Background on Greece and Debt

First: Let’s remind ourselves that Greece is a county like other countries in that there are lots of people with conflicting desires, plans, hopes and dreams. I’ve often panned the Greeks in historical terms for poisoning the world with their philosophers. However, Western Civilization is not Greek in flavor, but actually rather Germanic. It’s a blend of the two major influences, so it’s really quite unfair for us to judge the Greeks from our Germanic social mythology. Let’s also not forget that within living memory, Germany plundered Greece (during WW2) and has steadfastly refused to even admit doing so. To say that it no longer matters is a flat out lie: The current German good fortune, such as it is, includes a lot of stolen wealth. Part of what’s wrong with Greece’s economy was the crippling blow from which they never quite recovered.

In other words, there are no good guys so put away the gilding brush. The same is true with just about any analysis you read about the current business between Greece and the European banking system — all of them are giving you a slanted story. I’ll offer one link that comes about as close as anything else to the facts of the matter: Greece — The One Biggest Lie You Are Being Told By The Media. Please note how the same basic story applies to some other countries now on the edge of having to fight the same battle.

Yes, the Greeks are notoriously less interested in aping the dour German work ethic. But then, the Germans are no longer that way, either. Still, they tend to get things done with less corruption than the Greeks. The difference is that the Greeks were less interested in systematic sharing of the plunder, whereas the Germans are somewhat more democratic about it. The alleged “Cradle of Democracy” is anything but.

Still, the Greeks were doing okay before all this stuff went wrong, and the blame rests far more heavily on the banking lords than on the corruption so native to Greece. Corruption is a fact of human existence, only the flavor changes, like with the cooking. The Greeks were used to playing a tough game with each other and sometimes with outsiders, but the Eurobankers are thugs without any of the Greek charm, just cold spite and the most insidious lies.

Keep in mind that, while the government of Greece does have some regulatory power over the banks in Greece, the bankers have zero loyalty to the people. They are on board with the Eurobankers generally. The Greek banks have shareholders, but as you might expect, most of them are the same plutocrat psychopaths you see holding shares in banks everywhere. You saw what happened in Cyprus — the so-called “bail-in” — and it will probably happen in Greece, Spain, Italy, et al. If so, it will eventually happen in the US.

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The Otherworldly Call

Dear readers, I’m pretty sure most of you realized long ago that our official governing institutions are not really the human government over any of us. The structure we see is a facade, though the people involved are surely dangerous enough to you and I. There are very real people who make the real decisions; their identities are partially hidden. Some are hands-on but plenty prefer the shadows.

So if you revolt against the ostensible government, even if you win, it won’t change anything. The same lies that hold you where you are will be used to put other people into some other structure. Your revolution will be infiltrated before it gets off the ground. Someone else will step up to serve the same masters, regardless of the apparent system. While the control is not so total and steely as many imagine, this shadowy ruling class does have a rather firm grip on all the factors people tend to believe are necessary for our existence on this planet.

It’s not impossible to remove them from power, just wholly unlikely. First, there are an awful lot of them, so it would mean a massive slaughter simply because we cannot be quite sure who has to die to break this thing apart. Not even the plutocrats know everyone in their society; there is no central registry because they aren’t going to yield to the kind of tracking they foist on all of us. Even more confusing is that membership in that society experiences the same kind of flux you might expect for us plebes and our social institutions.

Powerful, very much so, but keep in mind that these are mere humans. These shadowy rulers are very well-informed and highly intelligent. Declaring that demons are behind all of this won’t change the human factors we might discover were we somehow granted full access to their world. Nor should you imagine that these people are especially endowed with some kind of arcane access to Satan’s councils. He is the Prince of Lies, and lies to them, too. Satan is constrained by the God who made him. Some people watch too many movies and TV shows that flatly contradict the Word of Truth, imagining some kind of communion between humans and demons that God said He won’t allow. Satan’s position and powers are far more mundane than he would like for you to understand, and so are the abilities of his willing servants.

From Scripture itself we find plenty of wisdom to understand what’s happening in our world today. In general terms, these plutocrats are using a collection of nations and their economies and military forces to sow instability in all the other places in this world. At some point, those same tools of instability will be themselves destabilized. The US is being herded down to into chaos quite intentionally. With the US will go all her allies to one degree or another. Having once served its purpose, the fearsome beast must be destroyed. Don’t get lost in the details, but see the larger pattern.

Global government requires control, and the simplest path to control is creating dependence. With artificially induced chaos, we will be of necessity dependent on something — anything — that appeals to us as “salvation.” That fake salvation is sold in every form imaginable. It could be any number of a thousand things so long as it is not the one thing that works. The greatest threat to global government is a sense of internal peace, and the greatest sense of peace is not taking this life too seriously in the first place.

The single most powerful weapon you and I have against all of this suffering and sorrow is our commitment to His truth. Walk in the footsteps of His Son and you can’t go the wrong destination. In more concrete terms, take up the communion of your heart with Creation and teach your brain to obey the heart. Learn to see the moral fabric of God’s character in the world around you, and cling to what is righteous. If it ends your existence here, so much the better. Until that moment when He calls us Home to His side, we are called to walk in His character here. Creation itself will support your choice, so learn how to commune directly with it.

Learn to accept what is optimal within the context. Stop pursuing false visions of some objective ideal. There is no specific program for victory that will work with everyone. We are all wired differently regarding the kinds of things on which we can and should focus. The most important thing you’ll do is make your own individual peace with the Creator, and then with His Creation. That means you’ll learn to abstract the divine character of God from the various Law Covenants in the Bible and know Him as only you can know Him. If you don’t understand how Jesus was Himself the Living Law of God, then you cannot really grasp the meaning of the preceding Law Covenants. The ancient mystical approach to reality was the one God designed for proper human existence on this planet, so embrace it or stay in the living death of perverted Western rationalism.

Don’t go chasing after false messiahs. The only real Kingdom of Heaven on earth is in your heart, not your mind or your body. It manifests in communion, not conformity to some human-designed structure. Do what God calls you to do and accept fellowship with others where it appears in your path. However, keep your eyes on God and with your conscious understanding forever consign this world to destruction.

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Psalm 57

In the header we learn this was written during the time David hid out in the Cave of Adullam, referring to events in 1 Samuel 22. At least one cave in that area offers a very large inner chamber after passing through a smaller vestibule at the entrance, and other caves have surely served as fortified keeps at various times. David was seldom actually alone, virtually always having at least a few friends and supporters in his entourage. We should not imagine that he wrote this song only of his own personal need. The courtly language always assumed the man plus all those for whom he was responsible.

The reference to the type of song as al-taschit refers most likely to the title of a popular tune that translates as “you must not destroy.”

The initial cry for mercy uses words that imply someone great bending down to notice a supplicant prostrate on the ground before him. As far as David is concerned, it is not so much a cave where he hides, but his heart is focused on taking refuge in God’s divine justice. Someone is surely breathing down his neck with a lust for murder. So the sovereign God of Creation alone can finish what men may have started.

David knows his problems aren’t imaginary. Oddly enough, instead of typical Hebrew hyperbole, this poetic description of Saul’s pursuit is rather accurate. The still reigning king is no slouch in battle and his troops outnumber anything David could gather. Yet the man was driven by demons of madness, so David knows the Lord of Heaven is not in this. Rather, Jehovah is there to cover him until this blows over.

What to do when your pursuit of God’s glory gets you in hot water? Don’t stop now! David calls on God to exalt Himself in plain sight of all humanity. From the human standpoint, there is no escape for David. Yet God can make David’s enemies fall into their own trap. So David refuses to panic or surrender his commitment to God’s justice.

How does God’s man face his apparent end? By keeping the focus on God. Several modern songs were taken from these final verses. David’s message here is timeless. In dramatic imagery, David calls to his heart where God’s glory registers on his awareness, and calls for his musical skills to attend this moment of praise. Well before dawn David plans to awaken and the first order of business is singing God’s praises. Let the whole world know David owes it all to his God. Could we float up into the sky itself, we would still see but the trailing end of His glory behind Him, the power of His divine character. Let God take His rightful place before the adoring eyes of all people!

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Shepherd of Hearts

I tread the lush green pastures of God’s provision. He calls me to His mountains and teaches me how to make the wild waters run still so others can drink. I had no ambition to do any of this, but the Lord would not allow me to choose anything else. Bondage? Call it what you will, but anything else would be madness and my life would be wasted on things that don’t matter.

The whole idea is that I sing His glories and hike openly to these places. Some few decide it sounds like the True Shepherd of Souls and decide to walk alongside. If they are sheep, it is only so that they may by God’s mercy become shepherds themselves. We seek to bring His justice to life.

Yeah, I could blather like that for pages and maybe it would call to you. I can’t drag you to those green pastures in the mountains of God and I can’t stick your face in the still waters. Could I do so, it wouldn’t gain anyone divine justice and life. You have to hear the voice of God in the things I write or the words simply represent virtual noise.

You want scientific proof? It’s limited, but it’s a start. Because the research builds on the false foundation of Western scientific assumptions, the websites that offer the bulk of this very real proof don’t really know what to do with it. One or two will offer a stack of books and courses (at premium prices) for a very poor rendition of how to use the science.

For a full understanding, we have to reach back into far earlier civilizations and their vast lore of obscure wisdom. Sure, I hold the Bible as the central anchor point for all of this, but God never hid it from the rest of the world (Romans 2:13-16). People far from the land of the Bible understood instinctively that the heart was far higher than the intellect and paid attention. Without knowing God by name (at least, no names that we would recognize), they still managed to sense His Person and sought to discern His character in the world around them. Thus, that I might have some affinity for elements of Native American culture and religious talk is a testimony to God’s mercy, not my departure from some imaginary orthodoxy designed by modern day Pharisees.

So I continue to recommend highly the blog posts of my dear co-worker in this ministry, Sister Wildcumber. The lady there is my sister and the Mama Elder of our online parish. Yeah, she has a more common birth name and a married name, but what difference does it make? Unless you live where she does, let’s take full advantage of this medium to strip away all our false dependencies on structures that serve only to hinder our spirituality. Know us by our words and by the Spirit that witnesses to these words. Otherwise, we are rightly nobodies to you. We call only to those who hear.

So tell me: What would it take for you to believe the message? How can we help you find the Lord of Creation in these things? We walk on this earth a short time, but I assure you some of us experience far more of it on levels most folks can’t imagine. It’s not magic; it’s miracle. We hear the voice of God singing from the very elements of nature. Rocks on the ground tell me of His greatness in their own unique voice. The greenery calls to me as I ride past on my bicycle and my heart rejoices with them.

You can be a part of our nutty, almost alien experience with God, but only if it calls to you.

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Photolog 9: Extended Harrah Loop

Today we explore. This is essentially the Harrah Loop but we add a couple miles north and see where that takes us. (Reminder: it’s pronounced “hair’-uh”.) This should provide an adequate test of my work on the Diamondback Edgewood bike.

LutherRd1000SIt started pretty much the same as before, heading east on SE 29th, diverting to SE 29th Place, then north on Indian Meridian to SE 15th. There we head east again to Luther Road, because I hadn’t seen that part in more than a year. It’s a very pleasing view between SE 15th and NE 10th.

We head back east on Reno to the monster evangelical Harrah Church. From there we head north on Dobbs. As before, the stretch near NE 10th features all those blackberry vines. However, the early crop is gone and the late crop is just now turning ripe. While something like a quarter of what you can see is black, it’s yet another quarter of those that are fully ripe. I’ve learned to tell when they are completely ready, because you don’t have to pull hard at all. They practically fall off into my hand with just the faintest tug. So it took a few minutes of hunting along the road, but I got a big handful before I continued.

HarrahMillIt’s just a half-mile east on NE 10th to the bike path that runs past the high school and their old-style athletic stadium. From there I went up a couple of blocks and dodged around behind the big Baptist church to see if I could get a better shot of the grain elevator — which elevator is about the only reason a town grew up here.

I rode across the bridge over the North Canadian River. I spotted the sand and gravel rig downstream. It’s a common way to supply good grade sand for construction and you see lots of dredging sites along the North Canadian. People love to swim in the resulting deep sandy ponds because they are clear of obstacles and flat-bottomed. Unfortunately, someone drowned at this one last week. There’s really no way to close them off.

Instead of turning back west at NE 50th, this time I stayed on Harrah Road until Wilshire Boulevard. The terrain, and thus the land use pattern, changed from farming to cattle pastures. In the mix was a lot of fallow regrowth forest. While this part of the county has lots of really nice places, the tax collection is seasoned with a lot of houses that scale down near the assessor’s bottom range. Turning left on Wilshire, it drops into a creek bottom, then immediately offers a brutal climb. The next hill is just as steep, but not long enough to qualify as “brutal.” The final drop down to Dobbs Road reminded me that Wilshire doesn’t go through. Oops.

StMaryCemetaryNo problem! The next mile of Dobbs Road is a parade of serious million-dollar real estate. At least a couple of mowed yards were bigger than the whole trailer park where I live. Must be a full time job just keeping the yards. It’s also got a lot of folks who apparently belonged to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Their cemetery is a landmark in this area. St. Mary’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church once stood at the site of this cemetery. However, it burned down twice, so they found themselves a lot in Jones and built with solid bricks. Meanwhile, during my tour of this area I spotted various symbols in driveways and yards that represented membership in at least some kind of Eastern Orthodox religion.

I knew for sure that NE 63rd went through, so I turned right and decided to see how it looked. I passed a crew with a huge power shovel working the ditches. A couple of driveways had washed out on the hillside and they were putting it all back new. I had seen several sloped gravel drives that sported a new drainage ditch running the length where vehicles were supposed to go, and matching evidence the residents had to drive off into the vegetation a bit to dodge these new and unwanted ditches. Pretty soon I was climbing that massive ridgeline that forces the North Canadian south after running around Jones.

OkAcadSDAThe Ukrainian Orthodox aren’t alone out here. The Oklahoma Academy is a program associated with the Seventh Day Adventists. The land was endowed by one of their wealthier members up on the ridge. The school is well supported with the kids pitching in as part of their education. This land grant includes lots of farm land, an orchard, a store, a B-n-B, the academy and an airfield for the mission aviation course. I can’t be sure if they still use this particular strip, but it seems quite nice compared to some places I flew into in Alaska. Most of the online mapping services indicate the airstrip is a mile away in the middle of a corn field. Still, this thing (below right) is plainly visible from any aerial view.OAairfield

As I reached the edge of the ridge, the view of the valley below was breathtaking. However, I never could get the camera to capture it properly. So I decided to try looking back from the bottom and it seems to have come out much better (below left).

NE63rdETripleXFrom there, I headed south and decided it was time to risk seeing the washout where the river cuts close to Triple X. While the most recent serious rains (noted in my trek south toward Lake Thunderbird) did some more damage in the county, this particular spot didn’t get cut any thinner. It was still safe enough for my bicycle, but I can see why motor vehicles are forbidden, with just a few feet between the roadbed and the new river bank. However, the same cut has been extended now much farther along the same road perhaps 200 yards (180m) before suddenly turning back east.

This allowed me to head home again on Indian Meridian. Here’s the view north toward NE 23rd, a quiet tree-lined country lane that I can’t resist hitting at least once on these northeastern loops.IndianMeridianN2NE23rd

From there it was back down to SE 29th and home again. The loop was 31 miles and took three hours. I suppose it helped that I didn’t push the air pressure on my front tire near the upper limit inscribed on the sidewall. I think 60psi was adequate. The real test is whether it stays up for more than a week. It was a good ride today.

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Reblog from Falling into Grace

I’m all behind this one, folks.

Not content, context.

Sister Wildcucumber points out some of the full meaning behind Romans 8:18-21 and similar passages. We take very seriously what the Hebrew people meant when they spoke of living from the heart, not the intellect. It requires a full awareness of your own design so that you can make a full submission to God, then you can relate properly with His Creation and how He designed us to live in it. You learn that the entirety of Western values is off the mark, because the most precious thing is not length, strength or quality of life, but the moral power of doing things God’s way.

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Fixing the Diamondback Bike

This is a frivolous post on bicycle hardware, so you can ignore it.DiamondBack

Behold, my Diamondback in all her glory. The other day I was feeling energetic and I went out and got the front wheel for this thing. After removing the black rubber rim tape, I took down a large roll of cork. That big wide roll of cork sheet was a freebie from someone who was cleaning out the garage after her husband died. He had been a truck mechanic and she wanted me to haul off as much of his stuff as I would take. Someone else got the tools, but a lot of his specialty supplies were left, and the cork sheet for making custom gaskets was a part of that pile.

Using scissors I cut a trio of thin strips. You see, the rims for hybrid bikes like this, when viewed in a cross section, have a rather deep narrow valley where the butts of the spokes are seated. As I noted in a previous post, some inner tubes will extrude themselves nicely into that valley with no problem. However, near the valve stem of every tube is a sensitive area and they build up the rubber to make it stronger. Unfortunately, this thicker rubber doesn’t fit nearly so well into that tight valley with the valve stem. The vast majority of trouble I’ve had with tubes and tires is right there, where tubes tend to blow out. So I cut these narrow strips of cork sheet and fitted them down into this valley with a tiny bit of tape holding the strips together at the ends. Then I carefully cut a valve stem hole that was a little tight on purpose.

This allowed the valve stem to come through, but that sensitive area is no longer extruded into the valley because the valley is filled with cork. At least, that’s the theory. It worked pretty well on the rear wheel and I just never got around to doing that on the front until last week. The rear hasn’t flattened in months.

So today I went searching for a replacement tube. I went to several stores that sold the bikes, too, but all they had was the narrower road-racing type tubes or Presta valve tubes. My bike has fatter tires and Schrader valves. All those stores in Midwest City don’t even sell a single bike with Presta valves, but all their fatter 700C tubes had Presta valves. On the fourth try I found a store with a large stock of everything — but only two that would fit my bike. I bought both.

Took the time to get the valve seated completely in the cork and aired it up. If it’s still holding most of the same pressure tomorrow, I’ll take it out for a long ride somewhere. There are two reasons for bothering.

1. The old mountain bike is showing signs of hard wear. It’s six years old and, especially the past few months, I’ve been running it hard three days per week. Some of the more expensive components are hard to keep properly adjusted. It’s getting hard to find those components these days and more expensive than ever.

2. The Diamondback offers far less roll resistance; that means more distance for less work.

Granted, I do have to sit upright, which explains the moderately high-rise handlebars. If you click on the picture you can see it up close. After trying to use the stock bar, I started having lots of arthritis pain in my elbows, so I had to replace it with something that would take the weight off my hands. This is the biggest frame (19-inch) that fits my height at around 70″ (1.78m), so it’s a longer stretch away from my body and that put my elbows in a bad pressure angle.

I added the rear rack, the pop-off fenders and built that custom front bottle holder. It’s just a plastic jar mounted on a carefully bent steel strap, held in place with a hose clamp. The ugly parts are covered by the same tool bag I used on the other bike. This bike was on sale because the shop was dumping this model.

If all goes well, I’ll have some pictures from tomorrow’s ride.

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Not a “Conspiracy”

There has always been a ruling elite, people who regarded themselves above the common folks.

Fasten your seat belts, because in order to keep this short, I have to make broad sweeping generalizations. Perhaps you are aware that the term “conspiracy theory” has been in use for centuries, but that it’s current derogatory meaning came into the public consciousness when the CIA released a memo on preventing folks from disputing reasonably the bogus conclusions of the Warren Commission on the assassination of JFK. Since then, the meaning of “conspiracy” has shifted so dramatically that we have be careful how we use it.

The assassination of JFK came at a time when the plutocrats were trying to seize a lot of control they had not held before. You can trace threads of their thinking and planning way back into history, but here in the US, there was a distinct effort to bring about a soft revolution in the 1960s. Part of the trick was breaking the revolution down into multiple threads of attack on a vast array of different social and political institutions separately. Each of these things experienced its own independent revolution, and it was largely successful. However, some of the techniques used to foment and enable these revolutions lent themselves to some new problems for the elite. Sometimes the elite would empower a rebel who, for whatever reason, didn’t stick to the script.

Thus, the various bits of evidence against the Warren Report became fairly common knowledge. This is when the CIA released that memo among the servants of the ruling elite as a means of mass PsyOp to shut down the debate. It didn’t work, but it at least allowed the elite to pretend and hang onto some semblance of control. At points, they darn near lost it, and had to come up with a range of new tricks that saw further unauthorized exposure.

And then along came the Internet.

Granted, the social orthodoxy remains intact and so does some measure of elite control, but they are most certainly struggling right now. If you aren’t aware of efforts to disable the Internet as it is currently used, you aren’t paying attention. It’s a multilevel attack on all aspects of free information sharing.

Let me offer a perspective that will help reduce some of the natural tension that arises from failing to grasp the nature of things. Our current tension and turmoil is perfectly normal, even predictable. To function as emissaries of God’s glory, we have to fix in our human minds what to expect from this world and the mass of unredeemed humanity. Our mission has nothing to do with fixing this world in terms of correcting or healing that unredeemed human behavior. It’s about simply showing His glory in a confined domain of calling He offers each of us. Fix yourself and stop worrying about fixing the rest of the world.

For us, it goes all the way back to ancient Nimrod and the Tower of Babel. Whatever else we make of that, it was the initial manifestation of humans rejecting revelation in part by how they all united together under a ruler who felt no kinship to his subjects. Nimrod ruled as an elite, a plutocrat who didn’t have to concern himself with the needs of his subjects. It was part force, part manipulation, or whatever you want to call it, but he convinced folks to follow his dream, a dream directly contrary to revelation. His predatory nature — “a great hunter” — made him willing to kill folks who argued with him, or oppress in other ways. It’s that predatory relationship that made him utterly evil, versus God’s revealed demand that leaders are to be like shepherds.

While we may point out leaders in history who at least appear to have operated by the shepherd’s morality, the world has been dominated by predators as long as human memory. There has always been a ruling elite who regarded themselves better than those under their power, and themselves deserving of whatever they desired to take from those they ruled.

Up until the end of the Middle Ages, the West at least had to deal mostly with royal and noble bloodlines who regarded their predations as entirely necessary and holy. Sometime around the Treaty of Westphalia, that fell apart and we had a different basis for selecting who could gain the elite status. A critical element is their intelligence, of course. Nimrod would not have been so powerful without his grand talents. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon II was easily a genius in certain terms, able to see farther and deeper than the average human of his day. But then, so was Daniel the Prophet. God didn’t object to Nebs being emperor and Daniel his loyal servant. It was a matter of divine calling. But ever since about the same time as the Treaty of Westphalia, the pretense of nobility died and was replaced with psychopathy. That is, the people who gained the leverage to rule were still predators with very high talents for ruling, but who managed to gain their power through political maneuvering, not merely by birth.

That doesn’t mean nepotism is dead, only that the social pretense of nobility is gone. The advantages of a wealthy upbringing still apply, but the deciding factor is now almost entirely a matter of psychopathy. No shepherds are permitted now, only Nimrods.

But the mere fact of a predatory elite with a vast lore of secrecy and plans to control the rest of us by whatever means has been with us since at least as early as the Tower of Babel. If more than one of them work together, it is a conspiracy to rule. Every government in existence today is the result of a conspiracy, of plans made in secret. That’s the simple fact of the matter. The only difference is that now we have been granted a chance to poke around and share our discoveries. You might have to sift through a lot of crap, but most of the facts are there. We still might not have access to the secret councils of the elite, but we do have a lot more evidence and details than what they like.

Most of what you are likely to read about these very real conspiracies is bullshit, in part because the elite know they have to smother the truth that way. They don’t personally write all that stuff; they have willing servants and fools to handle that. A certain amount of freedom and creativity works to their advantage — say anything but the facts. A favorite trick is to cloak the facts in contextual deception, but it’s the same as direct falsehood in effect.

However, there’s really nothing spooky about it, nothing that requires so much of the drama you see on forums like “Above Top Secret” or sites like that. The predatory elite still play by the same rules as previous royalty and nobility about keeping the facts away from the rest of us, but otherwise they are just people with predatory drives and self interest that puts them in competition with each other, just within those agreed rules. Recently, some of them have bent or even broken the old rules, and too many of their loyal servants have run too far without proper supervision. That’s why we are facing a global banking collapse.

In other words, however much the elite cooperate together is a little shaky right now. Most of the individuals are still in their powerful places, but the current game is very high risk. I don’t think every major threat is something they planned to do. Instead, they are forced to find ways to maintain whatever it is they believe they must have to keep preying on us. I have no idea how it will turn out in general because the situation on their level is pretty fluid right now. Some of it is obvious: The banking system as we see it today will collapse. Whatever you have in the bank is likely to disappear. What comes after that I can’t guess.

And I’m sure the Internet will experience some serious turmoil. If you think malware is bad now, just you wait. This thing is going to escalate beyond what we can imagine, and in directions that would shock us now. How many of you would have believed even half the Snowden revelations five years ago, while they were going on? Most of Snowden’s documents are actually that old, if not older. Use the Net, but don’t act like it’s necessary for your human existence. Things are only going to go downhill until so much of it falls apart that the current elite are displaced by a different bunch. They system is hardening, not sufficiently flexible to bend with the times. In terms of organizational theory we say, “institutionalizing a revolution makes it the new establishment to be destroyed.”

Get used to it; this is normal for the human race.

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Response to ACIM Folks

I’ve gotten some queries from folks who have an affinity for A Course in Miracles and related materials. Recently that traffic appears to have risen somewhat and I felt the need for an anchored reference point on this blog regarding the teachings of ACIM.

First: We live and let live. If you have embraced ACIM, it’s obvious I am not your enemy. You can peruse just a little here and discover that I’ve often said particular beliefs and theology are not the issue here. By the same token, I can’t easily fellowship with everyone who likes some of what I write. Feel free to use my stuff, but don’t assume we are one.

I have examined the teachings and read some of the material. It’s not for me. That’s all I should have to say.

I don’t stand with any of the mainstream branches of Christian religion, particularly those anchored in Western intellectual traditions. Faith in Christ is not cerebral, not a human decision and not a matter of having right thoughts. Such things are not at all a part of Jesus’ Hebrew intellectual background. You could easily make it seem like that’s what the New Testament requires, but you’d be lying. Even mainstream Christian religion knows all about the vast difference between Western Civilization and the Ancient Near East from which the Hebrew traditions arose. However, most Christian scholars do their best to ignore all of that. I stand with the ancients in asserting it’s not so much what’s in your head as what’s in your heart, or what your convictions demand.

The mainstream Christians can have their thing. The ACIM folks can have theirs. Unless you make it a point to harass me, I don’t see any need to address our differences. The difference here is that I was once a part of the mainstream and found things that didn’t work for me. I’m always having to explain that because there are an awful lot of evangelicals hitting me up for discussion all the time. When you deal with the same stuff all the time, you tend to come up with summaries that outline the differences. Against that background, precious few of the ACIM folks have addressed me directly. To be honest, I’ve had more noise from Jehovah’s Witnesses than from the ACIM bunch.

I’m not some kind of crusader seeking to banish from human awareness everything I don’t happen to agree with. Such is not my calling. If those other folks want to critique my stuff, I’ll be glad to help them do so with accuracy. They aren’t hurting me, even if they decide to use ugly words. I might not appreciate a ton of blather attacking my teaching here, but it’s all too easy for you to get your own forum for that. Do it right and I’ll even link to your forum from here. It’s not a question of fairness, but of skill and maybe some style in communication. I love a good roast because I don’t take myself that seriously. But if you play dirty or deceptively, I can’t respect anything you have to say. Don’t pretend you don’t know what that means.

As always, I’ll answer your questions as best I can. However, I must listen to my own heart and convictions, and logic/rhetoric has nothing to do with it. I’m not concerned with what you think of me nor my work. I have to please the voice inside my head. It matters not whether you imagine that voice might be God’s or something else; it’s God to me. In the words of a man I generally disagree with: Here I stand; I can do no other.

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Our Witness

We are aliens.

If you follow much of my teaching on this blog, there’s a pretty good chance you would be alien even to Petra, the band who recorded this song more than thirty years ago. They were fairly generic evangelical believers who burst on the scene during the height of the Hippie Jesus Freak Movement. Point your index finger in the air and shout, “One Way!” Few people today would recognize that expression. It’s not associated with anything they recognize. An even bigger struggle is when something we say is already associated with an awful lot of stuff that’s contrary to what we want to express. We can use some of the same language as mainstream Christians of whatever flavor, but it’s a sure bet we don’t have the same meaning behind those words.

More, we tend to avoid a significant measure of the behavior patterns associated with mainstream Christianity. Too much of it reflects the prevailing culture itself, not something particularly Christlike. While the mainstream churches claim to be different from the world around them, it’s not different enough. I have no doubt the Jesus Freaks of yesteryear made a good faith effort to put their fresh faith in new wine skins, but they were still suckers for a very cynical commercial exploitation. The difference between Petra and a bunch of other talented Christian musicians whose names never got printed on an album cover is that Petra felt there was no moral conflict in signing the contracts offered by the music industry. To this day we still have a vast wealth of very gifted musicians who were unwilling to go that route.

It’s not as if we could discuss the subtle nuances of how much compromise is too much. Nor would I want to paint myself as an absolutist in terms of legalism. Engaging such a debate is itself a moral compromise with the prevailing evil culture. It’s a distraction that avoids our fundamental rejection of sin in the first place. You might get the likes of major Contemporary Christian Music acts to go along with some of the verbiage I use on this blog, but I doubt many of them would understand my rejection of Western Civilization, or the use of your heart as a sensory organ. They have no problem with a cognitive religion and a side of emotional exuberance, but what we propose is more radical than radical.

If all we had was the verbal testimony such as is found on this blog, precious few would even hear any message at all. It would serve more to drive them away than to draw them. Further, the teaching itself says we don’t do it that way. It’s not that we try to sneak it in later, but that we have to gain a hearing first. We can’t presume to walk up on every porch in our neighborhood and expect folks to give us a fair hearing, as if they had some moral duty to listen. This treasure we bear in our earthen vessels has no value on the human plane. Something has to awaken that higher faculty in them before it matters.

It’s bluntly stated in the New Testament that no human can awaken that higher faculty, neither in themselves nor in others. It’s a flat-out miracle every time, a direct touch of Almighty God Himself, and Him alone. There is no useful distinction here between Spirit-born versus simply aware of the moral fabric of our human existence. You and I cannot tell the difference from here. But Scripture says our focus is on the latter, in the sense that we witness to the world more of moral awareness than of ineffable things of the Spirit Realm. And it should be obvious that mere words won’t get us there, wherever it is we are supposed to go.

Do you imagine that God intended all the world to read the Covenant of Moses? Not in the Hebrew inscription on stone tablets, I assure you. The world was supposed to read the Covenant in the life of Israel the Nation, a people who were committed to living as Israel the Mission. Notice that God was quite willing to accept a very poor level of compliance as the basis for granting His miraculous blessings. But when they did rise to just that minimal level of obedience, God was able to destroy whole armies assembled against Israel using just the Temple Choir by their singing as they marched (2 Chronicles 20).

Be ready to talk about your faith. If you can’t express yourself very well, feel free to steal everything I write. That tab at the top of this blog page marked “Radix Fidem” might be a good summary for some of you. However, this is not the starting place in the vast majority of contexts. Rather, it is our lives conducted by the outline found in those words that is our witness. The obedience itself is the power to change souls. God uses our contextual conduct as the means to opening blind eyes and melting frozen hearts. Even our failures call forth His power, if those failures come in the context of a desire to bless the Lord’s name.

Quite rare is the person who would hear our words first, because few in this world are seeking on that level. Even if your contextual conduct says nothing specific about your faith, it’s the glow of living from your heart that marks the fire of Heaven.

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