Virtual Resistance

Our warfare is in the moral realm.

We live in the Fallen Realm. God’s revelation of truth falls into the Moral Realm but bears implications for our lives in the Fallen Realm. Please note that the Moral Realm is the interface between the Spirit Realm and the Fallen Realm; it’s a label for something difficult to explain. The bulk of human focus cannot discern any part of the Moral Realm, and imagines that the Fallen Realm is the extent of reality. Human government reflects that false understanding. We could adopt the label “resistance” only because the vernacular imagines that human government is actually in control.

Insofar as we resist in this moment in human history, it is through moral opposition to a fallen understanding of things. While we might take the implied actions with tools and weapons and hands, the real conflict is in the Moral Realm, in that we assert the moral character of God in this world. So we tend to vary between us in the actual tactics in the moment, but we do need to share a common moral truth. We also emphasize the shared weapons of truth, the means to delivering the ordinance that destroys deceptions.

In ancient times, that was primarily the matter of going physically to those in moral prisons and telling them the truth. It has always been in God’s hands alone whether that truth is received; it was the matter for His people to go and tell. The expensive and specialized task of writing and sending a message that way was merely an adjunct. When writing became cheaper, the message became more deeply invested in that means of transmission. With electronic transmission, the message went even farther with less use of resources. The Internet is our Roman Road system. Nothing can replace face-to-face contact and the merging of hearts’ auras, but God has seen fit to bless the virtual medium for His use.

My calling emphasizes the means and methods of virtual communications. My fortresses might be a desktop system or server somewhere, and my maneuver weapons system in the field is a laptop. There are variations: For now, my “desktop” is a bigger laptop and my maneuver weapon is a netbook. But the meat space specifics matter less than how something is used. Depending on how you do things, you could substitute a smart phone or tablet for my netbook in your own service, but the point is the message backed up by how we live for the Lord’s glory.

We reflect His glory by how we live according to His revealed character. We bring that divine Presence by proxy into every sphere of human experience. We correct false impressions about the whole range of what people do. In general, we strive to show how God intends we as humans relate to everything around us, including how we relate to each other. That means we have to gain a certain expertise in virtual human relations over the networking devices we all use. We have to assert God’s truth regarding virtual space. I assure you that most people do not rightly understand the virtual realm, and it creates a lot of moral havoc.

One particular issue is that the medium itself is content neutral. That is, what passes over the wires will always be nothing more than electrical impulses. What that stuff looks like on the either end is a human construct that is imposed through the devices, but the wire knows nothing about that. It’s just a stream of binary data, zeroes and ones. In order to exploit this medium to the fullest potential, we must not concern ourselves with what other people choose to send. The freedom of our message means freedom of the most morally despicable things humans can imagine. Restricting the latter also restricts the former.

What people choose to transmit is not our problem, any more than what human governments imagine they must do. Do you imagine the Apostle Paul would attempt to stand in the path of Roman government shipments traveling over the Roman road system simply because his gospel message was morally superior? It doesn’t work like that. We insert ourselves into the stream of human activity as a whole, merely displaying the truth for all to see. God alone decides who will notice and be drawn.

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The Niceness Lie

It’s peculiar to Western social mythology that we are supposed to be “nice.”

While the actual definition is contextual and all over the map, we all have learned to recognize that undertone — “you’re supposed to be nice” — in much of today’s verbal noise. It’s not the same as civility, by the way. The majority of Western commentators wouldn’t recognize the difference. Okay, maybe they would, but they are committed to redefining civility to mean the prissy middle-class materialistic “niceness” often used as a verbal whip.

The Bible does not require you to be nice. It doesn’t teach being nice at all. It teaches compassion, which is hardly the same thing.

First, it requires that you understand divine justice, not Western social justice mythology. Divine justice is that moral discernment of God’s character that I rant about on this blog all the time. If your heart is not sensing and processing as the master of your soul, and your mind (with all the reason and logic) fails to serve your heart, you cannot possibly understand divine justice. Do you recall the vast complexity of the Law of Moses and all its prophetic applications? That was just one peculiar context for the manifestation of divine justice. We can summarize it, but we cannot pretend to capture something that requires the active participation of some higher capacity above your mere intellect.

On top of that, you have to exercise the power of your will to implement that divine justice. You must have a sense of divine calling in which to frame your response to every context. That means that the precise same provocation from precisely the same person might call for a different response in different contexts. You are obliged to sense through your heart what best fits God’s glory in that moment. Whatever brings Him glory in your life is, by definition, in everyone’s best interest. Compassion is giving someone as much justice as you have power to bring against some previous injustice. It’s a concern first for divine justice as the definition of “love.”

It could also mean completely ignoring what the victim claims they want or need. The controlling factor is not their need, but what God has given you to pass along. Nothing in the Bible requires that you reshape yourself to meet some expert’s prescription for what others need in any given context. Offer what God tells you to offer; otherwise walk away and stop wasting resources God has given you for a divine calling.

It’s not really a female thing, but it is a heathen feminist thing to demand control over every element of human consciousness by the bogus unrecognized mommies of our postmodern society. If you understand that feminism is not necessarily a feminine trait, but is a damned social construct, you realize that a lot of the bullshit over this issue is simply feminism as a mythology. It is a brand of morality that isn’t morally right. By the way, the mythical Western masculinity is wholly and utterly dependent on the mythical Western feminism because Western culture as a whole makes men into little boys who must do what their mommies tell them. People read this shit back into the Bible and are shocked when you tell them it’s not actually there. In fact, they are shocked when you use the word “shit” in moral and religious conversation. They refuse to recognize that God calls it that, because English Bible translators tend to be wusses.

The biblical masculinity is first self-controlled under the heading of divine calling and divine justice. That doesn’t mean a rule-bound behavior pattern, but a determination to not let our human nature take a majority vote on how we act. We place the heart in command because that’s our best hope of knowing God’s will. Then we make the mind serve the heart, and drag the flesh along behind. When the mind rules, we are back outside Eden facing that Flaming Sword, because the Fall was essentially placing human reason on the throne of moral decision making. We seek to walk back through that Flaming Sword to place everything back in proper order.

Having turned that Sword on our own hearts, we stand ready to use it when others attack our calling and mission for His glory. We naturally hope for lesser measures of authority, but we stand ready to exercise the full range of divine defense. Not so much in the physical sense, but something more encompassing, where we learn the boundaries of our dominion under God’s authority. But whatever it is we do, “niceness” as typically defined is always wrong because of where it starts. Nor is it somehow redemptive to use rough language just for its own sake. Rather, it has to fit the context. The New Testament prohibition is against senseless rough language as a reflex of the old sinful life. It takes a perverted mind to see speech codes and niceness in the Bible.

So, yeah — I’m ready if necessary to tell you to go screw yourself with some certainty that God will back it up.

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Linux on Dell Latitude 2120

This was a rather pricey business machine when Dell released it some four-and-a-half years ago. It was designed for Win7 and comes with a surprising array of added goodies, but no Bluetooth. You can find these things in good quantity on Ebay, Amazon, and other online shops. While most of them seem to run about or just over $100 US, I found a vendor offering a decent version for $89. While powered by the lesser of the two CPU options (Intel Atom N455), it had a full 2GB RAM. By the way, Linux says that the processor is dual-core at 1.66 Ghz.

You can get it with Windows, and I’m sure the key on the bottom works with any Dell Win7 installer DVD, but this vendor installs Linux Mint on their machines by default. That’s fine, but it was a huge mistake to select the Cinnamon Desktop for such a low-powered device. When you first fired it up, you are asked to select your language, keyboard, and give your account a password. This one uses the “sudo” method for administration, meaning no active root account. But as soon as the thing comes up with the GDM login screen, it’s running a constant slide show of different background images that takes up all the processor cycles. The lag time between what you type and what you see on the screen is intolerable for logging in. The desktop itself was just slightly less laggy, but some functions took so long to come up you might think the machine never got the click on the icon. They should have chosen the XFCE or LXDE desktop by default for lightweight machines.

I plugged in an external DVD-RW drive (there’s no room for an optical drive on such a small machine) and booted in plain old Debian. Given the specs (under 4GB RAM) I thought it might be worth trying the 32-bit version, but I couldn’t get it to read the hardware properly. Using the 64-bit (AMD64) installer worked fine. An Intel Atom is just a smaller and lighter Intel CPU, and is not a different architecture. I recommend you use the Debian installer CD that includes all the non-free firmware to reduce hassles during installation. This netbook requires the Broadcom firmware. Get the CD here (and typical 32-bit version here). You will need a USB mouse during installation because the installer kernel doesn’t recognize the touchpad. Once installed the touchpad works quite well.

During the installation routine, you’ll get a chance to select a desktop “task” and I chose the XFCE, of course. LXDE would work as well, but I’d avoid GNOME or KDE.

Once it’s up and running, everything seems to work just fine. That huge 57wh battery adds a bump to the back of the machine, but they make it work like a small lift, which gives the deck a slight tilt that most folks prefer when resting on any hard surface. The body has a rubberized coating not found on most laptops. The keyboard it a little tight but functional; with a little use to accustom myself, I can see writing even longer documents on it. I do find having the power cable and ethernet cable on the right side just a little odd, but it’s no big deal. With vanilla Debian and a lightweight desktop interface, it feels just about as snappy as any newer machine.

Addenda: FYI, this is what my desktop looks like. I put both toolbars vertical (“deskbar”) on either end.LatitudeDesktop (Click to enlarge.)

Update: I couldn’t get the 32-bit installer to work with Debian, and eventually the doggy slowness of the 64-bit caused me to search a bit. After testing a few different ideas and OSes, I’ve settled on Linux Mint 32-bit. The installation was flawless and everything works just fine using the built-in process of first testing the wrong driver, then replacing it with the Broadcom STA driver for the wifi.

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Photolog: NE 122nd

Today’s ride was to explore NE 122nd Street between Anderson Road and Midwest Boulevard, all of this being northwest of Jones and touching Witcher community.

As always, click on a thumbnail image to enlarge.

CarterAveJust a random sight along Hiwasee in the old Dunjee District, this is Carver Avenue, somewhere between NE 50th and NE 63rd. Google Maps will offer a street view passage, but it didn’t look quite this far gone. Over the past couple of years so little traffic has passed that the canes have just about blocked the road.

NAndersonnr122ndWhile the online mapping services show that you can reach NE 122nd from Anderson Road, it’s not quite true. It was cut off some years ago and turned into a dump. Just as well, as the water treatment plant just over the river offered an overwhelming odor. Despite numerous signs, it was clear that plenty of foot traffic had ignored the closure, and someone had dropped a few shotgun shells. For amusement, I stood them up on the big log there.

11801NAndersonRdJonesWhat surprised me is how many sights that I found appealing enough to shoot. Some didn’t turn out well, but this abandoned house and cars standing just north of Hefner Road on Anderson came out well enough, despite the overcast conditions. I captured this coming back out from the closed road.

11224NWestminsterJonesI tried again, riding along Hefner Road to the next section line west, Westminster Road. About half a mile north this place (right) was selling antique farm implements. Eventually I got to NE 122nd and found out what closed the road.NE122ndWestminsterRd Looking back eastward this (left) is what the entrance to a sand and gravel dump looks like.

8625NE122ndOKCI was fascinated by this old shed standing behind an equally old house (right). However, someone is taking care of the house and it has a completely incongruous brand new steel roof. It’s just some of the stuff you can see in areas under long occupation by humans. At this point I was in the old Witcher area, and I am told it had been a thriving farming community at one time. Something like half of the original homes are long gone, so this is a reminder of past glories.

8001EWilshireOKCBut this sort of thing is rather common along the river valley. This is the rock house standing near my picnic spot at Wilshire and Midwest Boulevard. I have seen pictures indicating that such was the common building style all over this part of the North Canadian Valley. There’s an ancient school house out here somewhere that looks like that, somewhere along NE 63rd, provided it hasn’t been demolished.

5500blkNMidwestBlvdThat place where the heavy construction is taking place near the enigmatic stone wall along Midwest Boulevard continues apace. There are massive piles of huge stones ready for reinforcing the banks. From the image perhaps you can see that the crews have diked off the north bank (where the river turns sharply south before crossing under Midwest Boulevard) and are pumping out the water. In the background this artificial dike curves around to connect with the natural bank. I’m guessing that they plan to prevent future wandering of the water course so as to reclaim some part of the land. They’ll probably refill the area enclosed by the dike. That is, unless what we are seeing is a temporary move designed to allow digging deep below the natural river bed for some reason.

Who knows?

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Lost in the Virtual Past

Every day I log into this account and check some of the statistics. Apparently I’ve done something right because search engines are leading folks to some of my older posts. Granted, there’s a few that are controversial, like my original comments about Life Church. That article has gotten multiple hits almost every day since I posted it. Oddly, my subsequent additions on the subject are largely ignored.

Some of my other past articles receive a little attention, too. More than a single hit in one day indicates a certain amount of interest out there in the virtual world. Sadly, I also find that some of the links have died. It’s especially rough when I linked to something I thought was really important. An example would be anything related to the Delphi Technique for manipulating people. It’s a method developed back in my youth by the Rand Corporation for steering public perception through silencing dissenting voices. You can find the original material on Rand’s site today using your favorite search engine. More importantly is that you learn about it from someone who wants to help you defeat this thing.

I read about that way back around the turn of the millennium when researching how lefties had seized control of local education districts. It’s a good thing I read that — it was used on me a couple of times since then. It was once a specialized weapon, but now has taken its place in the common lore of political rhetroic. Still, you don’t often encounter folks who actually do it well. The first time it came from a source so totally unexpected — a fundamentalist Christian — that I left the forum in disgust. The second time I was better prepared, because it happened while I was trying to find a path to service at Life Church. One of their “deacons” used it on me, and no surprise, because he was a professional educator. It shows up quite often in public education politics.

The author of the study I rely on most was Lynn Stuter. Her articles on various sites stop sometime in 2013, after which she seems to have disappeared from the Net. She’s about three years older than me (she was born in 1953), so there’s no telling what happened. At any rate, I’m ever so grateful for the Internet Archive’s Way Back Machine. I use it often enough to find stuff I worry might have been lost. In this case, I was able to go back to a snapshot of her own website and grab copies of the stuff that I use most. I have my laptop setup to print to PDF files and that’s the way I store a lot of stuff that is important to me but without wasting paper.

So if there’s something out there you think matters and the site is gone, try the Way Back Machine.

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Gotta Talk

You’ll forgive me if this sounds to fuzzy, because I don’t quite have the words. My mind yet struggles to make sense of this.

Late Saturday I knew it was on the way. All day Sunday it was shaping up. That pervasive sense of anticipation in my heart was a heavy burden. This morning, I realized it was here. I hardly had any idea what it was, but it was here.

The next stage of tribulation has begun. Did you think it would be announced on the mainstream news? What I mean is that die has been cast and God’s hand will not turn from the task He has set for Himself. It’s a reality in the moral sphere, never mind what it looks like to our minds here on the human level. The honest truth is that some of you, dear readers, will hardly notice. God is merciful. And I believe I’ll escape the worst of whatever it is, but I’ll be allowed to see things I never dreamed could be.

So this whole weekend up through today I’ve been taking those final preparatory steps. I’ve fixed all the stuff in the house and on the car that I know how to fix, or get fixed. Yes, someone was very generous with a donation that covered all those expenses and we have not been frivolous with it. But it was a whip-cracking hard driving sense that pushed me to get it all done quickly.

Some of you may recall I mentioned in one of my photologs that the AWACS jets here at Tinker just took off and circled the flight pattern, coming in close to the runway, then climbing out. They often kept this up all day, looping in the sky at a rather low speed. This evening, for the first time in many months, one of the AWACS jets took off from Tinker and gunned the turbines up full, turned and headed off toward the Gulf Coast at full throttle, climbing slowly. By itself, nothing, but my heart knew it was significant.

In three days Russian military aircraft have almost destroyed the IS in Syria. We haven’t done even one percent of that in over a year. Instead, we bombed an Afghan hospital. And now boots are on the ground in Syria, Russian and Iranian. All by Assad’s invitation. And Israel is cranking up the IDF and reserve forces while doing everything possible to provoke a Palestinian uprising. Europe is drowning in refugees but only a tiny portion are actually Syrians fleeing war; the rest are just demanding a rich Western lifestyle. So our NATO allies are about to step away from all the stuff the US has been prodding them to do because they can’t afford our fantasies any more. Meanwhile, it has slipped out that we have a grudging factual recognition that the Ukraine is no longer in once piece, and that the two seceding regions are on their own. They still have to face hostile fire, but no one imagines they’ll ever come back.

And none of these things, or all of them together, is the thing itself. Each is merely a symptom. Yep, I could be completely off my rocker and it’s just more of the same dreary human existence of global conflict. Still, for me and my heart, the crap has begun over the weekend, and I can’t afford to entertain any distractions.

God help us.

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Political Critical Mass

What kind of madness maintains the bloody tension between the State of Israel and the Palestinians? What perverted sickness keeps generation after generation locked in the open air prisons of Gaza and the West Bank? A great many Christian Zionists don’t understand why Israel hasn’t simply pushed them aside and taken the land. I submit that such a move would be too kind to serve the demented aims of Zionism.

This is the same kind of crazy that nailed Jesus to the Cross. Paul was being nice when he referred to Judaism as the Synagogue of Satan. He also correctly noted that most Jewish people were nothing like that by nature, but were herded, hounded and prodded into it by the most insidious dark genius of the rabbis who couldn’t even recognize the few virtues of Hellenism, but had to pervert that as well by turning it into spiteful legalism. While the masses did bear a load of errors about what to expect from Jesus, they were drawn instinctively to someone who understood the Creator’s compassion on the human condition. Talmudic Law made ancient Hebrew mysticism and kindness illegal.

As always, we note that Jews — whether a reference to the religion or the ethnic identity — are not the problem, but they are the carrier for this nastiness. We rightly blame The Cult.

Today we see reports of Palestinian violence. When Jewish “settlers” or the IDF kill Palestinians, if it’s reported at all, it is with some mock sadness, regardless of the numbers of dead bodies. When Palestinian activists manage to harm just a tiny handful of Jews, it’s the holocaust all over again. Maybe the current events will drift into a Third Intifada of sorts, but we should hardly be surprised.

If you were to write a script for some ongoing TV drama, this is exactly the sort of story line you would schedule right about now. The emotional pendulum has to swing the other way for awhile. So instead of Mossad agents firing harmless rockets from Palestinian territory to provoke the IDF into bombing the hell out of the residents around the launching sites, the Israeli infiltrators are provoking serious violence so the Zionists can play the victim card on a grand scale. Could you not see this coming when, over the past couple of weeks, Israeli troops invaded the Temple Mount precincts and disrupted worship in the mosque?

It’s the same madness that gave us this:

At Goldstein’s funeral, Rabbi Yaacov Perrin claimed that even one million Arabs are “not worth a Jewish fingernail”.

The rabbi simply admitted publicly what everyone knew was Zionist policy. For decades the ostensibly secular Israeli government tried to display some kind of balancing act, but this is wearing thin. Official statements were always a charade, but now it’s just Orwellian protocol. The boiling madness of Jewish exceptionalism is slopping over the sides more often, and the fire under the kettle explodes with each splash. How long can they keep stoking the fire before this thing goes nuclear? You and I could hardly guess the timing, but we can see where it’s going.

Regardless of the other purposes it serves, this is all part of the background for the impending right-wing backlash in the US.

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You Can Do This

Your heart knows.

It senses, and then processes what it senses, always measuring things in terms of moral reality. Turn your heart to the Creator and you will discover that it is His character your heart senses in all things. This is the lost legacy of biblical mysticism, so there is a vast territory of unexplored structures here.

For many of you, I’m simply down the same road ahead. Maybe I’m a trailblazer in that sense, but the path was here long before me. What you may enjoy reading here is well within the reach of your own heart. All you really get is my descriptions of things I’ve experienced personally. Your explorations will result in your own narrative. My prophetic announcements are nothing more than what my mind makes of what my heart clearly knows, and my heart knows nothing yours could not discern.

There’s a certain amount of common experience, but even that is restricted to common literary and cultural background. That is, I can only speak from the context of my life, and your mind can only receive what it recognizes. When we share enough, we become members of the same virtual church, a spiritual family where we can open up and take off the social armor. You can be your real self with me, and I with you.

I assure you that we are designed to commune with the Spirit Realm. What I teach is not secret, but cloaked against those who pay no attention to their hearts. What I describe as mystical experiences many of you already share. You might not know exactly how to proceed using it, but it’s right there in front of you. And yes, I may have a different calling and mission in some ways, but nothing I claim to experience from the “powers of the age to come” (Hebrews 6:5) are unique to me, as if you aren’t so privileged. That kind of thinking is pure nonsense, a lie of Satan accusing you falsely of being unusable to God.

Nor should you imagine you’ll get the same results. The only reason you might appreciate what I do here is because some part of you recognizes it as belonging to your moral existence. You recognize it on the moral level, though the signals of that recognition pass through the mind. Your mind is not in charge, but serves the heart, when things go as they should. You’ll get your own flavor of results, but those powers are right there in your heart already.

Don’t depend on me; share with me. Don’t rely on my personal reaction to your expressions of faith as somehow a Word from God. The “Word” part does not rest in the mind except as the means to implement. The Word of God comes to the heart or it means nothing. My reaction is merely a signal of what you should share with me; it has no bearing on your calling and your grasp of God’s truth. The hardest task here is learning to rejoice in what we share.

If you haven’t already started down that road, today is the day for you to begin trusting your heart more than your mind.

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Psalm 70

We have seen these lines before, at the end of Psalm 40. Standing alone, the context is subtly different. As a simple and short call for God’s help, it speaks of someone who has little opportunity to compose a more eloquent message to God. The words are close to formulaic, but carry a tension that indicates desperation.

The initial “make haste” is most English translations is not in the literal rendering, but implied by the context. The tone is there because David begins by calling out to God Almighty to come and snatch him from the jaws of his enemy. The line is echoed in a call for speedy aid, using the proper name Jehovah.

The second verse is quite colorful, in that David asks God make his enemies first pale as they are shocked by the outcome, then blush with embarrassment. They came expecting to take his life; let them recoil, bolt upright as the scene unfolds to taunt them for relishing David’s misfortune. Let it be like someone caught in degrading ritual devotion to some secret deity, as if to gain magical power to catch David in a vulnerable moment. Whatever it is going on with those folks, it could not possibly include a sincere devotion to Jehovah.

But there are folks of unwavering faith and trust in the God of Israel. Never mind what happens to David, let these people find cause to celebrate and rejoice in how God rescues them according to their faith. Let them glorify His name continuously.

But David feels crushed at this moment. Don’t be slow, O Lord, to make it painfully obvious to everyone that God is his only hope, and by implication, theirs.

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Update on Dad 01

I am grateful for those who have prayed with me about my Dad’s medical problems. Nobody will shame you if you take no interest in this subject, but for those who are curious, settle in for the long haul on my Dad’s story.

Some of my previous information was inaccurate. Part of the story is the typical conflicting wishes of various family members who think they know better than anyone else. My position is: So long as my Dad is conscious, his wishes will be honored. He wants to stay up in Northeast Oklahoma. That was his choice several years ago and he hasn’t changed his mind. There are other relatives up there, so he’s not isolated, just not here with the closest kin.

He’s awake but often in pain, so the doctors are giving him morphine. The surgeon removed an abscess on his spine. The doctors are now puzzled why he can’t feel his legs. He can just wiggle his toes, but can’t feel much. The surgery should have solved that problem, so there remains some tests to see if they can identify the cause of trouble. No other decisions can be made about rehab or anything else until they know why he’s still having trouble.

Pray that God grant the doctors insight into the cause and whether they can do anything to help him, particularly to relieve the pain.

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