OT History Is Up

Posted on February 9, 2016 by ehurst

Okay, I finally finished reformatting my Old Testament History book into a collection of just a few links. Some of the files are really long pages, but they should load pretty fast and you are encouraged to keep your own copies. This replaces a bundle of about 105 little files. Keep in mind that they are cross-linked to each other as if they were in the same folder and you’ll need to keep the original file names. I’ll eventually zip them up and place them in bundles on the FTP server.

So if you to the the static site you’ll see the links added at the bottom of the page (gone as of 2020).

Update: You can still request the zip file by email.

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A Glimpse Under the Cover

Posted on February 9, 2016 by ehurst

Consistent with the previous post, I’m going to offer some narrative about my internal process so that you’ll understand how it works.

For the time being, I’ll be using the fancy router as my home server. Right now that’s mostly a matter of firewall and FTP server. Only a couple of folks have expressed interest in the FTP service, but that’s fine. It’s my personal cloud storage; I use it and that’s reason enough to run it. Meanwhile, this sexy workstation computer bought with your generous donations is the place where I create and format the content. It is still very much the shadow server behind all the stuff I do with the two blogs, the books, and static website content, etc. So the basic question is what can I do to make this thing overlap as much as possible my comfort zone for producing and shaping that content, with sufficient flexibility to adapt when I discover God has something different in mind.

I run Windows in a virtual machine on my computer. I actually like Windows, mostly for what it does manage to do, despite all my other objections. Microsoft is accountable to God, not to me. All I can do is offer my reaction to what they’ve done. It is horrible technology, but Windows did a marvelous job of capturing the vast majority of user’s instincts and general hopes and dreams for what a PC could and should do. Sure, some of it was the result of manipulation and destroying sometimes better options offered by competition, but were the net result unacceptable, nobody would be using it. You can theorize all you like about whether the current business environment would be the same without the Redmond Borg’s market behavior, but we are where we are and this is how we get things done right now. In the context, I still like running Windows for some of my work.

What I can’t tolerate is how Microsoft seizes increasingly greater levels of control over users’ work environment. Somewhere between Win2K and XP was the pinnacle of usability and adaptability. It was buggy and riddled with security vulnerabilities, but that period was the best balance between moving forward with new technology while keeping the door open for old habits that served well some major portion of users. It was also just vulnerable enough that technicians could find ways to pry open the fingers of Microsoft management and do some of the things Windows was not supposed to do. With Vista and Win7, MS managed use the excuse of security and stability for closing those doors. Windows became less breakable and more tightly locked in every sense.

When MS gives with one hand, they take far more with the other. For example, I’ve discovered through some background tech chatter that if you choose to install Win7 now, one of the first required updates you get will break Windows Update on many systems — and you cannot fix it. While we cannot be sure of the criteria, it’s probably entirely intentional that your hopes of a fresh install of Win7 on some hardware now will be subject to the MS’s approval. And with every passing week, we get new announcements of yet more ways MS portrays the Borg mentality about what you will and will not be allowed to do with your hardware and their software.

Again, I don’t hate the technology but the attitude. I use Linux because, while I still have to deal with a certain amount of attitude from developers, it’s nothing like what we get from MS. So I run XP in a VM where it’s protected and I can still use the productive technology that’s frankly better than what I can get on Linux otherwise. I also run WINE for a couple of programs that work well enough without having to fire up the VM. These are choices I make in pursuit of God’s glory, so human logic and the opinions from various advocates just don’t matter.

By the way, in WINE I run Notepad++ for every day plain text composition and HTML formatting tasks. It does more with less hassle and less horsepower, and does it better, than the editors I can get made for Linux. I run Word 97 for basic pre-formatting in my books. In the VM with XP I run Word XP for the final product passed to my publisher. I use those versions because I have copies with valid product keys. If you must know, LibreOffice comes with some frankly nasty defaults that ruin the document formatting so that the published product is flawed. Changing those defaults doesn’t seem to stick, as it keeps inserting them back into new documents regardless of what I do with the templates. Complaining to the developers has proven pointless. And to be honest, I have grown much more comfortable with the subtle collection of habits associated with MS Office up through the XP version. The XP version won’t run under WINE; Office 97 does and I still think it was just dandy, but my publisher doesn’t like it.

Some of this reflects simply being set in my ways. There is nothing inherently good or righteous in change itself. I also don’t reject change that improves my service. We each must explore our own convictions and follow the path that brings us peace with the Creator.

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You, Too

Posted on February 9, 2016 by ehurst

God portrays Himself amongst us as an Eastern potentate, a sort of nomad sheikh. With that image is a certain kind of baggage about the nature of things. It portrays how He deals with us and how we should deal with each other. So far as we are concerned, this is the fundamental nature of moral reality in our universe. This is the optimum; it’s how we are wired. It is the very nature of human existence. For each of us, our best grasp of life in this realm of existence is striving to serve God as a feudal family member or household servant.

Included in this approach is the recognition that things are not static, that the whole universe is literally very much alive in its own right. If we don’t see it that way, we will fail to understand critical elements in God’s revelation, as He commands us to treat His Creation in terms of something alive with His divine character. Further, it is we who are fallen, while the rest of Creation is not fallen. Yet God has placed us in dominion over His Creation, so that our fallen nature is a painful imposition over Creation. Redemption can be characterized in part as learning how to exercise dominion in this world as God intended and giving the rest of Creation a break from our miserable thrashing.

An Eastern feudal servant is responsible for keeping track of his or her domain. That domain is delivered under certain terms, with certain limits and a distinct mission to occupy and make it profitable for the glory of our divine Sheikh. We represent His interests and are personally responsible to Him.

There are times when, in the process of doing this in my own life, I must go out and see where the boundaries are in the domain God delivered to me. That imagery applies on many levels and one of the most critical is recognizing who you are in terms of how you will go about God’s business. Yesterday was such a day of boundary inspection. Part of the artistry here is learning to recognize when a change in the boundary lines is the work of God versus when it represents a challenge to God’s divine authority. If you can’t embrace the serious need for being tested, you can’t improve your service. Our Sheikh remains ever mysterious and inscrutable in some of His purpose in moving things around and waiting for us to catch onto it.

In other words, there is no harm in going back and making sure you understand that this old thing is no longer appropriate, but that one is. And this new thing is to be added, but those things are a distraction. No other human can say what should drive you to go out and test the boundaries again, and whether it’s a waste of time.

This business of stretching out the virtual parish to cover new ways of sharing has shifted significantly from my original ideas. I was headed in the right direction but had a very normal tendency to stop too long at transitory points along the way. I just imagine that if God told me everything that was afoot, I’d mess up my chance to participate because I haven’t walked through the fire enough times to shed all the flammable junk. So I push through certain ideas until they run into stone walls and stop moving. “Okay, we got that out of the way.”

The point here is not the tentative answers at which I have arrived for today, but the underlying process. Indeed, that’s the whole point of sharing my faith, because human accomplishment was never that important. It’s all just a tool for His glory. What most Western minds keep failing to grasp is how paramount is that underlying process. Divine redemption is the process of growing an appetite for God’s favor by pursuing His glory, not the collection of things we do along the path. How He uses each of us is cool, but that He uses us is the thing we celebrate with each other. If He uses me and something about my story draws you, then you already understand as much as you need. You’ll understand that He wants to use you, too.

By no means would you be responsible to me for satisfying my inner visions in how you mark out your boundaries. Look past my foibles and follies, because there are plenty of them. See the merciful and mighty hand of God at work in me and realize He calls you into His service, as well.

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Lotsa Work

Posted on February 8, 2016 by ehurst

Some things on my computer were not working right; I decided to test some alternatives. None of them worked, of course. But instead of running Debian 64-bit, I decided to test the idea of running 32-bit. Seems to work okay, and the PAE kernel extensions allow it to address all the RAM. It meant changing the mixture of software I use because some of it is only available as 64-bit. Such is life. I think I like this better. Besides, in all the mucking around I moved my new USB wired keyboard and mouse connections into a different place and the machine is quicker to find them now.

For now, I’m using the router as my home server. I’m still hoping that DD-WRT developers come up with something less buggy.

And of course it all made me a little stir-crazy, so I went for a ride. Take into consideration we had stiff winds varying between north and northwest. I was riding our Oklahoma River trails and ended up listing into the wind up to 15° at times. It was a lot of work just riding at all, so I didn’t go far and didn’t take any pictures. It was still one whale of a workout.

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Added FTP Stuff

Posted on February 7, 2016 by ehurst

You watch the Superbowl. I have better things to do.

I’ve added my “stuff” to the FTP server. That includes the bulk of books except the Bible study series (I’m fixing something first), plus all the articles to which I refer regularly. Each of them is available in various formats that typically include Word, LibreOffice, PDF and epub. The HTML versions will be on the main static website eventually. Actual file titles vary but you are likely to figure out the abbreviations.

It’s all in the library under a folder named “edstuff”.

Update: The Ancient Truth Bible study materials are in the library under the “bible” folder, offering everything in four different document formats.

Second Update: The static site and home FTP servers are both gone as of 2020.

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Satan and the Fall

Posted on February 7, 2016 by ehurst

We see “the Serpent” in Genesis 3, and it’s just a poetic term for Satan. The Hebrew word for “snake” is nakawsh (naw-kawsh) — doesn’t that sound like a snake? Say it drawing out the last syllable for dramatic emphasis. Yet Paul says he was an “Angel of Light” (2 Corinthians 7:14). In the Garden, Eve instinctively recognized him as a person of authority. If we compare this scene with the opening paragraphs of Job, we begin to get a picture of someone who was allowed to come and go on the Earth at will, had tremendous power, and yet was accountable to God. Further, he had some access the God’s throne room, and seemed familiar with the protocols for addressing God.

Next, we look at Isaiah 14 where we get the name “Lucifer” — an English rendering of the Greek translation of Hebrew Scripture. The poetic lines of condemnation for Nebuchadnezzar (vv. 12-15) sound a great deal like the condemnation against the “King of Tyre” in Ezekiel 28:11-19. In the case of Tyre, we know for a fact that there was never any person bearing the title “King” over Tyre. There was a Prince (more accurately translated “leader from among the people”). We also know that the Prince was simultaneously the high priest of a very nasty religion. In the eyes of Hebrew prophets, the heathen god a people worshipped was their true ruler. For centuries, Bible scholars have said that this passage in Ezekiel could only be about Satan. Keep in mind, that there is a sense in which every pagan god and goddess was merely a front for a demon (1 Corinthians 10:19-20) when it involved genuine worship. It’s not too much of a stretch to see Tyre’s demon as Satan himself.

If you chase down the passages in Scripture regarding Satan (AKA Lucifer, the Enemy, the Accuser, etc.) and piece them together, you get a feel for this character. Seen as a whole, they describe one who, at first was the “Covering Cherub” of God. Try to imagine that few in Creation can bear the presence of God Himself, without losing their created form (i.e., they die). Thus, someone had to be a cloak to shield Creation. God created a special being to handle the task. This meant that all traffic/communication between God and Creation had to pass through this Living Cloak. No surprise that this being got a big head over his unique status, and tried to skim off some of that glory and praise meant for God, and keep it for himself.

Is this not the same thing the prophets denounced in the latter days of the Covenant? The Chosen People took themselves too seriously, convinced they were God’s gift to Creation. They forgot that they were simply the chosen messengers; they forgot that Israel the Nation was supposed to be Israel the Message. So while Jesus did encounter a few folks who remembered this (Luke 2:25-32) in His time, you would think they were a tiny minority. Today you can read and study the Talmud, if you get your hands on an honest translation that hasn’t cut out all the embarrassing stuff, and be told that only Jews are actually human, while the rest of us are animals.

You’ll have to decide for yourself how much this affects the way Jews as a whole and Jews individually interact with the rest of us. Compare that with Anglo-Saxon arrogance or any other presumption of superiority we encounter on this earth. It’s human nature because it comes from the Fall; it’s part the fundamental attraction in Satan’s sales pitch to Eve about the Forbidden Fruit. We are born with a reflex to measure all things by our own internal chatter. Our assumptions are surely so sensible; how could anything think differently?

When Satan came to visit Adam and Eve, he had already suffered the demotion from Covering Cherub to Divine Jailer. The only way he could prosper now was to increase the occupancy of his jail. The primary seduction was suckering folks into his own mistake. This business of presuming that human reason is sufficient to answer all the important questions of “life the universe and everything” is the very essence of the Fall. This is what puts us in the jail, because it is contrary to cosmic reality, contrary to the moral fabric of Creation, and contrary to God’s moral character. The nature of sin itself is arguing with God.

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Psalm 87

Posted on February 6, 2016 by ehurst

This is a terse prophetic song. The Hebrew is difficult to grasp if you read it literally, and you would be in good company. Toward the end before Babylon laid siege to the city, a great many shallow minds and closed hearts mistook such prophetic material as some kind of cheap guarantee that they had God over a barrel. They could do what they pleased, but as long as they hid in the City, God could not allow His House to be destroyed. How wrong they were, having forgotten the lesson of the Tabernacle at Shiloh. They forgot what God said to David, that He did not actually dwell in structures built by human hands. Rather, Solomon would build a house for God’s name, His earthly representation. This is not a song of Jerusalem the geographic spot on this earth; it is a song of Zion the heart of God.

So far as the record of Scripture shows, God first spoke personally to Abraham. On this Mount Moriah where Abraham was prepared to offer his only natural born heir, it is here that one can make some physical contact with the foundation of divine revelation and redemption. This act of Abraham was the symbolic foreshadowing of Christ, the final revelation of the Creator’s character. For the Sons of Korah, this is the place where God had been willing to found His personal reputation in the midst of fallen humanity.

He could have chosen any part of the Promised Land, but this is the spot to where He called David to build his capitol. It was honored by His choice, not by its own virtue. God could visit any Israeli in his home, but He called them as sovereign to appear before Him in a place they could learn to treasure for what it meant. While it would mean nothing but a burdensome ritual to some, to those whose heart was awake and focused on Jehovah, it was a sacred duty. They would come and be moved deeply at the sight of those symbols of imperial majesty.

And it was in this place where those with committed hearts could not remain silent, but would burst with praise and grateful thanksgiving for the high privilege of being God’s chosen voice to the world.

Someday, you would look around at all the foreigners who came to celebrate their Creator in this place. People from as far as Egypt in one direction and Babylon in the other. Philistia, once their implacable foe; Tyre who depended on them for food even as she controlled so much of the commerce coming into Israel; all colors of men, including those from Ethiopia — you will point to them and say that they were born here in Zion. This is where humanity’s redemption was born, and it will give everyone it touches a new identity. The Lord will count them as born in Zion. They will all be Children of Israel in the sense of God’s divine mission of revelation.

And the Sons of Korah singing and playing worship instruments will rejoice in this global redemption, welcoming everyone who seeks the Lord, proclaiming loudly that Jehovah is the source of their very existence.

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Within Reach

Posted on February 6, 2016 by ehurst

Spammers never learn. Every day in my blog comments here I get at least one spam comment for some facial serum sold on Amazon, sometimes two or three times. I also get at least once each week something telling me all about search engine optimization. Well, it’s too late for my ugly face and I get lots of people from search engine results, so I think I’ll skip the sales pitches.

Sometimes we think there is something in front of us that we simply cannot learn. Over the past two decades, I’ve read an awful lot about firewalling technology and it just never did sink in at the fundamental level. I was always so grateful for firewall software that come with instructions for dummies. “This is probably what you want, so click that and it will happen.” I love smart defaults. With the Red Hat gang (RHEL, CentOS, Scientific Linux, Stella/Nux and others) the default is okay. With anything based on Debian (Ubuntu, Mint, etc.) just install “ufw” and run two instructions with root credentials on the CLI:

ufw enable
ufw default deny

That covers most home and mobile device users. Even better is the massively complicated and brilliant “Firewall2” from SUSE, but I can’t stand running SUSE itself. However, if you want to learn about Linux networking, you really have to get the whole thing down starting with the fundamentals.

I won’t pretend to know all the ways the human mind learns something like that. Some folks pick it up on first exposure; most of us find it some kind of challenge. I suspect most of my readers are very challenged by it. So after two decades of fooling with Linux, I can no longer escape the task. It made a big difference that I first went back and read up on the basics of how computers communicate across the wires. Basic computer networking is pretty much learning to think in terms of packets of data. I never understood that very well, either. I found this tutorial and was amazed that I actually understood it for once. From there it wasn’t so hard to start understanding firewall technology.

I assure you there is some measure of divine assistance in learning something that I don’t find fascinating. Were it not for a sense of calling, I wouldn’t bother in the first place. However, there is a sense in which that drive to get it means I’ll persist. I’ll read some of it until it starts getting fuzzy. Then I’ll switch to another task or even walk away from the computer and perform some domestic chore. Then I’ll come back and reread and push ahead. I’ve been reading this chapter on firewalls off and on all morning. But for once, I think I’m getting it.

I do know from experience that this is the way it has been with computer technology stuff, particularly in Linux. If you are pretty sure you need it, and it doesn’t come easy, don’t get discouraged. Be patient with your own human weakness. You might need to do some research to find good teaching material, or at least tutorials that work for you, but most of it is within reach. Trust in the Lord and press ahead.

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Cycling: Antenna Farm

Posted on February 5, 2016 by ehurst

You are now entering Deep Fork hills.

You are now entering Deep Fork hills.

The Antenna Farm in OKC was once out in the boonies. Now it’s surrounded by multi-million dollar real estate.AntennaFarmOKC In a four-square-mile area there are over a dozen towers. This image (right) is just a few from one angle.

With a strong southerly breeze behind me as I rode up Midwest Boulevard, I hit Wilshire Boulevard PDQ. Turning left, there was just one hump and valley still feeding into the the North Canadian. After that it was a bit rougher in the Deep Fork watershed. On the way I passed some rather moderate nice homes, and one really slick gate with Mesopotamian art figures (below right).4936EWilshireOKC It was hilly all the way out to the Antenna Farm which starts well west of I-35.

KOKH-TVFox25 First up is the KOKH TV campus (left; shared with The CM 34 studios and KMGL FM radio) and a pretty tall tower over 1000 feet tall. This is a fairly new and aggressive broadcaster in our area, but I never see their reporter vehicles where I see the others. Just a half mile farther west where Wilshire crosses Kelley Avenue is vast acreage belonging to one of our oldest broadcasters. Formerly WKY, it is now KWTV (Channel 9). Back when digital broadcasting displaced the old analog signal, they took down what was then the tallest tower at nearly 1600 ft.KWTV9OKC All that’s left are massive anchor points. With digital broadcasting it was cheaper to lease a spot on someone else’s tower than to maintain that monster. Out behind their building is OETA public TV station, and off to one side is a couple of radio stations. This is the home of Griffin Communications.

OPUBCO-AnschutzBldgI decided not take the extra distance to see KFOR (Channel 4) and turned north on Kelley. As I passed along some really big church houses, I was able to see the old OPUBCO (Oklahoma Publishing Company, image left), a newspaper house. It was bought up by Anschutz Entertainment, an even richer and more partisan right-wing outfit. They still print The Daily Oklahoman and some other papers. For some crazy reason the mapping services label this building simply “ATM.”KOCO5OKC

Up and around the corner east on Britton Road is KOCO TV (Channel 5). Their website sucks but they currently offer the best storm broadcasts. You would notice there are a few older houses out in this area (stone house left), but most of them are newish.1301EWilshireOKC Some of these broadcasters hide among the odd mixture of homes and businesses now dotting the spaces between large subdivisions, so driving around out here you might not know because they simply don’t advertise. However, up on Britton Road is where you see the most expensive homes and it continues all the way back to Midwest Boulevard.

BrittonRdOpulence1 The two miles east of I-35 are really expensive real estate. I passed a massive place that was camera shy, hidden far back in the foliage, but the sign out front said “Vox Printing.” Their main claim to fame is all the paper packaging (including paper cups) used at McDonald’s. BrittonRdOpulence2 But then, just across the street from this obscenely expensive housing pictured on the left and right here was a stone front dugout that could easily date back to Land Run days (below right).LandRunHome This area did see a lot of settlement during that time, and there are plenty of signs that you can still find.

I suppose the saddest sight was yet another “Ghost Bike” memorial. This time the victim was named Clyde Riggs, an older man hit from behind just a day after the one up on Midwest Boulevard near Memorial Road.ClydeRiggsGhostCycle

On the way home I noticed that all the activity at the North Canadian bridge was stopped, and very little equipment was left standing around. It doesn’t look finished, so I’m not sure what to make of it. At any rate, I took advantage of the lack of workers to go down and capture what they have done under the bridge (below right).Cdn-Mwblvd-diversion That row of stones as it now stands would just about divert the worst of any flooding down the far side, containing it until it passed under the bridge. The open area in the near ground will see less turbulence and it should spare the bank on which I stood any further carving. However, I’m waiting to see if they close up the equipment lanes they left cutting through some of this stone work (called “rip-rap”) farther upriver where all that equipment and the stone dump was all parked.

With that I’ll drop the last two pictures here. One is the Deep Fork looking south from Britton Road with that huge Vox Printing plant in the background. The other is a really fancy gateway to an expensive subdivision on the hillside above the river.
DeepForkBrittonRd 4400blkEBrittonRdOKC

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Net Future

Posted on February 5, 2016 by ehurst

Some of you, dear readers, grasp the heart-led awareness. If you do, then you are acutely aware that most of the world does not, will not, and perhaps cannot get it. The nature of heart-led compassion for the world that held Our Savior on the Cross keeps us from treating these others with contempt. Whatever it is we might do to help them cross over, it won’t be a dismissive arrogance. If you aren’t grateful and humble, then you don’t have it.

What good does it do us to focus our awareness in the heart-mind if we don’t use it to guide our expectations and decisions? The only reason you don’t know what your heart of conviction demands is because you don’t submit to it. The brain is taught by the heart; the heart is the only part of us that can read the moral fabric of God’s character woven into Creation. The heart alone knows what God intended and how reality actually works. And it knows before your brain dares to ask. The tough part is teaching your intellect to submit by reflex. Let’s use it.

Can you imagine the Internet without ad-supported content?

This is more complex than it seems on the surface. The vast majority of content is offered freely. It may be ad-supported only because the service itself requires it, not the content. But if there was some way to get hosting for content without ads, plenty of folks would be willing to keep putting their stuff out there. It’s something in human nature itself. Right now the bulk of Net surfer attention goes to ad-supported content, so there’s an awful lot of content seen by very few eyes. And our culture has become spoiled, seeking the entertainment factor first and foremost.

That is not heart-led surfing. Entertainment can be neutral and harmless, but good luck finding that. It requires some experience at discerning the difference between the harmless versus stuff backed by ulterior motives, all the more so with heart-mind awareness. With that experience you discern that most of the entertainment is leverage for pushing one lie or another. Do you imagine the major news outlets are actually just trying to inform you of the facts? All of it follows a particular manipulative agenda. About the only good reason for giving them any attention is simply to see what they are lying about today. They offer nothing for heart-led folks, and deny that we exist.

The advertising industry as we know it is dying. Much of the current ad-supported garbage will go away. By no means will it all simply cease, but the virtual landscape will change. You can bet that the tracking will not slow down; it will only get worse.

A point in passing: Two technology giants get almost all their money from advertising and tracking, selling folks like you and me to third parties — Google at around 85% and Facebook at 95%. Apple and Microsoft tracking is currently not sold, but kept in-house; the bulk of their income arises from actual sales of product. For example, if you have a Windows phone or iPhone, you need worry only about what Microsoft or Apple does with that snooping internally. Sometimes you can actually turn stuff off that you don’t like. With Android, you can’t imagine how profligate is the snooping and disclosure to third parties. And every time someone offers a tool to tone it down, Google comes up with a new and nastier trick that you cannot control at all. Facebook is even worse.

I’m curious to see how this plays out. Some very popular sites will disappear very soon. The institutional resistance to change will see a lot of stuff hanging on to the bitter end, then closing with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. A few visionaries will be more nimble, and a precious few will actually understand what’s going on. Look for some truly new stuff being born.

You can have economic growth without debt; it’s just that it would be slower. A business can grow without investors. There are other ways to run a business on the Internet and make a profit. By the same token, artists can make a living from their art if they learn the new way of Internet marketing. Some of the lavish waste in the entertainment industry will go away, but those who truly love their art can find a way by catching on to the new Indie style and ditching the middleman. People still love live performances, but the pool of those with money for high ticket prices is shrinking radically. Meanwhile, the pool of smaller venues is growing, as is the word-of-mouth booking system.

Is anyone really surprised that religion will take the same hits from economic freezing? Some religious institutions are almost blatant in offering religion as entertainment. It’s all about butts in the seats and dollars in the offering plate. Do you know that there are “houses of worship” that charge a minimum cover to get in the door? Look for monster church houses in your area to close down, because the institutional resistance to change is powerful in mainstream religion.

It doesn’t have to be like that. Yes, I have a vision, but whatever you want to call “success” is not measured in terms of dollars and membership. The biggest payback I get is the words of thanks, and even somewhat in the words of criticism. The most valuable thing in heart-led religion is your heart-led response. You are my treasure. For the Father’s glory, I’ll take some risks.

The FTP server is up and running. So far, one person far away from me has tested access and there was no trouble. I’ve got a small collection of books, articles and booklets and some music, stuff I’ve collected over the past few years. I’m putting that stuff in this open library. The powers that be might not like everything about this arrangement, but I’m not making it public and certainly not charging anything for it.

Some of it might be familiar to a few of you, but some of it you’ve never seen or heard. All of it is freely accessible on the Net, but you might not know where to look. I’m trying learn about finding that stuff. Most of you have no time for that, so I’m offering the fruits of my labor free to you in a virtual library. If you want something I don’t have, just ask. In order for this to work, we need to keep it private. That means you need to ask for the address and then you’ll need a login and password. If you have something you want to share, that’s a separate procedure. Most of you won’t have permission to upload unless I’ve had a chance to get to know you. Let’s see if we can make this work without getting the wrong kind of attention. Eventually such measures won’t be necessary, but we have to live with it for now.

Let me know if you are interested: jhurst18 at cox dot net.

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