speaks to me directly in other ways, and I’ve had a dream-vision that this virtual parish has gotten, or is about to get, some attention from those who consider us annoying. Questions and dissent are no threat to my faith, but someone actively trying to change my message or trying to hush up any part of it is persecution, by definition, because our whole religion in this parish is mostly restricted to the electronic communication. So it’s one thing to notice the data online suggesting that the atmosphere is getting tense, and the nature of the conflicts; I’ve posted about that plenty of times. It’s another thing when that indefinable voice of God that drove me to this place says it’s about to get personal.

And if you consider yourself a part of this ministry, it could touch you, too.

The Answering Series was hopefully a good review that fortified a core of belief for some of you. The last thing I need is to confuse and obscure something that makes a difference in claiming our divine heritage in Christ. All I really want is to help discard things that you don’t need to worry about so you can focus your energy on what it takes to pursue the Son and please the Father. That includes helping you decide what part of my message might not work for you, because it would pull me down to take myself too seriously. Either way, I took advantage of some heavy discussion to make sure there was no confusion about what I represent, with an eye to helping you crystallize what you represent. Because the fiery arrows are coming.

That’s a reference to Ephesians 6 where Paul offers some parabolic images of spiritual armor. Stand firm! You might not cling to this earth with as much physical mass as I have, but your faith can easily overwhelm the mountains Satan puts in your path. By the way, my dream indicated that the attack, whatever it seems on the surface, will come from the Zionist Christians. Fortunately, their attacks seldom include any kind of offline persecution, so I rather expect it will be noise here and perhaps in your email, etc. That’s been the pattern so far with other folks they attack. I suppose there will come a day when the spite will ratchet to a higher level, but I don’t believe we are there yet.

Just look for some noise, and let your heart decide if you need to answer, and how. In general, don’t engage in debate as if you could hope to persuade them with reason. That’s their home ground. I’m often willing to explain myself, of course, but I never answer attempts to manipulate. The Lord saw fit to grant me some training and experience in head games, and I’m sure some of you have your own scars. At any rate, should anything instructive appear on my radar, I’ll share it with you here.

Addenda: My dream included a very specific warning about someone; would you be surprised that they hit me this morning with an email blast of Zionism after I posted this? So far as I know, this person is not a regular reader. However, the exchange turned out gentle in the end; give God room to work.

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