Our Greatest Fears

Posted on February 21, 2013 by ehurst

The things we fear most are hard-wired into our civilization.
Here in the US, there are a handful of hot-button issues that can be guaranteed to elicit much wailing and gnashing of teeth at the mere mention. I’ve dealt with some of those in the past, such as child sexual molestation. So long as we are materialistic and worship youth, there is no way to escape pedophilia and child molestation. It’s built in. The very panic reaction is symptom of precisely the same underlying cause. If we weren’t so panicky about it, the acts would happen far less often.
For this post I’m going to pick on bullying. Everyone recognizes how wrong it is. Almost everyone has done it at some time in their life. Almost every political activist is guilty of bullying. If you don’t see that, you have no clue to the definition of the term.
Again, it starts with the fundamental Western assumption of a unitary reality. This is blasphemous, but no one wants to poke around at the foundations of Western Civilization to see that. They just assume Western Civ is manifestly superior and refuse to think about it. Folks, this reality is temporary; it’s fake and it’s broken. God said so. But because the West assumes unconsciously this reality is all there is, the only possible result is materialism. Say what you want, but your Western gut reaction is to consider this life precious. In the Bible, all the way up to the last published portion of the canon, this was bluntly denied. The West is inherently anti-Christian.
Feminism lends itself extremely well to materialism. Since women are hard-wired by God to follow that nesting instinct, the only question is what she considers her “nest.” Because of the Fall, women get this pretty mixed up; our Western culture amplifies the worst of this. Women with little or no spiritual awareness are viciously materialistic as the fundamental definition of maternalism in our civilization. Correct the false assumption of a unitary reality, add in a sense of eternal aspirations, and feminism dies. It’s replaced by a mature and sensible feminine aspiration to make this sorry life more bearable for everyone in reach.
Western thinking drives you to live all your “should-have-done” thoughts through your children. We call it “smothering” versus mothering. It rears its ugly head most prominently in the middle classes, where materialism is about as bad as it gets. So when a kid gets roughed up, we get all these horrific calls for rules and laws to change things. What no one is permitted to notice is how such regulation inevitably makes it harder for everyone to breathe. It’s the same burdensome stupidity we see in the so-called “political correctness” observations. There is no possible way to change the rules without making things worse.
Simple social pressure would be fine, if it was aimed at the real problem. It is not. The real problem is kids are not taught to be thick-skinned. It never occurs to us because the whole concept is virtually missing in human development studies connected to childhood education. Kids who live in a household that doesn’t take themselves nor this life too seriously produce children phenomenally more mature than just about every person living under Western Civilization. Jesus was like that. We can’t imagine it in our American life.
Want to stop bullying? Teach your children not to care, and the bullies will seek other targets — very quickly. Teach them to expect humans to be shitty, because they are. You’d be amazed at how early kids can pick up on this kind of mindset. Smother them and they will never cease whining, even as adults.

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Virtual Revelations

Posted on February 21, 2013 by ehurst

God is in the business of uncovering the truth — AKA revelation.
Several times in several different places in Scripture this principle is flatly stated. How about, “There is nothing hidden which will not be brought into the light.” The context is Luke 8:16-18, where Jesus warns the ultimate truth of things is only hidden because people turn from the light. If you are willing to turn the Sword of Truth on your own soul first, you are permitted to wield it against the lies of this Shadow Realm in which we exist. In other places Jesus tells us transparency is the starting point for attacking lies. Not moral perfection, simply holding a desire to be open and honest is enough.
I’ve long been compromised; I have no cover in the virtual world or in the real world. For example, because I once enlisted in the military, and now use the Veterans Administration medical system, I have no privacy from the government. The lowest flunky bureaucrat in any government agency in the US could access my whole life in minutes. The paper trail is pretty fat.
Oddly enough, the advertisers seem completely fooled about what sort of man I am, in terms of spending habits. They continue to list me as individually earning $60K annually. Wouldn’t that be nice? (It’s more like $10K.) Check with services like Spokeo or other advertising sleuths; they have only the vaguest idea what part of the country I live in, or to whom I am related. Yet, if they used means other than my virtual online trail, they’d know better.
It really depends on what you want to know and how you go about it, but honestly, I’m wide open if you bother to ask. I try to walk my talk.
I am driven by a divine calling to share what God has given me. Lunacy that may be, but it’s the honest truth of how I operate. When you have the urge to show something to others, you have to tailor things to your audience and the means of communication. You also have to consider the context of why you are doing it. I don’t use selling techniques, such as SEO optimizations, because they aren’t consistent with my calling. For the kinds of things I’m trying to share, the credibility factor includes not using sales promotional techniques. Money isn’t part of the equation. By avoiding any hint of hucksterism, not drawing a large crowd of sycophants or a big contribution budget, I try to make it plain the only thing I have to gain is some hope of giving you the straight dope on whatever it is I write about. Yeah, I calculate a benefit from that.
Part of my calling is bringing attention to the rising Network Civilization, as I call it. This Internet stuff is a great opportunity for me to get more of the peculiar benefits I calculate. A critical element of all this is hoping I can persuade others to make maximum use of transparency on the Network, because that’s the best world we can hope for here in the Shadow Realm. Even if you are using some secretive anonymity as part of the Open Access Guerrilla movement and exposing dark secrets of government oppression to all the world, you still have to consider how to make your revelations credible.
You might have heard something about a company named Mandiant claiming to have traced some hacking back to China, and they specified the Chinese military organization and even have people posting Google Earth images of the building. Mandiant has posted videos on YouTube purporting to show how they watched the hackers do their naughty work. That’s a sales pitch. If you have any technical background at all, maybe you’ll understand some of this counterpoint to Mandiant’s claims in series called “Chinese Hackers and Security Malware Theater” —

The author provides a strong element of credibility for his report.
As with all things in the so-called “Truth Movement” online, it’s not necessary to explain how it really was done, only to debunk the official lies. Most people understand it’s unlikely we’ll ever get the whole story to anything, but if you know what it can’t be, you won’t be herded like a sheeple. In other words, one of the most important truths I can teach anyone is that there is no ultimate truth in this realm in the first place. If you learn to distrust everything you gather through your senses and are skeptical of your own human logic, you are in the right place to hear from God if that’s going to happen at all. At the very least, you’ll be in a better position to make your own decisions or intelligently choose not to decide.
Whatever it is you imagine you want in this life, I’m betting it’s easier to find if you have some justified cynicism and skepticism.

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Sacred Sorrow

Posted on February 20, 2013 by ehurst

I rise today against the heresy that says God won’t bring sorrow into your life.
Bad things happen. Without any moral or spiritual consciousness, you are left to rationalize cause and effect as best you can. The possibilities range between some variations on Aristotelian cold logic all the way out to animism and abject fear. If you cling to God’s moral revelation and if your spirit is alive in Christ, then you have some hope of understanding. Not that you will be able to connect cause and effect in your sorrows, but you will understand how sorrow in your life reflects the love of the Father.
What did God reveal to Abraham regarding the nation that would descend from him? The torch and the pot of coals made it pretty clear they would not be ready for God’s covenant until they had passed through magnificent suffering. What did God reveal to Isaiah as Judah declined into idolatry yet again? They must pass through the sorrow of Babylonian captivity in order to break the bad habit.
Men understand this instinctively. It takes very little maturity before they realize pushing the limits, of falling and getting hurt only to try again, is what makes them more of a man in some way. Yes, fallen men do have a cruel streak, but the instinct to push the limits of endurance and pain is the hand of God. We might flee suffering we didn’t choose, but we know it’s necessary on some level, and we find whiners repulsive.
God gives good things because they suit His purpose of enhancing His own glory. He gives bad things for the same reason. However, He made clear in His revelation that bad things were His way of driving us back to Him. Yes, the demons themselves serve God’s will, because their mission is to cause suffering to anything that falls into their domain. We are born in their domain, but we are also born with a consciousness that there has to be a way out of it. Bash the consciousness enough times and it quits working properly. We then begin to cling to stuff we like without understanding the bigger picture. We lose sight of what it all means.
Did your baby daughter die in some horrific crime? God took her to a better place. Are you going to meet her there sometime in your future? Did thousands of people die in a flood or earthquake? That’s a little more complex, but He is still in charge and those things don’t happen without His express permission. He never bothered to reveal the whole formula, but He did reveal enough for us to walk in His justice and serve His glory. It’s our damnable cultural bias that blinds us to His hand. We think somehow God’s “holiness” can’t include bad things, so we get awfully confused and come up with all kinds of damnable heresies contrary to His revelation. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not in your best interest. Your silly logical categories are a pitiful excuse against His revelation.
Losing this life is not a bad thing. If we could simply get that through our thick heads, we have solved the majority of our stupidity. Even taking someone’s life is not inherently evil. Our silly human logic struggles with how something like nuclear war can be the work of God’s hand, but God said He wouldn’t let us do anything He didn’t want for us. How He relates individual good and evil against national good and evil is beyond our comprehension, not because He didn’t explain any of it, but because we have embraced so many lies of human logic. Nations can sin and reap His wrath, too. Not everything in this realm of existence is based on the individual.
When you finally throw your Western rational bias in the trash and commit yourself to studying ancient Hebrew logic, then you will understand what God has said.

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Of Course I'm Wrong

Posted on February 19, 2013 by ehurst

It’s virtually impossible for you to visit this blog and not say to yourself that the author is wrong on something or another.
Thank God, none of us fallible people are responsible for policing the thoughts of humanity. We have enough trouble with our own. Then again, too many people feel it their duty to correct the world, or at least those portions of humanity they encounter.
I can’t tell you things I don’t know. Of those things I know, all of them come from my previous experience as processed through whatever intellect came with my DNA. From that experience, there are only a few things I can put into words. Sure, I believe what I’m telling you. I’d be frankly worried if you told me you believed everything I wrote. The biggest threat to a loudmouth is a genuine sycophant; people who have even a smidgen of contact with reality know you keep your enemies closer than your friends. You keep the sycophants busying chasing shadows because they’ll get you killed.
In other words, I don’t take myself too seriously and I don’t want that to change.
If I don’t allow folks who think differently to hang around, inevitably I’ll miss something critical and the random process of reality itself will kill me. On the other edge of that blade of truth is the realization God is God, and what people think and believe is His concern, not mine. Regardless how I word my pieces here and elsewhere, all I can realistically do is share my experience. I know better than to believe I’m somehow stringing words together that reflect some aspect of absolute truth. My commission from Him is not changing people’s minds; that’s not possible. My commission is making noise that draws attention to my experience. What happens when that noise reaches your ears is where He takes over completely from me.
So if someone who isn’t my brand of Christian, or isn’t any brand of Christian at all, posts a comment that challenges my assertions, I’m likely to allow the comment. Arguing with me, even rudely calling me names, isn’t going to get your comments deleted, so long as you address something that strikes me as fundamental to my post. I usually try to answer, but sometimes it’s just not necessary. I trust God to handle what my readers take away from the exchange. As I’ve said before, we live in the Realm of Shadows, and reality itself isn’t all that trustworthy. What’s trustworthy is in a different dimension altogether.
Thus, I promote the use of the Internet as a means of sharing between people. It strips away most of the baggage people use to manipulate each other. If there is any hope to making life here in the Shadows tolerable, one of the best places to communicate about improvements is online. My primary objective is getting you to think beyond the Shadows, but even that requires a good bit of discussion about the Shadows themselves. At least, that’s how it works out for me. There are some things I can’t tolerate, but I don’t begrudge other people having their own brand of lunacy alongside mine. What I don’t like is when you try to cut me off from having my say.
Fortunately, the Net tends to favor letting every lunatic have their say. The Net could care less what you are transmitting, so long as you obey the traffic rules. That’s a pretty good basis, because here in this really badly broken shadow of divine reality, it seems to work out best that we don’t censor things in the sense of total control. I may not want you on my lawn, but the street in front of my house is not under my control. In my experience, if you are complete fool, something will run you down. If not, it’s my duty to tolerate a certain amount of noise. If God tolerates your existence, I’m not in any position to argue. So chase all the porn you like, just don’t link to in the comments here.
Sometimes I’ll be working with a Net service, and the folks behind it try to block something. Their servers, their rules. It’s how we justify blocking spam. The volunteer community of computers sharing the electronic commons can decide there are some things we just don’t have to tolerate. To make it most fair, we place the burden on the person who controls the hardware, for the most part. But if your service is wide open to too many people who don’t agree with your policies, don’t be surprised if they’ll look for ways to bypass your censorship. The nature of large open virtual communities makes it challenging to police them. It’s the basic vigilante justice of the Net, an arms race and technology genius battle of the wits. Enjoy the adventure, because if a significant portion of your clientele disagree with your policies, you are fighting a losing battle. Technology is one thing, but humans are endlessly creative and variable.
Facebook is blocking various sources for articles that FB users want to link, for example. One of the primary ways around that is using an URL shortening service. You have to guess the folks who see your links won’t be cagey about the possibility of some scammer taking advantage of the security weaknesses in FB and in human habits. There are a lot of factors, such as folks like me who run Linux or highly protected Internet tools and are somewhat immune to some portion of online threats. It’s all a matter of user beware. Still, if you find something someone has posted elsewhere on the Net, and you want to share it with your FB buddies, you can find a way to link it if you are willing to work at it just a bit. Is your message worth the trouble?
You can also decide something is so important you could ask to repost the article on your blog, or even summarize and offer a digest. That takes more work, but sometimes the truth is worth it. More importantly, it preserves the principle of basic liberty of thought. You aren’t a computer, so stop letting people program you. If this Net thing is worth anything at all to you, study to find ways to use it most effectively.
I’m wrong; you’re wrong; we are all wrong about something. That isn’t going to be fixed in this realm of existence, but you shouldn’t put up with anyone hiding from you something which may prove to be a reasonable approximation of being right.

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Human Orthodoxies

Posted on February 18, 2013 by ehurst

We so easily forget the Fall touches the human intellect, not least because the Fall is almost entirely based on the decision to place human intellect as master over the will. This is entirely contrary to what God had in mind. The intellect is not capable of operating on the level of the Spirit Realm. The intellect is fallen as part of humanity’s fallen nature; any other view is a heresy, since it is bluntly stated in Scripture several places.
Thus, if we enslave the intellect in service to the Spirit, all is as well as it can be. If we allow the intellect to actually rule, we will inevitably fail to please God.
Systematic Theology is a primary example of intellect attempting to usurp the Spirit. The mind is granted by God to organize how we shall implement the imponderable imperatives of the Spirit. If we somehow conclude our individual organization is binding on others, we are walking in sin. Your mental organization of serving Christ need not apply to others simply on the basis of a presumption your theorizing is logical. The human standards of logic are a pitiful excuse for ignoring the Spirit. God’s logic is well outside the boundaries of ours.
The same can be said of any political theory. God’s Laws don’t lend themselves completely to human logic. Ignoring the fundamental assumptions behind God’s Laws will inevitably leave you standing without any grasp of moral imperatives. Given the entire range or Western rationalism is built on the a priori rejection of revelation, it’s no surprise every current political philosophy at some point violates God’s Laws.
Communism seems logical until you realize it works only when everyone is a saint. Socialism seems reasonable as a compromise until you realize socialist government inevitably draws the very worst of available humanity. The brightest and most productive minds are too busy and have no interest in government. What’s left are people who only carry a pretense of genius as a cover for the insatiable urge to control others by some internal vision of logic. Good moral people don’t want to govern others. The same applies to any of the various forms of democratic, republican or parliamentary governments. They all are built on the human intellect as the ultimate rule. Libertarian government would be morally the same as communism, in that it falsely assumes man’s mind can work out the logic of what matters most. All of them presume the necessity of the state.
All of them fail. The Laws of God elevate one guiding principle they all ignore: social stability. Even when you can get them to admit this matters most, all those theories insist getting there must follow some rational orthodoxy created on the basis of rejecting God’s Laws. God’s Laws presume only your kinfolks are permitted to decide on daily operations in pursuit of social stability. The individual is an asset — property, if you will — of the family, not of the civil government. Social and civil affairs are never, ever to be joined under one authority. When you reject God’s Laws, the moral fabric of the created universe will work against you, without fail. That the rational approach ignores the underlying assumptions guarantees none of these theoretical frameworks will ever notice what the problem is. They will always propose some mythological answer that appears rational on some level, but still fails to meet the demands of morality as God defines it.
What we are left with is a set of practices which cannot obey any particular theory, since none of them actually work. Your political orthodoxy is blasphemy.

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Crap Tests

Posted on February 18, 2013 by ehurst

Low Level Crap Test
You could see it, as plainly as daylight. Her posture, the facial expression, the choice of words and the tone of voice, the dismissive smart-aleck responses — all of it carefully tuned to fluster and distract the other person from the meat of the discussion. She had asked a question and realized the initial answer was not what she wanted to hear. Perhaps it was a bit complicated, contrary to what she already believed, or whatever reason you might infer. It didn’t matter. Everything in her manner says that you are stupid and she’s going to trip you up and prove it.
A precious few people are talented enough to do this consciously. Most people have it drummed into them at some point in their development and do it with only a minimal bit of consciousness, if any. It’s the subtext of how they face everything challenging their personal mythology.
Your specific response depends on the context, the relative position. It may call for a simple, relaxed, “Never mind.” Walk away because it’s just not worth it. Too often that’s not an option. If you are verbally talented and of a strong character, you can simply call them on it. Even better if you ignore it and stick with the matter at hand, as if you were talking to someone altogether reasonable. However, you may need to add just a bit of patronization to counter the attack.
The biggest problem is how effective this form of attack is on most people. It is intended to push your buttons and create a confrontation so she can walk away justified in rejecting your counsel in the future. You must be the one conscious of it as an attack.
Statist Crap Test
Defenders of the state will demand to know who will build the roads if we cut back on the state and taxes. The unspoken assumption is we simply can’t live without those roads.
Of course we can. However, we need not do without them. The communities that need the roads will build them. People forget the state as an institution is a blasphemous insult to God. His Laws provide for no such beast. His Laws presume a tightly knit community of people who form a stable social structure by observing His revealed guidance on human behavior. To call it “clannish” is accurate but implies something evil. God wired us to live that way, so it’s right.
Each community is supposed to decide for themselves, and whether the leadership of some other community is nuts is none of your concern. The state is infinitely worse as a system of human politics; instead of random potluck bringing the occasional ogre to leadership, the state guarantees no other kind will ever rise to power. Only by random luck do you ever get someone decent.
Further, God designed us to live under Eastern feudalism, not Western. All your nightmare tales arise from the latter; you probably have no factual knowledge of what the Eastern feudalism looked and felt like. It’s a shepherd community, where the tribal elder is your blood or covenant kin who is mostly hands-off. Yeah, libertarian eldership. If you need a road between your community and some other, you get together with them and negotiate a common interest. Outsiders have to negotiate passage. Sooner or later someone will get smart enough to enjoy the advantages of open trade and will keep the barriers low. High tolls are a way of keeping trade away.
There’s nothing wrong with a higher civil government keeping the peace, mostly in terms of genuine defense. There’s nothing wrong with a tiny civil government demanding feuding communities come to terms and get on with life. There’s nothing wrong because that civil government must arise from the collection of communities that it governs. It has to be that which is chosen by them.
Who will build the roads? Wait and see. It won’t matter because what we have now is relentlessly evil. Quite literally, just about anything would be better.

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Network Revolution

Posted on February 17, 2013 by ehurst

So you say you want a revolution? In the Network Age, revolution rarely requires any sort of direct confrontation. If it’s an actual change you want, then keep your eye on that, not all the silly heroism you see in fiction.
The old system is wrong; it justly dies. We can hasten the process just a little by living according to the system to come before it arrives. This gives us a voice in what it will be. A genuine revolution doesn’t simply change the mechanisms of society, but changes the way people think about reality itself. Lots of silly ideas have been promoted and tested this way across the ages. Most of them ignore some fundamental facts of reality. A genuine revolution claims to offer a more accurate approach to how we see things, not merely how we do things.
Perhaps it’s time to try something truly revolutionary. How about letting people think whatever they want to think? All we really need is some basic assumptions about letting everyone have what they like, so long as it does not hinder the next person having what they like, as well. You can’t really stop wars, but you can make them less likely. You can embrace a view of reality that makes allowance for human error. Let’s attack the basic assumptions that open the door to every maniac genius who wants to fix everything. Let’s embrace the fundamental assumption people should be given as much leeway as we can possibly afford.
The old system, and many systems before it, all worked from some grand vision of greatness and making the most of our potential. Let’s build the assumption that very idea itself is flawed from the start. Simply define some protocols for human interaction and let people network together as they see fit. If their protocols threaten networking itself, cut them off. Build a firewall and let in only what suits your needs. Let all humanity be a part of the Network on the same non-human standards computers use.
What gives the old system power over us? How do they maintain their power and control? A critical element is deception and secrecy. A critical weapon against them would naturally be exposure. Sometimes all it takes is a bit of research because the facts are easily found. Do the research and expose how the facts counter the propaganda. A devotion to truth should be a primary virtue of our world.
Data is not truth; it’s just the pavement on the road. It’s how we process and use data that makes us human, unique, valuable to the rest of the world. Learn to process data as a reflex, to think beyond the facts. You don’t ever need to assume your interpretation is the only right one, only that you have a duty to share it so others can decide for themselves. The system we have now is built on denying access to data, to prevent thinking and processing. It treats people as computers to be programmed — garbage in; garbage out. Let’s be people. People use computers; they exist for people, not the other way around. Our opponents are not computers, but people who embrace the broken system are the enemy and try to turn people into mere machines.
The Internet is the true battlefield. AI doesn’t care, can’t be made to care, can’t be creative. We fight over it and with it, not against it. We fight for the freedom to be more human.
Sometimes the data they believe hidden is not. Find it; pull it out. Process it and show the world. Sometimes it requires actively infiltrating the system, either on a human level or virtually. Perhaps the most dangerous would be hacking or cracking the system, and most of us aren’t capable of doing so, at least not safely. If someone determines to take that path, let them face the consequences. But make sure to tell the whole world about it. There is entirely too much available other ways simply because the bulk of those defending the old system tend to be the least competent, the least human.
Those who don’t support the system include experts from all walks of life. Most of the time it’s entirely too easy to shoot holes in the bags of wind defending the system. The Network Resistance is loaded with real experts. Build contacts and do the human networking for this stuff. Marginalize and devalue any source of propaganda, any means of communication the system control completely. Don’t fall for what merely entertains because the lies are built into it. Reevaluate before you face the hypnotic presentation, because you are vulnerable when you give your eyes to the video screen.
Do they use surveillance? Surveil them back. Never let it rest. Digital video cameras are getting cheaper all the time and so is memory. Capture everything that interests you; always be ready. Always be ready to throw away any footage that doesn’t serve your larger purpose. Best is to stream the data as you record it, if possible. Make sure it’s copied somewhere out of reach so that physical confrontation from them doesn’t change the results of your surveillance of them. Otherwise, take still shots and do the same.
Underlying the whole thing is a shift in morality and allegiance. In the final analysis, no political state can truly own you, or otherwise make claims on you. Don’t hesitate to pretend when it doesn’t matter. Tactics and strategy may call for cooperation and even submission most of the time. However, underneath it all, you know you are first a Netizen. It’s your primary human identity, a real human who isn’t a computer, but uses them.
You belong to the Network only because you say so. It’s entirely voluntary. Yes, there are rules; that’s how protocols work. They are not burdensome, but the minimum necessary. We all agree to connect or not. We participate in the fashion and on the level that suits us. We are truly free on the Network.
More than anything else, the destruction of the system hinges on simply becoming something they cannot control. Learn to see through the propaganda, the grandstanding and false flags. Not today, perhaps not tomorrow, but someday the system will collapse because there will be nothing left to consume. The the victims will simply pull away and when the system reaches out to take, there will be nothing.
The current system is very, very fragile.

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New Article: Spiritual Networking

Posted on February 17, 2013 by ehurst

New permanent article on the static site: Spiritual Networking (site is gone as of 2020). The thesis asserts the Internet is a parable for the Kingdom of Heaven. As such, it is also one of the greatest gifts from God as the means to honestly carrying for the gospel message in the way God intended. Not as we have seen it done by Western missionaries, who may have intended well, but often did more damage to the message than they realized. Staying true to how the Internet works, we can do things far better than that.

Addenda: As a side note, I find the Net has a peculiar function in human psychology most people never notice. If a person is immature enough to do very poorly in social settings, the Net will make it worse. If people are quite mature already, the Net is simply one more way of reaching out to people. The Net itself does not make people anti-social. That’s a convenient fable from people who want control over others.

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Zechariah 13

Posted on February 16, 2013 by ehurst

The vision of the previous chapter continues, describing what God can do if His people take seriously the call to live in repentance. The blessings cannot be described literally, so Zechariah indulges in rich symbolic imagery of a new age with someone far greater than even David and Solomon would rule the people righteously.
This New Davidic Kingdom would receive from God a new kind of fountain that washes clean the lives of the people. If people want His holiness, He pours it out in abundance. That’s how God does business with people who keep His Word. He’ll wash away all the idolatry so completely their names will be forgotten. The people wouldn’t even remember what it’s like to be unfaithful. False prophets will become anathema socially. Their own parents would execute them out of shame.
Those false prophets who survive will go underground. They will deny ever having been one of the idolatrous scum who often claimed to be such great men, with all sorts of special authority. They’ll quit wearing the prophetic garments and claim they have always been a poor farm slave. The telltale scars on the chests and arms of false prophets from the heathen blood rituals would give them away, but they would insist it was something resulting from accidents, simple childish roughhousing. Their very lives will be at risk if any suspects their sordid past.
Where will this purifying fountain come from? God would provide His own blood sacrifice — His own Shepherd Son. When the appointed Shepherd of His people is rejected and killed, the nation will be scattered. The majority of them would never return to the truth; the figure of thirds is not meant literally here in the midst of a parabolic vision. A substantial portion of Israel could be saved, but only by passing through the fire of cleansing suffering. So it is with all mankind once the Covenant of the Cross is established. We suffer here the opposition of the fallen world until our time is finished.

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The New Network Tribe

Posted on February 16, 2013 by ehurst

In times past leaderless organization was a theory, but in the Network Age, it is becoming dominant.
The fundamental element of Ancient Hebrew society was the extended family household. Without them, you were dead, often literally. No one else would take care of you because no one else had any duty to God to care much. Indeed, they had reason to be quite suspicious and keep you at arm’s length. Certain minimal life support issues were a duty, to give you a sporting chance, but general care and maintenance was a different matter. The only exemption was a covenant, which was more binding than simple shared DNA. This is how we are wired to live.
In the New Testament, the fundamental element was the church body, which was always organized like the ancient Hebrew tribal society. That is, your church was your covenant family. Again, this was more binding than blood ties, but the fundamental operation was as an extended family household in a tribal society. The whole point was the necessary support system for folks staying together in a single community. Chances were, if you followed Christ, your blood kin would likely kick you out as a threat to what they thought were God’s blessings. When churches were formed in Gentile communities, this might be less of an issue, but there were plenty of other problems which attacked the church and called for a tight, clannish community. This is how we are wired to live.
Hebraic families typically organized themselves by reflex. It included a measure of chaos from our Western point of view, but it was enough for them. It requires a book to discuss all the details, so we leave it there for now and point out: In the Network Age, physical proximity is often fleeting, if at all. It’s generally a non-factor in consideration of doing things together. Personalities may be an issue, but the fundamental nature of things does not require leadership at all. A common vision, yes, but not specific leadership. Rather, it requires only selected people taking up various functional roles, with the whole thing changing to meet the purpose, whatever that might be. In first century churches, a fundamental element was simply being together through thick and thin. Most important would be a shared vision of why we are still here on this earth. It had nothing to do with property or greatness as humans measure it; it didn’t matter what they accomplished. It was about the fundamental shift in what kind of people they were.
People in the Network Age are learning to get important things done with the most minimal structure. They seldom want things that require solid organizational structure. Too much of what matters most to them does not demand it. They have oriented on this life in ways older generations can’t comprehend.
Did the Occupy Movement produce results? Mostly they provoked even worse repression from the Establishment. The system geared up to destroy their influence. Does it occur to anyone that’s a good thing, if it becomes too publicly obvious so that no one can ignore it any more? Does it occur to anyone the failure itself brought a vast horde of people together over something that might be hard to define in terms of what is better, but not hard to define in terms of what is bad? The collected ideas pasted together in the early days of the Wall Street protests were often contradictory. The people who held these competing agendas didn’t agree and still don’t. But somehow they managed to get one job done: Making sure everyone knows the system is inherently broken and can’t be trusted. We now know it in ways we might have ignored before the protest.
Meanwhile, this vast horde of people got more practice at coming together, combining resources to build something we can’t easily detect with the normal awareness. If you are primed to think outside the collapsing structure of Western Civilization, you might see the Occupy protests as highly successful. They have organized with a unique identity and acted together for extended periods against a global foe, somehow managing to be cohesive in action despite the apparent disparity in terms of standard political agendas.
Yes, it did include a handful of organizers who tried to steer things, but those didn’t actually see what happened around them. The movement has built a tribal unity without the physical proximity. They have created a budding civilization that bypasses all the existing categories and structures. They are sucking the lifeblood out of the future for the current world order, while the current world order hardly notices.
Did anyone notice if you tried to deny them the standard infrastructure access, they simply routed around that denial? They manged to network through commodity devices and keep communications alive on a level sufficient to keep going. It was fundamental to their identity as a group. We can see the original movement is about dead, having moved into the stage of formalizing too much. It was perhaps inevitable because they were using new ways to do old politics. Already we are seeing political action without so much of the physical gatherings. Individuals with some shared vision are now acting individually in different places toward a common hope. The Network Age is slowly being born from the Net itself, directly, as whole segments of diverse populations from within many countries are embracing a whole new morality which is very different from the West.
They have become a virtual covenant tribe. They are a taste of the distant past and the future.

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