Mere Imagination?

Posted on March 1, 2016 by ehurst

If God doesn’t capture your imagination, He doesn’t have your heart.

I don’t feel competent to propose a psychological profile for people who live a heart-led existence. Jesus used parables because it defied description. At some level I can offer some characterization of what it’s like for me, and I can share some things I’ve learned from others as they attempt to verbalize their own experience. It sounds just like everything our society marginalizes as somehow inferior to their mythical objective reality.

Does a heart-led existence sometimes bleed over into mere imagination? Of course it does. How would you keep them separate? I maintain that common perceptions of reality are broken for the simple reason that “reality” is shadowy and untrustworthy. I believe the record of revelation is replete with incidents where God retooled His own Creation in ways that allowed people to see He could do it. The Hebrew nation departing Egypt was not a gladiator revolt; these folks had been slaves. Yet they managed to humble what was then the most powerful military force in that part of the world without using armed resistance. And while Egypt’s ruler sounded like a maniac, the Egyptian people had seen enough to fear things that were way beyond their control.

Any way you slice it, common perceptions of reality don’t make the grade. The cultural legacy of objective reality cannot account for some very real things that have happened and continue to happen. Anecdotes abound and genuine experts are unable to explain, or even theorize, how these things happen. The ragged edges of reality can’t be cleanly cut off to suit the Western prejudice.

So maybe the real problem is not what we can say we know for certain, or even with some reasonable measure of certainty. Maybe the real problem is claiming that it is possible to know against a very certain truth that human awareness is iffy in the first place. A certain level of agnosticism is far more mature than a childish insistence on things precisely defined as real versus unreal. Once you dismiss the mythology of objective reality, it’s bound to bring out some strangeness, but this is truly the best we can do.

I don’t need to carry around some internal divider between truth and fiction; I carry a divider of what I can use and what I cannot use for myself. That is true moral discernment.

As I push forward through life with an expectation that varies significantly from those around me, I don’t waste that much time to worrying what they’ll think of me. I’m too busy exploring the sense of peace and contentment for which they clamor and can’t seem to find. A very long time before I used the language of heart-mind awareness, when the best I had was the language of spiritual conviction, I decided pursuing conviction was the only answer I needed. If something matched my convictions in some particular context, screw everything else. There was a peace that touched things inside of me that no stimulus or drugs could reach. I found pieces of myself that had been missing my whole life up to then.

The language wasn’t important. The knowledge that science has found the heart to be a sensory organ with it’s own neural network and nodes of concentrated awareness simply provides the factual basis for what I was already doing. Reading how other people experienced that heart-mind awareness didn’t make me like them; it simply showed me that there was a name for what I was supposed to be like. It gave my convictions a more concrete shape, a more powerful reality as a store of ultimate truth that could be shined into more and more dark corners of my soul.

You should hardly be surprised, then, that I have little interest in anything that tends to pull me away from that kind of awareness. My experience is that TV in any shape or manifestation is some kind of evil hypnosis carefully designed to shut down my heart-mind awareness. There is some scientific data to help explain that, but it’s my very powerful reality that entertainment is generally harmful. There aren’t many ways I can structure a context and select what’s on a TV screen that won’t interfere with a heart-mind awareness. The same can be said for a great many other forms of entertainment in our culture. They are frankly painful. It kills off my sense of peace by closing off whatever it is many people think of as my wild imagination.

You like your TV? Fine, but I find it very difficult to fellowship with folks who okay with all those forms of entertainment. The problem is not that I’m some kind of controlling grouch seeking to make you see things my way. You can do to yourself whatever you like; it won’t hurt me as long as I can get away from it myself. But if that’s where you live, you won’t be able to share very much with me. So far, just about every form of entertainment available in our society is alien to the wild imagination of God’s Presence burning in my soul. Not just alien, but downright pedestrian and cheap by comparison. I find that people who belong to that alien world don’t do well me. I’m not going to inflict my inner vision on anyone who can’t use it. Just be aware that we can’t fellowship much if you belong to that. My imagination is too rich and real to fit into your entertained mind.

I don’t care what you call it; I know where I belong and I won’t be pulled away from it.

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Cycling: Return to Harrah

Posted on February 29, 2016 by ehurst

Today’s ride was simple and already well covered in previous photos; just search for Harrah” on my blog and you’ll see them. I suppose it was little more than nostalgia that drove me to pedal all that way east again. This was a 36-mile round trip. Straight east on Reno to Dobbs Road, a mile north the NE 10th, about a half-mile to Harrah’s bike path, north to Highway 62 and across the bridge on Harrah Road. I kept going north to NE 50th and started working my way back.

My sinuses told me what I didn’t at all miss about living out in eastern OK County. I was hit by a heavy dose of allergens starting about five miles out from the apartment. It’s funny how I run into them about Westminster Road but experience nothing like that west of there. At any rate, I rode over the ridgeline on NE 50th past the Wind Drift peach orchard and back down into the North Canadian Valley at Triple X.NE36thatTripleX While the barriers have been moved around a bit, the officials have not reopened Triple X between the bridge and NE 36th because they’ve never gotten federal permission to restore the river banks. Thus, that margin between Triple X and river bank is still only about six feet. However, the local traffic bypassing the barriers has really packed down a nice solid dirt road. Just past the last barriers I stopped in a shady spot just off Triple X on NE 36th.

ChoctawVintageWaterTwrPassing along through the backside of Choctaw’s main residential area, I spotted this vintage water tower. How’d you like to have something like that in your back yard?

13316NE36thChoctawI decided to stay on NE 36th all the way back to Midwest Boulevard. Along the way I spotted this old house. It was back off the road a bit and I had to shoot facing into the sun. The address was still visible on a small sign attached to the fence. From there, once I crossed Hiwasee Road I was in the old Dunjee neighborhood. They once had a very nice school, but now it’s just an abandoned building still visible from quite a distance as it sits on the highest spot of land out there. There was a time this was a rowdy and somewhat dangerous area, but I hardly saw anyone at all. A couple of miles on a noticed a bunch of .25 caliber brass lying in the intersection, but I can’t find any police reports to explain it. Mostly it was just a quiet hilly route all the way back through Spencer.

GospelTabernacleSpencerI had almost forgotten the fancy stone-fronted Gospel Tabernacle there next to Douglas Boulevard. There isn’t a lot of public information about it, but I understand that it’s essentially some kind of Seventh Day Pentecostal outfit. There were some ugly rumors about it back in the 1970s before they built this. There was an older and smaller local stone church house with a very large trailer park out back. The trailer park is still there, but now almost entirely hidden behind the church house. It was alleged in the old days that the “full members” lived in the trailers and turned over their income to the church. They got back a fairly low living expense and ate communally, etc. At some point in the 1980s it was all alleged to have changed and become more conventional. The staff kept an active Facebook page briefly a couple of years ago, but that’s quiescent now.

What most people don’t seem to understand is that a historian is just as interested in the false rumors as the actual facts. What everyone believes still has an effect on human behavior. Does that not explain how messed up Western Civilization is?

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Not the Same Anymore

Posted on February 29, 2016 by ehurst

I was a big fan. Bryan Duncan nailed it once during a phone interview. He told the radio DJ that he hoped he wasn’t the same man he was two weeks ago because he felt he had a long way to go in his ministry calling. A primary symptom of spiritual growth is a sense of penitent humility, even as we feel an unlimited confidence in God’s power and mercy in our lives.

By the way, I still love Bryan’s singing voice, but a lot of his music no longer speaks to me.

So very much of what brought me here is no longer pertinent. Some of it has become quite annoying. In the past week or so searching my old music favorites, I realized that how sweet it sounds means nothing against whether it draws me up out of myself. It’s not that I have suddenly decided the musicians are no longer good enough with their song-writing, but that what they needed to say is not always what I need to hear. A few rare albums speak to me all the way through, but most of it is now just a song or two here and there.

In a similar fashion, I read almost no fiction these days. There was a time I always had a book with me, and read when I should have been paying more attention to other things. I would get lost in the stories. Now my previous favorite authors annoy me. I can’t bear to read the next book in a series I once anticipated as I devoured each line. Some of the few authors I could read again are long dead. Whenever I sample something new, I’m struck by the same annoyances. I’m sure there are some decent new writers, but I don’t have time to pursue it like I once did with such obsessive devotion.

Why? My regular readers probably know that I just don’t have much tolerance for Western thinking any more. Most fiction I encounter is so lavishly pro-Western it’s sickening, and all the more annoying when the author seems wholly unaware of it. And if I went back over some of my own fiction I’d have to rewrite a bunch of it, probably in ways that simply wouldn’t work for storytelling. I have no idea if I’ll ever write any more. Given the way I write fiction, inspiration could come crashing down on me in the next hour. However, my conscious mind finds it unlikely.

Where do we go from here, Brothers and Sisters?

I’m forging into new territory on ancient roads. I keep saying to myself and others that we are building a new reality, in the sense that we are having to form entirely new structures for thinking about what God intended for humans. The heart-mind is totally new in our civilization. It seems most of the folks who write about it from the scientific background are still mired in Western expectations and what they produce is so mixed up and useless to me. I can’t find anybody ahead me on the same path. The terrain has shifted on a tectonic level since the ancients explored this land, so we aren’t going to find exactly what they mapped out.

It’s no longer a question of taking it one day at a time; I’m exploring entirely new turf and having to grapple with a new universe by the minute. I’m not complaining, but I’ll be the first to tell you sometimes I don’t have a clue what to do next.

(Check out his channel.)

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Heartless Evangelism

Posted on February 28, 2016 by ehurst

Our apartment complex has a posted sign about no solicitation. Once that sign is posted, you have to get management’s permission for any random door-knocking. Court precedent in this state has made it clear that door-knocking evangelism is covered under that and plenty of organizations have been warned, some even punished for overly zealous annoyances.

It didn’t stop them knocking on my door this afternoon. It has to be pretty egregious for me to use the system against these naughty folks. Most of the time I just deal with it. Most of the time they get a clue by my responses. Not these two.

First they invited me to a “Bible study” using some generic sounding religious group name. I told them I had it covered another way, but when the conversation should have been over, one of them piped up about whether I had ever heard of the “Motherhood of God.” The other supplemented it with words about the feminine characteristics of God. The verbal hints made it clear this was a Western feminist mythology thing, and I said I was familiar with the concept. Then I dismissed them and closed the door when the first one kept trying to talk more. There’s only so much you can do, and if they come back for another round, I’ll be a little less polite.

Over the years I’ve waited to see how these door knockers expressed themselves to see whether it was worth engaging them. On rare occasions you could tell they had an active heart to some degree. In one neighborhood many years ago I used to allow the local Jehovah’s Witnesses to hang around because their trainer was kind and loving. I’ve not seen JWs like that before or after. I’m quite familiar with JW teaching and I don’t care for it. Those folks were worth my time regardless whether I had any use for their religious chatter. We crave heart-led interaction and the rest is just the excuse for being with them. At least once I recall physically stiff-arming some asshole who was overly aggressive, nearly knocking him off my porch backward. Both responses are entirely consistent with teaching a heart-led faith.

So it didn’t matter what those two chicks this evening were selling, because there was no heart at all in it. This was a political agenda dressed in sacred robes and manipulative measures were certainly part of the package. Content means nothing if there is no heart-wave carrier for the message.

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The Heart of Outreach

Posted on February 28, 2016 by ehurst

As we use it here, the phrase “heart-led existence” is the same as walking by the spirit or walking by faith. Our problem is that those New Testament phrases come with a lot of baggage in the minds of readers, baggage that we won’t claim.

It’s not so different from the Orwellian propaganda we face every day from the mainstream culture in the West. Perhaps you’ve heard the old joke that an Anti-Semite is anyone that Jews hate. In other words, the label says more about the slinger than the target. In that same sense, there are more things than you can shake a stick at that weaken faith while pretending to teach about walking in faith. Faith in such teaching is just a superior form of cerebral processing, and the unspoken assumption is that your faith is measured by conforming with someone else’s orthodoxy.

Even if we can get them to use words that suggest the Spirit is above human intellect, they still act and speak as if the whole thing is a matter of right thinking. Take a look at the structure of all their teaching programs, and there’s nothing that reaches above the head. Biblical faith is not a stronger commitment to some orthodoxy. Faith is a faculty that overrules the reason because it comes from a higher authority.

I’ve warned about a common religious and social catastrophe related to Zionism and Dispensational Theology. I don’t care what brand of eschatology you espouse; it’s most likely contrary the Bible. The term “eschatology” refers to rational analysis of some sort; it must of necessity be an intellectual exercise. I’ve tried to point out research by others that show where Dispensationalism came from, how the pernicious lie of eschatology teaching entered the mainstream Western evangelical churches. For example, I mentioned the role played by C.I. Scofield and his marginal notes in certain editions of the Bible marketed in the US.

If you look up his name in connection with his sponsor Samuel Untermeyer in any search engine that doesn’t track you (try Duck Duck Go or Startpage) you’ll get unfiltered results that show the full range of people who have done the research. Chase enough rabbits from the results listed and you’ll learn how Untermeyer blackmailed President Woodrow Wilson into putting Brandeis on the Supreme Court. In other words, the same people are all engaged in a world of evil and it seems to run forever. Most of those stories are told by people who have been marginalized, while the whitewashed lies are everywhere.

Some of the people who write about Scofield have names like Texe Marrs. He does do a good job of getting the story on Scofield straight, but only because he tends to plagiarize folks who actually know. On Samuel Untermeyer, he tends to wander off into speculations that can’t be supported. On just about everything else I’ve seen, Texe Marrs sounds more like The National Enquirer than a pastor of teacher of the gospel. Sadly, the field of those seeking to expose the lies of Dispensational teaching are planted with a lot of tares.

My point is that such information, even when crystal clear and accurate, it still just intellectual data. These people are convinced that getting the right facts will save us. In other words, they are still stuck in the same deadly mudhole that keeps the churches from doing much redemptive work. One flavor of mud is no better than another. They are all slinging mud at each other and this keeps The Cult very happy.

Climbing down into that pit is not the way to rescue anyone. Faith in Christ does not come from right ideas or accurate thoughts. Faith in Christ is a miracle only God can perform in your soul. If your spirit is dead, there’s nothing you can do to bring it to life. God has to touch your dead spirit and fill it with the only spirit life there is — His. When the dead matter of your body returns to entropy, your brain will die with it, but your living spirit will face Him as either an adopted child of His Spirit or a foreigner enslaved to Satan.

Giving people the straight facts for their brains will not breathe divine life into their dead spirits. Whatever it is that God uses for that miracle mission requires that we operate above that level. If you read my previous vision about helping folks recover from the poison of Zionism and Dispensational heresy, it really isn’t about learning all the facts. If you can understand why we can’t support the modern State of Israel, that’s only because you understand the dire imperative of living from the heart. Our primary ministry of healing and redemption starts from simply learning to operate on the moral plane from the heart.

Do you grasp what a vast, unspeakable power that holds? Do you get that walking by the heart is the only way we can walk in God’s divine moral character? That the heart-mind is the only faculty capable of understanding His Person? What do you suppose Creation will do when you walk by the Creator’s habits? That’s our evangelism, our message, our mission. Just live by the heart-mind.

You can’t convince them of the truth with words and facts, but they cannot argue with your heart.

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Psalm 90

Posted on February 27, 2016 by ehurst

Thus we begin the Fourth Book of Psalms. The psalms that follow are generally liturgical in nature, as are those of the Fifth Book. Perhaps it’s divided between 106 and 107 only for convenience in terms of size, because the nature and style of the songs do not change.

This song is ascribed to Moses who led the Exodus. When we read of all the carping, whining and resistance he faced from Israel, we hardly wonder at the subject matter here. At the same time we notice how it resembles much of Ecclesiastes. For Solomon, this style of writing emulates the very best of classical Ancient Near Eastern Wisdom Literature. It’s easy to forget how Moses was educated in Pharaoh’s courts, and then at the hand of his father-in-law who was also hardly a country bumpkin. Thus, the message here is more subtle than might seem obvious from the words alone. This is dramatic oratory meant to draw us along a path of ancient Eastern logic, and we are obliged to read between the lines if we expect to see where it goes.

Moses first establishes that the One he addresses stands outside our time-space bubble. Jehovah isn’t just an immortal being who lives without dying. This is the great God Almighty, Creator of all things whose existence is rooted in an entirely separate realm. Existence itself is rooted in Him. It goes without saying that all things bear the stamp of His divine moral character; whatever He says is. If there is any hope for understanding this world, we first must seek His revelation.

Some of this translates poorly into English because it relies on an orientation of mind that simply is not quite possible from the same context as our tongue arises. It requires entering into a radically different set of assumptions that are exceedingly difficult to explain in any human language. Thus, Moses alludes to things in terms of characterization, not description. Most English translations miss the point here. God made us of the same stuff as earth, but we chose sin in the Garden, wandering from His revealed purpose. Thus, our human constitution includes a healthy dose of the Curse of the Fall, a measure of destruction. A primary element of that curse is our mortality. We weren’t supposed to die like this. Still, God calls us to return to Him. He is the Eternal One, and we are of such short duration in our lives that there are no words to compare.

Moses compares us to the passing of a single night and day in God’s lifetime. Our longest possible span of life is little more than a the passage of the sun over the earth to God, as if we were some ephemeral herb. Tomorrow we are but fertilizer for the next generation that lasts but a day, too.

Then Moses launches into an explanation that we have moved away from God and into His wrath. He cannot forget our rejection. Our darkest secret thoughts shine brightly before Him. Noting that we are fortunate to see some eighty years of life, our best prospect is to spend those years in labor and sorrow. When we die, we will have gained nothing that we can take with us. Like smoke on a strong wind — poof — we are gone and soon forgotten. No one can live long enough to measure the extent of God’s wrath against sin. Moses asks that we be reminded of our mortality often.

God calls us to return to Him, and Moses responds by calling on God to return His mercy to us so that we can regain our reverence for Him. Like a man who cannot work without a good breakfast, he asks that God fill us up with divine mercy so we can do His work and bring Him glory. There is precious little happiness in this world, but the joy of walking in God’s truth is unshakable. Give us a chance to teach our children a better way to see life. Let your glory sparkle in our dark existence so that the world will know there is such a thing as redemption.

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Cycling: Wandering Around Jones

Posted on February 27, 2016 by ehurst

509WMainJonesToday was a wandering ride, and most of my images are of houses old, new and somewhere in between. Today’s route started heading through the north end of the parks along Soldier Creek, up Spencer Road through the town of Spencer itself. I simply stayed on the road where it curved through “downtown” Spencer, and curved again heading toward Jones on the Spencer-Jones Road that follows the old railroad tracks along the North Canadian River course. Our first image is a nicely remodeled old house in Jones on what would be Britton Road.

JonesHistoricalSocJones is a rather old town, one of those farm-to-market railroad towns establish early in state history. The place is fairly historic in the sense of having been farmed actively for more than a century. Having a caboose as part of the Historical Society Museum speaks volumes about this little village. Some of the more interesting stuff is hidden off the main drag on the north side.

804NW4thJonesThese old cracker-box houses (left) were built in mass quantities all over this part of the state, most of them easily before my time. 1537EHefnerRdJonesTheir presence is a prime indicator of an older community. This one sat on the very edge of town as I made my way out the north end toward Hefner Road. And while I’ve already featured this ancient farm house up on Hefner Road before, I wanted to catch it from another angle (right).

NCanat122ndI decided it would be a good day to revisit the eastern end of NE 122nd where it stops at Westminster Road. The old sand, gravel and rubble dump at the corner is better organized and has a new sign about ownership by the Dub Ranch. Today’s southerly breeze carried away the smell of the water treatment plant on the north bank of the river. I hadn’t noticed it before but where NE 122nd crosses over the North Canadian River on it’s way north, there stands a very deep and quiet pool from dredging. Even now during the rather dry season, it’s deep enough you could safely dive off the bridge, but I doubt the water would smell all that good right now.

NE122ndBridgeNCanNE122ndatPostRdStill, the place had a quiet ambiance and I stopped to eat my snack. I watched a snapping turtle swimming in the semi-stagnant deep and just felt a sense of peace. I’ve been through here a couple of times before, but today was the day to stick around and soak it up. On the right is a shot of the bridge scene, and on the left is a wide angle of the fields north of the road.

10301NE122ndJoneOn the left here is an old house sitting on the edge of those fields. It is no longer inhabited but the owners are keeping it up decently anyway.12017NPostRd On the right is a house that sits down on the edge of the flood plain at the southern end of this part of Post Road. I was sitting on the ground on the slope down to the lower flood plain when I took this.

12500ThreeOaksDrJonesSomething I noticed from several different points around this area, and as much as three miles away, was the cupola on an rather opulent house just off NE 122nd on Three Oaks Drive. What that tells me is the view must be astounding from inside that thing. The house sits on the north slope at the edge of the North Canadian Valley, perched on the highest point of land for quite some distance in all directions. Back down that hill and facing out on NE 122nd was this halfway in-ground home.9221NE122nd I pasted two shots together from the side view off Three Oaks Drive. This is a very popular design and I saw at least two or three more out in this area just today. One I could see only from the backside, but recognized it by the wall and rail the wraps the edge. I caught a glimpse of the driveway that ran in front of it, with cars and only barns visible otherwise.

3810NMidwestBlvdSpencerBut that was nothing like the bunker I saw later on. If you come north on Midwest Boulevard as it starts to drop down into the Canadian Valley, you won’t know this is there. There is a thicket of evergreens screening it from the road. A sign on the gate is now nearly rusted and faded blank; it just barely offers the advice to please enter through the front gate, but the other side of the property ends behind some trees and no roads nearby. I’ll leave you to speculate.

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Pull In Those Dependencies

Posted on February 26, 2016 by ehurst

So, you’ve outsourced your IT operations? How quickly could you scramble to pull it back in-house? Just thought I’d ask since you are likely to be doing that soon. That is, you’ll do it if your business manages to stay alive during the deepening recession.

The Internet Cloud is about to start precipitating everything back out. This isn’t simply about the likes of Yahoo going begging for a buyer. Lots of stuff is being sold, but who’s to say the buyers will still be in business 6 months from now? I’ve read people suggesting that China’s vast horde of Western cash will make that nation a rescue buyer. Except China is struggling, too, but along totally different lines.

Folks, as much as possible, you need to evaluate whatever IT services you must have to stay in business, and start planning to cut the strings. You need to pull as much as you can back under your own roof ASAP. Not every business will shut down. There are certain forms of entertainment that are just about recession-proof: certain types of competitive sports and vice always sell. And I suppose people are not going to give up their cellphones even if it means sleeping in their cars. But seriously, do your best to hang on and keep track of your market. It may seem more expensive to do stuff in-house, but it’s even more expensive if your IT provider shuts down; they have a tendency to tell no one until they close the doors and sell your data.

Even as they struggle so hard to build and become the essential service no one can live without, the big huge specialty centralizers are going to collapse. They will do so without warning. Personal loyalty doesn’t mean a thing any more unless it’s under your roof. Trust me, most of this IT stuff isn’t really that complicated. Flexibility is the primary survival tactic.

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Post-Zionist PTSD

Posted on February 26, 2016 by ehurst

The ineffable moral Law of God calls to all humans. It is not a question of performance, but of commitment. This thing is the nature of love itself; you can’t be drawn to the moral character of God without being overwhelmed by His compassion for His Creation.

We sometimes have to fight the Devil as he drives people against that love. In the process of resisting the darkness, it is inevitable that things we do may serve to bring pain and suffering to those who are wedded to Darkness. There is little we can do about that because we are fortunate indeed to be free ourselves, merely to exercise control over own reactions, never mind whether others can respond to compassion by moving toward the Law. There is no explanation — we have to do it because we simply must.

The justification is the Cross.

What we offer here at Kiln of the Soul is no-strings-attached. Whatever binding this call includes is not our doing. We are also bound. It’s really very easy to operate this way online; it would be tougher in the flesh where we have to fight our own darkness. Compassion drives us to hold you close when that may be the last physical act to do you any good. It’s hard to turn that off when you are driven by the Cross. Here in the virtual realm, it’s easier to keep our hands to ourselves, so to speak.

But it’s still very hard to watch people destroy themselves even in virtual space. It’s compassion that drives us to warn you that clinging to certain things will form a barrier between you and your best interest in moral truth. We can’t decide for you to let it go; we struggle to decide it for ourselves and know all too well what sorrow it brings. This is why we can refuse to shrink from the task of warning you. Sling all the labels you like; we will absorb that and cry in private to Our Lord insofar as it manages to injure us. This compassion is why we would rather help you for even the briefest moment on your inner moral journey, rather than try to hold even the smallest part of you if it holds you back.

I can’t tell you it’s a prophecy, only that I am deeply certain this massive false fortress of Zionism will collapse in fire, burning and poisoning everyone who took refuge in it. Quick reminder: If Zionism was attached to a genuine love of the moral character of God, we would be first in line to sign on as supporters. But Zionism seeks to capture all the blessings with none of the moral responsibilities, so it’s utterly false. It serves a false understanding of God and His revelation. It’s a manifestation of the Synagogue of Satan. We don’t hate the people sucked into that; we pity them for completely missing the sweetness of moral truth. So it cannot stand and God will crush it in the fullness of His divine wrath, and I sense that it comes soon.

We need to prepare in our hearts a virtual hospital for those who escape with their lives. It’s going to be one of the most depressing, bewildering experiences for them. Whether they can appreciate our view on things matters not; they will need our moral healing. I understand it all too well because I was once a part of that. I was driven out but only because I was at that point already alienated. I had the luxury to discover the falseness of it all slowly and deliberately moved out. It still nearly killed me. We can’t estimate how dangerous it will be for those still trapped inside when this thing comes apart more obviously.

So this is a major element in what drives me. And so long as there is a fallen world with fallen men, you can bet there will be slavers running around trying to recapture them with reforged chains of deception. In some way, we should be prepared to immunize them as much as possible against whatever lies are cooked up in the future. We can’t predict with that much precision, but we can certainly make sure the truth itself is fully declared to do its own work in them.

You can join me or you can simply take as much of this as you can use in your own mission. It’s not about growing a visible organization and putting my proud face on something that gets attention. Forget about me but take this truth.

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Decision Disaster

Posted on February 25, 2016 by ehurst

People have alleged all kinds of silly, goofy stuff about Billy Graham. Granted, his children have waded through enough scandal, but aside from a few unguarded jokes, the man himself is untouched by noteworthy moral failures.

That is, unless you understand the part he played in destroying the Western evangelical message. This really isn’t about him, but about his message, often referred to as “Decision Theology.” Indeed, his organization put out a magazine called Decision and it symbolized the easy believism. He once said that was a problem, but his preaching was precisely that. Go back and check the results of his crusades. In every location, he would gin up a huge army of local volunteers to follow up on those who “made a decision” at his worship services. In every case that anyone has recorded, not even 10% of those folks who crowded his alter calls ever gave evidence of having found faith. They apparently didn’t even “get religion” as the old expression goes.

Such was my experience when I volunteered as a follow up counselor for his and similar ministries. I can’t tell you that he knew about that. I recall reading somewhere that his staff tended to insulate him from stuff like that. He did and said a lot of things outside his crusade work that indicated he was just a bit cynical about things while always trying to be diplomatic and nice. Maybe he’s like most other humans — his own mixture of foibles and failures. However, no one can deny his fame is partly owed to WR Hearst and affiliated news organization way back when Billy was just starting out.

As well, I can’t produce any specific references on his ministerial background, but I recall someone said he was deeply influenced by Charles G. Finney. That would be more than sufficient to explain the “easy believism” stuff, because Finney openly insisted that this was good enough. He dismissed concerns about Fruit of the Spirit and went after the manipulation and huckster atmosphere with highly emotional altar calls.

Since Finney’s time, it has been very unpopular to criticize that empty, merely cerebral religion. When I was studying for the ministry, it was rare the teacher or guide who didn’t echo that garbage. At first I played that game and my efforts brought explosive numbers into whatever organization I served. While some part of me always felt a little dirty, but I kept pushing that into the background as “from the Devil.”

There is no room here to describe the memorable steps along my path to the truth. I’ve lost count how many times it felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest as each small incremental shift brought shattering pain. It didn’t have to be that way, but a lot of well meaning people shaped my thinking so very wrongly. If you can walk away from your religion, it’s not very useful in giving shape to your faith. It’s no wonder a lot of heart-led folks stayed away from organized Christianity.

Finney, Graham and millions of others made no room for a heart-led faith.

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