SUSE Is Viable Again

Posted on March 21, 2013 by ehurst

I loved SuSE back in the days between versions 6-9. At the time Novell took over around 9.0, things quickly went downhill. Everything I liked about SuSE was badly damaged or taken away. A few releases were okay, but the whole model of development was bad corporate. There is no “good corporate” but at least Red Hat is tolerable; Novell was not.
It took some time for the developers of SUSE to shake off the worst effects of bad corporate herding, but the current release of 12.3 is just about usable. It still takes some tweaking, and you will have to get used to things being a little different, but I believe it’s worth the trouble.
The two primary usability issues are still the KDE desktop and font rendering. KDE will never be what it once was, but it’s finally getting tolerable. (Look out! That can only mean they are preparing to screw it up again.) I won’t waste a bunch of time rewriting the two best guides for fixing things.
MTE (Make Tech Easier) has a very good guide on taming KDE 4 and making it act more like KDE 3. Just change one detail: your new desktop theme “Vintage” goes in /home/[username]/.kde4/share/apps/desktoptheme — the .kde folder in your HOME has changed to .kde4.
Part of the damage from passing through Novell was the destruction of font rendering. I highly recommend you follow the guide at OpenSUSE Starter and add the muzlocker repo to get things back like they once were. Just change the details to match the 12.3 release.
I’m still entirely disappointed by the failure of the Plasmoid widgets to match the glory of the Kicker stuff in KDE 3. I want more system information at hand, and I want it all in one place. So I use GKrellM and I built the gkrell-weather plugin from source. Simply add the gkrellm-devel package, accept whatever dependencies come with it, then get the plugin source here. You can build with the defaults and let it install where it likes, because when you restart GKrellM after installing the plugin, it will be found. You can find the appropriate weather station codes here. For example, the closest to me geographically is Tinker Air Force Base, KTIK (you have to use all caps).
Naturally I had to add WINE so I could run Notepad++ because nothing in Linux works so well, and also so I could run Word 97. I still use Opera for mail, in part because KMail is an overly complicated boondoggle and you are lucky if you can get it to work. It tried to import settings from Opera, but failed to create any kind of usable configuration and I can’t work out the obscure non-standard options in KMail while the automated settings keep interfering. YMMV.
Still, I’d say if you really need a current Linux distro for a newish machine like mine, it’s pretty good for desktop use.

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Lend to Your Neighbor

Posted on March 21, 2013 by ehurst

In God’s Laws, all debts must be personal.
There is no place in God’s Justice for impersonal business involvement. The corporate entity is from Hell. In ancient times you were personally liable for your debts to someone who knew you well enough to be a critical factor in your life before they made the loan. Nor are you permitted to invest mere money in any venture; you must be directly, hands-on involved where your money goes. Our culture has this all wrong, of course. On top of our greedy, whiny, needy expectations that lead us to use credit for food, this impersonal debt business is part of why we have God’s wrath on us.
So you might suppose there is coming a reckoning day on things like national debt, particularly government debt. There’s a limit, right? There will be a day when the herd of impersonal investors will decide the US government is no longer a good risk, and turn off the tap. Chaos follows.
But it’s not that simple. The vast herd of investors is not all one entity. The plutocrats are stringing along a very large number of folks who only think they are part of club. You’ll learn an awful lot when you see who gets the haircut during any defaults. Some of it is simple competition between big players. They aren’t all working together except in the sense they are playing a game we never get to see, and some of them will be big losers, too. Meanwhile, the game they play assumes all of us little people are losers already.
I have no solid concept to offer on how this will end. I’m utterly certain it will be in the next few years, maybe this year for some things. There are too many players gaming for different prizes from different angles. You can’t boil it all down to just global bankers, Big Oil, Big Pharma, the Rothschilds, the Jews, or whatever other labels are popularly slung about. What we can know is that most of us are the prey, and we live among predators. Most of the predators own the system and can insulate themselves from direct predation, yet still walk away with all the goodies. That sort of thing goes back before the days of Noah.
On the one hand: Yes, it’s a good time to invest in hard assets. Not just gold, but the means to keep on living and making a life when you have to recreate a system that comes apart. On the other hand: It’s much more important you invest in yourself. Hardware is good, but if you can’t hack the software, it just sits there reflecting your pitiful rage back at you. Make sure you know how to use all those means of survival. More importantly, make sure you don’t get so wrapped up in survival you miss the best opportunities to work toward death.
In this fallen realm, we owe God. Dying is not a sad end, but a happy release from prison for those of us spiritually alive. Those without a spiritual awareness are already dead and don’t know it. Human expiration will fall on them rather randomly, and a lot more of them in the near future. For us who seek a higher realm, we have to earn our death. We have to strive to be in the right place and time to accomplish the mission of glorifying His Name so we can go home to our rest.
Part of that mission is getting directly involved with people. Give your stuff — and certainly yourself — to others. Not aimlessly, but follow that divine call on your resources. Otherwise, you’ll have to stay around a lot longer suffering all this misery and sorrow. While you live, faithful holiness is the only relief. Don’t miss your ride home. Don’t be so hung up on the details you forget what they all mean together.
In the Bible, lending was a term that meant you expected God to repay, regardless whether the human recipient did.

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In Conformance with God's Laws

Posted on March 20, 2013 by ehurst

In the previous post, I hammered out the concept of social stability as clannish extended family household living. As always, physical DNA is far less important than spiritual DNA; the ritual symbolizes something above the human plane.
The Laws of God are based on a presumption you would prefer spiritual enlightenment in your human circle of associates, but dare not assume it happens that often. Thus, the point of having Laws is to offer a plausible path to social stability and peace on earth that includes everyone. Rituals are applied to everyone in the household in hopes at least some of them will sense the divine calling first to love the Laws of God as His revelation. Then, it is hoped that builds to a point where spiritual birth occurs. God alone controls the miracle of spiritual birth and never explains how He uses His Laws to bring it about. What He does explain is that He uses repentance under His Laws to breathe life into dead spirits. We are left focusing on how to abstract the Laws to our own context, because that’s how God has chosen to grow His Kingdom.
Our modern Christian mythology of “born again” does not reflect the original teaching. It is utterly and wholly impossible for a human to choose spiritual birth because the fallen mind cannot even want it. The entire action takes place in the Spirit Realm and nothing of fallen human resources touches it. Spiritual birth is entirely a decision of God and humans have no say in the matter whatsoever, at least so far as Scripture can explain it at all.
Therefore, in conforming ourselves to the extended family household for which God designed us — hard-wired — we build the covenant family. Even under Moses, being born of Israeli blood was simply an advantage of being the shortest path to becoming a Son of the Law. You still had to make that conscious commitment to embrace the Covenant individually. Tons of help and even some coercion, but you could opt out and surrender your status along with the obligations, becoming a Gentile in effect. Granted, most of Old Testament History is loaded with people failing to grasp this fundamental fact, but the Covenant did not apply to anyone who didn’t embrace it as a moral commitment. By the same token, anyone born outside the nation could go through the conversion process and become a member of the Covenant, and thus a Son of the Law with all the privileges of full citizenship.
This symbolizes becoming a Son of the Spirit. (Yes, I know we prefer the gender neutral stuff, but in Hebrew thought and in English grammar, the masculine is the inclusive gender. Get over it.) If you are a Child of God, you are included in the family. As elder of my spiritual clan, I may not be able to integrate you into our earthly operations — what we call “the church” — but I can’t pretend God isn’t using you for His glory. Your particular doctrine and practice is yours to work out with God; you still have to figure out whether it will fit in this or that church. However, the fundamental nature of “church” is a family unit operating more or less as an ancient Hebrew clan.
Again, it’s an alien concept to the West, including Western Christianity. American Christians are so completely bathed in the Western rationalist mode that we reflexively think churches should be organized like anything else we do in Western society. We make church like a business of sorts. That is completely wrong. Conforming to God’s Laws for the church means you toss that model in the trash, and you realize this is about “marrying into” the church clan. Given we have so very far to go, just getting started thinking about it is enough for now. However, insofar as humanly possible, your church should be residing in a single space like a village. You should be tripping over each other 24/7 — physically. You don’t “go to” church; you assemble where you live at the appointed day and time to worship. You’ve been at church all along. Chew on that while we leave undefined all the possible rules and regulations.
The point is this: That all-day-long involvement in each other’s lives is how we conform to God’s standards. Social cohesion and stability is built on embracing the expectations of the Laws as a whole, but if you aren’t breathing each other’s air, you can’t begin to conform. It’s not an aspect of your earthly existence, but defines it. This is the assumption; whether we can, and to what degree we can execute this in our current social and historical context is the big question each of you must work out for yourself. If you truly want what God says is His glory, you’ll work toward that goal. His power and mercy will enable those things He regards essential for you. No one says you aren’t supposed to get involved in the wider world so fundamentally hostile to all of this, but if you have no consciousness of the ideal, you can’t represent the Kingdom very well.
Holiness is defined as a desire for God’s ways in your life.

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In Defiance of God’s Laws

Posted on March 19, 2013 by ehurst

Fundamental issue: Social stability — God’s Laws demand it and are aimed at producing it. This is the thing on which we focus as we attempt to understand how to do justice and bring Him glory.

The primary means to producing this social stability is hidden in plain sight. Yes, it requires you read between the lines; that’s how Hebrew writing works. In Genesis 6-9 we find the Noah narrative. The climax is the Rainbow Covenant — AKA Law of Noah. Notice what is described as the situation prior to the Flood. First, there is the mixing between the two primary tribes or nations of humanity. That is, we have those who worship God and live a pastoral primitive life. Then we have those who ignore God and follow the inclinations of their human desires and imaginations. The latter built cities, developed technology, etc. The former had no business messing with the latter. One of the symptoms was the rise of domineering warlords, oppressive rulers — bad government and social instability.

Part of the problem was the family elders were refusing to restrain their families. That goes back the Adam, too lazy to keep Eve away from things she didn’t understand properly. In the Covenant of Noah, God instructed mankind to raise up strong elders to lead their families. We are supposed to be a little clannish and not mix too freely with folks who are too different. All the more so if your clan takes seriously the revelation of God and the others don’t. Demonstrate the difference of obeying God’s Laws and claiming the blessings. The uniqueness of holiness was dissolving in free mixing, forgetting God’s ways.

The proper model of government has always been that of the shepherd. This was the tribal elder, not necessarily the oldest grandfather, but the most able and wise of those available. If he was really wise, he would just about have to be forced into the job, because good moral people don’t like to rule the lives of others. People eager to rule are always bad at it; that was the point of describing oppressive “great men” in the narrative, people who were looking out for their own comfort and fame. So true government is a burden on those ruling. Critical was the element of family, living in an extended family household. The elder was your government, the one who used his influence to keep peace within and with the neighbors. Nobody outside the family had any business poking into the details of your daily existence; no laws were permitted to usurp the authority of the elder.

Yes, there are a hundred problems going this route. Not everyone who rises to the eldership is all that nice. Still, the model is based on the best possible life for fallen humanity. Nothing man has devised has been better; instead, it has always turned out uniformly worse. That has never hindered men of power from destroying the clan and tribal unity of folks for the purpose of exploiting them. Today we live in a world where it is virtually illegal to live under biblical laws.

Any society, any civilization, any philosophy that defies this model is wrong. End of discussion. It also happens to be fundamental to the entirety of our Western Civilization. We have to moderate between what we know God requires and whatever it takes to remain relatively unmolested under whatever human government we live. Sure, do what God says, but do so knowing what the consequences will be. We aren’t here to demand and force human government to obey God’s Laws. We are here as living proof His Laws are wise, and our mission is to live them as much as we can. This is what worship and prayer are for, helping us discern where God wants each of us to draw the line, to lay the path between the conflicting demands. What can I do to glorify His name in this particular context?

The West in general, and America in particular, lives in a fundamental defiance of Noah’s Laws. Fundamental to our mission here is pointing that out. Use whatever talents, abilities and gifts you have from God. Seek your calling with an eye to this one basic fact: The only reason we are still on this earth is to make Him look good. The main way we do that is living in the Land of Repentance, always seeking to turn from sin. Turning from sin is doing your best to discern how God’s Laws protect you from being suckered at every turn.

You can study the Laws of God here and here (site closed). Yes, that’s a tall order, a lot to bite off and chew. Don’t follow me; follow the drawing of the Spirit. If this calls to you, find your own path in it. Whatever you do, don’t keep on living in defiance of God’s Laws.

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Eurobankers and Ancient Rome

Posted on March 18, 2013 by ehurst

I’ve decided to call our political non-party the Revelation Party. That’s in keeping with my final comment about the only reason I bother discussing politics is as a means to a prophetic platform. That is, I bring the Justice of God to the current reality so everyone knows why God is pouring out His wrath. Just as a reminder, I’ve already warned that, for Americans at least, protest and demonstration is fine, but actual resistance is a sin. Not a sin on general principles — quite the contrary; God’s Laws encourage resisting evil. Rather, it’s a sin for us now to resist because this is what we’ve asked for.
Does anybody have to explain why our prosperity has been evil? God promised prosperity on certain terms. Western Civilization as a whole fundamentally rejects God’s terms. It’s not as if God won’t allow you a few centuries to play games trying to dodge His moral laws. Go ahead and play that game, He says. So we have tried, and mightily. The credit system we use in modern economics is inherently evil, a vast global attempt to get around the moral laws by which the universe itself operates.
Instead of recounting here all my previous assertions about God’s economics, I’ll focus on something pretty obvious: If you don’t have it, do without. Sure, we say things like that in Western Civ, but we have yet to spend more than a day or so living it. As a civilization, we deny it completely. Have you ever read Aldous Huxley? We are there. We demand instant gratification of all our creaturely desires and it has been the means to our slavery. Look, there were times as a child my family lived in a broken down car for weeks at a time. We always climbed out of the pit, but not by mortgaging our future to the hilt. There was a time we reached the economic prosperity of the middle class, but we never could adopt the cultural habits. As an adult myself, after bouncing off it a few times and getting totally raked over the coals, it’s not hard for me to rise to this latter day call to Christian Mysticism and a rather anti-materialist view.
So it’s easy for me to say — “if you don’t have it, do without” — because I live it, but most of the Western world can’t even imagine it. That’s where the prophetic business comes into play. I’ve done it; you can, too. But I realize precious few are ready for it. Sorry about that. Austerity is the new luxury and I’m luxuriating.
Meanwhile, our entire civilization is built on the presumption we can buy now and pay later. We have no material foundation. We’re floating on a wing and a promissory note that means nothing. Several quadrillion dollars worth of paper and nothing behind it. We have allowed the bankers to talk us into borrowing for a luxurious “minimum standard” dream of the merchant class. They have all the property in legal ownership, and we have the debts. They want to own our souls, but there isn’t yet a standard by which they can claim them. So they simply reclaim the full gamut of what we rely on to live — the means of food production, the soil upon which we stand, and the entire system by which we all exchange goods and services. They own it all. You can’t even breathe without their permit.
The Pharisees approached Jesus with a false dichotomy. In their twisted mythological view of God’s Laws, it was wrong to pay taxes to Gentile rulers. But to declare such thoughts publicly was treason. If they could get Him to embrace either of the two horns of dilemma, they could either destroy His popular credibility or get Him arrested. He undercut their entire premise. Demanding one of these Pharisees reach into their pockets for whatever coins they carried, one of them produced a Roman denarius. Oops. Did this Son of the Law Pharisee carry around a gold graven image on his person? Was that not tantamount to worshiping Caesar?
If not, it was most certainly accepting the prosperity of the Roman economic system. How hard would it be to prove the Roman system was not what God had in mind? The Pharisee who benefited from the luxuries of Roman occupation (“Pax Romana”), whose very place and power in society depended on Roman soldiers, imposed on a population that barely tolerated their own rapacious Jewish leadership at this point — that Pharisee dared to split logical hairs with the Son of God. Speaking through His Son, God said, “If you insist on living in Roman luxury, don’t complain about Roman taxes.”
There you have it, Cypriots. If you were willing to live under the benefits of the Eurobank system, don’t complain when they come to collect. Thus saith the Lord. America, you may not be next, but you are on the list.

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Virtual Party

Posted on March 17, 2013 by ehurst

Let’s talk politics! No, let’s laugh at politics. That will be an official plank in our virtual political party.
First item: Western Civilization is dead. It’s not just the American system of government that’s fundamentally evil, but the Enlightenment philosophy behind it and all of Western Civilization, to boot. If we were going to do activist politics, we’d have to aim first at destroying the US government, but God says He has that already worked out, so we’ll just let it ride. Of course America is going down the tubes!
Second item: We shall react to every political issue from the perspective of Christian Mysticism watching the West die. That is, we acknowledge we are stuck with this headless snake writhing on the ground. While it thrashes about, we will point out the best way to avoid being crushed while we cling to God’s Laws. If you struggle with the metaphor: We’ll state the ideal within the context, knowing it may not be the best way to proceed. For example, I posted this on Facebook:

I don’t care about left, right, libertarian, communist, American, Mexican, European, Chinese, nor any brand of human logic. I will tell you what God’s Justice demands: People who don’t want to own a gun should not have to. People who want guns should be free to own and carry them wherever they wish. If they can’t afford one, the government should issue them one. This is in the people’s best interest everywhere in the world, regardless of government or cultural background.

There is no plan of action to implement this. That’s between you and God, but we do recognize the basic principles.
Third item: Nobody has to agree with anything anyone else says. That should ensure we never become a real party. That’s where we laugh at the idea of politics in the first place.
So, who’s ready to unjoin this non-party? Make your non-donations here!
(Hint: There is only one reason I do anything at all, and that is to glorify God. Thus, the only reason to raise political issues at all is to point out why God’s wrath is falling on the American Empire.)

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Whence the Tithe?

Posted on March 17, 2013 by ehurst

It’s not hard to figure this out.
In primordial times, humans knew instinctively there was at least one higher being with some measure of control over how well they survived. Western Civilization attempts to smother that instinct, but it’s standard equipment. Thus, it’s no surprise humans have always had an impulse to make some sort of offering to the deity or deities they could surmise. The Genesis narratives assume this common knowledge. Thus, you cannot read Scripture without grasping this underlying concept. If your efforts to feed yourself succeed in some measure, you try to share some of that success with God.
Not that He needs to eat, but you acknowledge Him by your willingness to share. What you do with that share is symbolism. In ancient times the symbolism was burning it or something like that. Since Christ, we easily understand the better symbolism is giving it to someone else. In particular, we are taught to look for someone who might actually need it.
Very early humans recognized that working together in groups would enhance the results of trying to feed, clothe and shelter ourselves. Families tended to stay as physically close as possible and keep working to create a system that made the most of everyone’s capabilities to contribute to the collective welfare. There was no question that those less capable still got a share. By extension, someone more capable of doing something equally important also got a share. So if you had a talented guard who spent time guarding instead of making food, you still fed him.
The fundamental concept of the king is actually warlord. This is no mystery. You feed this big brute while he spends his time improving defenses for the community. If there’s no immediate threat, he spends his time getting ready for the inevitable time they will come. So it goes all the way back to ancient times that you would pay some sort of tax for your safety. By extension, lots of people do important things that don’t produce food. Those who do produce food are able to produce more and live a better life because of what those who don’t produce contribute to that life. If you want to be selfish, try producing food without all those other folks. You may be lucky to survive.
The Ancient Near East built a cultural assumption that included all this. Somehow they arrived at the idea a tenth was about right for basic community maintenance, plus up to another tenth for community contingencies. This only ever applied to those who produced what was needed. In the Covenant of Moses, it was all about food. That is, eating was something you had to do every day. All the other stuff people produced that wasn’t food could wait until it was needed. So the ritual system of sacrifice meant food sacrifices on a regular basis commensurate with shared prosperity. If God allowed a good harvest, you shared more, but it was still a tenth of what you produced. You could offer anything you liked for other purposes; in that culture it was pretty common for people to feel like sharing, if for no other reason than generosity was a sign of greatness. The local bigshot always made sure he was the most generous; it was downright competitive at times.
We have a slender, dirtier version of that buried in the depths of Western Civilization. Our version is about showing off, while the ANE version was all about community welfare. They were looking at keeping everything stable and predictable as possible, since life is inherently unpredictable at best. The fundamental promise of the rainbow is all about God amplifying our efforts to conform to His expectations. If we genuinely seek stability according to what He reveals as the best way to achieve it, He feeds His power back into the natural system to make it easier. He’s already done as much as He’s going to, and the ball is in our court. The Western version tries to make man the deity, intensely selfish and arrogant, yet fearful and suspicious, by contrast.
The modern Western Christian notion of tithing is entirely a product of Western mythology preying upon the confused and ill-informed conscience of the people. The words about tithing do appear in Scripture, but what is taught and practiced is a blasphemous perversion compared to what Scripture says from within its own culture. People who don’t cultivate food plants or animals never had to tithe. Simply gathering wild produce, including fishing, was not covered under tithing, nor any other productive economic activity. All that other stuff was a matter of various offerings other than tithes. Pulling up all these mentions of giving to God as the psychological leverage to compel the conscience of Christians to tithe and then some from their income is criminal in God’s eyes.
It seems a deep illness infecting Western Christian leaders. They love to hammer “the little people” with abusive perversions of Scripture. I’m sure you are acquainted with how Romans 13 is twisted that way, trying to convince you God demands you love and support whatever evil government you happen to be born under. Nothing of the sort; Paul ends the chapter by pointing out how the sacrificial love of Christ is all the law we need. If you care and give according to the Spirit, reading it from the Mind of Christ, you realize God is pleased with your dismissal of human demands that conflict with His calling on your life. Sure, there will be consequences and you don’t go out of your way to provoke trouble. That’s simply the context in which you obey the Lord in this fallen world. You can disobey those alleged Christian leaders, too.
Here in our house church, we assume God can lead you to dispose of your resources according to His own plans. Sure, I have a donation page linked at the top of this blog, but that’s just because some have asked for it. I don’t pass the hat and you should feel not the slightest tinge of guilt when you ignore the hat or plate or basket or bucket passed in front of you.

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Malachi 3

Posted on March 16, 2013 by ehurst

The previous chapter ends with the people daring to ask why they had not seen the justice of God, referring to the materialistic demands they imagined the Covenant promised. This was a century before the arrival of Hellenism, yet see the stage already set for full-blown Pharisaism in the attitude Malachi confronted here. The most obvious element missing here is the timeless perspective of God’s revelation to the Hebrew people. There is no sense of the ancient legacy, no commitment to future generations. There is only the immediate “gimme” of arrogant fools seeking creature comforts. They evaluate the terms of the Covenant on mere profit and loss. What Jesus called “serving Mammon” is painfully obvious already.
People who cannot see beyond their immediate generation are trapped; they are utterly incapable of understanding God’s revelation. The Law of Moses makes no sense whatsoever without seeing the divine imperatives calling to you across several centuries. It’s also impossible to understand the Law if you fail to embrace the whole nation as your blood kin and resident aliens as potential family. This is all one team, not mere scenery, not competitors or threats. The widow in your village was your grandmother; the orphans your nephews and nieces. Allowing them to suffer was an inexcusable disgrace and personal insult to God. Getting this right was the very first and foremost expression of God’s justice. Allowing this to decay across generations was to desert utterly the entire purpose for calling them God’s Chosen.
God often ignores the human sense of time as a pointed lesson we are wrong for clinging to it. Malachi begins this chapter by describing something which does not come about literally until some four centuries later. God speaks through Malachi as if this is just a few days away. That is a critical point: Learn to think long term, not just your own pitiful life span. At the same time, if the people could just recover their Ancient Hebrew outlook, perhaps it could be sooner. What He offers here is a personal visit. Would they be ready to receive Him as befitting His Lordship? If they take too long making ready, He’ll come at His own time, and it won’t be pleasant.
We all know John the Baptist was the Messenger and his call to repentance was largely ignored. Thus, when God actually came in the guise of Jesus Christ, they all missed out on the blessing, only to catch the damnation of wrath a generation later as the existing political entity of Judah ended once and for all. Purifying a people like gold and silver could easily mean most of them consumed in the fire. He rattles of representative sins: efforts to bypass God’s revelation through divination, infidelity, breaking oaths, and those who deny their social responsibilities. All of these constitute ugly attacks on the social stability that the Law of Moses was supposed to encourage. That social stability and shalom was their means to God’s glory.
Malachi asserts they need to repent, but they ask just what it means to return to God. He refers to His people as sneaking into His treasury and plundering His possessions. They can’t imagine what he is talking about. So he reminds them they have refused to support the needy. A critical portion of the Mosaic Tithe Law was every third year, bringing the tithe of produce (crops and domestic animals) to the village storehouse. That collection was used to support the Levites, the poor and nomads wandering through the area (Deuteronomy 14:22-29). While the people may have been obeying the other parts of tithing obligations, they were missing this one. For this cause, they would be suffering higher natural losses on par with the Gentiles who didn’t know Jehovah. Repent and God would restrain such losses, and make them stand out as uniquely prosperous among the nations around them.
They have the gall to defame God, but deny they ever criticize Him. He warns that their phony ritual acts of mourning show no real sense of sorrow for sin. They don’t see how it makes any difference, refusing to understand the whole system of ritual sacrifice was precisely designed to cultivate a sense of the fallen human nature. Those sacrifices were supposed to call attention to how it feels to stand in the presence of God. If that doesn’t make you tremble with fear, you deserve the full measure of His wrath in Hell.
Something calls the spirit of the prophet. Somewhere out there, some place away from this present company of agnostics, there had to be a few people who really and truly cared what God thought. He’s not seeing a concrete vision within time and space reality, but a spiritual truth that God will never allow His revelation to go without a living witness. Somewhere there will always be a remnant of true believers who will associate together and seek God’s face. He’s keeping track of them, recognizes them as His kind of people. When the day comes He calls the righteous to His final gathering, they’ll be among the invited family guests. Meanwhile, there will be some unique sense in how He treats them in this life, too.

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Mysticism and Marriage

Posted on March 16, 2013 by ehurst

Marriage is a tool.
Marriage is not your life; it is the framework in which most people are supposed to operate for their lives. We are fundamentally designed to rely on one critical partner. That partner makes possible our sanity as we forge a divine hyper-reality against our fallen reality.
A critical element of that divine hyper-reality is recognizing we do not marry for love. Attraction is a variable, not destiny. Love always grows from shared hardship. If your partnership is wisely chosen, no other particulars matter, because love will grow from a glowing coal into a life long blazing furnace. That is how we are wired; it never fails unless there is something inside us too badly broken to follow God’s path.
The issue is a sense of calling. Everyone on this earth is called by God, in one sense or another. Each of us born in this plane of existence has a hope for peace with God and His Creation. It has far less to do with occupation and everything to do with a fundamental orientation about having a sense of purpose. Searching in itself is the fundamental purpose. Should you spend your entire life struggling to discern, and then you die with a sense you never found it, you have still lived justly as God sees it.
Holiness is defined by desire, not success and certainly not any particular measure of human understanding.
Damaged people carry their damage into everything. Our society so flagrantly disregards God’s revelation that we should never be surprised most marriages don’t work well. However, once you are in it, God’s mandate is to make the most of it. You cannot make a marriage work, but you can work God’s glory within it. If that kills the marriage, it was already dead.
Marriage serves the mission or it falls away as a carcass.

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Spiritual Prepper

Posted on March 15, 2013 by ehurst

I’m a prepper.
Every day I get down on my knees and ask God if He still needs me here or if I need to prepare to go Home. Neither prosperity nor even survival is a worthy goal in this fallen world. Death is merely a circumstance in the Kingdom of Heaven. I’m prepared to jump at God’s command. If I don’t sense any particular command, I’m prepared to act on the Laws of God as best I understand them. Every other approach to the question is evil.
The first item on my prepper’s list is to dismiss this world and its cares. This world continues as it does for only one reason that I need to worry about: God isn’t ready to destroy it all just yet. His glory is not yet fulfilled and that means I still have work to do in promoting His reputation. In the process of chasing down His glory, all the means and methods will be revealed.
The starting place for the means and methods is the Law of God. Not the particulars, but the underlying assumptions of what it says about how things in this broken world work. That is, I study to see the underlying theme of how God plans to react to human activity. In particular, I focus on the moral implications as God revealed them. There is a vast ocean of work necessary for anyone who reads this, because if you read and write English, chances are you think in a certain frame of reference that is all wrong. Chances are you are thinking in a fundamentally Aristotelian fashion with a fat layer of Germanic tribal mythology, all summed up in the Enlightenment and whatever has followed it. God’s Laws were written in an Ancient Near Eastern frame of reference, so completely different it makes you an alien.
If you think like an average Westerner, you are alien to God’s Laws. I don’t care if you have a PhD in Theology; you don’t know squat if you can’t think like an ancient Hebrew. If you start moving over into that Hebrew mode of thought, you’ll be alien to the world in which you live.
This leaves us with a large overlap of shared concerns with folks who think in terms of surviving the coming bad times. We share some of those expectations that, not just America, but most governments in the world are currently moving toward a very repressive police-state mode. Some of the methods for facing the bad times are applicable to both, but for the most part, their goals are not as mine. I’m ready to bug out, but I hardly expect bugging out will meet my requirements from God in the majority of probable events. Escape, evasion and survival are not goals, but means to a greater end. It is highly unlikely they are God’s plan for me.
Yeah, bad times are surely coming for just about anyone who is likely to read this. Whatever it is we are all experiencing now is just the beginning of sorrows. It’s not the End of the World, but it might be the end of you. If you aren’t comfortable with that, make some changes.
Don’t buy into my package nor anyone else’s. Get you own.

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