Vision Refresh

Posted on February 24, 2016 by ehurst

This is just an update for the sake of accountability.

Would you believe the spam I get on this blog? Every day I see at least a half-dozen spam comments on various posts, and easily a dozen spammy messages on the “Private Contact” form. Right now, the latter is mostly a bunch of Asian characters that I can’t read plus a few English phrases indicating attempts to market cracked software from Microsoft. Yeah, it’s a hassle to run this site, but it’s what God has called me to do.

So I’m going about this process of studying how to provide my own services and even buying some of the necessary equipment with your generous donations. This is DIY web services for a reason. At first I had to wonder why I felt so provoked to go this way. My instinct was to ponder if it was necessary to spend a lot of effort in high security preparations, but that doesn’t seem to be so important. I believe in prayer and how it changes us and helps us shed false impressions infesting our minds and imaginations. The longer I pray and contemplate what’s going on, the more it seems the real issue is not to worry about attacks, but to insure availability.

I’m utterly certain God’s wrath on America is merely the localized manifestation of His general wrath on the West. To the degree America dominates whatever it means to be “Western” we shall see America get a bigger share of that wrath, but it is sure to spill over into other places. That spillover includes virtual places. I really believe that many of the current services that we treat like public accommodation will go away or simply become less accessible. The funding model behind most of it is dissolving before our eyes. These are effects, not so much God’s purpose and plan. To the degree any of that stuff rests on making a profit, it will tend to disappear because profit will be hard to obtain. Only what people do for other reasons will stay around. This is why I trust Open Source software: It tends to arise from a non-profit drive to excel for its own sake. I’m seriously working to move away from reliance on commercially produced software.

Obviously I’m not trying to make a profit myself. I do this because something inside drives me and I can’t be silent or still. So it comes to my conscious mind that if I plan to keep doing this, I have to be ready to do more of it myself. In order to serve God, I have to know more about Internet services and the gritty details of running those services. I’m all too willing to share what I know and encourage you to be ready to learn as much as you need to provide your own ministry. I would talk about things like having sufficient hardware with the capabilities for running some of the services you require to minister, and stop relying on the Cloud to cover it. Even in Windows you can learn to run a server, or simply gather the software tools and learn how to use them so that you can pass the content to some other device somewhere.

If you sense even the slightest drawing to do something, I would urge you to research the new line of more powerful home routers. You’d be amazed at the stuff they’ll do, and you’d be surprised at how much your ISP will let you get away with. For example, most of them tolerate a private FTP server like mine because it’s not enough traffic to worry about. It’s so common these days they have a hard time telling you “no.” Properly secured against hijacking and abuse, a powerful home router can make your Internet presence much easier to maintain. If you need to do this stuff, learn how it works and do it well.

My point is this: We are coming into a time of tribulation when one of the few hopes for keeping your sanity is a driving sense of purpose. If you can keep your eyes on those things God demands of you personally, you can weather a lot of really tough conditions. I’m not doing this stuff because it’s a fun hobby; that might have been the case some years ago, but now I have a hard and clear focus on the imperative of divine glory. I’m not an activist fighting much of a human threat, either in the flesh or virtually. My focus is less about defending from attacks and more about making sure I provide with my own hands what is suitable for my calling. We all lean on each other, but right now there’s no one else in a position to do that work for me. I’m okay with that; this is something I tend to do well enough on my own, as it were. As things get tighter economically, I’ll have to gear up and do even more. A great many tasks in our Kingdom service will turn out to be more DIY than now seems necessary.

Part of that understanding is an awareness of the level of deception from the world about what’s going on. Some things are far worse than we are told, while there’s plenty of false alarm to distract. We’ve been talking about that already, so I don’t need to say much right now. It’s already past time, but you can start now reassessing what your calling demands and what you may need to provide in-house as we face a challenging future.

So right now I’m working on gathering content that supports my teaching. This is a mission of building the library and keeping it available. Maybe it’s a little superfluous right now, but I feel certain some of it will disappear suddenly. At the same time I’m updating and reformatting my own content to ensure it’s in the most digestible package I can offer. I’m trusting God for a lot of things I can’t do, but whatever I can do is now my sacred mission.

Right now the focus is content and availability.

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Program Notes: FTP Additions

Posted on February 24, 2016 by ehurst

I noticed lately that YouTube now features channels operated professionally in the name of various music acts from my youth. Notice how I worded that; I seriously doubt all of them involve the actual musicians. Most of them appear to be the cookie-cutter work of publicists. It’s both very smart and just a wee bit creepy to me. On the one hand I can find high-quality copies of some of my long lost albums. Some of them are remastered and even better. I paid good money for them and the media simply wore out, got lost or stolen, or whatever. It’s so nice to hear again the music that helped propel critical moments in my spiritual and moral development: the likes of Bloodgood, Mylon LeFevre and Broken Heart, Edin-Adahl, even Stryper.

On the other hand, given the lack of personal interaction with the musicians on these channels, it just shows they don’t have much control over their own work. It symbolizes what is really wrong with the music as an industry and how ownership works so much against the artist and the audience.

At any rate, I’m using various means to capture the music and save it as MP3 files to share on my FTP site. To that I’m also adding some of the academic background stuff I discover once in awhile. For example, I found a good supply of reference material to the Judiazers that ravaged the first century churches. One site offered the letters of Ignatius (b. 35 AD) who served a great many of the founding churches in Asia Minor and Greece. It was he who first and best traced how the Judaizers spawned some elements of what became Gnosticism. In particular, he ran into Doceticism. It was little more than a cynical plow to disembowel the reality of Jesus as the Son of God. I’m adding that stuff to the collection on the FTP server.

I’m having a little more trouble with finding material about the False Messianic Expectations. I note that I stumbled across one of the few scholars to do any significant work on that. She was a favorite college professor back in the 1970s — Dr. Rowena Strickland. I seem to recall it was the subject of her doctoral thesis (she was one of the first female ThDs among Baptists back in the 1930s). She’s just an obscure footnote to the world, at most, but to me she was an intellectual giant and I owe her so much. Most of what she did to help me came later as I began to shed my attachment to the Dispensational Heresy. She was around to see that ugly crap shoved down evangelical throats and spotted the flaws right away, not to mention she saw first hand the heavy and hateful politics that put it in place.

At any rate, her work on Messianic Expectations has been virtually buried. She covered it so well in her classes that it’s burned into my memory. I’ve written it up for my book on OT History so I can share it. The references she cited in her original work will probably fade into obscurity in the academic world.

No, I cannot possibly explain why I feel so driven to collect all this stuff, but it seems morally right and gives me peace.

Actually, I do this because I realize that the “free ride” Internet services will come to an end soon and there’s no telling what will disappear. This is part of why I opened a second blog using paid space on a private server. Given the economic realities, that private server is more likely to still be there even after stuff like this WordPress service goes down. It’s not that what I have to say is so important in my own mind, but I can’t shut up and some of you seem to think you want to read it. So I’m trying to share what God has given me and I’m willing to use whatever resources He provides to do it. If you get tired of me, just stop reading and unsuscribe. I’m okay with that. As long as one person shows up and interacts with me I’ll keep doing this. God bless you.

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Charity Without Conviction

Posted on February 23, 2016 by ehurst

Conviction is another word for heart-led living.

Conviction is always consistent with God’s character and with His revelation. Our grasp of what it requires of us will surely vary over time, but conviction itself is eternal. Conscience is our mental awareness of conviction, and the content of conscience will change as we strive to obey. What it demands today will surely change tomorrow, but the grasp we have tomorrow is unlikely to improve much if we don’t obey what it means to us now. Conviction is the imprint of God’s divine Presence in your soul.

In John 3 Jesus tried to pull Nicodemas back into the ancient Hebrew mystical mindset, away from the rationalist frame of reference that rabbis had embraced after Alexander the Great made his charismatic sales pitch for Hellenism. Nicodemas couldn’t understand how Jesus could exercise the obvious miracle power of the Creator while operating outside the legalistic boundaries of Judaism. In his darkened mind, it was a curiosity that could someone exercise the privileges of the Covenant without the Covenant as he imagined it. Already, Nicodemas reflected the mindset that God was bound under the rabbinical definitions of what had been revealed in the Law. God was no longer a Person in the ancient sense of His revelation, but had been reshaped into someone who must bow the knee to some higher authority that they imagined as “The Law.” They completely lost the proper image of Law as arising from the character of the Lawgiver. Today’s Talmud in part reflects this comical mental image of God, but it was already inherent in the corrupted rabbinical teaching back before Jesus was born.

So Jesus, as the ultimate living expression of God’s moral character, took precedence over the written expression of the Covenant. You could mistake what Moses wrote and argue about what it could mean because Moses wasn’t there to correct a corrupted imagination more than a thousand years after his death. However, the rabbis could not argue with the living God when He chose to walk in human flesh. The miracles Jesus performed were promised in the Law; His miracles aimed to establish His credentials as the Law of God in the flesh. It was contrasted against their lack of miracles. It was the proof that He could use His Father’s Creator authority to remake Creation at His whim, but He did so in accordance with the revealed Law of God, because His actions and words manifested the heart of God, the moral character of God.

In Matthew 13 Jesus taught in parables and told the story of a man sowing his fields — a parable about parables. It was a parable about how His teaching was planting seeds of moral conviction. There are plenty of things in human existence that can keep us from absorbing the truth on any level. But seeds don’t stay seeds forever; they are meant to grow and take root and produce the Fruit of the Spirit.

When Jesus fed the 5000 they were ready to make Him their Messianic King (John 6). To them it looked and tasted just like the bogus Messianic Expectations that arose from corrupted rabbinical teachings after the Return from Exile. So this crowd figured tactical and practical considerations didn’t matter; here was someone who could change reality to suit His whims. That was true as far as it went. Jesus could have called twelve legions of angels and no army could have withstood even one angel. But Jesus wasn’t in the business of fixing Israel’s political discomfort. He was there to announce that Israel had rejected the Covenant so completely that the inherent promise was going to be offered to all humanity and on a different level. It never was a matter of DNA, but the Covenant had always been a matter of commitment to the Father’s moral character. Anyone in the entire world who embraced the provisions of the Covenant could become an Israelite. But because the people who claimed the name of Israel and were in the best position to exercise the Covenant refused to obey it, and refused to let anyone else obey the Covenant, it called for drastic action.

Jesus instituted the same basic mission with a different charter. So there was no use in trying to fix the current “Israel” but to create a wholly different kind of Israel. But Jesus gave them a chance to figure it out before the final end to that Old Covenant. Their rejection manifested in attempts to make Him a worldly king. Eventually He had to drive away everyone who was unable to get it. Later in John 6 we see where He used parabolic language to polarize the crowd. Too many of them considered the bread of bellies as the best that God could offer. Jesus wanted to winnow out those who would prefer the Bread of Heaven.

Since when does Christian charity have to obey human reckoning? I can’t count how often I’ve read or heard “Christian” teaching on charity that insisted we cannot share the gospel message until we have filled empty bellies. If that’s what it takes to get a hearing, then it’s not the gospel they are hearing. The gospel is seeds of conviction. Let those who are tied to this world do charity their way; we aren’t offering food, but food as a symbol of compassion. If we don’t have food, we offer compassion any way we can. But if they don’t respond to compassion itself, then they cannot hear the gospel. The genuine power of conviction works all the way through human death, so hunger is no impediment to the truth. And if we aren’t sharing the gospel, we have no reason to build our own separate charity works. An orthodox message does not make relief work somehow “holy.”

What makes it holy is ensuring that compassion isn’t just a word that becomes the excuse for milking people who lack conviction to resist emotional manipulation. We don’t build some “respectable” organization that makes a comfortable living for those running things. If the figurehead for a charity dresses better than you, keep God’s money in your pocket. Don’t donate your time because they’ll simply despise you and abuse you.

Sow the seeds of conviction.

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Morphing Reality

Posted on February 23, 2016 by ehurst

I’m not kidding; we are moving into a different civilization.

There’s a lot of friction in human habits. We call it “custom and culture” but it amounts to that broad, almost unconscious comfort zone that is neither exactly what we want, nor bad enough to provoke wholesale change. But the underlying structure of what we’ve had is going away, unsustainable as the desirable things it made possible take wing and leave the nest. Despite our fantasies, there is nothing perfect in the sense that it can last forever. The structure of our awareness is also a living thing, and it has aged to the boundaries of its own mortality.

The ad-supported model is collapsing. It may not go away completely, but it will suffer a significant shrinkage, going from near ubiquity to just a few strongholds where they can still survive. None of it is likely to thrive for a long time to come without radical transformation. In my humble opinion, we haven’t seen much change yet. In each field of human endeavor, the hardening of old ways varies with the character it takes on as it grows. Everything dies according to how it lived. Advertising is rooted in materialism, but that is also the most fragile aspect of human nature. It’s the worst thing to build on if you can’t keep the wild innovations rolling.

Some things require only minor adjustments. The popularity of sports as entertainment isn’t going to die; that’s hard-wired into human nature. You can find traces of it all the way back in the most ancient literature and cave drawings. It’s the kind of thing even the most poverty-stricken starving louts will waste resources to see. Advertising will survive there. In most other venues it will wither, perhaps die altogether.

That will change what you and I see on the Net. It will be a shake out. If it requires a high liquidity to function, you should expect it to wither. If the driving force behind it is something deeper in human nature, then it will continue without advertiser support. We are about to find out what projects and services are built on the human soul, and to what degree, as the flow of money dries up. Never mind where it started; where is it today? We’ve already seen some old Internet bastions go begging for a buyer, and that sort of blood-letting is only going to increase. When the paycheck goes away, only what people truly love will continue.

So not every business or project will shut down. For awhile, there simply won’t be any money, so we’ll get rid of a lot of fluff. Out of sheer boredom a lot of folks will start testing new ideas and eventually we’ll build a new culture and human productivity will reawaken. While it remains to be seen what that looks like, we do have hints of what will at least make it through the transition when global finances are at low ebb.

We who see our human existence through lens of God’s moral character will always find our places in this mess. If God drives us to do it, He’ll provide the means. While I teach that we can learn how to build a better moral economic theory, I’m willing to bet it would be hellishly hard to share with most people. That’s because it’s a theory that includes a reliance on miracles outright. God’s revelation doesn’t always make sense to our human reasoning processes, but I maintain that we do have a capacity for learn the divine logic that makes it work.

That’s what I’m doing here on the Net. Honestly, I have doubts that his free service offered under the name “WordPress” will survive the economic shake up, at least not in its current form. Some of the most popular stuff has already closed up shop and disappeared from the Net because what made it popular was unsustainable in tight economics. On the one hand, I’m convinced God hears and keeps things alive if we ask according to His divine revelation. On the other hand, a fundamental element in prayer is asking for our minds to change to meet the higher priorities of moral truth. Our personal sadness at the loss of something has little bearing on the question. I’m doing my best to tell the story of what I’ve seen in hopes that at least a few of you will be provoked to seek that moral fabric, that divine logic.

Given that “reality” can be a label for whatever fantasy and mythology we cling to at any given time, I say that we can and should build a new reality.

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Cycling: Early Greening

Posted on February 22, 2016 by ehurst

CndValleySodFarmWhile this image shows a sod farm with specially bred grass that greens up early and stays that way long into the cold of winter, it’s still nice to see. Shade grasses are also green, but the dominant Bermuda grass is still yellow. In the foreground the lilac colored stuff is henbit. It’s edible, but not entirely digestible in the sense that if you eat more than a couple of bites, it will change the color of your stool. Ruminant animals are better equipped to handle it. And who can spot the clump of ribwort in the near center-right?

9998EHefnerRdToday was a less energetic and more thoughtful ride. I took the time to hear the singing of the grasses and shrubs, not to mention birds and other critters coming out to celebrate spring. So I rode out on Midwest Boulevard to Hefner Road, then east to Post Road. I couldn’t miss catching this shot of steep hilly draw across the field with cows chewing the cud. A little farther south I spotted two horses watching me from across a pond.10701NPostRd

A rowdy dog came out in the road to bark, but the owner was also coming out in her Jeep and assured me at length that “Buddy” was all noise. He certainly was frightened and cowed when I dismounted my bike to talk to him. At Britton Road I turned back west toward Midwest Boulevard again. At the river I was able to get a decent shot of The Sawmill.TheSawmillOKC Behind the ancient red tractor was a moderate sized pile of fresh-cut lumber with a sweet oaken smell drifting on the wind.

This was a serious prayer-ride so I had to stop a couple of times as the spiritual Presence became too strong for riding. Our Father has much in store for us, but my brain simply wasn’t up to the task of sorting it out. Maybe another day…

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Proverbs 29

Posted on February 22, 2016 by ehurst

This chapter is a collection of shorter and simpler proverbs, the kind of thing you might hear among the peasants. It’s as if Solomon asks his sons to consider: What will the common man think of you? What sort of proverbs will they say out there in the streets, the roads between little villages and in the fields of labor? What will it be like at the bottom of the political ladder during your reign?

1. A man who hardens his neck when reproved shall be suddenly broken, and there will be no healing. A more literal rendering refers to “a man of reproofs” — someone whose life is characterized by receiving frequent correction from those in authority. If he allows calluses to build up on the back of his neck so that he is indifferent to such education, at some point will come a strike that breaks his neck. Wise kings don’t ignore the little people, lest they suddenly realize they stand alone against whatever God allows to rise against them.

2-3. When the righteous increase, the people rejoice; but when the wicked rule, the people mourn. Whoever loves wisdom rejoices his father; but a companion of harlots wastes wealth. Were a king to go among his subjects in disguise, would he see people generally relaxed and pleasant, or will he find them deep sorrow at the heavy burden of his reign? The second sentence uses very much the same wording; brighten the people and you’ll brighten your father’s countenance. The Hebrew figure of speech comes out more like “shepherd to harlots” as the image of fat and sassy women who always get what they want. Such is not the image of righteous royal court. God grants wealth so you can rise in reputation when you share it with your family, not your cronies.

4. The king establishes the land by judgment; but he taking bribes tears it down. A king can make or break his own domain. The literal image of a just king’s domain is “standing strong.” The opposite is “beating it down.” What a king does in private affects his entire realm of authority.

5. A man who flatters his neighbor spreads a net for his feet. The image is subtle and hard to translate here. Flattery derives from the image of someone noisily running ahead to remove all the least impediments so that the king never sees so much as a grain of sand changing the elevation of the bottoms of his shoes. In its place, he spreads a net to trap the king in a false sense of dependence.

6. In the sin of an evil man there is a snare; but the righteous sings and rejoices. Again, the richness of the imagery is lost in translation. If a king tolerates rebellion, he gains the punishment of the rebel for himself. So in the minds of the common people, those who rebel against moral justice should hang, choking noisily. But those who seek moral purity should be singing and dancing.

7. The righteous knows the plea of the poor; the wicked cares not to know it. Most English translations partly miss the point here. The focus is on the word “know” — the just heart guides the mind to a full grasp of reality. They give an honest hearing to a suit filed by those with no money or power because moral justice is its own reward. The righteous judge wants to be a part of that. The immoral judge has no concept for any of this, only his own personal comfort. He won’t even permit the poor to bring a claim into his court.

8. Scornful men bring a city into a snare, but the wise turn away wrath. Another bad translation: This proverb begins with a term that means scornful, but it’s also an old pun about someone trying to inflate their reputation pretending to translate a foreign tongue. They miss the whole point of the conversation. It’s derisive term for self-important big-shot ambassadors. Letting such people have authority will kindle a fire (“puff” is not snare) on the nation as symbolized by the image of a capital city. The word for “wise” here is someone who knows when to keep his mouth shut because he lacks that inflated ego. Instead, he seeks a way to defuse tension from behind the scenes.

9. If a wise man contends with a foolish man, whether he rages or laughs, there is no rest. A better translation: A wise king will have no peace in his court if he has to put up with the constant intrusions of someone lacking moral discernment. Every hour it’s either raging fury or uproarious mocking. The image of a fool is someone utterly foreign to contemplation and facing his own humanity; he’s always grousing about or making fun of others and insists the most powerful person present hears him out.

10. Men of blood hate the upright; but the just seek his soul. Bloodthirsty people are maniacally driven to prey on the man of good character; they’d kill him on sight. But the morally just folks will do their best to emulate that man, driven to spend time with him.

11. A fool speaks all his mind; but a wise one keeps it in until afterwards. This is a blunt statement echoed often in the background of ancient wisdom literature as a whole. Even in our time, we recognize civility as the tendency of not blasting out every thought that crosses your mind. The image here is someone who has no sense of social stability because they are too self-absorbed.

12. If a ruler listens to lies, all his servants are wicked. A king is known by his counselors. If they don’t hasten to correct false information, what kind of king must he be to have them around?

13. The poor and the deceitful man meet together; the LORD gives light to the eyes of both. This requires a little context. Being poor doesn’t mean you are stupid. Being a predator (typically a loan shark) doesn’t mean you don’t know what is evil. The two encounter each other in the business of daily life and recognize each other for what they are, despite a great difference in what they make of it. Sometimes we don’t get to see how things turn out in the end, but God gives everyone an opportunity to choose His ways and reject the deception of how things seem to be from a mere materialistic perspective.

14. A king who truly judges the weak, his throne shall be established forever. Clumsy translation: A king who exercises strong moral judgment with those who are weak will stand in God’s favor. Never mind what God plans in terms of earthly events, such a king will be blessed within the context.

15. The rod and rebuke give wisdom, but a boy sent off causes shame to his mother. This is the image of a mother who can’t be bothered to actually be a mother helping to form the character of her children. When he gets of hand at home, instead of taking the time to discern the moral issue and correcting the child’s false ideas, she just runs them out of the house for the sake of her own convenience. Only by a miracle would such a child grow up to care about others; all the more so if he is king.

16. When the wicked are multiplied, sin increases; but the righteous shall see their fall. Mistranslation here: When the wicked are elevated in power, a general level of moral decline sets in. Eventually this will run it’s course and their predations will rot the system from the inside. Maybe not within a single lifetime, but those with a high moral character will recognize why a government collapses. Morality is reality.

17. Correct your son, and he shall give you rest; yea, he shall give delight to your soul. Why does Solomon invest so much effort in these books he writes? It’s because he wants to die seeing his kingdom a happy place and his sons worthy of celebration. As they take up the tasks of running the kingdom, they must understand the moral truth of how things work, and that giving the people a life worth living is their whole mission.

18. Where there is no wisdom, the people perish; but he who keeps the law, he is blessed. The KJV is a bad translation of this, and has been quoted abusively in English speaking religion. The word for “wisdom” means insight, a clear moral understanding of what God says about the world He created. Without out that, you might as well slaughter the common folk with your own hands. But investing resources and time into making the Covenant everyone’s “common sense” will stand you in God’s favor.

19. A servant will not be corrected by words, for though he understands, he will not answer. Most people in the East became slaves while pursuing other plans. You should hardly be surprised when they aren’t eager to please. They might know what you want but feel disinclined to respond appropriately. This is why slave owners are prepared to use physical force. However, the contextual implication is the image of a king who does not want to serve the moral truth of God. What should he expect his kingdom will do if he is unresponsive to their real needs?

20. Do you see a man hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him. Again we return to that quintessential image of a wise man: He waits until his moral authority gains him a hearing. Sure, some few have minds like a steel trap, but they usually get there from long patient study. The image of “hasty” is an impetuous child crowding you and demanding your attention without any regard for anyone else. In an adult, this isn’t mere folly; this is a serious threat to life and limb and you rightly treat them with defensive violence.

21. He pampering his servant from youth, that one in his after days shall his successor. There are better English translations, but the ambiguity is in the Hebrew thinking. It hardly matters what someone’s legal status is; if you treat them as family, they are family. That could be good or bad, so be cautious whom you welcome into your inheritance. Consider the end of every matter as best you can and act accordingly from the start.

22. An angry man stirs up fighting, and a furious man abounds in sin. Talent means little if moral character is lacking. When kings consider whom to commission as servants, they should avoid the genius who grates on everyone’s nerves.

23. A man’s pride shall bring him low; but honor shall uphold the humble in spirit. The contrast here in Hebrew imagery is rich. On the one hand is a man with an inflated ego; he’s up there where he could fall at any moment. The other is someone who isn’t full of hot air, but actually substantial, and he stays close to the ground in the first place. Massive cornerstones that keep buildings from falling down a slope aren’t known for drifting off into every gust of wind.

24. He who shares with a thief hates his own soul; he hears an oath and does not tell. This translation misses the point. The first part is clear enough about being a partner with someone who takes what isn’t his. The second part is not about keeping promises, but about hiding curses. If you become aware of a conspiracy of evil, you are part of the evil if you don’t report it to the affected parties. It matters not whether you can do anything about it, but that you are obliged to turn on the lights so everyone can see.

25-26. The fear of man brings a snare, but whoever puts his trust in the LORD shall be safe. Many seek the ruler’s favor; but each man’s judgment comes from the LORD. Anxiety over what men can do to you is a trap. Trust in God and embrace His revelation at whatever cost, because after men have done all they can, you still have to face the Creator. It makes no difference if the man is a king.

27. An unjust man is a hateful thing to the just; and he who is upright in the way is hateful to the wicked. Nothing does more for a king’s reputation than making the right enemies.

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Burning Heart; Changing Life

Posted on February 21, 2016 by ehurst

And then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight. And they said to one another, “Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:31-32, NKJV)

——–

“Why in the world would you want to do that?” The young man’s question was a demand. He was a brilliant technician who had sacrificed a great many hours of sleep to experience and know precisely how it all worked and what the results would be for just about every variable.

The older man let his breath quickly out his nose, then opened his mouth. His chest expanded to pull in a large volume. In a calm, almost bemused tone he responded, “It doesn’t matter to me what makes sense to you. I know what I want and you can either take my money or tell me you aren’t interested.”

——–

It is human nature to make a great many decisions based on something other than reason and social custom. It is a standard delusion to imagine what what makes sense to you must be somehow universal. The vast lore of scientific and historical knowledge of how this world works could never cover all the bases; together they cannot possibly answer all the questions. Human need cannot be quantified that way.

Once you become conscious of this and embrace it as moral truth, it becomes a lot easier to suffer the arrogance of people utterly convinced that their way is the ultimate answer to all mankind’s ills.

If you are not in a state of flux on at least a few things in your life, then you have already died. It is the nature of childhood to explore things not yet experienced. Yet each child will unconsciously foreclose on a lot of possibilities for any number of reasons. This does not make them inferior. As we age, we tend to shut the door on more things, but that’s so we can pay more attention to things that do call us onward.

Adding in a conscious awareness of the heart and the moral sphere of consideration adds more complications. It does not reduce tension; it makes tension natural and normal. We stop wasting effort on vanquishing tensions and seek to build our own peace internally. We serve to personify peace in that sense. It’s not that everyone will simply buy into our sense of peace, but that their tension has little effect on us.

Even something as quantifiable as the computer technology so very important to my ministry calling, it still must yield to the variability of human questing. If computers become the masters, we are doomed. They are the servants, second in line behind the intellect that must also submit before the moral authority of the heart.

Don’t ignore your convictions; God plants them in the nerve clusters of your heart’s independent nervous system. There’s a mind there with its own logic, and the people of the Ancient Near East took it quite literally that the heart was an entirely different faculty from the brain. It’s the part of us that can know God.

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You Won’t Get Out Alive

Posted on February 21, 2016 by ehurst

TrosperParkThis world is a pitiful mess at best, and you won’t get out of here alive.

So I’ll summarize the nature of my recent sorrows with this workstation. I updated the BIOS from around v.3 to v.14 and the settings were all whacked, unbeknownst to me. I honestly worried that the hardware was failing on me because my three favorite OSes were handling the crazy settings differently. Finally I got a clue from CentOS and inspected the BIOS. Among other things, it had been set to treat the drives like older ATA hardware. The proper default is the AHCI setting for Linux, and this happens to be a very fast modern high-end drive. Once I fixed that (along with a handful of other goofy settings) everything went back to computer nirvana. So I’m running my preference, Debian Jessie. Enough adventure, please.

I lost a couple of days’ worth of work, but that’s no disaster. I suppose the biggest thing I lost was the raw images from the Draper Lake ride, but I’ll shed no tears because I’ll go back out and shoot what I want or need sometime later. There are only so many picturesque spots around that gigantic red-dirt pond. That recreational facilities are being upgraded, but once they flood West Elm Creek the campground and motorbike trails will be under water. Back when Draper first filled up, the entire area was open to off-road motor sports. Now the one last area they are permitted is about to go away.

I’ve ridden and describe the Grand Boulevard Trail on this blog before. About half the distance on that trail is a high-crime area. During the summer it’s possible I’ll be accosted by thugs. My trust is in the Lord but I won’t fling a challenge in His face. The image at the top is from the trail where it wanders through Trosper Park. Troper Park is a hang out for gay meet-ups, but they tend to avoid the bike path. I can handle gay come-ons with grace, but some of these folks are not so polite. The polite ones hang out in other places. It was a nice picnic spot yesterday. I noticed a plaque on the bridge that indicated if your bike weighs close to 5 tons, you need to send it across ahead of you and follow after it clears the landing on the other side.

Can you and a dozen friends together pedal something that heavy? Could you be that heavy?

I’m entering a time when I will focus on reformatting and editing all my Bible study books. I’m working on Revelation right now and I savor it so much I’m moving too slowly. Part of the purpose for taking those long rides is to give my heart room to crowd out the silly concerns of my pitiful human reasoning. Extended physical exertion reduces the background noise.

Did you know that the major point behind John’s Apocalypse was how to handle human government? He knew that the last vestige of covenant government was gone, and could see how utterly dehumanizing Roman style government was. It was the end of Eastern feudalism, the thing for which we are all hard-wired by God, and the rise of the secular state. Even the church, founded on that Ancient Near Eastern tribal structure, was being sucked into the matrix of cerebral organization. The gospel would overcome, but the people would lose most of their moral power to resist sin. The revelation of Law as God’s moral character would be swamped. It was all driven out into some imaginary “objective truth.” How was he supposed to address that horror?

The ultimate Law of God is Himself. Faith is ancient Eastern feudal loyalty to His expressed wishes. Get to know Him by examining His covenants in their contexts. This is the power to live in a crazy world; it’s also the power to become so radically different that more ordinary souls will be puzzled enough to wonder, and maybe even moved to ask what it’s all about.

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Psalm 89

Posted on February 20, 2016 by ehurst

This is the final psalm in Book 3; the last verse is more likely a benediction to the collection than for this psalm. The author here is Ethan, brother of Heman who gave us the previous hymn, and equally famous for his wisdom and as a Temple musician during David’s reign.

At least a couple of modern English songs take their words from the first few lines here. No other starting place would make sense than to praise the name of the Lord. Whatever else may follow, these declarations are true. Never mind what it looks like or what it feels like, Our God never fails. This is followed by a recitation of the divine call and promise to David as King of Israel.

Unless you are foolish enough to reject the Lord’s anointed ruler, this is very good news to anyone who resides in the Land of Israel. Thus, the next few verses celebrate what a marvel this promise represents in terms of revealing God’s character. Given how He has been so incredibly faithful before making such a promise, including smashing Egypt to set His people free, how could this grand promise go wrong? Who is like Our God? No one compares favorably with Jehovah.

The Ethan lavishes rich praise on God for demonstrating unquestionable mastery over the whole earth. He rattles off the names of landmarks visible for many miles around, as if God had simply pinched them up with His fingers. It’s hard to summarize all the symbolism. People who serve God can walk with confidence and pride that the world itself is their ally. If God favors you, nothing else matters in this world. So God’s promised favor on David is very good news for the rest of the kingdom.

Indeed, Ethan paints a glowing image of God’s choice and ritual anointing of David. It was virtually the same as adopting David as His own Son. For a moment he says things scholars have long insisted were Messianic prophecies, if for no other reason than that they could not be literally true of David the man. Even while his memory lives fresh in the psalmist’s mind, David has become the symbol of a promised deliverer. While David eventually dies, the promise he symbolized will eventually walk the earth again.

As part of this commitment to mercy, God declares that He will show exceptional restraint in correcting the people over whom David rules. They won’t get away with murder, but He will punish them with an eye to driving them back to His throne. God has no intention of tossing this covenant aside out of mere impatience with them. Again, the symbolic meaning is hard to miss.

So how sad it is that Israel must surely have driven hard against God’s patience, because things aren’t that happy right now. To all appearances there is no longer any covenant at all. Nothing protects them and shalom has departed utterly — no prosperity, no safety from human or natural enemies, no protection from plagues. If anything, the enemies around them have more favor from God than He grants to Israel.

In accordance with the courtly protocols of his day, Ethan asks rhetorically how long God will hide His face from them. Should the current generation who remember His divine mercy die before it returns, who would be left to teach His ways? Ethan wonders if he’ll die before God relents. So he cries out for the Lord to remember that not everyone in Israel has turned away from Him. How much longer must he hide in shame as God’s enemies parade and celebrate while insulting His people? Don’t forget us forever, O Lord!

Then comes the benediction we are sure belongs to this third division of Psalms.

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Cycling: Hydrology Survey

Posted on February 20, 2016 by ehurst

EastElmCreekYesterday I rode out to Draper Lake. To make it interesting, I did some research on the proposed West Elm Creek Reservoir and tried to capture part of it in pictures. The context is this: Draper Lake captures East Elm Creek. The image on the right is a view of that creek from the dam. West Elm Creek is less than a mile off to the west of Draper Lake. My poor little camera struggles to capture the perspective, but that branch begins just off the bike trail built alongside I-240 out by the old GM Plant. (Consult your favorite mapping service and look south of Tinker AFB to the southeast of OKC.)

WestElmCreek01WestElmCreek02Here is a collection of wide angle shots I took from inside the Draper Lake recreational area.WestElmCreek03 This land is not yet purchased, but the officials and supporters have been talking about this quite publicly for at least three decades. If they dam this thing as proposed, it will create a second body of water roughly equivalent in acreage and volume to the current Draper Lake.

ProposedWestElmResOn the right is a screen capture of the map offered in public documents.JoiningArea The faded bluish blot on the left is about what they expect this thing to cover, and the dotted outline is the land they’ll purchase for it. If you have time to waste, you can examine the details and see that the two lakes will merge under a section of existing road on the southwest corner of Draper. The image on the left is facing north, so the lake is on the right and the proposed lake would be on the left. I assume they would dig it out, merge the water and put it back as a bridge.

DamRidgeThe current Draper dam would be extended westward and around the access roads currently used for the massive water control and purification buildings I showed here on previous posts about Draper Lake. Again, consult your favorite mapping service to see where they are now. The image to the right captures a natural ridge already used as part of the Draper Dam, and the drawings indicate it would simply be extended off to the left in the picture.

The other item of note is that the proposed map shows that Stella Road/SE 149th would be cut off entirely as the new dam and lake would run south parallel to Douglas Boulevard for quite some distance. I’ve been out there in the past and the dam would run into a high ridge that runs across Douglas.

UpperEastElmCreekFinally, I’m throwing in this gratuitous shot of the upper East Elm Creek area on the lake taken from a high ridge. What you don’t see in the image is how steeply it drops off if you were to walk straight forward. The ring road around Draper runs down through through swampland and is easily the most ragged and worn out section of the road because the water table in wet season runs over the road frequently. This shot was taken at the worst part of the dry season. One of the odd effects of the unprecedented El Nino effect this year has been a relatively warm and dry winter. However, if predictions run true, last spring’s floods were nothing compared to what we’ll have soon.

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