Job 28

Posted on February 22, 2014 by ehurst

Job’s friends had clearly failed to take advantage of revelation. Instead, they relied on their own reasoning as to how things worked, a miserable failure. Job continues his speech by explaining how wisdom is not within human reach, but requires full submission to God.

Job leads of with descriptions of primitive mining. The most valuable material things among men required digging into the earth. He describes vertical shaft mining in remote places to set the tone of how much trouble it is to harvest mineral treasures. Miners try to bring daylight to the deepest reaches of the earth. No other creatures invest so much effort in something that cannot be eaten. Given the technological advances, Job supposed mankind had probably found just about everything of value from such extreme efforts.

But the one thing man needs most in this world is not found in mines. More, what men can dig up from such extravagant searches for material wealth cannot buy that one thing we all need. No matter what you can find, make or pile up in terms of things mankind values, none of it — all of it together — cannot purchase wisdom. Could we find a way to search the bottom of the sea, or visit the abode of the dead, we would not find it. Human treasures cannot be weighed in terms of wisdom because the slightest glimmer of wisdom tips the scales against all human wealth and power.

So where do men get wisdom? If you charmed every other living creature, none of them would be able to lead to it. If you could ask the spirit beings in charge of God’s wrath — Abaddon and Death — the best you could get is a report that it could be found, but they haven’t actually seen it themselves. God alone knows the path to wisdom. When He began Creation, He wove wisdom into it. Against the vast reaches of our universe, He alone understands how this reality works. Then He declared to all men that the entry to the path of wisdom is embracing His revelation.

Subtle it may be, but Job drives home the point that human effort cannot discover the moral fabric of the universe. They can receive it only from above. Job implies all the blather from the trio was merely the echoes of their own limited understanding, their own reasoning, and bore no connection to what God had revealed up that point.

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Misguidance

Posted on February 22, 2014 by ehurst

Western Christianity is fighting the wrong battle.

Being somewhat nerdy, I’ve read tons of fiction, including a whole library of futuristic science fiction and fantasy tales. Most of them are built on the typical Western mythology — little more than variations on Beowulf as told by Homer. It was all wonderfully entertaining and I did absorb a great deal of unconventional thinking. As a side note, children today will face a relentless feminist publishing industry, so the mythology has shifted a bit to far more conformist thinking, but that’s another story for another day. Our society today is still heavily influenced by the reading I had in my youth.

That influence shows up in mainstream Christian mythology, taking note that a great deal of non-Christian society shares the same moral assumptions. Things are complicated and it bears a brief analysis. Western Christianity is relentlessly purpose driven in the cheap imitation of the gospel message as propaganda. There is a powerful demand by some that art by Christians should be blatantly “Christian art” or the artists have failed their duty. Meanwhile, art that takes Christian morals seriously takes a beating among secularists, not so much because it isn’t good art, but as a reaction to that overzealous nonsense. Still, the net result is that this perverted Westernized brand of Christian morality is far more influential than most like to admit, simply because it is the established moral mythology against which even its worst enemies define their attacks.

The point is that we have epic battles against good and evil. Never mind the outcomes, there is a presumption of a recognized definition of good and evil. Even those who reject the broad definitions are forced to use them as a foil. The competing value systems are pretty much all of a type, and anyone with a bit of comparative civilization background can recognize it. You recognize common features: the myth of the great man (hero/heroine/antihero), the myth of the great battle, etc. It’s a sort of vicious circle reflected everywhere — reality is alternatively boring or pointlessly terrifying, so we aren’t entertained with that. We want fiction that entertains by taking us away from reality. It’s the same reason your American news broadcast is loaded with spectacle — if it bleeds, it leads — and chasing celebrities. It shapes our perception of the world and we demand more of the same, a self-confirming bias. We color everything with simplistic values because of this.

It’s not that the ANE Bible viewpoint lacks heroes, for example. Rather, the whole concept of what it means to be a hero is radically different. But our Western assumptions keep us from seeing that. So the mention of “Antichrist” brings up a wealth of meaning that simply is not right, totally missing the point of what the Apostles were trying to tell their readers. The image of Nicolae Carpathia from Left Behind (particularly the movie) shares precious little of the New Testament image. Most people who already agree with that statement would make only minor changes within the Western tradition; I have had serious difficulty finding people who critique it from a non-Western viewpoint.

In the Bible, Antichrist was never meant to be a single figure somewhere in our future. The label applies to a human tendency that remains hard-wired into fallen human nature. We are all just a bit of Antichrist. That tendency shows up in many ways and on many levels. Some of my readers are likely to understand what I mean when I say that Western Civilization is a primary manifestation of Antichrist. We end up with the recognition that Antichrist would lie about itself by pushing the image of an individual Son of Satan as a basic misguidance to keep itself hidden from view and safe from opposition.

My use of the term “The Cabal” in previous blog posts has, I’m sure, already confused some of you. It’s roughly equivalent to the foregoing description of Antichrist. There are in this world people who self-identify as sharing a common drive to dominate human existence. They do work together, sharing a self-conscious identity. If you attempt to associate them with any other established category, you’ll miss some of them. They are totally separate from mainstream ideas about human groupings. If I tell you they share some of the mindset with, say, Kabbalistic Hasidim Jews, that’s not the same thing as suggesting The Cabal is a bunch of them. Accurate or not, that misses the point. Don’t point to the Lubavitchers and call them The Cabal. I don’t use the term that way.

Rather, I am hoping you’ll realize that The Cabal acts and thinks somewhat like Lubavitchers, but that includes the necessity that you actually know something about that particular thread of Judaism. That’s part of the definition of The Cabal in the sense that very few people have an accurate analysis of Judaism at all. You might know what religious Jews want you to believe, but if you think they aren’t guarding some privacy quite different from the PR, you are a fool. One of the defining traits is not revealing much until they are in a position to fear no repercussions from folks who hold different values. You’ll see that trait in a lot of other human groupings, too. By its nature, this thing I call The Cabal would need to act that way to avoid opposition when they hold a weaker hand in the game — they bluff.

Meanwhile, my definition of The Cabal ropes in a bunch of folks who are rabidly antisemitic. One of the standard jokes is that an antisemite is anyone living or dead who is hated by at least one Jew. The point is that the whole question rests entirely in the minds of those who make the most noise about it. They are the ones who demand absolute control over all aspects of the conversation, so independent thought is simply forbidden before you open your mouth, and as much as possible, before you even think. It’s the ultimate expression of Thought Police. But there are plenty of folks who are openly honest about their broad spite for Jews and The Cabal includes some of these.

What matters here is how they operate. They view themselves as a higher species, and are paranoid about opposition. These folks do suffer a grand measure of self-interest, but the also share the same kind of self-interest. They define it all within a certain recognizable set of boundaries. It is their divinely appointed destiny to take over all human space, and any opposition is evil by definition. They are fully aware of the whole range of more common human moral values, and pointedly reject them even while promoting them for everyone else. Not in every detail, but the general shape of Western Civilization is the product of their maneuvering as agents of influence starting way back before the time Christ. Particulars of their agenda do drift over generations, as does a great deal of other identifying human factors, but the broader trend of their work is recognizable.

They do not possess the level of virtuosity that they imagine. This business of an immensely powerful individual with all of Satan’s powers at his disposal is a myth they promote. In their arrogance, they imagine it is partly true, but Satan simply does not work that way. That’s why I attack the popular image of the Devil. Our Enemy is not God’s enemy; he is forced to serve God in ways he himself finds unpleasant. That’s part of the punishment from his own fall from his original position. So while we can broadly say The Cabal is satanic and evil, it requires a boatload of explanation to qualify how those terms are used in the Bible. The Cabal as a bunch of people are pretty intelligent, but they are still people with some crazy ideas that simply do not reflect reality. Western Civilization reflects their own assumptions about things, and Western epistemology is a part of their broader philosophy, but only in the sense that they adopted it as a better expression of assumptions they held before Plato and Aristotle formulated their philosophies.

A primary difference is that The Cabal does not buy into much of the Germanic mythology. They are not Enlightenment folks, but use the dominating influence of the Enlightenment as a tool to keep the rest of humanity in line. Machiavelli and the Neocons use that same playbook.

By now it should be obvious that I avoid pointing at any particular individual and suggesting they are a member of The Cabal. It’s more like a religion and political party, a continuous discernible influence across recorded history. It remains self-consistent. It is recognizable by how it works, and we can associate some obscure writings with the broader agenda that it follows. Consider where I’m coming from. I take the Bible seriously; I hold myself accountable to it. I take seriously the task of understanding the Bible from the epistemology held by the people who wrote it. I take seriously the necessity of applying that epistemology to all questions, particularly the question of how we should live our lives. At the same time, I take into account everything Western Civilization can tell me about human history and human nature from its own perspective. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do contend this is the best explanation from all those inputs when answering the question of what we need to know about what opposes the mission of the gospel.

If we continue to swallow Western epistemology, we play into the hands of The Cabal. If we take the bait of blaming Jews, or Nazis, or secularists, or communists, or any other entity commonly defined today, we will swallow the hook and be taken out of the fight. The battlefield is not the world or human history, and the goal is not somehow defeating some enemy with human talents and heroism. A particularly pernicious lie is that there will be some final battle here on earth over Palestine. To some degree The Cabal seems to believe that, but they are utterly wrong. Dispensationalism is one of the favorite lies of The Cabal. The battlefield is not literal turf; it’s your own soul and victory is simply opposing your fallen human nature. The greatest ally of that evil nature is misdirection, the tendency to focus outward to other humans. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against dark powers in the Spirit Realm. Even our metaphors are all wrong. One of the most important battles is to reclaim the epistemology of the Bible, something The Cabal has rejected for itself.

It’s The Cabal that’s beating a dead horse; don’t get involved in saving something that can’t help your mission.

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Fool’s Goal

Posted on February 21, 2014 by ehurst

Nobody says having a goal in mind is somehow evil. What’s evil is the underlying mental frame of reference that makes accomplishment the measure of your worth.

When you boil down Scripture to the essence, you discover God says holiness is measured by desire. God Himself, Creator of the Universe and all things, says He’s not interested in what people can measure through their various talents. What gets His attention is when you surrender to the fire of passion for Him. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” translates into our culture as a desire for whatever God says is good. That’s more than mere religion; that’s the ultimate measure of what humans can have. There’s nothing in that about what you can be or do, but what you can have.

Our Western world is obsessed with accomplishment. We want the value of all things placed inside the categories that we can control. We have an inborn desire to be our own gods. We want to decide what counts as virtue, to declare what is good and bad. It goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden and the forbidden fruit; “The fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” is not a good translation. It should be more like “The Tree of Deciding What Is Good or Evil.” It implies arrogating God’s position and rejecting His revelation in favor of whatever our human capabilities can discern without revelation. The Fall was fundamentally man’s choice to assert his reason and feelings over what God said.

The point is not that you can’t build a structure against which you measure the events of life, but that you dare not build one without God’s input. The basic human tendency is to mark things like thrift as a virtue instead of trusting revelation in the moment to help you decide when you can’t afford not to throw it all away. Revelation starts with the record compiled by God’s people, but God Himself says it doesn’t end there. Revelation goes on and on through the moments of every day you are here in this world.

The problem is that I can get folks to pay lip service to all of that, and then watch them invest every bit of life into something God bluntly says is pointless. We build monuments to human achievement, not to remember and reflect on our mortality, but as a fist raised in the face of God. Where and when did God say we needed to own real estate and vast comfortable facilities in His name? Who said it was necessary to focus so much attention on just a tiny handful of virtuoso religious experts? Where is it written that a carefully structured budget is a valid reflection of Christ on the Cross? I will tell of most assuredly all of those things are sin in that they replace what God said and what His people first began to do after watching Jesus rise into the clouds.

That business of “renewing your mind” doesn’t mean getting a degree at some certified institution. It means learning to think so differently that the world cannot grapple with it at all. Nothing is ever settled in terms of what we can understand in our minds. If you can call it “efficient” and/or “effective,” it’s already taking the wrong path.

We have a convention in our literature called “Utopia” — literally “No Place.” We understand it as both a dreamy hope for what can be, while at the same time something that cannot be. Is it possible to take the revelation of God, even when we read it with good Hebrew intellectual assumptions, and implement a society what pleases Him? No. That’s a critical point of the Old Testament: Under the most ideal conditions, with God Himself writing the script and everything just about as perfect as it ever could be in this world, a human society could not keep it working for more than a few years at a time. Even with God’s constant miraculous intervention, it couldn’t work. It had nothing to do with God’s capability and wisdom; it had everything to do with our fallen state.

Every time I see or hear something that oozes with “if only we could” I get sick. As long as something like that passes through your mind, you cannot pretend to follow God’s agenda. His agenda has nothing to do with anything any human might consider an agenda. His agenda is a vivid, moment-by-moment clinging to Him without the pretense that you could write up a set of principles. God did had them written and people still ignore major elements of what He said, so stop pretending you can do it better. To the degree it can be stated in human language, it begins with recognizing that, starting at that Resurrection Morning 2000 years ago, we resign all efforts to build a human society that we can pretend is good.

It’s just barely possible to create a tiny enclave out of society that comes close, but that requires such a radical shift in thinking, down to the most basic assumptions about reality itself, that you would rightly despair of seeing it in your lifetime. It’s not bad enough that we live by the wrong epistemology, but the whole world does. The moment you start to build a genuine church, it will be crushed as illegal in a dozen different ways on the first day. Not that you shouldn’t learn about it, but that you should learn about it only so you understand that it can’t happen. Even while the Apostles were still around to make sure things were aimed in the right direction, it was a constant battle that eventually failed.

It cannot be done. God doesn’t want it done. We serve a false god if we think He does want things a certain way. What He wants is people who depend on Him in full assurance it won’t go right and that it won’t matter.

Go ahead and try, but don’t invest yourself in results. Read that again. You are supposed to try, to spend your whole life pressing ahead as if it could be, even while you realize in your mind that it won’t happen. From time to time, God will bless things and you’ll experience moments of His power manifesting before your eyes, but don’t try to capture it and camp on it. That’s not why He grants those moments. Once you’ve seen it and internalized it, you will be held accountable for the lesson, not keeping that moment alive. God does that to change us, not to change the world in which we live. It’s a taste of Heaven, not a recipe for a steady diet here below.

There have been in my life thus far great moments when the power of the Spirit poured out among various groups of people to which I belonged. Were I to seek remaking those moments, I would be fighting God. Were I to study them with all the tools of human education at my disposal and attempt to extract the essence of what made it good, it’s possible I’ll find something useful, in that I can learn to guard against folly. But there cannot be a pattern for provoking bliss in a future opportunity. Bliss comes as a gift from God, not as a result of some repeatable structure. There is no magic formula that can be made to work again down the road. The best you can do is teach yourself not to make the same mistakes you did when things did not bless you.

Stop taking it seriously if something you do takes off. Just because people and resources are attracted to something in which you are involved, even if you are the center of attention, that is not a sign of God’s favor on the activity. Don’t let it own you. That bullshit about negativity and self-fulfilling failure does not apply here. The point is not about some magical negative or positive energy, but about where you invest your loyalty. God works in and through all sorts of human activities, but none of them are God. Don’t treat any lesser thing as your god.

All that noise about living your dreams is a Satanic misdirection. Don’t let it own you. Take what God brings your way and let Him give you the fire to push it as far as you can, but don’t ever think it is about accomplishment. It’s about the joy of experiencing Him in the moment. It’s a false dichotomy presented by our secular world that you either have to save for a rainy day or live like an animal. In modern Western secular philosophy there is nothing above the intellect, so whatever isn’t rational must be emotional and animal. Faith in a higher power can’t be anything more than mere sentiment. The establishment does not recognize that intuition or a move of the Spirit is superior to reason. Even when society recognizes aspirations beyond the pedestrian level, they try to enslave it to mere inspiration to achieve more.

Stop trying to achieve. Pretend if you must for the sake of those who seem to be spiritually dead, but never give your heart to that folly. Rather, cultivate a sense of moral imperative and mission, and live in the moment that can also point you to thrift, but the same moment might well demand you sacrifice it all for no measurable result. It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but God.

We do things because they are righteous and just in that moment, not based on expected results. Embracing God’s Justice is its own reward.

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What to Expect

Posted on February 20, 2014 by ehurst

All I have is my limited analytical talents and my intuition, so take this with a grain of salt. This is a working model I’ll use until it crumbles.

The Cabal should not be identified with any particular institution. It works within many institutions and you have to learn to recognize its fingerprints based on broader factors than just a publicly announced agenda you might not like. Global government doesn’t require an organized and recognizable governing institution. The Cabal is known for accepting something less than direct control as sufficient to fulfill its agenda. To the degree it relishes direct control, things are not yet ripe for that. I suspect the definition of “ripe” would include a massive level of human extermination we cannot imagine, something currently not feasible.

For now, its enough to control resources. Again, it’s not direct or overt control, but in a more subtle sense of gaining leverage through willing or unwitting proxies. Immediately before us is a broad attempt to corral material wealth, to consolidate titular ownership in very few hands. I seriously doubt it will work out as The Cabal intends, but it will be generally uncomfortable for most of humanity in the foreseeable future. It’s going to feel like privation and slavery, regardless what names are used officially.

The Cabal has no single program of action that you could explain easily. I’m going to focus on what’s coming here in the U.S. I’ve already noted the seesaw political charade, bouncing back and forth between two broad agendas, both substantially controlled by The Cabal. In general, it doesn’t care which side wins because it wins either way. We are approaching a sort of break point. The two sides have been escalating their provocations of each other, maneuvering and implementing systemic hindrances to each other. At some point, someone will push the big red button and try to “stop the insanity” by asserting blatant and total dominance. My personal guess is the Neocons will do it, and stand a good chance to win, insofar as it’s possible to accomplish anything.

For now, the Progressives have the upper hand and I expect some really irresponsible moves from them in the next few months. For example, we have seen where conservative churches have been pushing back against speech restrictions under threat of losing tax exemption. I figure the IRS will apply that hammer very shortly. Consider the tepid response to previous IRS abuses against purely political organizations. You should expect conservative evangelicals to begin crying about religious persecution, etc. This and similar oppression should successfully provoke enough backlash to effectively tip the scales in favor of the Neocon agenda.

So shortly after that, we are highly likely to see military attacks in Syria, Iran, etc., leading to something we could call WW3. There are too many variables to push that line of supposition any farther. I’m just guessing, not predicting. Too many things could change even before the sun goes down today.

The point here is, in terms of tribulation, The Cabal has not painted a target on folks like me. Keep in mind that their primary mission is destroying the gospel message, despite having an imperfect understanding of it on a human level. The Cabal tends to think of Western Christianity as a prime target, even as it attempts to enslave Western Christians to their dirty work. All along the way, since the First Century, The Cabal has worked to subvert and control however much of Christianity as was organized into visible churches. Its agents were involved in trapping church leaders under Constantine’s government. Later, its agents were involved in the breakup of the Roman Church, working from within to provoke irreconcilable conflicts that could only result in organizational fracture. The Cabal took advantage of historical intellectual currents to which it contributed in the first place.

So if you share some measure of my beliefs and religious outlook, you can expect little direct attack. Instead, we will face systemic friction. In doing what is necessary for our mission, we will inevitably get in trouble, along with a lot of other folks who have no such mission. Whether good or bad, we’ll have a lot of company. For myself, a critical element of my mission means avoiding much association with institutional Christian religion. This is simple honesty, on one level. I feel for them, but they are already a serious threat to my mission without noting that I don’t need to paint their target on my back. I can only help mainstream Christians by pulling them out of such organized structures. So, to stay on task, I need to consider ways to avoid being associated with them.

Meanwhile, a critical element of my mission as expressed on this blog is helping folks who share some of my beliefs. I’m hoping I can help to eliminate false expectations good or bad, and to offer what I consider a more realistic assessment. Mostly I want to direct your attention to the core issues of pursuing the moral imperatives that justify God leaving us here while things go crazy around us. There is nothing to gain by organizing in the typical sense, as that would only paint a target on us. Let’s keep it virtual. Yes, the Internet will change a good bit and access might get dicey. Think about it in terms of packing lightly; don’t invest too much in any particular technology solution. The whole idea is to have sufficient access to each other online that we can share our sorrows and solutions, all in pursuit of that eternal mission.

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Mission Persistence

Posted on February 19, 2014 by ehurst

I teach that there is nothing significant humans can do to affect the choice, timing and process of spiritual birth in themselves or others. That’s about as close as we can come to explaining what’s really going on with individual spiritual redemption. God does what He does with or without us, and as I’ve often noted, in spite of organized Christian religion. There will always be people coming to Christ and seeking ways to live the wordless burning drive that it brings, so there will always be some kind of Christian fellowship, regardless how ill informed it tends to be. What we experience in connection to that is the manifestation of God’s work on our end of the chain; it is not the whole reality. All the more so when our culture does everything possible to keep us from even approaching the thought process God recommended for discussing such things.

We are encouraged to keep the gospel message alive, to take it before the eyes of the world, because that is the context in which God would prefer to bring His power to bear on people He elects to call. He wants us involved in the process, but does not need us. He will most certainly do His work of redemption if we fail, and everything in Scripture tells us we should expect to fail. Westerners do not properly understand how that works and attach a lot of bogus psychology to it because our entire civilization is built on bogus psychology. But we are supposed to carry on with words and deeds that portray at least a sensitivity to spiritual realities. It’s not the gospel sales pitch that does it, but the broader context in which a few words might have some power because God desires to bring His Presence to bear in that context. But in the final analysis, you and I are just along for the ride.

This whole business of Christian living is for our benefit after we have been brought over into the Spirit Realm. While Christian living does tend to reflect the best for all humanity regardless of spiritual state, that is not the point for us. We know it’s in everyone’s best interest, but the stronger motive is to lay claim to the full breadth of joy possible while we are stuck here waiting for His final call to depart this Vale of Sorrow. Wholly inscrutable is His reckoning on why He keeps us here and for how long; our part is the make the most of it by struggling to operate by His recommendations for human existence.

Those recommendations are given shape in the context of the Law Covenants. We are not remanded to the custody of the peculiar code of conduct itself, but to what that code of conduct shows us about something far deeper than mere laws. Those laws point to something fundamental about creation, our fallen nature, and the whole point of it all. It’s just barely possible that mere human intellect could begin to see that moral fabric in our earthly existence, but only if the human intellect develops within a specific context of Hebrew/ANE epistemology. Originally, the idea was to create a human cultural and intellectual context to optimize preparation for that divine call to spiritual awareness, but that fell apart. So God revealed Himself as a human figure, offering a vast lore of clarification about the whole thing, and then paid the price to grant us that spiritual birth before we wade through the human conditioning that makes life worth living. The idea was that we would form communities to begin reclaiming that lost heritage of human conditioning.

Historically, the Christians lost track of that whole idea rather early in the game. That didn’t prevent God continuing His work of redemption, but it has deprived countless generations of Christians of their rich heritage. What’s at stake here is not whether this or that poor benighted soul will go to heaven because we failed, but that said poor soul might be stuck with our monumentally stupid rejection of God’s ways once they do awaken to eternal life. I am hardly the first guy to notice this problem in history, but the message from previous folks has been suppressed by those who consider themselves in charge while having no clue what they should have been doing. I can go back and show you flashes of insight from those who woke up intellectually to some of what God intended for His people, and how they were so deeply blessed by laying claim to the fuller heritage of faith. Hint: It had nothing to do with their theology, but it was something much more subtle and also more substantial.

But it was suppressed. I suppose calling that opposing force “The Cabal” is about as good a label as any other. You probably know that word is connected to Kabbalism, but there is a broad wealth of background information that you probably don’t have unless you read European History and Humanities in depth. There are key terms such as Neoplatonism and Talmudism and so forth that impinge upon a proper understanding of what we face here. It would be very misleading to imagine this thing was highly organized by the people involved, though at times it approached something like that. It’s more accurate to image this thing as a living force that uses people, and that the underlying beliefs and intellectual processes they expressed were somewhat less important than conspiracy theorists imagine. So it’s not like I’m picking on Jews or Catholics, but it would be a lie if I didn’t note that a lot of folks who identified themselves with those labels in history were involved in some really bad stuff against the gospel message. And today a lot of evangelical folks are doing the work to hinder the message by perverting it.

My point is to push away the simplistic nonsense so popular in the West today, nonsense embraced by both the mainstream Joe Sixpack and the folks who imagine they are preparing for Armageddon or something like that. Whatever it is we might associate with my label — The Cabal — is pretty much beholden to Western epistemology. They tend to believe all reality is unitary (bluntly stated by folks like Averroes, a patron saint in Kabbalism) versus my assertion the universe exists inside a bubble of temporal existence, surrounded by an eternity unbounded by space-time considerations. They remain utterly sold on the idea of human politics as the way to get things done. Thus, to organize at all in the Western sense yields them the battlefield of their choice. It’s a trap. The Cabal is hardly omniscient, but the members tend to be well above average intelligence. They are hardly marching in lock-step; that’s just a myth they perpetuate to make us fear. Instead, they are themselves paranoid, even about each other.

I could go on at book length about this, but the point is how very easily we defeat them. Step away from Western Christian stupidity; learn to think like the ancient Hebrew minds. There is no precise definition of that, no particular goal, just think of it as a path that ends when you die. You won’t know until you get there. Learn to think with ultimate reliance on moral intelligence, something that requires using your spiritual faculty to perceive what God intended for you in any given context. Given that our context is moving into a time of tribulation, it’s a good idea to consider whether you are supposed to make noise and take the heat or act rather quietly so you can keep working a while longer. Either way, the gospel is not your sales pitch; it’s your broader approach to living. It’s your mission as a whole, so keep the focus there.

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Political Observations

Posted on February 18, 2014 by ehurst

There is a distinct advantage to my otherworldly focus. I can honestly claim objectivity regarding politics because I dismiss all of it as mere shadows and lies. I maintain that not a single Western government is remotely acceptable to God in terms of His revelation, none of them the least bit legitimate against Scripture, so not a single political statement today reflects any part of what I believe. It’s all manure, but each type has it’s own unique stink, and I’m left with being a connoisseur of nastiness.

Have you noticed that there is no human on earth so viscerally and senselessly hateful as a liberal ranting about the alleged hatred of non-liberals? And Progressives are the most sickening cowards, always demanding someone else do something about their pet peeves. Yet they salivate at the smallest bloodshed when their orthodoxy is enforced on others. Their hymns to openness apply only to a tiny range of acceptable alternatives.

The vast majority of conservatives are eager for someone else to send their children to war, but they do marshal a vast horde of willing cannon fodder. They are easily more Marxist than Marx on one particular point: They honestly believe humans will generally operate in their own economic best interest. This the one group most likely to flat out ignore anything I say in criticizing Western Civilization. No, I mean in direct conversation one-on-one, they pretend not to hear any comment that criticizes materialism, unless they permit themselves some lip service to “transcendent values.” Meanwhile, the single biggest threat to my human existence is Christian Fundamentalists.

The Western cultural images of apocalypse are always painted by doctrinaire fundies. The nightmare scenarios are relentlessly restricted to leftists as demons. What no one wants to admit is that, to the degree we are likely to suffer an apocalypse at all, it will come to us at the hands of the folks who have bought up Hal Lindsay and Tim LaHaye books. The Dispensationalists will be the primary perpetrators of WW3, and the Antichrist will be a Christian Fundamentalist taking control of world government.

Naturally, all of the above are patsies for someone far more intelligent. It won’t do to apply any labels at this point, because all of them are owned by one or another partisan group that I reject, but Satan runs all sides of the political debate. Christ pointedly withdrew from involvement in partisan disputes in His day. His agenda was blatantly outside this world, which makes things all the more Orwellian when the competing political entities all claim Him for their very worldly plans. How do you deal with a force that is so slimy you can’t pin it down verbally? No matter what I call this thing, it will polarize the readers.

Yet it’s painfully obvious there are puppet masters pulling the strings. The mere existence of the political left and right today both owe themselves to this same background thing. Wherever communists have taken control, it was the same kind of people regardless of the location. Those same people invented what we now call neoconservativism. Those two forces play off each other, with all the other identifiable political labels as mere herds of useful idiots. Even noting that they can be labeled “commies versus neocons” is merely the American manifestation of the same false dichotomy.

This evil band of plutocrats cannot be identified as a political group, ethnic group, nor even rightly as a religion. However, there is a highly religious flavor to their expressed agenda. You think it’s hidden? It’s been published in different forms since mankind had written language, and you can find various accurate expressions of it today on the Net. Most of the time it is presented to us as slander against someone else, so that expressing any interest at all marginalizes you immediately — if you are lucky. And it comes in contrasting and self-contradictory flavors. How do you argue with what amounts to a black hole? It exists only to deny direct observation of itself even as it sucks in everything.

All you have to remember is that if something addresses itself to this fallen world, as if things of this world actually matter, it’s a lie. It’s just a shadow. Don’t fear those who can only attack the flesh.

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Preparing for Persecution

Posted on February 17, 2014 by ehurst

For those who share any significant portion of my religious beliefs: Prepare for persecution.

While I can’t tell you much about the author, this article is a fairly balanced and accurate assessment of a rising faction within the West, but most particularly in the U.S. A smattering of labels are applied to it, depending on the place you stand when viewing it: Dispensationalists, Christian Zionists, militant evangelicals, etc. As I have often said, the Judaizers won long ago, and Western Christianity is enslaved to the paranoia that demands changes here in the Shadowlands. Of all the identifiable pressure groups in the world, this is probably the single greatest threat I face as a Christian Mystic. It’s not so much the people themselves, nor specifically their beliefs, but the effects of their zealous warmongering and all that comes with it.

Not long ago, I offered a warning to my politically and socially liberal friends. Partisan politics is a volatile charade meant to distract the sheeple. The pendulum swing currently favors Democrats in many ways, though they refuse to admit it. Both sides always imagine themselves under siege, even when they actually dominate. I predicted the Progressives would push too far on something and the pendulum will swing the other way soon. When it does, in some locales a reactionary force will arise and literally threaten the life and safety of those they blame for whatever bad situation they consider to be so intolerable (like the fallout from Obamacare, for example). When Progressives are the reaction, they use government agents and institutions to oppress (like the IRS), while Conservative elements use populist tools and non-government actors. Need we note which side is loaded with gun-toting advocates of the Second Amendment? In some locales, bloodshed seems likely as things escalate.

It’s not that Conservatives don’t use government force, too, but their leverage is currently in the military and similar institutions that ostensibly act outside the U.S. The linked article notes a powerful trend in the military as an identifiable society. We could allege all sorts of reasons why the current administration is so reluctant to unchain the military, but it seems to make more sense to me if we see it mostly as partisan posturing. The great bird of prey has two wings and the flight plan never changes. Those of us who do our best to escape the matrix and think outside the dominant channels aren’t being ignored, but we aren’t regarded as significant threats. Instead, we are a convenient part of the collateral damage.

As always, I refuse to participate in the ongoing deception. No political element represents my interests or my opinions; no organized religion wants anything to do with me. I’m not feeling particularly lonely or oppressed, but I do expect to face a great deal of human resistance as I make my way through the mission to which my Heavenly Father has called me. To the degree you share my ideas, dear readers, so you will likely face opposition almost anywhere in the world. We do not lend ourselves to the manipulations of the plutocrats. At some point it is inevitable that our human existence will cross into the line of fire. We accept that as our normal.

The New Testament pointedly says we should welcome this as a privilege of Kingdom Service.

Clarification: I am most threatened by Conservatives because they refuse to acknowledge my dissent, and I’ll be crushed for insufficient enthusiasm for their cause. The threat is broadly institutional as they have consciously infiltrated every institution where they could find a foothold. They are opportunistic and grab each moment that falls their way. From Progressives the greater danger is their visceral hatred for my failure to embrace their fundamental assumptions, but they tend as a whole to be less activist unless they really do hold all the cards. Progressives are much more cowardly about persecution. These observations are a matter of current trends, not so much historical.

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We Tribulate

Posted on February 16, 2014 by ehurst

Sure, I read the news. We are passing through a time of tribulation. Sometimes I’ll comment on developments here, but I don’t pretend to understand very much about it all. You are equally responsible to God for developing your own sense of what is happening. The reason is simple: We aren’t supposed to debate which viewpoint is more accurate, but develop a sense of what God requires of us individually.

There’s a tremendous amount of deception. Back before the Internet, it was much easier to keep things under cover. Some of the most audacious things have happened and only recently do we see evidence that has remained hidden all this time. We all know that it’s because the cost of sharing information has plummeted and the audience is now vastly larger, to the point it’s almost global. So we know about, say the Franklin Scandal and how major American political figures were raping children, and have been for quite some time. We are rightly far more cynical, but the average Joe Sixpack and kin seldom bother to look for such revelations. They are too busy playing Candy Crush.

Yes, that sort of blindness is precisely what TPTB have been trying to cultivate. But some of us can push through such shadows if we try.

I simply lack the talent for expressing how the things we fear aren’t what they appear. Yes, we are passing through a global economic melt-down. But it won’t hit you where you expect or in the ways you might hear about from the likes of Preppers. Yes, there will be blood in the streets, and maybe on your street, but it won’t be ubiquitous. Some of it will be hidden and some it fluffed up out of proportion because someone stands to gain from distorting the facts.

Again, it’s not for me to tell you how to read and filter out all that noise. Your perception of things isn’t really the issue, nor is mine. What matters is the same message coming from way back in the First Century. This world isn’t important, and most human activity that proclaims importance has none. Pitch a tent; don’t build a palace. Okay, build palaces as a hobby and art form, but not with any intent to shield yourself from human suffering. Invest your resources in the glory of Jesus’ name. That would lead only tangentially to investing much in human comfort, in the sense we can only do so much without taking care of this flesh. God has set for you a balance point between total neglect and rabid demands for perfect nutrition and fitness. Find your own fulcrum, and don’t be surprised if it moves now and then.

That business of glorifying Christ isn’t as complicated as most theologians want you to believe. I encourage you to toss out mainstream theological considerations as a trap designed to cripple your witness. Stick with the obvious message of the Scripture from the intellectual assumptions of the people who wrote it: Do what’s right. Commit yourself to the attitude written into the Law Covenants. Don’t slavishly obey them as if you are so very certain you can nail it all down with perfection. That simply substitutes your human intelligence for the real God. Read between the lines and absorb the deeper moral commitments; abstract it from the context with the sure knowledge you can’t always get it right.

Holiness is measured by desire, not any objective standard that a human can understand.

That sort of holiness is how you get through this time of tribulation. Just stick with your mission and don’t get distracted. Don’t be surprised by the most god-awful things that fall out of the sky or burst up from the pits of Hell. That stuff was always there, but kept from view by those who love it so much. We are in a time when there will be shocking revelations, shocking only because too many people preferred the comfortable lies. At the same time, evil will take on a radical boldness as all those nasty plans become obvious. What are you going to do about it anyway? TPTB have the upper hand and can afford the chutzpah. Still, I assure you from my personal experience that earth-shattering evil was always there, and I saw glimpses of it long ago.

You probably did, too, but perhaps some part of you just didn’t want to believe the enormity of it all. So believe it now. Just don’t get hung up on it. Your current life wasn’t worth much in the first place, so don’t fear — “loving not their lives unto death” (Revelation 12:11). That wrath of God on human sin will splatter on us while we remain on this plane of existence, but it doesn’t have our names on it. Those of us who claim the Cross have all the sacrifice God ever demanded under His Laws. We simply have to live out the message. Words mean nothing unless you give them shoes to walk and hands to work.

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Job 27

Posted on February 15, 2014 by ehurst

We could wish for better translations of Job into English. The underlying sarcasm and wit are not easily translated across the centuries, miles and cultural distance. Having been pushed relentlessly by the idiotic arguments of his erstwhile friends, having bounced his facts off the stony heads and hearts of this trio, Job sometimes pushes into hyperbole. We recall the prologue says Job does not sin in his words, but he does overstate his case as it becomes obvious here. He vows to the God who has denied him justice that he will never admit to their accusations. Job asserts that would be a blasphemous lie against God.

It takes a very hardened heart to imagine that Job recants his previous contentions here. He is mocking the three elders. Yes, it would be great if God’s judgment on unjust behavior was so obvious. Would that God put Job’s suffering on them! But would the wicked in such a state call out to God and sing His praises as Job had done? They have watched Job from the first day of his mourning. How could they accuse him of evil when he clearly and potently stands with God?

To prove this subtle point, Job repeats some of the assertions they made. When those assertions about God come from the mouths of comfortable men addressing someone in sorrow, it says one thing. When the same characterizations come from the mouth of the one who suffers the literal symptoms of that litany of wrath against sin, it means something else entirely. Job confesses God’s justice in condemning the wicked. But as Job has contended from the start, those characterizations of how God judges sin cannot be taken with such bald literalism. Job’s recitation is quite obviously parabolic, loaded with symbolism, not literal description.

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Communion Lost

Posted on February 14, 2014 by ehurst

Reticence is a virtue.

We live in a self-indulgent world that is quite the opposite of civil. Civility is the quality of removing enough of yourself from the common market of human interaction to participate without intruding on anyone else. The goal of civility is to avoid looming large, pretending significance only in the eyes of those with whom life requires you to remain close. Life is the thing; it’s not about us as individuals.

Our world is populated by millions of isolated countries of individuals. Community must not happen; that would diminish us. We have no awareness of safely building ourselves with commitment into something worthy, something bigger than ourselves. Instead, nothing is bigger than the self.

This is completely backwards to what God had in mind. We need not attempt the impossible task of backing up until we are back in Eden; we can’t go there until we leave this world. Rather, monumental enough is the task of simply recovering what God said was possible after the Fall. We have no idea because our world has not simply wandered off, but scattered in frantic fear of having to sacrifice some small piece of ourselves to be near God.

So we live the paradox of being so utterly individually alone because we insist on pushing our whole selves into every other eye. We have no sense of scale when it comes to community. There are a million ways to do it wrong, but only one way is consistent with the design God used in creating the universe.

That way has very soft edges, because it was meant to require paying full attention to God’s individual calling for each of us. If you do not participate in His society, you cannot participate at all, because there is no other society in existence. We have well dreamed up all sorts of imaginary societies, forcefully willing them into some semblance of reality in our minds, but all of them are fake. We remain isolated and it burns, whether conscious or not. Your very real intimate lover remains only a machine with no lasting fulfillment, so the burning agony of isolation continues. It may be not be fully conscious; you can lie to yourself. Still, it’s there and it makes us hungry. We burn ourselves out in seeking every way except the one our Creator proclaimed.

When in your dying thirst someone gives you water, you must first sip slowly or you will vomit it all back up and be worse off. The path to the deepest communion possible in our fallen space is to sip slowly and offer only small sips of ourselves. There is no virtue in probing questions about the details of another’s soul, nor spilling out the full content of our character. Communion grows strongest in the soil of common commitment to something far, far bigger. You don’t need to know about me, but about my commitments. We have no idea how to do that because our society threw that away centuries ago.

We have to rediscover, and rebuild, or we have nothing. We have nothing more than our wild imaginations, the vivid vapors that disappear in the slightest breeze of human sorrow. We have no strength to endure because we have too long consumed nothing of substance in this empty world.

It’s not about us, but about communion itself.

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