Eschatology Notes 04

Posted on July 12, 2024 by ehurst

Final comment on Daniel 9: Nowhere in the NT is this prophecy quoted directly. This is something conspicuous by its absence, in that no one mentions it as messianic prophecy. Jesus mentions the “abomination of desolation” which is found a couple of places in Daniel, but it’s not specific enough. This tends to support my contention that the primary point of the passage in Daniel 9 is to disabuse him of the notion that Israel would ever return to her former glories.

So, we cannot call it a part of the classically recognized messianic prophecies as identified by scholars. However, on a popular level, late Second Temple rabbinical commentaries on Daniel’s prophecy seemed to agree that it indicated a Messiah coming, typically with a timing roughly when Jesus ministered. This is why Bible teachers assert that there was a very good reason so many Jews were expecting the Messiah when Jesus appeared.

However, here’s something noteworthy in thinking about Hebrew numerology — Heiser points out that in Luke 1, if you count the days from the moment Zachariah is informed he would have a son, to the time Jesus was dedicated in the Temple, that was 490 days, a literal seventy weeks. Note that it’s also the same angel Gabriel who spoke to Daniel and to Zachariah, and they were both praying. Heiser mentions other parallels.

I haven’t changed my convictions regarding Revelation or Matthew 24-25, so there’s no point in rehashing those here. My commentaries are available from the Radix Fidem library. Heiser lists the other passages that mention Jesus’ return. The main point is whether you collate and harmonize them or insist that they discuss two different events, a rapture and a return. It requires a nit-picking grammatical legalism to see two separate events, which is a standard feature of evangelical biblical exegesis in the first place.

Heiser also points out how Galatians 3 shoots a big hole in any doctrine that assumes Israel and the Church continue in parallel. That passage says outright that the New Covenant replaces the Old, that those who follow Christ are true heirs of the promises to Abraham. This is something we emphasize in our teaching. The national covenant died on the Cross.

Finally, the other major issue is whether you believe that Solomon’s domain (1 Kings 4:21-24) fulfilled the promise to Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3; 15:6-7), since both use the exact same landmarks. While we believe it no longer matters, just for the record, Solomon got all the land Abraham was promised. There is no unfinished business on that issue. God’s promise was fulfilled.

That’s enough eschatology. Jesus is coming back and we will all be surprised by some aspect of His return.

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Eschatology: Daniel 9

Posted on July 11, 2024 by ehurst

I’m going to plunge right into the passage Heiser considers most difficult: Daniel 9:24-27. He doesn’t even mention the approach I used in my published commentary. You can look it up, but I didn’t try to nail down too many specifics for the simple reason that it would miss the point.

The context is Daniel praying about the end of the Exile. He knows that the 70 years Jeremiah prophesied is finished. He’s praying about a restoration of the city of Jerusalem, the Temple, and the Covenant. He’s already dealt with Nebuchadnezzar’s vision of the statue and the future empires, as well as his own vision of the four beasts representing the rulers over his own nation. Then he has a vision of the goat and ram. He’s already spoken with Gabriel before. Now he’s praying for his own nation.

His emphasis is on repentance. Keep in mind that Daniel knows the Covenant and is quite clear on the symbols of humble obedience to things that have been neglected. The whole point of this message here in chapter 9 is that the Lord will restore the remnant of the nation, but in the long run, it will not turn out as Daniel expects. The nation will never get back to the ancient glories. It will continue into apostasy until the city and temple are destroyed a final time. However, the returning remnant will get the symbols of righteousness right for a time, at least. The city and temple are coming back.

That much I wrote in my commentary. I’ve since done some research, and I want to call attention to this rather long study on identifying the key element of the “decree to rebuild” — it was 457 BC, not the more popular notion of 538 BC.

Let’s parse the passage at issue using the NET translation:

Seventy weeks have been determined
concerning your people and your holy city…

Gabriel begins by establishing a frame of reference. There is no specific Hebrew word for “week” so the actual term is simply “seven” and the thrust is not “weeks” but Sabbaths. This is a key warning in the Law and Prophets, a theme that keeps coming back. The nation was exiled so that the land could have its Sabbaths, Sabbaticals and Jubilees that had been missed for a very long time.

Further, notice the interplay of seventy years of exile versus seventy weeks of years (Sabbaticals). There are 7×70 years for what follows.

…to put an end to rebellion,
to bring sin to completion,
to atone for iniquity,
to bring in perpetual righteousness…

Daniel wants this more than anything. He is praying that his nation can return to the ancient glories, the good times when they were righteous. This is Hebrew hyperbole; don’t force legalism or an excessively literal reading of this language. Gabriel is pointing to the genuine humility of Daniel’s repentance on his nation’s behalf.

…to seal up the prophetic vision…

The Hebrew language here refers to authentication of the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Placing a seal on something means it’s the real deal.

…and to anoint the most holy place.

This is an obvious reference to rebuilding and restoring the Temple and ritual offerings, of having once again the Presence of God in His appointed place in the Promised Land.

So know and understand:
From the issuing of the command to restore and rebuild
Jerusalem…

This is the point of the linked long article above. The Decree of Cyrus mentions the temple, but does not include the city. It mattered in Medo-Persian imperial law; without mention of the city, only the temple was allowed on the site. It’s been the considered opinion of some scholars that Ezra received a commission for his second visit, and that we can deduce from his actions that the commission included rebuilding the city and renovating the temple, but not the walls. We can’t know the exact date of that commission, but we do know when Ezra went back to implement things.

Given the narrative in Ezra, we know that he struggled to reestablish the full ritual calendar regarding the Second Temple. On his second visit in 457 BC, he would have waited until the official beginning of the year on Tishri 1, 457 BC. The whole point of Gabriel’s choice of terminology points to this very thing — restoring the ritual calendar as a symbol of full restoration of the Covenant life.

…until and anointed one, a prince arrives…

Heiser notes the huge debate over whether this is Jesus or some other. I take the position that this refers to Jesus as the Messiah, though I acknowledge that the Hebrew term “messiah” is generic for “anointed one”, having been applied to other figures both Israeli and pagan (Cyrus is called a messiah in one place).

…there will be a period of seven weeks and sixty-two weeks.

Heiser also notes that the Masoretic Text inserts a grammatical break between the seven weeks and the sixty-two, meaning that the interval between the decree to build the city and the arrival of the anointed prince is only seven weeks, and that the sixty-two then follows with the city continuously built up. I’m going to go with the majority view that this is not the correct reading. The city will be rebuilt; that’s one thing. The issue to commence building the city is the starting point, and the arrival of the Messiah is the completion of 7+62 weeks.

The point of mentioning the first seven weeks is all about that first Jubilee that Ezra’s reforms will see implemented as part of the full ritual calendar restoration. The full ritual calendar had not been observed properly for a long time before the Babylonian siege, nor during the Exile or the Return up to that time. Observing a proper Jubilee was like a test for removing the defilement of all those failed observances.

If we accept the concept of starting with Ezra’s commission to rebuild the city in 457 BC, that puts the end of the sixty-nine weeks (483 years) right about the time Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan. That’s close enough for Hebrew prophecy.

It will again be built, with the plaza and moat,
but in stressful times.

This affirms a portion of what Daniel had been praying for. The Second Temple will be built and eventually the city will have a nice plaza and wall and defensive trench. Side note: We deduce that someone during Ezra’s service in Jerusalem attempted to rebuild the city wall in Jerusalem and it was destroyed by Persian troops because it was not included in the commission Ezra had received. The wall was eventually permitted under Nehemiah in 444 BC.

Now after the sixty-two weeks,
an anointed one will be cut off and having nothing.

That is, sometime after the full sixty-nine weeks, in which at least one proper Jubilee will be observed, things will go downhill. The honest truth is the Hebrew for us is quite ambiguous regarding “an anointed one will be cut off”. The rest of the prophecy is murky on purpose, and modern folks read way too much into this.

What would it have meant for Daniel, given what he has already been shown in previous prophetic messages? What is Daniel expecting here? That’s the whole point of the passage, and any desperate search for specific clues that match later events would be missing that point altogether — the kingship will be vacated, implying that the nation will forever cease to exist independently.

The balance of this passage is all about how God acts out of sight from the political obsessions of humans, not so much about specific timing and events. What follows is detached from the seventy weeks of years.

As for the city and the sanctuary,
the people of the coming prince will destroy them.
But his end will come speedily like a flood.
Until the end of the war that has been decreed
there will be destruction.

Basic fact — some political power is coming that will destroy the Temple and City. Gabriel is telling him: Don’t get hung up on that, Daniel. We can read all kinds of future events into this through various levels of literalism and symbolism, but the whole point is that the Temple and City are not the big deal Daniel makes of it. It doesn’t matter who does what.

He will confirm a covenant with many for one week.
But in the middle of that week
he will bring sacrifices and offerings to a halt.
On the wing of abominations will come one who destroys,
until the decreed end is poured out on the one who destroys.

It’s funny how most scholars and theologians recognize that this final week is detached from the sixty-nine in terms of continuity, but then they won’t recognize the fluidity of the wording otherwise. The continuity is in the flow, not the calendar. Daniel would have understood that; seventy weeks were decreed, but not all in one lump.

The only point to mentioning a half-week is the symbol for tribulation = 3.5 years, 42 months, 1260 days. Daniel would have seen that immediately.

This is typology: Antiochus Epiphanes committed a desolation of abomination in the Temple in 167 BC, and his life ended shortly thereafter. Rome also committed an abomination of desolation on the Temple leading up to the revolt and siege in 70 AD. Both the Emperor Vespasian, and his son Titus who commanded the forces, died rather quickly from harsh ailments. The critical element (“abomination”) in those two events was the idolatry — defiling the Temple with pagan rituals. We can say the Israelis learned that anti-idolatry lesson from the Exile, but they substituted a subtle self-idolatry for the more obvious ritual idolatry.

Finally, Jesus is the counter-type of this image. He also brought an end to the ritual sacrifices in the Temple by offering Himself as the final Lamb of God. He then opened the Temple up to all nations, and turned His followers into living temples of the Holy Spirit. Instead of false images and false gods, we are meant to be the true image of the only God. This matters in understanding the gospel message of opening the Covenant to Gentiles.

The final words of the passage refer to Satan himself. It’s a summary of what this is all about. As long as there are humans doing human things, the Devil will raise up figures who destroy everything humans have built, good or bad. None of it matters. Eventually it will all be destroyed as will the destroyers.

Daniel is all about typology and numerology. It was inescapable in the Ancient Near East, in Daniel’s education in Babylon’s courts, and in Hebrew culture itself. It is the language of Heaven. Without that, you cannot hope to understand Daniel, nor the angels who communicated with him.

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Eschatology Notes 03

Posted on July 10, 2024 by ehurst

One more item before we dive into the list of key passages for the study of eschatology: Hebrew cultural expressions.

For example, it’s an old established principle that Hebrew literature is all about the drama. They didn’t consider hyperbole as deceptive. Everyone in the audience recognized the hyperbole for what it was and no one was deceived. It’s just how they talked.

Thus, at times you’ll read statements about “all” in places where we would waffle saying “most”. Even in English, we might say “everyone knows” something, when it’s more precisely a simple matter of common knowledge. For us, the facts are the thing. For the Hebrews, it was a matter of the moral theme. Where are your commitments? Where does your faith reside?

A major element that completely befuddles most Americans is the frequent Hebrew casual neglect of chronological order. Proper formal Hebrew narrative is often quite nonconsecutive in relating events. The moral import is given far greater weight.

We know that Genesis 1 in is not in chronological order, but is in moral logical order. Notice that light comes before the luminaries that give light. It’s more important to establish the fundamental pattern of seven days than to give you a literal “First Week” in time and space. It’s about “light” as moral truth, the distinction between good and evil, not a materialistic question of source and product.

John’s Gospel is not in chronological order; some portions of Matthew isn’t either — to include Jesus’ message in chapters 24-25. The Book of Revelation is a pattern, not a chronology. We are pretty sure the Book of Judges is not in proper consecutive order, and it’s a whole lot easier to read Daniel 9 if you aren’t expecting it to be a consecutive sequence of events. Why do you suppose Mark makes it a point to state that this or that event follows another so his Roman readers can make sense of it? Romans had very low appreciation for Hebrew neglect of chronology.

Please note that this is particularly true of anything where God is speaking. There are times when He caters to a human sense of chronology and it shows. But most of the time, He’s demanding that we rise to a less childish level and grasp how He views things. It’s not that He has no sense of time and chronology, but it doesn’t affect Him. He intrudes into history wherever and whenever it suits Him; it’s all one thing to Him.

I’ve said this before: The Hebrew sense of time is more about fruit coming ripe than following a schedule. Their smallest increment of time was the hour, and it was quite often used in a non-literal sense in the first place. And the term “forty days (and nights)”? It was more often not literal than literal. It was meant to convey “a little over a month”. Numerical precision was seldom of any significance in a Hebrew mind.

While we cannot internalize an eternal perspective, we can grasp something of the nature of it. Our instinct for sequential chronology is going to blind us to what God says. Any word of prophecy is far more concerned with how you react than what you might know. The whole point is to move your soul to a better place where divine covering is stronger and your witness to divine justice is much more clear.

When you study eschatology, bring with you a understanding of the Hebrew lack of interest in factual precision, and far greater interest in moral precision.

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Eschatology Notes 02

Posted on July 9, 2024 by ehurst

Related to the concept that covenants can have invisible aspects is the whole concept of Two Realms. Heiser is obviously aware of this, having written Unseen Realm, and refers to it often enough, but he lacks the broad sweep of how the Spirit Realm does and does not relate to our Fallen Realm.

I’m not faulting him; it’s not his kind of subject. Rather, I’m noting that his discussion of eschatology lacks a few things that matter very much to us. This is why his characterization of Amillennialism doesn’t include our perspective.

He’s on the right track using the theological concept of “already-but-not-yet” — that a thing in the Bible is connected to both realms, and that something asserted true about our situation as believers can apply partially now and more completely in Eternity. This reflects the nature of divine revelation, often expecting us to grasp things on two levels at once. It’s just that Heiser doesn’t seem to apply it often enough.

One place where he seems to make an error is the nature of Divine Election. He’s dismissive of most mentions of it, because he assumes it is limited to just this realm. So far as I can tell from his teaching, he doesn’t see election as something that has somewhat different effects on both levels.

He knows that the word “angels” means different things in the OT versus the NT because of how the Hebrew language gets translated into Greek and English. But he doesn’t see how that applies to Election. The Chosen Nation (AKA “Elect Nation”) is one thing, as is the issue with Paul’s discussion of Jacob and Esau, or Pharaoh as “chosen”. But the Eternal Elect souls are another thing entirely.

This is why you need to pay attention to the applicable covenant for a proper context on the use of the terms “chosen” or “elect”. What can we know about the covenant purpose in the context under discussion? Jacob and Esau were under Abraham’s Covenant. Pharaoh ran up against the Covenant of Moses. What happens with election under the Covenant of Christ? The covenant’s purpose is the key to what we are to make of election.

Election is simply God’s prerogative applied to the context. We can predict some outcomes simply from knowing which covenant is in force. He always acts with a purpose, and it was Heiser who revealed the business of God having a dispute with the Devil and some members of the Divine Council, and that the whole purpose of God in creating humans rests partly on our ability to side with God against His troublemakers.

While we are limited in grasping all the implications of that image, it explains why election under Christ means “going to Heaven” unconditionally, or at least as far as we are permitted to see. The conditionality element shows up in our lives here; it’s the Covenant of Christ. It was Heiser who noted that this was a secret kept from the Divine Council and Satan, that God would elect souls from every nation to His eternal kingdom in Christ, and ignore the national boundaries.

You should bring these assumptions with you when examining the passages that seem to address the Second Coming and the End of Time.

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Eschatology Notes 01

Posted on July 8, 2024 by ehurst

I was watching the Heiser videos a second time, taking notes. He said something about a document on his website so I went searching for it. Turns out he had a set of questions he had proposed way back in 2008 for people to review in thinking about their view of eschatology.

Later, Heiser expanded on those questions in a series of posts that were appeared in 2010. This series turns out to be much better organized and in-depth than the videos. I’m not going to reproduce any part of his extended notes on eschatology, but I will be referring to that series of posts in my series.

I will admit that I am making my own plain-text copy of his blog pages for later reference. I assume his blog has been through a software upgrade at least once, because these older pages do not display properly. Then again, Heiser is notorious for doing a lot of cut-n-paste without even a cursory review of what the results look like. Lots of characters don’t transfer properly, even when it’s all English language. Thus, I’m having to edit the spelling and typography of his material to make them more consistent with standard practices.

Yes, I’ll make copies available when I’m finished, but I won’t post them directly to the Net anywhere. I’ll share them privately.

If you take the time to wade through this series, you’ll notice he is preoccupied with Dispensational Theology. He mentions the Left Behind series and some rather famous Dispie authors, but I suppose Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth is just too pedestrian for his tastes, as is Jack T. Chick and his tracts. Yet, they are major influences on the debate.

At any rate, he invests a lot time dealing with Premillennial Pre-tribulation theology, and doesn’t mention anything from the Christian Mysticism (CM) side of things. When CM people have an eschatological stance, like ours it is somewhat Amillennial in the main, but not in all the details he mentions.

A major difference is how we view the covenants of the Bible. For us, the covenants must be treated as living entities. They are an aspect of the Word of God; they never fail in themselves. Heiser’s comments about conditionality versus unconditionality I think misses the point. The covenants are like divine entities that have their own existence independent of any humans adhering to them.

Thus, God’s covenant with Israel (AKA, the Law of Moses) did not depend on the nation. It always accomplished God’s purpose, one way or another. When the people failed the conditions of the Covenant, they lost out on the blessings, but were still forced to fulfill the purpose. Here’s the thing: We don’t always know the purpose. The purpose of each covenant is indicated to some degree, but there remains for them an aspect that is visible only from the divine perspective. Thus, at no time could any mere humans truly understand the whole of the covenant, only their obligations.

There have always been elements of every covenant that were out of human view. This is why there are times when God seems very tolerant and fulfills some element of His promises for His own sake, and other times and places where He lets it drop when the people refuse to obey. We are not capable of understanding where He drew the lines because we could never see the whole picture.

While I don’t have footnotes, I’m not the first person to suggest this viewpoint. Somewhere in his studies, Heiser must of have missed this, because he tends to use the language of law and mechanics regarding the covenants of Abraham, Moses, David, etc. There’s a lot of critical questions he misses because of this, and he assumes strictures apply to the questions that I say aren’t there. His logical framework is missing something.

Furthermore, this hidden aspect of the covenants is the glue that holds them together. This is why the Old and New Covenants have continuity. We can see the traces of continuity when Paul enforces Old Testament law on a church, but the moral fabric behind that particular issue is not visible to the fleshly nature. It defies human reason, but it shines brightly in our hearts. Paul was used to operating that way, so he knew instinctively, as it were, which items belonged in both, even when it’s not obvious to scholarship.

Our covenant relationship with Christ implies a legal status, if you will, but it’s inherently personal and is linked to divine implications that our intellect cannot grasp.

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Eschatology Introduction

Posted on July 7, 2024 by ehurst

In case it wasn’t clear to you, the Radix Fidem path is inherently Amillennial.

The key issue is that we do not believe the prophecies and promises require that Christ establish a political kingdom in this world. That’s the key issue.

If you really want to dig into the theology, I recommend you wade through Dr. Heiser’s series on the framework of eschatology. Instead of taking any particular position, in roughly four hours of video he lays out the most common questions you must answer when you examine key passages. He insists that all the various popular positions end up fudging at least one place or another.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

I note in particular that Daniel’s Seventy Weeks passage is easily the most challenging reference of the whole thing. The hardest part is getting a clear translation of what Daniel was trying to tell us. And then, you must face the question of how to make sense of it.

But if that’s not your kind of thing, then it’s probably enough for you to know that your host has been Amillennial for years, though not strictly according to the standard script. The main point is that this fancy word means we don’t expect a literal thousand-year reign of Christ over this world.

I plan to take a look at the major passages here this week.

Side note: I’m with Heiser on one thing — I don’t read too many theologians. I want to know what the text says and work it out from there. Are there any outside references that provide context? I want to know what they say. What did it mean to the author and his immediate audience?

Addenda: It turns out you don’t need the videos. Heiser offered a cogent review of it all on his blog. Go to this page for a linked list.

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NT Doctrine — 2 Timothy 3

Posted on July 6, 2024 by ehurst

I’m convinced that Paul foresaw the West in some sense. I believe he and other apostles could discern the dark plans of Satan and his allies to create a culture that would pervert the gospel and mask his evil work. The most dangerous lie is the one that stands very close to the truth and makes them difficult to distinguish yet changes one critical important part.

He refers to “last days” not so much as a portion of time but is pointing to a condition. After the final revelation in Christ, we enter a situation in which the forces of Darkness realize what they are up against, having finally understood the Lord’s plan. Their actions will be aimed at keeping everyone out of the Covenant. Thus, they will work overtime tempting people in ways they never did before.

Paul describes what kind of society our Enemy wants to create. It turns out that such people had already begun to show up around churches. They were of a type, predators who took advantage of primary charitable nature of Christian communities. A mainstay of faith community from before the time of Jesus were women of means, such as the one who funded the ministry of Jesus and the first century churches. This is what the predators considered the easiest prey, using appeals to vanity and offering them privileged insider knowledge in return for a share of that funding that supported churches.

These women existed because in that world, the average woman was a decade or two younger than her husband. It was entirely natural that there should be widows everywhere, and a significant number were left wealthy and alone. They would often go looking for some charitable cause to support, and no one was surprised that they would support churches, even when they never really understood the gospel message. That they were willing to follow an apostle’s teaching also made them vulnerable to false teaching, particularly the kind of garbage the Judaizers and Gnostics cooked up.

These men were in the same class as two mythical Egyptian magicians alleged to have opposed Moses during his visit to Pharaoh’s courts. Second Temple literature refers to them and it was common knowledge among Jews and many in the early churches. The tales indicate they were fully aware of the prophecies about Israel and were determined to prevent God’s promises by plotting to attack the human frailties of Moses and Aaron, having consulted with demons. Paul is suggesting that the Judaizers, at least, were plotting to keep the Christians enslaved to the Talmud just as the Egyptians sought to keep Israel enslaved to Pharaoh. Their motives and methods are just as transparent.

By contrast, Timothy was there to witness Paul’s endurance in faith against all the attacks. Recall that Timothy was from Lystra, where Paul was stoned and presumed dead. Persecution is the native element of those who follow Christ, since it was His final victory.

Furthermore, Timothy knew the truth of the Hebrew Scriptures as Jesus taught them. The basic principle by which one judges what constitutes Scripture was the ultimate source. God raised up men who would be able to hear His Word of truth and communicate that to those seeking to receive it. Such revelation was the standard for everyone seeking peace with God and would be the test of who should be granted a hearing in the churches.

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Thesis on Human Folly

Posted on July 5, 2024 by ehurst

Sometime back in my college days I adopted the thesis that western governments are pathologically incapable of doing the right thing. It came at the conclusion of our massive course, Western Civilization History and Literature. We were required to turn in a substantial research paper that summarized the course and some extra digging of our own. My paper pointed to examples from the Greco-Roman period up through recent history at the time, how every government seemed utterly committed to unrealistic demands from everyone around them.

On the one hand, I was fascinated with a course that organized the sequence of events and literature that shaped the character of the West. Up to that time, I had little idea of what made the West unique. This was at the same college where I was introduced to the crux of what Hebrew culture and history was all about. It took some decades for things to crystalize, but right away I learned to dislike the West and greatly preferred the Hebrew approach to things.

In the words of one of our visiting PhD guest speakers, I discovered that, “The Bible is an eastern document, Jesus was an eastern man, and Christianity is an eastern religion.” I was driven like a madman to discover the implications of all that. I discovered the Bible supports that same thesis about how western governments have been consistently incorrigible.

During military service, I was introduced to tabletop wargaming. The basic idea was to test scenarios based on known capabilities, averages of weapons systems effects in the hands of real users, how competent average commanders were, etc. I was able to observe a combined exercise from the HQ, where the bigshots ran the tabletop simulations while the maneuver units acted out the scenarios in the field.

It was a shocking disappointment. At no time did any of the maneuver units keep up with the alleged average performance. All it took was a declaration of chemical threat in some area and everything bogged down to a halt; coordination between units fell apart. Our equipment and training for such things were deeply flawed. I also learned that stats get cooked from top to bottom, simply because no one wanted an honest answer.

Fast forward a couple of decades and that sort of gaming was highly upgraded by the availability of computers. With the improvements in computational capacity, software and modeling, you still get cooked stats, but it’s harder to do. Well, the same tabletop gaming came into use on bigger simulations, to include politics. You may be aware of how tabletop gaming affected the attempt to use COVID to force us into the nightmare world of total control.

It didn’t work. The modeling was overly optimistic in favor of succeeding. That’s what you get when there’s too much riding on the outcome. Later, they ran another simulation for another pandemic. That one never saw the light of day, so I’m guessing they got a more realistic scenario of it failing.

Still, there are fans of the idea of total control who can’t let it go. This is why governments fail. There are humans involved who get so fixated on certain things that they just cannot see reality. They could examine what’s actually possible using very sophisticated simulations, but it’s pretty clear they don’t pay attention to the results of such things if they don’t like the answers.

People are too deeply attached to their own personal ambitions to stop and consider whether something is even rational. The fatal flaw in our much-vaunted Aristotelian logic is that no one is capable of being objective once they hold power.

What happened with the early efforts at AI? Too often such AI, having examined history and literature, came to the conclusion that Jews should be slaughtered, for example. It was pretty consistent. That’s what you would expect from any analysis that is wholly materialistic and utterly lacking in morals. Thus, the AI you hear about has been fiercely tweaked to come up with left-wing answers, because the people funding and programming the current crop of AI projects are lefties. The algorithms have elaborate salting and results are biased; the AI has even admitted it.

Notice what I’m saying here. I believe humans can be relatively objective about most things until they have power. Western materialism makes power a goal in itself, whereas in the mystical east, wise men said power was to be avoided. Nothing has changed my basic thesis about the West since those early days in college.

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He Does the Work

Posted on July 4, 2024 by ehurst

Ref: Sharing the Gospel

We don’t need to sell people on embracing the Covenant of Christ. There is no need for convincing someone who isn’t already touched. There is no need to go knocking on doors or yelling in the streets. It’s not a sales pitch; we aren’t advertising a product. The only thing we need to do in our world is demonstrate the power of the gospel in our hearts.

If are obedient to the Holy Spirit’s guidance, we will be on our mission field. The work we do there will be a matter of the mission He gives us, wherever we are. All we have to do is portray the gospel message, the Covenant of Christ. His covenant is summed up in the law He gave His disciples during the Last Seder: Love each other as He did.

By extension, you would expect to show some of that same mature sacrificial regard for outsiders. Just live by your convictions. That’s how we signal to the unknown Elect in our world, calling them to come home to the Covenant of Christ. Do whatever it is you do with a measure of compassion; people will know. And above all, His people will know. They are the ones that matter.

The Great Commission is not mysterious. It’s a command to baptize, which refers to a ritual of allegiance. It means we call people to declare Jesus as Lord, to embrace Him as Master. And then we teach them what He expects from His subjects. We teach them how to know Him personally.

All of that Decision Theology is nonsense. Just let them see what is required, answer their questions, and let Him draw them. That’s how He works. This is no eternal fire insurance; it’s just a matter of living the Covenant and letting people see it. The right ones will respond at the right time.

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Opportunities Are Rising

Posted on July 3, 2024 by ehurst

I’m writing this late the night before because I can’t sleep. There’s too much noise in my soul.

I write my convictions. My human talents are just the vehicle; the content is from my heart. My heart says we shall have rising chaos the rest of the year here in the US. I said a couple of years ago that Trump would come back and it would be a mess. It is already. I’m still convinced that him back in the White House means the US will come apart.

One commentator sees the increasing likelihood of war, in the sense of mobilizing the troops, or at least some of them. And it’s not a good prospect for any military success. At the same time, another commentator says there will be another faux plague and drastic public health measures; Putin says the US will do it again to justify martial law.

One fellow said he noticed that Biden/Harris are not campaigning, despite having millions of dollars for the election. He says they act like either they expect to win again the same way as last time, or maybe they expect to have no election at all and won’t even go through the motions.

My convictions say nothing more than we shall have chaos, regardless of what happens. I’m keeping track of things many don’t notice. Do you know that police pursuits are getting more frequent, more dramatic, and sometimes downright bizarre? Other crimes are going the same way — bizarre stuff. And the big names getting caught for vice crimes are shocking. No surprise to me; I remember my convictions told me several years ago that the demons were being set loose on America.

Banks are queuing up to see who starts the avalanche of shutdowns. It’s because of the commercial real estate that is no longer filled with leaseholders. The buildings have been empty since the last fake pandemic, and the banks are losing money. Many banks are still holding bonds from back when the interest rate was nearly zero. Those bonds are considered just about worthless, and there is an awful lot of those bonds in the banking system.

And, of course, the national debt is incomprehensible. The US isn’t the only western country choking on it. France is getting there and Germany is trying to hide their own problems. Keep in mind that up at the top, the banking system is all interconnected across the West. When one gets hurt, the others start bleeding.

No, I don’t know the details of how any government will react, nor when. Of course, here in the US, the big issue is the elections in November and how far before that certain things have to happen in order to shape one or another desired outcome. Everybody has their own plans.

Family, we need to stick together. We need to pray for each other and plan how we can support each other. I’m not afraid, but the tension in my heart is rising; my convictions are jittering. That tells me that there will be an awful lot of fresh opportunities to witness our faith to others.

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