The Man of Wrath

Posted on February 8, 2024 by ehurst

Let’s not even pretend this is a word from God. I’m sharing what is actually a prayer request. This is very much a part of praying that the Lord bring down His wrath against sin. His children will prosper if they are clinging to Him when He comes to visit, as He did Sodom and Gomorrah those many centuries ago. It is time for a divine tour of inspection and correction.

We have seen how God has done these things in the past. This is a time for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, though perhaps not their final advent. It’s time for the conquerors, the destroyers, the economic collapse and disease. God is quite the artist, always implementing His wrath in a glorious mix of human and natural destruction of man’s follies.

And, boy, do we have some hideous follies around us today.

Let’s be clear: Trump is an egotistical windbag. This whole election campaign is about his ego, and nothing more. This was always true. We can hope that he has learned at least a few hard lessons on how to boost his own ego through the office of POTUS. His fame will rest on destroying the globalist agenda. His power will rest on placating the neocons, and pretending to be a friend of liberty. I can’t promise he’ll take that path, but I believe he will.

Trump is not good for America, but his brand of harm to the nation is more consistent with what I envision as God’s wrath coming for us, versus the insufferable dark evil of the globalists. I believe the globalist agenda is like Babylon in the prophecies: It is fallen, fallen, and it’s time for the smoke to billow out of their works. If you read their propaganda fear-mongering aimed at us, you realize they are scared of Trump.

The election will be a chaotic mess, but I still believe Trump will end up in the driver’s seat. If not him, someone worse and more destructive in the same ways. But at this point, I can’t imagine who that might be, so I’m convinced it will be Trump. The mood of right-wing vengeance is smoldering, and he’s the best front man. There’s a high probability he will be the last POTUS, simply because the US is quite likely to break apart.

Taking all of this together, let’s pray that Trump assumes the presidency. Let the man of God’s wrath come and perform his mission of destruction. Never mind what Trump intends to do, or what most imagine he could and should do, let’s pray he drag with him into office divine fury for his enemies, and eventually for himself.

Now, as a side note related to this, you should understand that decentralization is our best hope for surviving the global catastrophe heading our way. For the world to shatter into thousands of tiny nations is the only hope we have; it would be divine mercy. A strong centralized global government would actively hinder us even knowing about the disaster, much less taking wise actions to prepare for it. As the magnetic poles continue their rapid movement away from the geophysical poles, and earth’s magnetic shield weakens and collapses, the destruction this will bring requires preparations that no central government would permit.

It won’t be long before the Internet becomes unusable; it’s a race to see whether bad government or the celestial disturbances will kill it first.

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The Politics of Dead Souls

Posted on February 5, 2024 by ehurst

The globalists have one major blind spot. They assume that breaking down the large government systems in the West will allow them to replace those systems with something else, while keeping the large countries intact. And then, they expect to further unite all the people into a single, global unity under their elite control. They want a new “West” with an alternative definition.

That’s not how it works. Each of these large government systems was welded together from smaller units, and the unity across these smaller nations is rather shallow and fragile. Despite any rhetoric about “we are all in this together”, people with a will to act remain committed to a much smaller national identity. Decentralization is hard-wired in human nature, starting with the Tower of Babel. The unifiers are not as vigorous and determined as the decentralizers.

So, if the globalists break down the system that holds these small nations together in large unions, then the nations will reassert their identity and refuse to unify again when the proposal is tilted against them, as globalism is. Destroying large unions of states will guarantee they scatter. People are inherently tribal. It is utterly impossible for large mixed populations to forget who they are. Their loyalty to the union is very thin, concealing a readiness to split at any moment. Every day, the real politics of what people do always reflects their sense of what tribe they belong to.

And the globalists are silly enough to exacerbate those tribal tensions in order to break down the system they plan to replace. They honestly believe that human identity can be atomized so as to make every individual socially isolated. It may appear to be our current reality, but it’s a thin false veneer. The moment things get tough, they will form tribes to survive.

The globalists are being used by the neocons. The neocons want fractures and chaos because they hate the West in the first place. Why the globalists cannot see this is a mystery to me, but they are blinded by their ideology. It’s as if they believe they have some magic in their hands that will allow them to marshal force against the chaos, when the force itself is organic to the chaotic mix of peoples they seek to rule.

There are no globalist troops to suppress a rebellion.

Granted, I know the globalists seem so certain they can simply persuade everyone to buy into their wild dreams. They can’t seem to realize that there is substantial resistance to their ideals from the people themselves. They have been infected by the communist mantra that people are infinitely malleable. They honestly believe that, if they can just seize all sources of public information sharing, everyone can be fooled. They have infinite faith in hypnotism, when any good hypnotist will tell you that a significant portion of any population cannot be hypnotized, and these same people are natural leaders.

At any rate, the globalist failure to make the vaxx unanimous should have been warning enough their plans are hopeless. But they will continue trying to tweak their system to make it work.

Now, I’m not suggesting that the resistors are somehow great or even good people. They are simply humans doing what humans naturally do, guided by the various false gods they serve. The allies of Satan on the Elohim Council have no intention of letting either the globalists or the neocons win. The elohim opposition wants us humans to destroy ourselves. Indeed, the elohim don’t have the power to simply turn off elements of human nature; they can only steer humans by their natural fallen fleshly inclinations. The elohim experiment in tweaked humans (the Nephilim) was crushed by God. Instead, they use the disembodied spirits of Nephilim to seize normal humans — we call it “demon possession”. That’s going to become far more prevalent in the near future.

Meanwhile, nothing — absolutely nothing — humans cook up on their own can stand against God’s will. The story being told by human activity in our fallen condition is God’s story in the end. Our existence in this world is in itself a fiction, a simulation God is running to prove a point. While our eternal destiny is locked in as individuals, Elect or Damned, the lives we live here allow us to choose only whether we consciously participate in God’s case or prove it by our failures to account for His revelation.

He grants a clarity of moral vision to humans who submit feudally to Him as the One to whom all glory is due. That’s what it means to embrace the Covenant of Christ. Jesus is our living Testament of the Covenant, the Living Law of God for us humans. We are allowed to see what the globalists and neocons cannot see. They are incapable of understanding it because their souls are dead.

Yes, I know that what I suggest here sounds like the ravings of a madman. I am very far outside the mainstream. I’m not trying to persuade anyone who isn’t ready to hear this. I’m trying to encourage those who already know the truth: We are on the Lord’s side. He will take care of His own, but on His terms. Our duty is to embrace His terms and the mission of His glory.

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Don’t Defy God

Posted on February 4, 2024 by ehurst

Following a debate online, I felt compelled to make one distinction: I am utterly sexist because the Bible fits the definition of sexist according to modern usage of the word. However, I am by no means a traditionalist within this culture. I do not particularly favor our western traditions regarding the place of women in this world, whether current, or from any part of our past.

The West was mostly wrong from the start, and has never been right, and certainly isn’t right today. The West has always favored women in one way or another, and what we see today with the feminist cult is simply the tail end of where the West has always been. The biblical standard for the female identity bears only a superficial resemblance to some aspects of the western version.

The problem we face is that the Bible gives you a few hints and leaves the details to your own convictions. Sometimes we can articulate the fundamentals, and it’s a good exercise to try. It’s very enlightening, showing you something about yourself and your situation.

But sometimes you can best address a conflict by pointing out the implications of the fundamentals. Where do we come out on the issues right now, the ones in front of us? How do we respond to a fallen world deeply antagonistic toward faith?

I see nothing wrong with girls learning to climb trees in order to work as arborists (people who trim, nurture or cut down trees). I’ve met a couple of really competent female auto mechanics, and it doesn’t feel wrong to me. On the other hand, I’ve met a lot of female soldiers and not a one of them would make a good battle buddy. It had nothing to do with the particular skills or even the physical fitness requirements, but was a simple matter that women have the wrong kind of instincts.

A woman’s internal organization and her thought processes are different from those of a man. She can strive to embrace them and emulate all she likes, but when it comes to the moment you dodge bullets, it gets lost. There are already too many men with feminine influences who get lost in combat, but for a woman to have the right stuff is so rare it’s of no statistical significance. When it comes to the realm of strategic planning, women have no place in combat.

They do just fine at non-combat roles, even in management, but I think we should demilitarize some of them, in part for that reason. We should assign gender-based duties and keep men out from under female leadership. That’s something so fundamental to Scripture that there can be no debate. The only time females could direct male work was when the man was an unconverted Gentile slave, not considered an actual “man” in the sense of the Covenant.

Thus, I find no place for women in government, aside from certain limited supporting roles. They shouldn’t vote; they have historically abused that power to destroy every functioning political system. Whatever might be wrong with governments in human history, putting women in certain key roles made it worse. There is simply no excuse.

Here’s the key issue: Once you open the door for some specially talented female genius to take a place in masculine duties, you cannot possibly keep out the incompetent females — not in our world, at any rate. There are certain boundaries that you cannot fudge on, because of feminine nature at large. The story of Esther exposes this. If you give women a chance to form their own political organizations, they will rebel and destroy God’s will among men.

Women are critical assets in keeping track of issues men forget. Women are supposed to coordinate with their own household men to take care of those things. They have a duty to use their influence that way, but God forbids they ever put their hands on the levers.

It’s not a question of women being inherently evil, but uniquely open to demonic influence on certain key questions regarding our human existence. Some men may be open to that, but every woman is open to it. Regardless of the problems inherent in male leadership, it is what God has demanded of us. Defying God never turns out well for humans.

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NT Doctrine — Galatians 4

Posted on February 3, 2024 by ehurst

Paul reiterates the imagery of preservation of an estate until the heir reaches the appointed time and condition of bequest. The emphasis is that all of God’s Elect, Jew and Gentile, were the estate, and Christ was the heir. But we were minor children, as well, as part of the divine household estate. We were under the various elohim powers God appointed over the nations of the world, all of us under one law covenant or another. For us, it was no different from being slaves, just like any minor heir prior to the bequest of the estate. Jesus was the natural born heir, but we have received an adoption that elevates us to the status of true younger heirs behind Him as Firstborn. The mark of that adoption is the Presence of the Holy Spirit of Christ in our hearts. Because of this, we can call Him by the personal terms of endearment used by natural children — “Daddy! Papa!”

Paul follows a tangent thought here: Gentiles were under the control of lesser deities, the Elohim Council in God’s courts. Those were not gods, not honestly classed as such in the Creator’s eyes, but they played that role, seeking to skim off some of His glory for themselves. But now that the Galatian believers had become acquainted to the true God and Creator, were they going to return to that slavery under those lesser beings who were just scam artists at best?

Paul mentions that they were now enslaving themselves under Talmudic holy days, something wholly inappropriate for Gentiles who did not inherit any of Israel’s national history. There were a whole bundle of special observances that God had not commanded, but which the Pharisees had forced into civil law, choking the common Jewish people with an excuse for yet one more abusive tax. Paul kept his Jewish habits rather private, living more like a Gentile than a Jew among them. How many Jews did they know who would even admit to such a thing? Did not Jews typically hector their Gentile neighbors about pagan habits that interfered with nitpicking Jewish observances? The Galatian Christians should stand with him in rejecting that legalistic nonsense; he certainly didn’t feel insulted that they would ignore the Jewish calendar.

He mentions some physical condition that compelled him to spend time in Galatia, apparently when he had planned not to even go there. There are a couple of plausible guesses what he refers to, but it doesn’t matter. Whatever it was usually caused superstitious Gentiles to spit at him, but instead, the Galatians received his gospel message with frank enthusiasm. What happened? It sounds like the Judaizers had managed to turn them against Paul personally.

Was it not odd how the Judaizers treated the Galatian Christians as suckers? First they come courting the churches, appealing to their vanity. Then, they start telling them how awful they are for not embracing Judaism, using the old trick of provoking desire for the snake oil by talking about how hard it is to get. And Judaizer religion was snake oil, indeed, completely worthless. To Paul, it feels like having to give birth to the same child again, after they had grown quite a bit. Whatever it was that compelled him to struggle physically to bring them the gospel was worth it, but this pain and sorrow of countering the Judaizers was egregious and unjustified.

Do they really want the Law? Paul will give them a bit of Old Testament the Judaizers would prefer to hide. He talks about Abraham who had an elder son (Ishmael) by his household slave, Hagar. However, Isaac was his natural born heir. The distinction is that Isaac was born in response to a promise from God, whereas Ishmael was born from a mere human choice. Paul will use this story as an allegory — in the same rabbinical style the Judaizers would.

The Covenant of Moses was like Hagar, rooted in the customs and laws of slavery. Israel as an earthly nation was purchased from slavery in Egypt. Like a concubine, her children held limited privileges, represented by earthly Jerusalem (Zion). But the legal wife was Sarah, and her children were full heirs, which is the Covenant of Abraham/Christ, represented by the spiritual Jerusalem (Heaven). The faith covenant is everything the law covenant could not be. Paul is being terse here by letting the implications seep through without words.

Continuing in that vein, Paul refers to Isaiah 54:1. The ancient prophet paints the image of what those returning from Babylon could have if they rose to faith instead of wallowing in mere law and all its limitations. Would the Judeans coming home be more like a bitter old woman who lost her children? Or would they return in full faith in Jehovah and be more like a young bride that has not yet had children? If the latter, then they could expect a whopping large faith family that would inherit the heavens.

Those who put their faith in Christ are like children of that prophetic promise. Yes, Christians would face persecution from Jews, as Isaac faced from Ishmael, and for the same reason. But those who retain their status as Jews are born for slavery to the law, while the children of faith inherit as fellow heirs with the Son of God. Only a fool would go back into the slavery of the Law Covenant.

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Random Photos 16

Posted on February 1, 2024 by ehurst

It’s been a while since the weather has been decent enough to go out for rides and take pictures. Here we have downtown OKC with the taller buildings in the clouds. This was the first decent warmish day in three weeks, but it was still cloudy and had been drizzling early in the morning.

Eagle Lake in Del City was still covered with a thin layer of ice, something I’ve not had a chance to see in a very long time. Keep in mind that the lake had been fairly warm all year up to the that blistering cold wave that rolled in late December. Thus, even with a week below freezing temperatures here, the lakes never froze over the hard. It would take a few weeks for the water to cool down enough to freeze over completely.

The resort and stuff under construction on the FAM site where the river crosses under Eastern Avenue is about halfway done. It will change the skyline significantly in OKC. And I’m still not touching the construction zone, but going around it by whatever means are available.

The OKC Parks and Rec have been working on the facilities at Draper Lake even through the cold weather. They’ve re-graveled the interior roads and put up strong cable fencing to keep people from trying to off-road in the area. This has been designated a nature preserve; more and more of the park is virtually off limits to everything except pedestrians and horses.

The lake levels are finally rising to their previous levels. They had been down for two years; I have no idea why. Still, it’s nice to see the water level coming back up.

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God in a Box

Posted on January 31, 2024 by ehurst

I have no interest in writing my biography; I don’t believe my life has been that interesting. But a few people have asked me how I got where I am in this ministry. I’ll offer a rough outline of what I believe were the turning points.

It was 1963. I grew up among an extended family of Southern Baptists. At age 7, I was outside on a summer day playing with my toys in the grass and dirt of our front yard. The pastor of our Baptist church drove up and I quickly moved my stuff from the driveway, then continued playing while he went inside to visit with my mother. A little while later, Mom called me from the porch.

I came in the front door and the pastor began to interview me about my faith. I recall almost nothing of this conversation, though my mother thought I was answering his questions consistently and knowingly. She claims I professed faith in Christ, but all I can recall from this encounter is the pastor demonstrating to me what baptism would be like, with him holding me just off the floor on my back in his large hands.

In other words, nothing happened, yet everyone else was convinced it did. I was duly baptized and considered a born-again Christian. I was not. A couple of years later we lived in another town and attended another local Baptist church. I came under conviction and the pastor had the sense to know what it was. That was when I genuinely professed Christ as my Savior. It changed everything for me.

And yet, there was this potent sense of unfinished business. Something kept drawing me to the altar during the worship service, and I had no idea what it was. This went on for years. Then, in yet another town and another Baptist church, someone guessed it correctly and I seized upon the truth: I was called to the gospel ministry. I was 16 at the time. Again, major changes inside of me, and my self-image and understanding of the world shifted.

As I prepared to jump through all the hoops required by the system, two things were missing. One was the simple need of an understanding mentor. I never got that, and to this day I’m frankly still outraged. The pastor of our church did not take me seriously, and there may be some earthly reasons for that, but everywhere we went and no matter what church we joined, no one would so much as make a referral. Two, everyone kept trying to herd me in directions I knew I could not go. They thought I was balking, but they were refusing to help me because I wouldn’t play their silly head games.

And they were silly, indeed. It was all politics and money. I was unaware of the details, but I sensed it wasn’t the Holy Spirit that guided their manipulations. I was hard driven for something no one was willing to offer.

Finally, I found a conventional path that God didn’t block off, and I went to Oklahoma Baptist University, almost on full scholarship. It was just a time in American and church history when things converged to pay for a genuinely poverty stricken young man to attend a very tough academic institution. While there was some waste, I still ended up with a good GPA.

And one of the most important things I learned was not in any class. Some speaker in our weekly assembly said that Christianity is an eastern religion, the Bible is an eastern book, and Jesus was an eastern man. I don’t remember anything else he said that day, but it took root and grew in my soul. Eventually it became a consuming passion as I sought to understand all the implications.

And a critical part of my education there was classical Western Civilization studies, trying to insure I understood what shaped our western heritage. But instead of making me a fan, it allowed me to see the moral flaws. I learned how to do independent study, but was never encouraged to pursue it by anyone on the faculty of that college.

For some decades I tried to make my way through the system by which Baptist churches develop and employ pastoral ministers. As long as I volunteered and worked for free, I got lots of support and accolades. My leadership was welcome, but no one would even discuss my chances of actually getting paid to do the work. And I still had never once gotten mentoring. I willingly submitted, but it never happened. I tested the waters with other denominations (two kinds of Presbyterian, Missouri Synod Lutherans, several independent churches). Very little mentoring and no opportunities, as before. My volunteer ministry work in the military chapel system was easily the highlight of my ministry career, when the whole community knew my name and my work. They were open to whatever God wanted me to do.

People in uniform might make a regular attendance at chapel simply because that’s their custom. However, for the majority of those who showed up, they had to really want it. We didn’t have any silly gateways where people would be walked through an interview of set questions to join in membership. If you wanted to work, they gladly gave you room to do something, limited only by military regulations. I did a lot, leading long-term organized Bible studies, leading the youth program for a while, occasionally preaching in the chapel service.

But then my knees failed and I could no longer serve in uniform. Back home in the churches again, things had only gotten worse. Finally, during the early 2000s I knew I’d have to make my own way. The fire of God burned hotter than ever in my soul, and I got involved in some verbal conflicts when the church I attended at the time blew up. I was betrayed by people I had supported, so I left. I started leading home worship, always with an eye to avoid the abuses I faced from the system.

If I could be welcomed as a full member with such a flimsy procedure called “evangelism” that changed nothing in my soul, that would by itself explain why those churches and their larger denominational organizations were so politicized. But on a much grander scale, I realized from my exposure to religious news sources that the whole mainstream system was coming apart in the same way. I realized that it was a major element of my future ministry to prepare a community of some kind to welcome those spat out by the system that struggled to put God in a tiny box.

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This Is Greatness

Posted on January 29, 2024 by ehurst

Humans have an extremely difficult time imagining their own insignificance.

Here’s the logic: The moment you start to imagine that you and your actions can make any difference in the human condition is the moment you fail. The only thing Eternity will remember when it’s all over with is how you contributed to God’s glory or didn’t.

If you are silly enough to think that planting yourself in human memory is worth the trouble, realize that the unseen powers of the Spirit Realm will guarantee you cannot do so by being good. The only way you can make your mark among humans is by choosing evil. Granted, a great many humans may decide that what you did was somehow “good” in their estimate, but humans at large really have no clue. Human greatness, as humans at large understand it, is a waste of time.

The only righteous path is to seek out your own convictions and follow where they lead. It may start off pretty ugly, because it takes time to read them clearly. Worse, convictions tend to be a moving target. Still, this is the only path for human ambition that won’t end in evil. Your convictions are the Word of God for you individually, already written into your soul. Whatever is there contains your destiny, in terms of whatever it is God promotes, that for which He intends to use you. You cannot possibly do any better.

Following your convictions will naturally meet resistance from the Devil and most of the Elohim Council. Fallen human nature resists it already, and the elohim who fancy themselves as deities will use their powers to hinder you. (Something made my computer hardware act up while I was writing this.) However, God says He will support you.

You need to understand: The issue is not human success. The issue is your commitment, your pursuit, not your ability to carry through. The very notion of getting you stuck on performance is a lie from Hell. You need not ever succeed in any way except to keep trying. Divine glory is manifested in your attitude of commitment. That’s all it takes to win.

That’s all it takes to represent Jehovah’s agenda in Creation. That’s what it takes to win His case against Satan and the elohim rebellion. That’s what it takes to transcend the Fall and seize your inheritance as a child of God.

This is the path to “human greatness” as God defines it.

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An Age of Fraud Like No Other

Posted on January 28, 2024 by ehurst

I keep saying that the real warfare these days is information. That is precisely the nature of the gospel itself. We can pray that people will be guided to the truth of God in their hearts, and that will happen to some degree, but the Savior commissioned us to spread the message to ensure people have some kind of conscious context for the wordless yearnings in their hearts.

This is not a question of going to Heaven or Hell. Election works 100% regardless of human factors. What matters is the issue of God receiving His due glory from His own Elect while they serve time in this prison existence. We are the proof of His contention against the rebellious Elohim Council.

Starting with the Garden of Eden and the Fall, the true issue of conflict has always been the truth of God. And in our current fallen condition, that means information versus misinformation. Not as humans define such things, but it’s a matter of information consistent with God’s revelation. There are no precise rational boundaries; divine truth transcends such things. True information means saying what is consistent with the Person of God and His divine moral character within the context.

And for the time being, the primary field of action is online. Everything we say and do through other media, and even in our private interactions, is constrained by the shape of things available online. So, I’ve often written about computers and networking technology because it is germane to the gospel message. When the Net goes away (and it will), then it’s a different game entirely. As long as it’s here, we have to account for the Internet and its affects on our gospel witness.

And I’ve noted in the past that computer security is a subset of information security. The real issue is the information; the computer is simply the means, not an end in itself. And for a long time it could be boiled down to (1) protecting computer storage of information from loss, (2) ensuring transmission of the information (getting it through), and (3) protecting the content from corruption.

The first two items have been an issue since the beginning of networking. It continues today as an arms race. The whole point of networking is propagating information, and there will always be warfare over how to protect information from loss or blockage.

The third item was a big enough problem for the longest time. How many times have you been duped by false quotes that were massively copied via emails and social media? There’s a whole industry of “fact checking” that was valid for a long time, never mind how the term has been recently hijacked as the means to censorship. Most people have no concept of checking to see if some message is accurate.

For example, we had that early Internet conspiracy called “Rex84”. Now, there was the real thing, but there was also considerable nonsense being spread long after the particular military exercise to which it refers. The wild and unfounded assertions were raging for two decades after. The most egregious claims were that certain sites were already fully prepared as prison camps for confining people. Folks who lived near those sites checked it out; virtually none of them were fitted out for such a thing.

To this day people on the Net still insist that a site near me (withing easy bicycle distance) is ready to receive prisoners. As someone with considerable military training in running a prison camp, I can tell you that site is not ready, and the necessary materials are not even anywhere around. It’s not even properly secured from casual incursions; you can find hobos living part time there. It’s heavily wooded, with only a few tiny clearings. There are similar reports from people living near other alleged sites.

False information is a separate issue that isn’t really a part of networking security. The problem is the gullibility of humans, all too willing to believe lies that match their biases.

But the real issue with protecting the gospel message from corruption is verifying the source of something. The current means of electronic verification that a message actually came from the source alleged is rather cumbersome, and has always been a matter of security by obscurity. Good technicians can always fake communications; the system is pretty fragile.

And it’s now almost completely wiped out by AI. Do you realize that, having already dabbled in just a tiny few videos of myself talking and singing on YouTube some years ago, some AI could now produce a video of me saying anything you can imagine, and in languages I don’t even know. The courts are about to test some of the aspects of this threat, but they won’t be able to put that genie back in the bottle.

People who know me well could recognize when something was out of character. That’s not very many people. Fortunately, I’m not famous enough to make it worthwhile to try. I’ve made it a point to make most of my output about the message, and very little about me. But the strongest factor is that I always encourage folks to evaluate whether something I say is useful. You should have an internal filter in your convictions that prevent you receiving a message that God didn’t intend for you, never mind whether some AI might have ginned up a false message in writing or in video.

If the Internet gets too loaded down with crap like that, I pray Christians recognize it and stop relying on it. But for the rest of the world? Don’t be surprised when videos and other media pop up promoting the most outlandish frauds about public figures.

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NT Doctrine — Galatians 3

Posted on January 27, 2024 by ehurst

Notice a fundamental truth here: Paul is saying that the Covenant of Christ is not a continuation of Moses, but a continuation of the Covenant of Abraham. The Covenant of Abraham was reborn in Christ; He wasn’t merely the fulfillment of Moses, but of the promises of Abraham. And the Covenant of Abraham was a covenant of faith, not law. Moses was just a passage for faith. Abraham had more than one son, so having his DNA was not the basis of the promises. It was on the basis of election activated by faith.

It was the written form of an anguished cry Paul makes at the start of this chapter. Who has done this awful thing to you? Paul had been careful to lay out before them the meaning of the Cross. They surely understood that it was their cross, too. Their old lives were crucified. Did the Holy Spirit wait until they went back and complied with the Jewish identity, becoming “Sons of the Law”, or did He fill their souls the moment they heard the gospel? And having been born by the Spirit, were they now going to rely on the flesh to finish the job? If they had embraced the Law, the Jews would not have harassed them and stirred up Roman officials against them. They didn’t claim Christ’s miracles by the Law, nor the strength to face testing by the Law.

Paul does not bother to distinguish here between the bogus Talmudic law and the Covenant of Moses. At it’s very best, the Law did not produce faith, only a national identity. That was as much as it could do. Jews harped on being Sons of Abraham, but that doesn’t wash. Abraham didn’t just credit the promises; he invested his whole soul into them in faith. That was the basis for God calling him “righteous”, the substance of his covenant. It had nothing to do with genetics; the true children of Abraham’s covenant were children of faith. Indeed, the promise to Abraham is that every nation and tribe on earth would be blessed by his faith, not those who issued from his body.

In theory, the Law could grant you peace with God only if you kept it perfectly. No one managed to do that (not even Moses who presented the Law). Thus, the Law only confirmed the Curse of the Fall by making it painfully obvious that flesh was not capable of obeying God. The true standard of righteousness starts with faith. Christ absorbed the Curse of the Fall on our behalf; He extinguished the Curse on the Cross. This was the whole point of the Cross: to bring the Covenant of Faith to the whole world. That was the promise of Abraham’s Covenant, God’s plan from the very beginning.

Consider the authority of a covenant sworn by ordinary men. Once it is established and sealed, no power of government would dare set it aside. Even Rome enforced a man’s last will and testament who was subject to Roman authority, strictly by the letter. Paul makes the point that the promise to Abraham applied only to one line of inheritance, and that was by faith, not by birth. The Messiah was the named heir of Abraham, the one for whom the promise of faith stood.

So, when the Law of Moses came along 430 years after Abraham, it did not alter that Covenant of Faith. God Himself was the guarantor of that covenant, validated by Abraham’s faith. Whatever the Covenant of Moses could do, it did not include something previously locked up under the Covenant of Abraham. The promise of the final covenant of the Messiah was already sealed before the Law was ever given. The Law of Moses must yield to the Covenant of Faith as prior law.

Then what was the point of the Law? What did it have to offer? The Nation of Israel was like a minor who would inherit faith once they grew up. They were submitted to an appointed guardian, a nanny to raise them until they were supposed to be ready to inherit the promises of faith. It was essential the Israelis grow up to understand their sinful fleshly natures, and the necessity of redemption. The Law simply pointed out the need for faith. In this, the Gentile nations were the younger siblings under the same custody, and Israel was the firstborn who should have gotten there first. Paul notes in passing that angels were administering this custody arrangement.

Moses was the mediator of this custody. A mediator stands between two or more parties. God is one party, the senior party. Moses did not contradict the will of God. If Moses could have redeemed everyone, then the Covenant of Abraham was a fraud. No, Moses made obvious the need for the Messiah already promised in Abraham.

The Law was meant to awaken in everyone a desire for redemption and that redemption was coming. The Law is a tutor who trains us to understand and value Christ. The will has been unsealed and read; it is faith in Christ. The period of minority has passed. Everyone who has entered Christ has entered into the adult world of faith. Everyone in Christ has nailed their flesh to the Cross, and lives now by faith in Him. In baptism the Galatian Christians swore their allegiance to Him as Lord, and now wear the vestments of His authority. They have renounced their human identity; they are no longer Jews and Gentiles, not slave nor free, no longer male or female, etc.

In the Covenant of Christ, we have also entered the Covenant promises of Abraham. How could anyone possibly revert to their status as minors under a guardian whose mission has been fulfilled, and is no longer in authority?

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So Far…

Posted on January 26, 2024 by ehurst

It’s time for a pragmatic reassessment of this ministry. Not so much what we have done, but what can we expect realistically for the future?

My convictions tell me that we are in the early stages of global chaos. It’s going to get much worse. Some of that “worse” will come in leaps and bounds, but most of it will be a long slow descent. But the biggest problem is not the threat of kinetic conflict; that is only a symptom of the information warfare. The real goal of God’s enemies working here on earth is deception.

Because of the deception, there will be a WW3. I don’t have a word from the Lord regarding the details of our path, only that this is where the world is headed. Indeed, the excuses are scattered all over the place. The real issues is that there must be global warfare, so in some ways it doesn’t matter how we get there.

But this is all merely background noise. It should not be the focus of attention for people of faith. The call of the gospel is not to fix the world’s ills. Humanity is fallen; sinners will sin. They will violate the Covenants and reap the consequences. The evil is not in the sad condition of humanity. The evil is in the persistent deception of humans that keeps them from serving their time in prison — this world — according to God’s revelation.

It is exceedingly difficult to get westerners in particular to abandon their mythology. It’s not so hard to get them to embrace genuine faith in Christ; the Elect will always come home to that truth sooner or later. The difficulty is getting them to understand the biblical perspective of what feudal submission to Christ requires of us. The cosmology and metaphysics of the Bible are radically different from what is common among church folks here in America.

To be honest, our Radix Fidem rejection of Zionism is only the proximate cause of conflict with the mainstream church leadership. The real problem is why they embrace it in the first place. It’s that old issue with sowing seeds of biblical truth on rocky ground or hardened footpaths. American society offers little fertile soil. Zionism is a symptom of having never prepared the soil properly.

First, there’s this grand delusion that the Great Commission means changing this fallen world. Spiritual conquest is changing the individual soul, not the fallen condition. For all the formal theology of the last two millennia, western Christians do not actually understand the Fall. I’m hardly the only person to notice that the Catholic Church officially teaches that the human intellect is not fallen, but not very many people recognize that this is also an unspoken assumption of how Protestants approach the question of following Christ.

The Scriptures say very little about what Adam and Eve had before the Fall, but the whole story of the Fall itself is rooted in that makes us fallen: We rely on our human capabilities instead of God’s provision to decide what our destiny and duties are in Creation. We instinctively turn away from revelation. It puts us in the position of passing judgment on His Word; it’s a rejection of Christ who is His Living Word. We end up agreeing with Jews and Judaizers about what God has said.

Without getting bogged down again in all the details, the net result is that American church folks have long been fools for Zionism. But again, that’s just the symptom. The core issue is that the following statement would shock most church folks: Jesus didn’t die on the Cross to bring us to Heaven, but to open the Covenant to the whole world. The issue of going to Heaven was settled before Eden was ever built. The bigger question is whether the Elect will embrace His divine glory while we are here.

The fundamental issue in the Devil’s rebellion is who gets the glory. Scripture is pretty clear about that, even if it is revealed in mystical prophecy, in particular the words of Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. Those passages point out the underlying theme of spiritual rebellion, the primary issue that Satan himself has with Jehovah, and thus the nature of his temptation of humanity. The whole issue is that our God is unique, the only one, and the greatness of His created servants is not on par with Him. They are still creatures, and He is the Creator. All glory is His.

The Devil was disciplined for seizing God’s glory for Himself. He was reduced from his status as the Divine Bodyguard (“Covering Cherub”) to the divine Prosecutor and Jailer. The Devil was confined to staying in this own prison — the fallen world. But he rejected that discipline, and continued making his case by tempting humanity to join him there. He knew God would be compelled to discipline humanity the same way for the same sin, the sin of seizing the prerogatives of glory for themselves.

Redemption is in restoring His stolen glory. We are confined to hard labor in this prison existence, and that labor is restoring all glory to His name. The only path He authorizes for that is in His revelation, His Son. And the frame of reference for His Son is the Covenant. The Covenant of Moses was the proper setting for His Son to manifest on earth, the final revelation to humanity at the end of a series of covenants. The final covenant in Christ was a shocker to the rebels in Heaven. They did not expect a covenant that transcended the boundaries of human identities.

Yes, we desire to return to Eden, which is pretty much the same concept as going to Heaven. The reason we desire it is because our eternal nature was not taken from us. The denial of access to the Tree of Life symbolized being forced into a mortal existence, not the removal of our eternal nature. Were it not for the eternal nature within, we would be wholly unable to respond to the gospel. There would be no home for the Holy Spirit within us. The meaning of Election is the existence of that eternal nature.

There is no clinical description possible of Election. It’s all part of the biblical mystical language. We might be able to delineate what sin looks like, but there is no way we can be made to distinguish the Elect from the Damned until the Elect come home to Jesus and manifest His glory. Thus, our mission is to live like Christ as the means to expose His glory, which He uses to awaken the awareness of Election in the Elect.

And we do this against the background of human chaos in a fallen realm of existence. This is the prison of souls, and we can do nothing to change its nature or its operation. But we can buck the system in favor the Creator’s glory. This is how we manifest His justice in condemning the Devil, and in condemning our own sins. This is how we participate in our original mission in Eden. This is how our lives are redeemed.

This is also the true source of conflict we have with the mainstream of Christian religion. We uphold the Covenant of Christ, while they try their hardest to chase everything else. Jesus died for our sins, so that we could be accepted into His Covenant. Satan can’t steal our eternal natures from us, but he can deceive us into missing our calling to Christ’s glory. That’s the real issue behind spiritual warfare. Will you walk in His Covenant to glorify Him?

We should expect rejection of this message. All the other noise is just symptoms of that.

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