No Plan of Salvation

Posted on March 14, 2016 by ehurst

Sorry, but we don’t offer a neatly prepackaged “Plan of Salvation” for the members of our parish to use in evangelism.

We aren’t selling conversion. We are walking in divine justice and letting that speak for itself. If people ask about it, I can’t imagine how it would be exactly the same script you could follow in all contexts. No two people will be coming from quite the same kind of moral slavery, so the path to freedom has only some vague commonalities. Ultimate moral truth exceeds the capabilities of descriptive language; we end up searching for a parable that fits the need. We take for granted that our fallen human nature will surely get in the way, so we are reminded that the whole thing is one big miracle in the first place.

My whole gambit here as a virtual pastor is not telling you where the boundaries are, but telling you something about the process of setting boundaries. This is actually not religion per se, but meta-religion to be precise. I go to great lengths to warn you that all I can give you is what I have, so your inclusion in virtual parish membership is purely a matter of you humoring me. You know what you’ll get if you come here; you must also decide what and how much applies to you. I fully expect you to build your own religion, because religion is merely the individual human response to divine activity in the Spirit Realm. Religion is your effort to organize and implement a response to divine imperatives working in your heart. Religion must satisfy eternal demands; religion is the servant of faith, not the master. You have to remember that when someone asks about your religion.

So what would you tell someone who bluntly asks about your faith? All I can offer is what I have, so what follows depends entirely on how closely it comes to your own faith. Here are some of the fundamental concepts that come to mind:

  • There has to be a driving sense of need for redemption. We probably aren’t often in a good position to assess whether it’s just that common bogus guilt and condemnation most people feel or whether there is a genuine eternal calling that surfaces in their souls. It helps if you are aware of the way Satan uses condemnation like a drug to keep people trapped. The miracle of personal redemption begins with a genuine sense of conviction, the birth of heart-led awareness intruding into the conscious mind. It doesn’t require a traumatic sense of torment with weeping and crying out, but it does require a sense of real need. Without that, there isn’t a lot that religion can do.
  • There’s no hurry. We are at most midwives helping along a divine moral process. We didn’t create the sense of torment and we can’t give them any real relief. Dispossessing someone of demonic control requires their own moral volition or it won’t do any lasting good (Matthew 12:43-45). They have to fill that inner space with moral justice to prevent a worse end, so let this thing take its course.
  • It’s all about the heart. The essence of our work here is helping people bring their conscious minds under the rule of their convictions. I use the word “convictions” to help bridge the cultural gap from a mythology that makes the heart something far less in our society. The heart is the one part of us designed to receive and process the truth from the Spirit Realm. The heart already knows and understands all of Eternity on its own terms, but it’s the conscious mind that needs to become aware of it. In this sense, “born again” is just a term for awakening the mind to the heart. If redemption happens, it is because the heart was already alive and knocking on the door of the conscious mind. We don’t awaken the heart. All we do is help someone find that link. All of us will spend the rest of our earthly existence trying to maximize the communication between the two.
  • Religious teaching is just a way of expressing God’s divine character in context. We do spend a lot of time trying to make sense of how the Bible in general, and the various Covenants in particular, help to dramatize and breathe life into God as a Person and as Lord. These things are manifestations that give shape and character to what redemption does for us. It’s still a matter of walking back into Eden where we pass through that Flaming Sword of self-death. Those commandments and laws in the Bible are pointers to things that need to die so we can finish cutting off stuff that doesn’t belong in Eden. Need I remind you that the image of the Flaming Sword is a rather poor translation? It’s not about the fire, but the glow. The sword of truth glows with it’s own revelation; it burns only because the flesh resists the truth. That call to repentance is much bigger than the description of sins and how to repent.
  • Obedience to God’s Law is its own reward. If your efforts to conform to your best understanding of what God demands don’t bring peace and joy, you are missing something somewhere. Creation is woven together from God’s character, so if conforming to His character doesn’t feel like conforming to reality, it’s not working. Chances are very good you have a broken concept for what it’s all about. We are seeking the thing for which we are designed, and God has revealed enough that we should be able to find it. We should hardly be surprised that we come into it with a lot of bad impulses and false understanding. Pleasing God should naturally be pleasing to us.

That should be enough to help you write your own Plan of Salvation.

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Rewired

Posted on March 13, 2016 by ehurst

Just a tidbit for this Sunday: When you discover the heart-mind faculty, it will physically alter your body.

On the one hand, this is hardly surprising. If you can wade through all the medical jargon you will discover that the heart’s separate neural network is much stronger than your central nervous system. The difference between the electromagnetic field of the heart and that of the brain was what led to the discovery of the sensory heart. More research along those lines showed that the heart’s nervous system also had nodes where nerves bundle together and act like a brain, processing whatever it is the heart senses with it’s massive field. That the heart could take command of certain physiological functions should surprise no one with sufficient medical knowledge.

However, we observe language in the Bible that indicates faith will permanently change how your intellect processes things. If you allow your faith and convictions to take the lead in making decisions, it will most certainly train your mind to think differently. Is not faith the means of healing from God?

So while there is a common experience of a powerful alteration in your body from a changed heart-consciousness, on the other hand we know it is highly individual in effects. No two of us will experience faith quite the same, and that’s how God intended it. Within a given individual, the effects will be unpredictable. Faith is the final adventure.

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Verbal Restraints

Posted on March 13, 2016 by ehurst

I want you to be free, including free to dispute what I say. Having you follow your own heart-mind leading will, in the long run, make my world a better place and improve my opportunities to glorify Christ. So the ideal is that you are free to follow your heart so I can follow mine.

Because of how language is used in Western cultures, many people are under false mental constraints. I run into it all the time with people who imagine I am, or should be, on board with their agenda. It’s an agenda that comes packaged in a particular form of expression that has gotten so very predictable, in that it predictably calls for action without actually providing a full rationale. It assumes too much without establishing all the antecedent moral values. It’s a basic principle of propaganda that folks can be herded into action with push-button words and I’ve seen it all too often in other forms of abuse.

Don’t buy it. This doesn’t require you to get bogged down in semantic analysis. You can learn a good mental habit of spotting the key terms and phrases that are used to bludgeon the conscience. One of my favorites is the term “Freemason” or “Masonic” in the context of some secretive threat. While there is plenty of material seeking to define how the terms are used, even then you can spot efforts to foreclose investigation by the reader. I’m not going to offer a long and involved analysis here; I seek to introduce that habit of mind that catches an attempt to prevent you from thinking and understanding beyond some call to action against a vague threat, one that probably doesn’t exist. We have enough real threats.

So let me offer this much: The Freemasons are not monolithic. Their own leaders don’t consistently agree on key issues. The membership ranges all over the place, with a significant minority joining simply because it’s the easiest way to find clients for business, or simply to find leverage that opens other doors in our human existence. At the other extreme, there are some who treat it as their true religion and are committed on a level of genuine faith. Whether it represents some kind of multi-generational cult of world control at any time in the past, it hardly qualifies for that status now. It’s been watered down to the point it is just one more insider group filled with people who have conflicting loyalties to other insider groups. There was a time a bunch of Freemasons conspired to change the politics, including murder, arson and other forms of mayhem, but they are hardly so single-minded these days.

At the same time, you should never doubt that Freemasons will generally lie to outsiders about the nature of their organization and its activities. That’s just fundamental to a lot of human activity, and it’s wired into the nature of secret societies. We should allow them to have their say, but realize some portion of it will always be untrustworthy, simply because they’ve been caught too often in the past. They do not represent a moral force for good. Some things never change.

What should we think of all that noise about Albert Pike as a major figure in their heritage? Like a lot of other major figures connected to secret societies, the record of his life is filled with planted lies, while other critical elements have gone missing. I’ve yet to see any biographical material that I trust completely. And was he a “Satanist”? That’s another complication attached to the abuse of language. He was most likely a Manichean, a fellow who believed that some cosmic forces of good and evil were more or less in balance. He did not accept the association of “Lucifer” with “Satan” and was a Luciferian — that much is largely undisputed. Further, he was deep into the Scottish Rite, something generally separate from the Freemasons, if you want to be precise. The two are related and overlap in many ways, sometimes even in membership, but they aren’t the same thing. Still, you could find various local Freemason organizations using Albert Pike’s name on things like awards for accomplishments. Oh, and it’s almost certain his alleged letter to Mazzini is pure fiction, and that the supposed prediction of three world wars is based on fables concocted after WW2.

My point is that the whole thing is muddy and not reliable as a reference point. And just how different is the supposed “evil secrecy” from the conspiratorial tones of most of the stuff proposing to uncover the secrets? We really don’t need all that noise to identify things that aren’t part of Our Lord’s plans for us. Just learn to read your heart-mind back into your conscious awareness and God will lead you where you need to go for His glory. You can recognize sin by its fruit, a fruit that violates God’s moral character written into reality itself.

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Psalm 92

Posted on March 12, 2016 by ehurst

This is the quintessential psalm of praise. For a day of Sabbath rest, what could bring more peace to the soul than a proper celebration?

So we begin with a declaration of how pleasant it is to lose yourself in God’s glory. Whether in daylight or in darkness, it is always the right time to worship Him. Pick an instrument because anything can be used for His glory. Just consider for a moment all the great things He has done on this earth for those He favors and you’ll think of blessings worthy of your praise.

Something is lost in translation when we see mention here of His works and thoughts. It’s more like his handiwork in Creation as a whole, and the manifestation of His plans. We marvel at how it all fits together as an expression of His divine character. The image of someone who has use only of his flesh and poor benighted intellect is appropriate for people who lack the awareness of their heart-minds, equivalent to lacking faith-as-faculty for perception. So perhaps these fools do seem to flourish for a season, but it’s only so they can be mowed down like hay for straw or fertilizer. The idea here is that they get to rise up just long enough to be noticed before removal. They think they know what’s going on, but have no clue how God’s Creation works.

God is totally the opposite, exalted beyond this universe entirely. How could anyone possibly resist Him? There is a double expression that emphasizes just how amazing and emphatic it is: Those who reject Jehovah as God are dust in His hands. The phrase typically translated “workers of iniquity” paints the image of someone who strives without rest, but to no effective purpose. They have no power to accomplish anything; it’s all in vain.

Contrast that with we who celebrate His reputation. The horn here symbolizes a purposeful effort, something that everyone can see and recognize for what it is. Thus, like the horns of an ox, a threat to anything that stands in the way, God empowers us to push through everything He calls us to do. No power on earth can resist the will of God manifested in His obedient people.

And contrasted with the grass and flowers in previous verses, so easily mowed or trampled, we who serve Him are solid trees like the cedars of Lebanon, so massive and so very useful. The image is someone whom God takes into His imperial service as a talented and honorable figure elevated to noble status. He nurtures our lives so that by the time we should be too old for adventure, we’ll bear some other kind of fruit that blesses everyone around us. At the very least, we will join the chorus who praise His name as the most trustworthy of all.

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Wise as Serpents

Posted on March 12, 2016 by ehurst

There’s nothing sinful about having a good solid mental grasp of reality. This is how the rest of the world believes things work, and we need to be aware of where their heads are if we expect to help them trust their hearts instead. How many ways do we have to say it? Just because the world tends to work that way most of the time doesn’t mean God is pleased with it. What most people regard as reality is simply the world as run by Satan (by God’s permit), regardless whether they are aware of it in those terms. So long as they live by their logic and emotions, so long as they ignore their heart-mind and retain a purely intellectual awareness of things, they cannot connect to God’s truth.

God’s truth teaches my heart that I should not pretend to know who is going to win the coming elections here in the US. Since not a single candidate has manifested a heart-led awareness, there is no “favorite to win” in any election that comes to my awareness. Thus, the whole thing falls into that morally random space where it probably doesn’t matter who wins. God will certainly have His hand at work, but it’s all about the herding of those utterly unconscious of His will. Yes, I include in that mix the entire range of politically active “Christians” and their religious organizations. They have no clue, at least on the issue of politics. Given that there are so many of them pushing contrasting guesses, somebody will inevitably guess correctly. And because their favorite wins, they will imagine that they actually know what’s going on. I’m not in that crowd, and I’m not guessing, at least not with the fervor and commitment they hold for any particular candidate.

It is purely my intellectual speculation that favors the probability that Trump will come up with the prize. He won’t get what he and his supporters imagine he will get along with that office, but I tend to believe he’ll win. Now, I’m quite familiar with all the warnings from those who know a lot about the nuts-n-bolts of Republican politics, particularly the criminal shit behind the scenes. (Vulgarity sometimes is the best language for something morally vulgar.) What these informed commentators seem to ignore is one of the primary reasons I make no pretense of caring either way: Trump has his own criminal organization behind him. Have we forgotten how often he negotiated deals that necessarily involved the Mafia and similar folk? East Coasts politics and big money deals with real estate and buildings ain’t gonna happen without the various mob bosses playing along, and Trump has played them quite well. Who did the mob-boy Christie endorse?

So do you imagine these Mafia/Mob folks might want some of the payoff of a Trump presidency? Do you suppose they will sit quietly while the other criminal gang — establishment politicians — try to hijack Trump’s nomination? Never mind the popular will; I think all parties are quite willing to spitefully ignore that. But here’s one big difference: The mob is entirely unlikely to kill the host from which it feeds. The political establishment is more mindless, and has proven a complete lack of such measured depravity. In other words, I suggest that America will be better off with the limited plundering by the Mafia/Mob nexus than by allowing the “respectable” folks to keep stripping us of all the necessities of life. Trump spoke in the last debate about how we spend all this money around the world and get nothing back from it. We can probably afford to keep our country going if we simply stop wasting money outside our borders. So if Trump promises to reduce our profligate national waste on international adventurism, I am willing to believe he means it for the simple reason that it will require we bring all that national wealth output back home for the measured domestic plundering that will otherwise be impossible if we don’t change course.

In a purely academic sense, there is no effective difference between an official government and a de facto government by gang/mob. They both do the same things, using propaganda and threats of force to stay in power, taxing the normal human economic activity in various ways simply because they can. However, in human history the record is rather clear: Official governments with faux respectability always hurt the citizens far more than a government that makes no such pretense.

So what we have is really a case of shadow-government elite seeking ways to undercut old alliances. When there was enough plunder to go around, these alliances stood. The system of plunder has outgrown the source of human production, so there’s less to share. These people will start throwing each other under the bus soon. People who think they have real power, and want you to believe they have it, may be surprised when their armies suddenly change uniforms. What happens when the mainstream media can’t get work from the vast army of “little people” that keeps their operations going? Those pampered mouthpieces don’t know how to run the broadcasting operation themselves. What happens when the Pentagon can’t get beans and bullets because the deal-making CEOs can’t get workers to fulfill those supply contracts? What happens when truckers decide not to drive those trucks? There are too many ways the system can be twisted and big names left hanging for public mockery. Only a fool will stand on “principle” in these times.

The current system is unsustainable and it will break down, but there will always be empires and plunder. Those are the facts of our human existence, but also the deeper moral truth anyone with a heart-led awareness can see. What we can easily discern from the facts is that, going back as far as we can in the annals of history, whatever new system rises from the wreckage of the old is built of the same stuff. Systems aren’t radically replaced wholesale, but someone comes along with a better way of using what’s already there. I can’t say whether Trump can leverage things well enough to win, or whether it means with or without the GOP, or some portion of the organization. I think we all know that if Hillary Clinton wins, there will be a civil war of some sort, more serious breakage before the system changes. I believe we should expect more than anything else that some previous mythologies will be crushed. They’ll persist, but without any visible means of support and advocacy by folks in power.

Listen to your heart first, but don’t hesitate to use your intellect as God intended: Wise as serpents and harmless as doves. Be ready to exploit the situation for Our Savior’s glory.

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Bears Watching

Posted on March 11, 2016 by ehurst

This is my Father’s world, so I have nothing to fear. Rather, following the counsel to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16), we watch what this world does and prepare to exploit human events for His glory.

Between the two blogs, I’ve tried to enunciate a doctrine that we cannot expect any human political activity to gain even the faintest direct support from God, particularly in the sense that He was involved in Ancient Israel. There is no government today that actively participates in any of the Law Covenants revealed in Scripture.

Granted, we’ve had no end of people claiming some direct approval of God, but it requires first swallowing varying amounts of mythology that is alien to Scripture. Are we not amazed at the vast number of Christians who forget the full implications of Jesus’ statement to Pilate that His Kingdom is rooted in another realm of existence (John 18:36)? Jesus’ own viewpoint on things was emphatically otherworldly. Whatever you want to make of His departing commands, it was not aimed at capturing political control on this earth. He stated flatly that He could have done that at any time, and plenty of folks begged Him to do so, even trying to force Him into it.

This world as we know it is slated for destruction; that’s what the final act of redemption will be. Any reference to conquering this realm of existence quite obviously refers to our internal conquest of the fallen self as an ally with this realm. We fight against our internal cursed impulses and commit ourselves to reflecting His glory into this world precisely so we can leave it. Dying is our reward unless we happen to be around when He returns. That so many people who can read English would choke on that teaching simply reflects how easy it is to get lost in all kinds of deceptions.

I have no complaint with the so-called Charismatic gifts of the Spirit. What bothers me is that, after direct involvement in churches where those gifts were emphasized in any way, I found that there was simply too much obvious fakery attached to most of it. By no means was it all fake, but I have to step back and question anything that doesn’t lead to self-conquest. When the presence of those manifestations of power lead to any kind of obsession with this world, there’s something wrong. I kept running into people determined to make this world a better place in materialistic sense, and that is not our divine calling and mission. Those gifts were not granted to consume upon our own excitement and personal human fulfillment. However, the Charismatic experience itself is not a problem.

This abuse of the gifts was one bad trend. At the same time another bad doctrine was growing, and it typically goes by the nickname of Dominionism. This doctrine is a direct reflection of Reformation teaching about harnessing the power of civil government to enforce some sort of public morality. The Dominion doctrine is more specific and carefully structured for concrete plans to take over secular human government. No one should be surprised that Dominionism and Charismatic teachings would merge.

Don’t get lost here; this is not a question of numbers and how many individuals and monster churches follow this. Rather, it’s a question of influence. Lots of people embrace this in churches where Charismatic and Dominionist teachings aren’t officially supported, at least not openly. This combination has captured the interest of a powerful politically active minority, and God alone knows how many trillions of political dollars are behind it.

Finally, we should hardly be surprised that this thing is also largely Dispensationalist. How could the Neocons miss this opportunity? We dare not forget the cynical principle of Neocon politics that using religion to steer the masses is in everyone’s best interest. We saw it in Constantine’s fake adoption of Christian religion. It goes all the way back to the Tower of Babel, using astrology to seize control of humanity and steer them away from God’s direct command to disperse after the Flood. The Neocon political doctrine is a direct result of Zionism, and uses Christian Charismatic Dominionism to ensure America serves the Zionist agenda.

This is what’s behind the election campaign of Ted Cruz. There’s a video at that link pulling together several clips from his senate campaign, and the same stuff is happening right now with his presidential campaign. This whole thing is yet another manifestation of what I called the rising right-wing backlash. At this point the establishment GOP leadership is on the verge of anointing Cruz as their man, if they haven’t already agreed on it; he’s courting them. How this plays out in the actual Republican Convention and election remains to be seen. However, this powerful force will not simply go away if Trump wins.

Familiarize yourself with the flavor, because this is a taste of the future.

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Published: Proverbs Bible Study

Posted on March 11, 2016 by ehurst

AT-Proverbs-smallPublished! The be exact, the official title is Ancient Truth: Proverbs.

You can find the webpage page version here (site is gone as of 2020) and the ebook at Smashwords here.

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Cycling: A Short Katy Loop

Posted on March 10, 2016 by ehurst

3101NE50thNot really much of an adventure today, just out on NE 4th to the Katy Trail, then up to NE 50th. I realized that I hadn’t seen that stretch of road in some thirty or forty years. So when I got through the golf course and up near the Firefighter Museum, I turned right. It wasn’t that far past the Softball Hall of Fame and under Interstate 35. Just past a relatively new charter bus line (Village Tours) depot and up a steep hill was this fine old local stone house (above left).

Barn5001NE50thForestParkWhile there were also some newer McMansion looking places, there was a bit of this older stone architecture scattered for a couple of miles along NE 50th like that. Out behind a neat little house this old stone barn was hidden in the trees. I had to get down in the foliage just to get a good look at it.

HenbitCarpetNE50thPast a few more McMansions and one beautiful place mostly obscured behind more trees, I encountered this lovely carpet of henbit next to a high-priced horse pen with high-priced horses roaming around inside. I’ll start seeing a lot of this carpeting in rural fields this time of year.

5300NAirDepotI stayed on NE 50th back down toward the river along a short section of Air Depot Boulevard. As I followed the road where it turned north, I was surprised by this aging house that fronts Air Depot at the driveway for Bridlewood Equestrian. More horse boarding, of course. It was a fairly quiet ride back home from there.

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Proverbs 31

Posted on March 10, 2016 by ehurst

We don’t know who Lemuel was nor should we let the question distract us. About the only useful scholarship we have on the source of this chapter tells us that it seems Aramaic in grammar and character of expression. Up until the Exile, long after Solomon’s time, the common Hebrew vernacular was more Canaanite in flavor and noticeably different from the Aramaic of Abraham, not to mention the Aramized Hebrew after the Return from Exile. One gets the feeling this chapter is rather ancient even to Solomon’s court. Furthermore, the format does not require, but would actually suffer from, a verse-by-verse examination.

The first section provides the context. We have a ruler named Lemuel who is lectured by his mother in ancient moral wisdom. The figure of speech she uses to open this teaching implies a rhetorical query: How will you reign? She wants him to consider what kind of man and king he will be, and makes mention that she regards his birth as an answer to prayer, a prayer in which she made with customary vows to ensure he would grow up wise, among other things.

So she encourages him to be a real man, to rule and not let himself be ruled by common human temptations. Do we fail to notice that it is a woman warning him not to let women manipulate him? She also notes that too many wealthy and powerful men fritter their lives away in alcoholism. There is a time and place for inebriation in ordinary human existence, but those times should not be many. You shouldn’t act like some poor peasant who has little to live for and never gets enough booze, lest you end up one of them. Don’t let human sorrow overwhelm you so that you feel tempted to use drink to medicate your misery. With power and wealth come responsibilities; ignore the obligations and you lose the privileges. God grants men power over others as a trust that they will reduce the misery of others, not waste all the effort on themselves. Exert power for justice; that’s in your own best interest.

What follows this is offered in the form of a Hebrew acrostic. These are typically in more-or-less alphabetical order as each verse begins with a different letter. It still comes across with a distinct Aramaic flavor. Whether this reflects typical Hebrew thinking on the place of women in society is not the question; it paints a picture of what a noble woman could be. As usual, it’s a mistake to read it with legalistic literalism that was never native to Eastern thinking. The words are meant to draw a picture of a real lady.

It would be easy to read our modern prejudices back into this, but we must bear in mind the images reflect a culture that simply does not exist any longer in our world today. Do we need a reminder that our lives are poorer for that reason? This is how God thinks things should be. The emphasis is not on how much work she does and how much income she brings into the household. Rather, the whole point is that she embraces her moral identity as God revealed it. She is committed to the welfare of her household. She might be pushy at times but the objective is not demanding her way. She does all she can within the moral constraints of her gender to build the nest. If it requires working with her own hands, then she does it. No job is too dirty or too hard; no stone is left unturned in search for household welfare. She is loyal to her husband and promotes his reputation. Her agenda is divine justice, so she always has enough to share with the unfortunate.

So while the imagery is drawn from the ruling class, what it tells us of a proper feminine character would apply all the way down to the economic bottom. The poorest man is still a petty king over some minuscule domain; his wife is still the lady of the house within whatever means are at hand.

At the end, we realize what this is all about: Don’t be a sucker for a pretty face or social charisma. This is still good moral matronly advice to a young prince. Give your heart to a lady who is on your team from the start. She might do none of these things specifically, but if she exhibits this kind of character, latch onto her. She’s an asset, not an expense. You’ll never regret choosing this one over all the others.

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Advocacy of Glory

Posted on March 10, 2016 by ehurst

From time to time I still get various communications that presume to encourage support or advocacy for various efforts to protect or recover “our rights.” I’ve warned often that neither the language nor ideas based on “rights” are from Scripture. They are based on Western mythology.

If you dig into the background of Western Civilization in terms of literature and oral lore as the foundation of moral reasoning, you’ll find that the whole business of rights as a concept arises entirely from Greek Philosophy (Hellenism) blended with various myths of the Germanic tribes that invaded and brought down the Roman Empire. Here in the US, it is easily traced almost wholly to the Anglo-Saxon myths and resulting moral assumptions.

Nothing like that can be found in the Ancient Near East (ANE) in general, nor Hebrew intellectual traditions in specific — the roots of the Bible. The Bible is founded on ANE assumptions about reality, because the ANE intellectual foundations as a whole are very close to what God wanted humans to think. The ANE traditions reflect God’s direct immediate revelation to mankind as the nature of life, the universe and everything. God Himself built Hebrew language and intellectual culture as the proper means to understand Him. I’ve already discussed at length elsewhere what those labels mean, so lets move on from there.

Obvious corollaries:

1. Western Civilization as a whole is morally confused and generally hostile to God’s revelation. You cannot blend those two. If you accept Western assumptions, you must exclude God and His revelation. I cannot take you seriously if you pretend they are compatible.

2. The Western secular state is inherently evil. There might be some decent things possible under a secular state, but the foundation violates God’s moral Law. You cannot claim to follow Christ if you give whole-hearted support to the concept of the secular state.

3. US constitutional government is a culmination of Western mythology, and is not a reflection of Scripture. Any advocacy or effort to support the US Constitution is morally wrong. Measures to cynically tolerate the system and work within are morally proper, so long as you understand that God will eventually destroy it.

4. To suggest that God is judging the US for sin against some pure vision of the US Constitution is a lie from Hell. To suggest that He is judging America for sins identified by frustrated reactionary Anglo-Saxon moralists is a lie from Hell. To advocate for a return to some prior time in American history when things were better, imagined or real, is actually a part of why God’s wrath is falling on the US.

5. God directs human political affairs in the much the same way as cowboys herding cattle. In the long term, it means slaughter. So long as humans come together to form a society and enhance their prospects for life and comfort, to the degree their choices reflect God’s revealed moral character for human life, He will directly protect it and guide it. To the degree they ignore or violate His revelation, He relegates their affairs to the background noise of fallen human behavior against which He reveals Himself afresh.

The only way you can hope to begin observing God’s divine revelation is by learning to read His character through the mind and moral logic of your heart, not that of your intellectual reason. It may well include the tactical necessity of activities that seem to promote things advocated by various political activist groups. However, our fundamental moral purpose is not even remotely related to the same thing those activists promote.

Having said all that, I want to share an observation based purely on my own experience within this moral frame of reference that I teach.

There is no way in Hell we can return the US government to constitutional constraints. The US Constitution is a dead letter and your rights are non-existent. Government officials will do what they damned will please with us and only their own human fears will restrain them. In my useless human reckoning, I would guess that the last point at which there was any hope of restraining federal violent abuses would have been at Waco and the siege on David Koresh and his friends. Nothing in the Branch Davidian behavior justified the extreme federal response. Certain powerful figures planned that as a test to see if they could get away with it. Since that time, surveillance and infiltration has gone to such lengths that no armed resistance is possible, insofar as what the activists suggest they want to accomplish.

I wasn’t the only one who predicted the recent events at that wildlife refuge in Oregon would turn out bad. I wasn’t the only one who predicted the folks who helped Cliven Bundy in Nevada would eventually be arrested. I seriously doubt there is anyone with the balls to do what it takes to stop this railroad and roll back federal abuses, because it will take a level of warfare and slaughter that the federal officials most certainly don’t mind using against them.

I could probably suggest ways resistance is possible, but I have zero interest in that. My focus is bringing glory to God by offering my best understanding of His moral character against the background of lies, violence and general human failure we all face every day. That means promoting a prophetic message that warns people against all Western governments, in the sense that you dare not trust them beyond that level of holy cynicism necessary to obey your convictions and calling. Infiltrate with the intent to see God’s glory, but never commit your heart to any human institution, least of all anything built on Western moral assumptions.

I have no real interest in human political activities beyond discerning what I must do to make my Savior smile. My Lord’s Kingdom is not of this world and no human political action can serve His glory. If you want covenant blessings on earth, all you have to do is adhere to the Covenant of Noah; fat chance of that happening in our intellectual climate today. A precious few of us will learn to read His revelation through heart-led logic and discern His divine will and harvest His blessings in whatever measure pleases Him. Our only hope is to discern His moral character in Creation. There is no system of human thought capable of encapsulating that.

Stop asking me to promote your cause; whatever god you might imagine is with you, it ain’t the God of the Bible.

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