Symbols and Icons

Posted on February 21, 2026 by ehurst

Re: Naked Bible 130: Conference Interviews Part 3

Heiser interviews David Burnett regarding his paper, “Death, Resurrection, and Transformation in Scripture in 1 Corinthians 15”. This has to do mostly with how the Septuagint and New Testament documents interplay via the Greek language.

In Deuteronomy 4:15ff, Moses remarks that, at no time did they see God’s form in the fire (or the cloud). This is a well known ancient concept that there is no way to depict the Creator of all things. Keep in mind that the business with the golden calf was not to worship the calf itself, but depict it as the mount upon which an invisible deity rode. Thus, Moses says not to make any graven images (idols) of anything on earth as a substitute for God’s lack of form.

The Septuagint uses the term eikon as “image”. It’s the same term used in Genesis, in that you and I are the eikon or “image” of God. This is where He offers that list of things for which Israel must not create an image or likeness. And when they gaze into the skies, they shall not feel awed and seek to worship those things up there.

Notice that Moses does not forbid them making any eikon of those celestial bodies. Keep in mind that, in the Hebrew language, any reference to the visible stars and planets is shorthand for God’s staff in Heaven — elohim and so forth. We’ve seen how the Ark of the Covenant had “images” of those beings (cherubim and seraphim), so they weren’t forbidden to make such images, but forbidden to worship them.

Paul taught the resurrection of humans, something Greeks sneered at because they could not imagine the existence of a spiritual realm separate from this realm. In 1 Corinthians 15:35ff, we noted in a previous lesson that Paul echoes Deuteronomy 4 but doesn’t copy the list exactly because he’s talking about resurrection, not idolatry. Instead, Paul refers to the different kinds of bodies that God has given various creatures. He refers to heavenly (eternal) bodies and mortal bodies. Then he mentions the various celestial bodies. Next, Paul moves onto how resurrection is not a silly myth, as many Greek scholars of his day alleged.

Paul then refers to how our mortal existence is like a seed sown. Our mortal form is related, but bears no resemblance — no eikon — to our resurrected/eternal form. He still echoes something in Deuteronomy 4 in that we should not make images of mortal things to worship them. And while we could make representative images of eternal bodies, we still don’t worship them, either.

Why not? We are slated to replace them.

The imagery in 1 Corinthians 15 is all about seeds planted, dying, and then being reborn as something else. This is parallel to the passage in Deuteronomy 4 where Moses warns the people of Israel to remember that they were taken from the smelting furnace (Egypt) and brought out as what survived the fire. God was in that fire with them; He was the fire. They were the treasure, they were themselves an eikon of what He intended for humans in this world. It was “already but not yet” making them imagers of God. This is parallel to the concept of Paul’s death-burial-resurrection imagery via planting seeds for crops.

The OT Chosen were a symbol of the NT Elect. They were to be His testimony as a nation of flesh; we are His testimony as a nation of hearts. We are being made into the eikon of Christ. Our eternal form will see us replace those beings who have sought to seduce us to worship them. Putting materials into a furnace was part of the process of making an eikon that pagans would worship. We are in the New Exodus.

Luke 9:31 — Jesus discusses with Moses and Elijah His “departure”. Luke uses the Greek term for “exodus” on purpose. Jesus would descend the mountain and go through death, but come out the other side in His eternal body. Thus, Paul has answered the questions in 1 Corinthians 15 regarding the process toward resurrection. We die in the flesh, we germinate for a time, then spring to life eternal. We once bore the eikon of mortal humanity, but we shall then bear the eikon of eternal life, same as Christ.

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Reprise: Heart Power

Posted on February 19, 2026 by ehurst

Roughly 11 years ago I embarked on a study regarding the power of the heart as a primary organizing force in our human existence. Someone had introduced the concept to me, but from a peculiar angle that really didn’t set too well. The material mentioned some scientific research and I began chasing that down.

That this really is a science is not in doubt; see this article, for example.

The key figure was Jan Walleczek of Stanford University. You can still find online copies of his earliest publications on this (“Self-organized Biological Dynamics and Non-linear Control”) if you know where to look, but it’s not light reading. The critical point he makes is that the heart generates a very powerful electromagnetic field that does far more than you might imagine. His paper focuses on how the heart manages the activity and structure inside the body. The heart is also a sensory organ that can process feedback from this powerful field, such as when it encounters the fields generated by other living beings, and apparently some inanimate objects.

The challenge is getting our brains to make sense of what our hearts can tell us. There are several organizations attempting to do this, not least of which is the Heart Math Institute. They do a good job of summarizing the research out there, but because they are stuck in the western model of anthropology, they assume it’s primary application is the emotions.

In western mythology, the heart is the repository of sentiment or emotion. Thus, using all that research obviously means emotional intelligence. However, the West is the only civilization in human history to assume this. Every other civilization and culture assumes that the heart operates in an entirely different realm of being, something the West flatly denies even exists.

Which brings us to the field of Biblical Studies. The entire Ancient Near East assumes the heart is our only viable connection to the Spirit Realm. In the Bible, the heart is the seat of faith, the faculty by which we submit and commit to our Creator. It is the faculty by which we can discern spiritual matters. It can be steered wrong, falling off into idolatry, but God has made His mark on the hearts of the Elect. Sooner or later, they will come to Him in faith.

For our Radix Fidem community, this connection between modern science and Biblical Studies, producing the concept of heart-led living, which is much more than the common western evangelical image of “having faith”. The latter is often portrayed as a mere discipline of the mind, not a full engagement of one’s whole being.

I’m placing a copy of my book, Heart of Faith here in my blog’s media archive for easy download, should you be interested in this subject.

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Conscience and Conviction

Posted on February 14, 2026 by ehurst

We can say that your conscience is your capacity to read your convictions. Conscience is the interface between your conscious mind and your convictions. But the conscience needs training; the convictions do not. The convictions are not developed but discovered. They are written on your heart by God’s finger from eternity. They reflect the character of God expressed in your particular individual existence. Convictions are written in the heart, not as data, but as the image of the Holy Spirit stamped on your DNA.

Sinners have hearts, too, but they are formless and void without the Holy Spirit. It can still rattle their cage like convictions do, but the whole thing is limited by being only the flesh without an eternal component. Such people will never understand what God could make of their lives, what they were intended to be. They have no real individual purpose. All they have is a collection of instincts that are ill-defined in their awareness.

The heart is the seat of commitment (AKA, faith) but it can belong to other things beside the Creator. In the West, it’s rare for people to even learn about the faculty of the heart, and faith is poorly defined because it’s not focused on anything that justifies faith. Most American church folks have put their faith in an idea and a collection of impressions that they call “God”, but few of them are personally connected to Him. This is why “faith” is such a slippery term that seldom equates with the Hebrew concept of faith discussed in the Bible.

Even saying this much is merely one man’s attempt to speak in the clinical frame of reference and language to which westerners are accustomed. Any serious attempt to develop a valid concept of conscience from Scripture is hindered by several problems. Because westerners generally have no concept of what the heart does best, they confuse conscience and convictions. It doesn’t help that the Greek in the New Testament has no accurate equivalent terminology for the Hebrew concept of faith and conviction.

Western Christians have little to no grasp of Hebrew psychology and anthropology. I’m not saying we should switch to the Hebrew — I doubt we could — but that we cannot build one better than what the West offers as long as keep wallowing in the western version of everything.

The biggest problem is the linear thinking, the legalism of western philosophical assumptions. We know that the Holy Spirit of God transcends human culture. Something in the Hebrew national history is more than just a taste of the Ancient Near East. Paul told Timothy (2 Timothy 2:15) to “rightly divide” (literally “cut straight”) the Old Testament — to become an expert at carving off the fat of the Old Testament context so that he understood the eternal bone structure beneath it.

What are God’s priorities? Not just the words of revelation to a people-place-time, but who is the Person of God in your life? In Hebrew culture, words do not mean things. Words indicate something you should explore on a higher level than the words. You are not bound by the words, but by the Person of God who gave the words in context. Your conscience won’t know the difference between person and law. You can load it up with law and culture and it will treat that stuff as convictions, as the Word of God. That’s why, if you grow in spiritual understanding and faith, your conscience will change — it will report different answers to the same questions over time.

Even then, we still have one more serious problem: The conscience may have been sickened by (1) not using it properly, failing to obey its warnings, and (2) loading it up with false expectations. False guilt will garble the message. The reason this is such a big problem in the West is because of the western punitive legal system. Rational law is not God; God is your divine Father who doesn’t operate or even think in terms of law and punishment.

The Fall did not saddle us with condemnation. Adam’s sin was not the inheritance; mortality was the inheritance. English translations of Hebrew law are naturally tilted toward the western concept, completely missing what God actually said. It’s not that you stand condemned and must pay a penalty for your crimes, but that you must learn to conquer your fleshly nature. The Cross does not purchase your way into Heaven; it empowers you to shed the burden of your fallen flesh. The Cross opens the way into a covenant privilege with God.

The ransom buys us out of the mortality, out of enslavement to the Devil’s dominion. The reason you feel condemned is because that is a feature of the slavery. The flesh is a ball and chain, a false notion that you deserve every bad thing that happens to you. The misery is merely the result of wallowing in the flesh. This is a false conscience; you need a new one granted from the Father.

Conviction comes from Above; it empowers you to rise above the flesh. Don’t seek to understand the Greek concepts of sin and righteousness; seek the Hebrew. Election means that you are native born to the Covenant of Christ. It’s where you belong. It’s not a question of being a good or bad person in the Hellenized sense that someone can be intrinsically evil or righteous while in this flesh. The Hebrew concept of “good” is whether something is useful to God.

The Hebrew concept of “evil” is a matter of the results of not being useful. To be wicked is to wallow in the flesh that belongs to Satan. It is taking the path of the mortal nature, acting as if there is no eternity. It’s surrendering yourself to the animal instincts of the fleshly nature. It means relying on your senses and reason to make your way in this world. Conviction means rising above that level to see all things from an eternal perspective.

A “clear conscience” is one that has been washed by the clarity of revelation. It pulls your mortal existence into alignment with divine purpose. With this understanding, go back and reread all those passages about the conscience.

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Long and Short

Posted on February 11, 2026 by ehurst

I had something else written up for today, but then I came across this: The Criminality Buried In The Epstein Files Is Worse Than Anyone Thought, And The Degeneracy Of Donald Trump Is Worse Than Anyone Thought.

If you think the title is long, you should see the article. Because I want you to read it, I’ll keep my post short. It’s just more confirmation of what we expected.

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A Harvest Is Coming

Posted on February 8, 2026 by ehurst

For some of you, this won’t be anything new. I believe I’ve been pretty consistent on what we can expect from this time of tribulation. The only thing new would be a few contextual refinements, things no one could have foreseen. But in broad general terms, nothing much has changed.

The major corporations will continue to metastasize like cancer, forming almost a separate economy. They are absorbing everything, consuming all the productivity and credit (future productivity) and crushing other sectors of the broader economic system. The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. It’s very much the Walmart Effect: out-competing all the little guys in town until they all close. The big store will capture all the economic activity, absorb all the business, and then drop the value of what they offer against the price, like any monopoly.

Right now, the stock market has no relationship at all with how us little people live. We aren’t included in their prosperity. We’ll be sucked dry by a rentier system. The coming economic distresses will hit the lower edges first, working its way upward. But the system itself will break from other causes.

For example, AI. All the available credit is being absorbed, to the tune of roughly a trillion dollars, to fund the build out of facilities. Further, all the memory chips and processors that the industry can produce will be sucked up. Whatever devices you have now will have to do, because the prices of computer hardware has already approached double, and it will continue to rise. I didn’t see this coming by my analysis, but by conviction. I upgraded all my computer hardware over the past year because my convictions warned me this would be the last chance for a while.

I’m still doing the same with my bicycles even as I write this, because the hardware prices are soaring. I’m buying from old stock when possible, because convictions tell me that bikes will become even more critical for my future activities, though I don’t yet see exactly how.

I’m watching out for censorship. A lot depends on the source and means of it. Under Biden, it was globalism that associated me with a large dissident population to which I didn’t actually belong. That was one kind of problem calling for its own path of resistance. If the current regime does something similar as a matter of course, it will be a slightly different kind of problem. Their methods are limited to a certain range of things.

If it starts to happen because Zionists notice me, it will be lumping me in with the pro-Palestinian cause, even though I don’t support Palestine. If the source of pressure comes from Zionist Christian groups, it will be associating me with the broad anti-Dispensational crowd, and that would be accurate. They would use a different set of tactics. It could be a combination of both, and frankly that is what I consider most likely. That would be less likely to result in censorship, per se, and more like propaganda attacks.

Propaganda attacks would include things like waves of sock-puppets trying to post nasty comments here, reputational threats posted online elsewhere, trying to get me kicked off the service provider, etc. If we add in the neocon influence, it could mean debanking and a host of AI bots digging in my background, or worse. I’m keeping an eye on trends in the political wrangling online. The problem with AI is that it can so easily fake stuff in my name that I would never support. It would be hard to think of anything worse than to have my message contaminated by fake material. It would be very easy to do with intercepting my email traffic or planting fake comments on forums I’ve never heard of (previously this was called a “Joe Job” when done manually).

But AI can easily do much more that we can’t even predict right now. Some uses are quite intentional, but we are already seeing uses that were never intended. Imagine those vast AI hardware farms directed to overwhelm the traffic on the Net so that ordinary human users can’t even get a word in edgewise? Passive consumers of content would never know the difference, but genuine content providers would suffer filtering. What if the AI bots were controlled by neocons? What about bots controlled by wokies?

It would no longer be necessary to assassinate people like Kirk if their message was swamped in the first place. I’m expecting to see something like that, as well.

Here’s the thing: Our God is at work in the midst of all this. Right now, too many people are comfortable and unwilling to consider their path in life. Only when their world is shaken do people stop and consider spiritual matters, when they have nothing else left. While a lot of people are going to suffer randomly, God is watching a small handful of His Elect who need to be shaken from their comfort zone to awaken. The numbers of covenant people right now are minuscule, but we shall see a good harvest of souls from the torments of the future.

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We’ll Be Okay

Posted on February 4, 2026 by ehurst

We have a burden to tell the truth, even though we know the world will not listen.

Jesus warned His disciples of a fundamental truth: It is not for us to know the Father’s plans for human governments. He reserves His own counsel on such things. Instead, He gives us guidance that prepares us for what is coming on a different level, keeping our focus as shepherds over our flocks.

At the same time, His Word points out patterns and priorities by which He operates. This is what the Scripture calls “wisdom” — knowing God so well that you know what to expect from Him. As with all knowledge of persons, it’s not a matter of precise detail, but of general trends, so that nothing really surprises us.

The various covenants declared in Scripture give us a clue to God’s priorities, amplified by the record of how He acts when humans fail. Humans have drifted very far from those revelations. Most people who read the Scripture are coming from a totally alien viewpoint so that it requires a heavy burden of effort to restore the fundamental value system behind Scripture. Ask yourself: How many people do you know who would even for a moment entertain the biblical prerequisite of eastern feudal-tribal social structure? Yet, without that underlying assumption, you cannot even begin to comprehend what Jesus taught.

Indeed, the whole of the New Testament rests on that assumption. The Kingdom of Heaven manifests on earth in just that way. The whole concept of “church” is fundamentally feudal and tribal; it’s wired into Creation itself. The world God created expects to see this before it will cooperate with any human effort to harvest the blessings God promised.

Robert’s Rules of Order is anathema, a feeble human effort focused on everything except the Law of Love Christ proclaimed at the Last Seder. The US Constitution is even worse. We know what happens when institutions are built on such things. It keeps everything out of the covenant and within Satan’s domain. Thus, failure is the only option long term.

Some say that Civil War 2.0 has already started, and I agree. I’m not too sure the first one ever ended, though the human ideals for which people fight have shifted a great deal over the decades since then. What matters is the fighting, not what anyone claims is the reason. Those who lack spiritual guidance in Christ’s love will fight over anything, or even nothing.

I remain convinced that the real battle will be informational, trying to conquer pubic perception. The linked article is part of the propaganda war. What the author suggests is the solution won’t happen. That is, it might happen in a few areas, but not the locations where it matters most for the sake of propaganda. The Bundy style militias will react to a left-wing federal government, but not to bused-in lefty protesters.

By the way, the militia action at the Bundy Ranch was broadly justified and arguably lawful, but it doesn’t make any difference. Nobody on either side cares what God has to say about it. It was all under Satan because nobody was acting under the Covenant. All that’s left is discussing what might be effective in the given context.

We know what to expect from Trump in general terms; it’s all about his ego. He is wholly unconcerned with the welfare of the either the people or the institutions. Meanwhile, I keep wondering when he will be removed from office; his own people are plotting against him. Some of them have good sensible reasons, but if it happens, it will only make life here in the US even worse. The people at the top of government and finance are consolidating their controls over the economy solely in order to seize more plunder for themselves. They are heedlessly destroying sectors of the economy that don’t interest them, not realizing how the whole thing is welded together.

Meanwhile, the relative poverty for the little people will gradually creep upward into higher classes. The middles will join the bottom in struggling to maintain their accustomed lifestyle. It’s a slow rot. For awhile yet, it’s going to look okay because the higher class businesses will continue to prosper. If you watch the independent small businesses that cater to the common folks, they are already starting to close their doors. Only the big name-brand franchise shops remain open, and even they are closing outlets in some areas.

God will take care of His covenant people. We’ll be okay. Operate by your convictions because God will sponsor that. Stay focused on what really matters — love Him and His people. Be compassionate with lost sheep.

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It Matters to God

Posted on January 31, 2026 by ehurst

Re — Naked Bible 126: Ezekiel 18

I believe Heiser chases too many rabbits in this podcast. It’s not as complicated as he makes it out to be.

How many times did God miraculously spare His people in the OT? He caused three armies to fight each other when Israel obeyed and sent a choir out to face them. He destroyed the Assyrian invasion force and let the Kingdom of Judah survive because the king prayed humbly. So why did He not act against Babylon? Up to this point in Ezekiel’s prophecy, the leaders of Judah have been told in several different ways that they have broken the Covenant. Their hedge was gone because they tore it down, chasing idols.

Those elders argued repeatedly with Ezekiel’s message. They quoted a proverb that arose from Exodus 20:5 where God warns the nation that if they get entangled in idolatry, His wrath would fall, and it would keep falling on the third and fourth generations following. If you check Benner’s translation assistance, you’ll learn that the “iniquity of the fathers” is a concept based on a twisted rope that binds one generation to another. The generations are bound together. If you twist the binding, then the trouble takes three to four generations to unwind.

So, the elders there in Babylon were saying that the fathers had eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth were set on edge (sour grapes caused friction between the upper and lower teeth). They were using this as an excuse: “It’s not our sins that got us in trouble, but it was our ancestors.” They rejected Ezekiel’s declaration of their own sins. They were misusing that passage in the Torah.

When covenant people engage in idolatry, they open the doorways to the Nephilim spirits (demons). Once those spirits gain a foothold in the household, it can take a few generations to drive them out again, if the succeeding generations repent and are faithful to the Covenant. Parents can twist the rope that binds them to their children and grandchildren simply by virtue of still being alive when those subsequent generations are born. Those children still live under the same roof with dad/granddad along with his playing footsie with demons. The entire household is still subject to his perverted authority.

That should be obvious.

God, speaking through Ezekiel, warns the elders in Babylon that this does not apply to them the way they suggest. It’s no longer a simple matter of ousting a few demons. Judah had pushed God way too far too long, and He was suspending the bulk of the Covenant. In particular, He was suspending the promises that He had given to the nation as a whole.

This is the same God who overlooked the sins of the people whenever the leadership were faithful. This isn’t flatly stated in the Covenant, but was a fundamental assumption of the feudal worldview of ANE people. If your shepherd is faithful to God, He’s going to bless the sheep on the shepherd’s behalf. Otherwise, Christ’s death on the Cross for the Elect means nothing. Blessings and curses work the same in that sense. That’s the nature of Creation itself; it is fundamentally feudal and God likes it that way.

As Hesier notes, Western people choke on this, passing judgment on God for making things that way. You’ll find any number of western scholars who simply insert their individualist assumptions into their analysis and insist that the Hebrew people evolved to a “higher” (individualist) sense of justice, so that they assign dates to the biblical text based on how much it reflects rising individualism. Heiser himself waffles on this a bit, generally uncomfortable with ANE feudalism as God’s actual design.

At any rate, we have Ezekiel saying that, in this situation with some provisions of the Covenant suspended, the people need to focus on their own individual purity and zeal for Jehovah. “The soul that sins, it shall die.” Jeremiah echoes this, warning that, while God had already surrendered the nation to Babylon, individuals could survive the siege of Jerusalem by remaining individually faithful to the Lord. It’s the same message here in Ezekiel 18.

For those who get hung up on the “shall die” part, keep in mind that this applies only to the Covenant people. He’s not sharing some universal principle that applies to pagans, too. This applies only to God’s Chosen, people who belong to Him. If you embarrass Him too much, He will bring you Home early. If you aren’t His in the first place, your passing will be under the Devil’s control. There’s no telling when or how those sad souls leave this world; it’s going to appear quite random.

The Covenant is the context in which God operates.

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The Omphalos

Posted on January 28, 2026 by ehurst

Re: Naked Bible 124: Ezekiel 17

You can quickly discern who is a fake scholar of ancient religions by how they take the ANE mythology literally. Fake scholars (the kind typically hired for TV shows about ancient history) will talk about how the Hebrew people literally believed the earth was flat.

No, the Hebrews simply talked that way. Their culture was loaded with metaphor, much of which they inherited from other cultures and civilizations. The Hebrew language itself is fundamentally built up from the concept of parable. You should presume any Hebrew text to be generally figures of speech until the context forces you to read it literally. The very letters of the Hebrew alphabet are each metaphors that contribute to the meaning of the words.

Western minds tend to be literal first, then abstract. This is very alien to the ANE mind of parable. We see it in the Gospels when Jesus speaks in parables and His listeners tend to miss the point because the Hellenizing influence had bitten hard into their culture. Christ appeared three centuries after the conquest and very heavy influence of Alexander the Great, who zealously evangelized Hellenism. The religion of Judaism was the result of trying to inject Hellenized literalism and abstraction into parabolic sacred texts and oral lore. It’s an ugly perversion of the teachings of Moses.

Just so, we have a scholarly term we took from the Greeks: “omphalos”. It refers to a cultic object representing the concept of the cosmic axis around which everything rotates. It is drawn from the idea of the human navel. Not the shape of the navel, but the location is the point here. But while the Greek version of this was abstract, the ANE version of the “world navel” was parabolic.

In the podcast, Heiser refers to this by stringing together various parabolic images. If you can think in parables, then you will understand that the Mountain of God, the Tree of Life, and the Cross of Christ as all the same thing. There are a whole raft of associations that show up in how Hebrew parables point back to something that cannot be defined, only indicated within a given context.

It’s not about this world; it’s a reference to cosmic truth in the Spirit Realm (AKA, the Unseen Realm). The axis of divine truth does not exist in this world. It manifests in this world. There are places in this world, for various passages of time, when the focus of convergence between the Spirit Realm and mankind’s fallen existence takes a central place in human awareness.

God has revealed Himself in various times and places. For as long as that manifestation was a key to gaining peace with God, it stood as the “navel of the world” — at least as far as the particular audience is concerned. It’s the place where man can approach Him, and it comes with a collection of typical accessories. ANE legends are loaded with metaphors that show up in Hebrew language and culture — and in the Bible. Heiser links to a couple of documents that are written at his level. You’ll discover what serious biblical scholars have pulled together in their research about the concept of “navel of the world” and these features:

  1. It is the origin of all things created, as if the umbilical cord was connected there.
  2. It’s associated with the “cosmic tree”, including the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. Thus, a great many shrines were associated with the shade of some massive hardy tree.
  3. It can manifest in built structures like the Holy of Holies (a special room) decorated with (guarded by) winged serpents (seraphim) and other fearsome beasts (cherubim). It was the place to contact the divine.
  4. It was also the place to connect with nether realms. Thus, it often included a covered opening in the floor/ground with access to the mythical sea of raging waters and the beasts that live there. Alternatively, it can be access to the Abyss.
  5. The importance of solar orientation (facing the rising sun). It may vary between solar worship or simply observing the cardinal directions marked by the sun, etc.
  6. It’s the place where priests and other cultic personnel hang out. In some traditions, the Queen Mother figure is important.
  7. The association with mountain tops was common. You would expect written references to state metaphorically that it was higher than all other land features. But it was not as a geographic fact; the idea was its prominence in the sense of importance.
  8. Related to prominence is that it was the center of all things, the focus of everyone’s attention. It was often the place where food was distributed (the umbilicus again).

In the Bible, you will see the navel concept used as a metaphor. For example, in Judges 9:36, in the Hebrew text the armed men are coming down from “the center/navel of the land”, a reference to the ritual high place near Shechem: Mount Gerizim. The prophetess Deborah sat under a special tree for a reason (Judges 4:5). When Solomon held a great gathering before the Temple was completed, he used a high place near Gibeon that had been hijacked for worship of Jehovah. Eventually Zion became the navel of the world for Israel. The presence of Gehenna (Hinnom Valley) as the symbol of Hell should surprise no one, just below the ritual high place David purchased for building the future Temple of Solomon. Moreover, there was an opening in the ground of the site where the blood of some sacrifices was drained away. That opening in the foundation was symbolically reputed to connect to the sea.

Through the prophets, God speaks in terms of such concepts, calling Zion the “center/navel of the world”. Thus, when Ezekiel in this chapter refers to the “twig” of some future descendant of the House of David, he’s building the image of something that will grow into a great cosmic tree to be planted atop Zion. It combines both common images for the navel of the world, tree and mountain.

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Rehab for Fallen Leadership?

Posted on January 24, 2026 by ehurst

Let’s step away from the Heiser passenger train just a bit. We need to get away from the tightly controlled route to cover something he could not and would not have touched.

Over and over again, the foundation for our faith community is to embrace the Hebrew outlook of the Bible. It’s radically different from that of the West in general and American churches in particular. It’s not enough to simply get the intellectual background of Jesus. We must walk in His footsteps; we must live life as He would in our place. Somewhere between the divine ideal and the context of where we are today must be a landing place for us to find His peace.

Most of us come out of an American evangelical background, or are at least familiar with it. I’m sure most of us have at least read about the organizational discipline process for handling church leaders who somehow manage to break from their role qualifications. On the one hand, evangelicals confuse the roles of elder and pastor. On the other hand, the standard qualifications listed in the New Testament aren’t significantly different between those two roles: 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, and 1 Peter 5.

  1. Sexually/maritally faithful
  2. Good manager of household
  3. Humble
  4. Gentle
  5. Sober
  6. Peaceful
  7. Financially responsible
  8. Hospitable
  9. Self-controlled
  10. Upright in character
  11. Committed to holiness
  12. Able to teach
  13. Spiritually mature (not a new convert)
  14. Respectable (and respected by outsiders)
  15. A good example to the flock

If you are familiar with Big Eva teachings, you’ll recognize the lists offered at Gospel Coalition and Acts 29. The discussion of qualification and disqualification is long established. It would be very easy to get bogged down in the particular emphasis and meaning different sources might suggest in analyzing the Scriptures, but our point here is that they all consistently approach it from a western frame of reference. The discussion is burdened with a big wad of western professional standards and the matching legalism. Rarely do you see anyone trying to dig up a historical context for what the Apostles wrote.

Naturally, it’s because Big Eva has a culturally twisted perception of what a “church” is and does. Paul didn’t plant public access corporations; he started familial covenant communities. The first century churches were extended family households bound by a common spiritual DNA with a Hebrew feudal structure.

The primary biblical image of church leadership is the shepherd raising a flock. That’s what the word “pastor” means – someone who spends almost all his time with his sheep. He loses sleep when one is sick, injured or lost. When he does sleep, it’s next to them; he smells like them.

Start from that image and read the list again. The primary objective of church shepherds is not shearing and slaughter, but herding them to the Law of Christ: to love the Lord and to love each other as the Lord loves. You invest a lot of effort in teaching them about the Lord who owns them. They need to know how Jesus loves them so they can emulate that. The whole point is improving how well this extended family gets along with each other, looking after each other’s welfare.

Every element of the shepherd’s qualification must contribute to that priority. Every time you want to point out any disqualification, it has to be something that threatens that priority. It’s not about measurable success. You don’t hire and fire a shepherd like a corporate CEO. Shepherds are not rated by the numbers of bodies, buildings or dollars in the budget. They are rated on how well they build a familiar atmosphere of cooperation and common welfare.

To be blunt, the flock should be able to recognize the shepherd by the smell of his individual perspiration. They should know his habits, what he hums under his breath, and what makes him angry. They should know his fleshly temptations, as he should know theirs. They should be eager to watch out for each other in humility and love. His problems are theirs and vice versa.

Only after you get all of that right will you be in a position to talk about what happens when he does something inconsistent with his role, something that threatens the unity of the household. Accountability should be built into the process. Recognize the problems early. Know him well enough to estimate what it takes to get back on track.

That’s what rehab of church leadership means.

The American institutional church norm of social engagement is entirely too impersonal and “professional” to make any sense of what the New Testament says about church leadership. Until you’ve seen everyone at their worst and made peace with that, no one has any business discussing dismissing anyone from office. Indeed, they have no business discussing forming a church in the first place.

Yes, we have a huge burden of social habits to overcome. The biblical image of “church” is a monumental demand on Americans. The problem so far is that no one has ever really tried, so we have no idea how close we can come. The fundamental image itself has never been considered. Instead, we have had any number of creepy cult groups and senseless experiments that have served only to enslave and harm.

In other words, the mainstream image of “church” is only slightly better than cults, at best. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen good men of God tossed aside because of silly legalistic rules about professionalism. At the same time, I’ve seen countless times a man with no moral qualifications at all ran a huge institution because he was professionally qualified or simply able to manifest as a celebrity.

God help us.

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In the Twilight of the Empire

Posted on January 21, 2026 by ehurst

Following up from yesterday’s post, I wanted to point out that this analysis seems to pull together bits of outline I had been reading other places, and adds considerable detail that rings true for me.

In particular, it’s a good look at what it was like from Iran’s position during the supposedly “successful” attack last summer versus the failed attempt over the past few weeks. Those espionage regime-change methods failed because the majority of the Iranian population have no complaints with the government. They were unhappy with the inflation of their currency, but not with the government itself.

The surprising detail was the shorting of Iran’s currency abroad; I hadn’t been aware of that. It shows once more how you should not trust a currency exchange system controlled by your enemies. The system demands entirely too much vulnerability as the price for cooperation in trade. Iran would do well to back their currency with something that does not respond to price manipulation schemes. I wouldn’t recommend precious metals, because that’s a huge target for manipulation schemes, but something like commodities or even water.

For example, tying a currency to water makes the population focus on something truly essential in that part of the world, something already quite valuable. It would spur investment in harvest and storage, becoming the supplier of a commodity that other countries nearby lack. It’s value is already rising globally.

I’m sure there are a thousand reasons it might not work well, but remaining vulnerable to sworn enemies is not a viable option. The US is vulnerable, as well, though the US dollar has penetrated much wider and farther than Iran’s currency. Still, Trump is making enough enemies to encourage the whole world to get out from under the dollar. This is a part of what will plunge the US into imperial collapse.

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