Open Spirituality

Posted on February 15, 2013 by ehurst

Connect the dots, because they are all drawn on the same sheet of paper: Open Access, Open Source, and Open Spirituality (of which Christian Mysticism participates).
In Christian Mysticism we have a devotion to truth. We care about people, as empathy is the primary expression of truth between people, and we are disentangled from the results. We aren’t worried how it turns out because here in the Realm of Shadows, not much really matters that much. Let God have His way, just participate willingly. We strive to clarify the mysteries.
Both Open Access and Open Source avoid hiding anything. As much as possible, all gates and barriers are removed. There’s no elitism, per se, just active minds which see the truth of some things better than others. Everyone can participate because you never know when the next genius will come along and make something huge of the truth someone else finds. I will say empathy is too often utterly absent in Open Source, but at least it’s open.
Granted, there are certain natural barriers. To get on the Net, you have to have a device and some form of signal routing. That’s the new paper and ink, the new TV and radio. Most research also requires resources not possible for most of the folks who can best use them, so we have institutions that pool resources and people. No one’s happy about how this is working out right now, but there is no easy answer. It’s changing, though, even as we speak.
Compare that with any institution or entity that operates along the lines of controlled access. Government? It’s desperate to control outcomes by limiting information, hiding anything it believes will cause the results to come out “wrong.” More than that, it will manufacture lies to create a false impression. Churches tend to do the same thing, though not always knowingly.
In Open Access, Open Source and Open Spirituality, we see the birth of a new civilization. You could easily see the fundamental openness in other intellectual threads, movements or whatever you want to call them. Open Politics is just getting started, but it’s really hard for people to swallow a form of activism which has almost no core beliefs. Something like the Occupy movement fails and succeeds at the same time. It fails to accomplish anything measurable and is nearly impossible to define, yet the impact of people coalescing around a rather amorphous goal is both more subtle and more powerful than anyone can measure.
This is what’s behind Open Spirituality — your theology isn’t the point. The unity of the Spirit is not something you can define in human terms because it is rooted outside the human realm and the intellect. Its power and impact is not easily measured in human terms until you suddenly realize so much has changed behind the shadows, it’s a whole new world.
(Note: I realize the term “Open Spirituality” has more than one meaning, and is used as a cover for some pretty cerebral stuff that is not actually spiritual. That’s more of Open Religion, which is a different thing entirely.)

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A Piece of Jeremiah

Posted on February 15, 2013 by ehurst

I’m not in the least trying to be elitist, but precious few are the folks who catch on to what I’m doing on this blog.

Jeremiah wrote in his prophecies how few were his friends at the end of the Judean monarchy and through the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem. Because he wrote in dramatic Hebrew parabolic language, it’s hard to gauge facts, but we can certainly catch how he and God felt about it. As always, I deny having any of his stature, just some of his calling and some of his experience of isolation here at the end of the American Empire. Nobody has to lay siege to this country; we are destroying ourselves.

I’ve been working my way back through my notes on Isaiah in preparation for the next book. There is no driving sense I need to hurry. I do at least a chapter most days, and often three or four. Sometimes what I wrote really hits me hard these four years later. That’s a good thing, but it requires time to consider what it demands of me personally. I can’t preach what hasn’t ripped me to shreds first.

So yesterday I noticed I had never pasted my notes into the file for Isaiah 37. Going back through all my archives, I can’t find any copy of the original. On the one hand, I can’t recreate the frame of mind I had then. On the other hand, I simply accepted what is and went back through my sources and wrote a fresh review. Maybe it’s better; God alone knows. But for the past four years, it seems no one noticed, because no one complained that the file was empty.

In the past few years, only two people mentioned any interest in joining our home worship services. Neither of them ever showed up. A couple of people have sent emails about the static site where I (used to) keep all this stuff, and one person actually found my cellphone number there and called to thank me. A few folks on Facebook catch the links posted from here and one or two discuss it with me. From time to time, people will make comments here about the spiritual angle, and every week another one or two will subscribe. I don’t have time to reciprocate, and I really have no idea who is reading this stuff. Weekdays this blog averages around 150 hits daily; weekends a good bit less. My books are still being downloaded a few each week from Smashwords.

I’m not complaining. I went into this knowing it was quite alien to most people. It was hard enough for me to shift incrementally over the years from a purely Western Post-Enlightenment approach to the Ancient Hebrew. I had lots of help from really great teachers along the way as I intentionally kept myself exposed to the academic theology and philosophy scene. How hard must it be for others? There may come a day when the number of people paying any attention to this message will grow. All the more so if other people take up the burden, but I’m honestly not that interested in attention, only opportunity. The heart and soul of what I do is getting people to follow their own calling, not swallow my expression of truth.

Folks, the most important thing you can do is: (1) recognize the Western intellectual roots are morally bankrupt and cannot allow you to get as close to God as He wants. Then (2) learn to build your approach to reality on the one God revealed in His Word, the Hebrew epistemology in which God speaks. We have a rich opportunity because the future civilization replacing the West is wide open to such choices. No longer will you be summarily excluded as I have been in the past.

I’m not saying all the churches and religious institutions are evil. Some are, but even those aren’t wholly evil. Rather, they have built on the sand of Western intellectual assumptions and God is about to wash that all away. Sure, some vestige of those institutions will be around for the future, but they’ll be essentially dead. Don’t be a slave to the dead past. Christ leads us forward, bringing us closer to That Final Day, but we need to do our homework. He won’t come for a Bride not ready.

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Bits and Pieces 9

Posted on February 14, 2013 by ehurst

After my disappointment with Lenny and Squeeze, I’m pleased to announce Debian Wheezy is really worth the time and trouble getting it set up. While I thought about writing up an install guide, it’s just silly to duplicate the efforts of others. You can read the official guide here. It’s not simplified, but it’s good enough. It’s not simple to install, but it’s brutally simple to keep it working once installed. I’ll be glad to help people with questions.
Debian reflects some element of the future cultural shift. It’s wide open, generic, and about as trustworthy as Open Source can be. Almost anything you really need to do can be done with it. It bears the feel of things like the Occupy movement, the Open Access future, and all the things I warn God is unleashing on this world. It’s here. You can join it or be left behind.
On Facebook the other day someone posted a link to an article about why youth are leaving evangelical churches. The writer was a bit reactionary, trying to tell churches to stop being like the Purchase Purpose Driven or emergent stuff. That’s fine, but both are wrong. The newer stuff is all wrong because it doesn’t break completely from the past, and is often nothing more than an extension of what the evangelical reactionaries were doing already. The difference is PD and emergent are more honestly mercenary, which is the hidden core of the Post-Enlightenment version of Christianity. (Anything older is more about elitism.) You see, the youth are leaving because they are leaving the old dying culture of Modern America. Even pointing to Post-Modern misses it, because it still drags too much baggage from the Modern Age. It’s Western Civilization itself that’s dying here. So the youth are leaving it all behind and the Modern American churches belong to that Modern and Post-Modern Age.
I take the same line as a lot of other Network Age thinkers. We know blowing off copyright only creates trouble while the Old Guard still have a monopoly on the use of force. So we skirt the edges. If I get a music file you want, I’ll share it directly, not in one of those notorious file-sharing setups. Or I’ll tell you how to get your own copy legally, which is much better, so you can listen to your MP3 version at will. That’s how things will be for the future, the DIY of tomorrow. But we all agree if someone produces a piece of software and refuses to maintain and support it, they have no legitimate right to keep you from using it. If you can find a copy of “obsolete” software, then find a serial key and use it, provided you can get it to run (hooray for DOSBox, FreeDOS and WINE). There are multiple communities out there keeping this stuff alive. It won’t be advertised, but if you really need it, just ask someone who knows. Sharing anonymously or between friends is the way we handle it until the Old Guard are no longer in charge.
For religion in general, and Christianity in particular, Open Source is the future. All the current structures in place, regardless where or how they started, are all aimed at control and milking us. They might believe they want good things for us, but they are so deeply deceived about the very ground on which they stand, they just don’t see how badly they are hurting everyone. Maybe it wasn’t too bad way back right after the Enlightenment, but they never stayed true to principles. Even the most democratic of churches are now so deeply mired in insider controls and systemic barriers to full participation, and utterly unaccountable, that it has to go. The youth are leaving, and the institutions will collapse, shrinking steadily, because they’ve refused to consider the intellectual assumptions on which they are built. Mysticism is a good fit for where they are going now.
Welcome to the future; it’s here.

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Tool Shed 2

Posted on February 13, 2013 by ehurst

I’ve been doing a lot of testing. I sincerely hope that’s over for awhile.
Scientific Linux on the laptop wasn’t working. There is a bug Red Hat refuses to fix; dropping into hibernate mode frequently corrupts a portion of the file system on machines with Intel chipsets. While I managed to fix the file system by rebooting, what’s the point in that? Hibernation is all about not having to boot from scratch. If I can’t use my laptop as a laptop, it’s not working. So I did something else.
Debian’s next release — Wheezy — is due out very soon. So I grabbed the pre-release and installed it on my laptop. So far, it’s working quite well. I had forgotten how simple Debian could be once you get it installed and set up properly.
On the desktop system, a part of the Mint way of doing things is so convoluted that it drives me nuts. I’m watching a half-dozen updates or nagging check notices on the desktop. It depends on what it is whether Mint will do it simply or make you fight through a series of roadblocks. I’m not sure why, but it seems Mint does not like the kernel updates supplied by Ubuntu, but then won’t offer the fixes any other way. The same goes with a lot of other packages. Also, flashplayer has to be updated manually. That’s just too annoying when the claim is serving the user.
So I’m running Debian Wheezy on both machines and it’s all good for now. I grabbed the XFCE installer ISO and everything is tolerable. So far, all the packages I need have been easy to find and install and none of that wild and silly tweaking to undo.
I don’t enjoy blowing off half a day installing some new OS when I have plenty of stuff waiting for me to finish.

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IP and God's Laws

Posted on February 12, 2013 by ehurst

In God’s Laws, there are two essential periods observed in economics. The first is personal debt; the limit was seven years — sabbatical. The second was systemic debt, limited to fifty years — Jubilee. The second is well understood and desperately needed in modern economic systems. Within every economic system, there must be a debt reset, a total write-off, every fifty years at the longest.
The first is not so well understood, but if properly applied, could obviate need for the second.
By no means should we read the Hebrew code of law from a Western literalist approach. Hebrew language was inherently symbolic; readers were expected to absorb the expressed image as a manifestation of something deeper, much more difficult to convey in simple terms. The Law was for simpletons; adults were expected to meditate and grasp the heart and soul of things. The Law was not legislation but indication of how the Lawgiver thought, what He demanded of us personally. God held people accountable to Him personally, as would any lesser ruling human lord.
In Hebrew intellectual culture, a typical reading of the Law was expansive. Not so much in the particulars as in the underlying concepts. The image of seven as the number of sacred things is too ancient to trace. Very early we find the expression “to seven oneself” as a figure of speech for making a solemn vow. We see it in the agreement Jacob had with his uncle Laban, several centuries before Moses.
It was a common Ancient Near Eastern concept that individual servitude of any sort was limited to seven years maximum. If the exchange of goods and services could not break even in seven years, it was wrong to consider making any kind of deal. If seven years couldn’t pay for it, something was deeply wrong with the situation. Only after the seven years and the debt was considered settled could there be a consideration of longer terms of service for entirely different reasons.
Times have changed, but the moral fabric of the universe has not. Any economy which can see individuals saddled with debt more than seven years is an evil economy. That economy is the enemy of God. As a fundamental concept of moral law itself, it is expansive in application to all things related to the economy.
While the Hebrew culture would find the notion of copyright repulsive in the first place, holding monopoly rights to profit from any intellectual property beyond seven years is most certainly a sin. This applies to anything published in print, analog or digital format. The whole concept is an attack on social stability, paving an open highway to Hell.
We as Christian Mystics cannot engage in activism as a means of change, at least activism as commonly defined in modern Western politics. It’s one thing to raise consciousness, to proclaim a call for repentance and pointing out sin. This we do with unlimited ardor, but we do not pressure people beyond giving notice. It must of necessity be voluntary because we do not have a binding covenant before God for a legal system allowing us to use any kind of force. The fundamental Law of Noah only goes so far, applying itself to the household alone. While God meant for that to cover everything in any society, the enforcement is in the hands of God.
In our current context, we would first need an extensive period of revival and cultural change. It would mean taking a path so completely different, few can even contemplate. Something like this has to grow up in the hearts of the population at large. People have to place themselves willingly under the proper expressions of authority He revealed to this world. It is a testimony against our culture that virtually no one can conceive of God’s system of government. Under that Law of Noah, we who observe it wait upon His hand to guide us through the process. He has shown a restraint we must observe, and accept the answer which may well be, “Not here, not now.”
Obey the driving hand of God in your service to His glory. Do what is necessary to please Him in your own calling. We as Christian Mystics should call for an end to extended copyright — past seven years. We should be willing to suffer whatever losses fall upon when we decline to enforce His standards on those who do not submit to our leadership in His Laws. On the other hand, we are also not bound by every particular of evil human laws. We are bound to the conscience Our Lord burned into us by His personal Presence.

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We Live for His Glory

Posted on February 12, 2013 by ehurst

The most difficult thing to explain to Christians is the full meaning of embracing the demands of God’s glory.
From the very earliest days of my spiritual awareness, going back to the 1970s, was the mission of communicating the divine truth in our modern cultural context. I considered myself a cultural translator then, and still do today. Dr. Robert Clarke at OBU set my feet on a long path of understanding the intellectual assumptions of our Western world, providing the clues I needed to realize the vast gulf between us and the people of the Bible. It took a very long time to break free of the bondage on my own thinking, but I had a map with vague references and basic features, and I was determined to explore.
If it’s this hard to move from our deeply flawed Western understanding to a truly biblical perspective, is it worth the trouble? You certainly can’t answer that question from our broken Western assumptions. The answer of what it’s worth comes after paying the costs and seeing what it buys. I can’t decide for you to pay that price; all I can do is point out the possibilities. Here I am at an age where the end of my days is within sight. I’m pretty sure I haven’t discovered all the places on that map. I’m pretty sure I’ll die before I see it all. In Western terms, I’ve wasted all those years on something which is demonstrably unproductive.
In biblical terms, I’m near the peak of achievement.
At the end of his deepest philosophical genius, King Solomon wrote: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13) Living by God’s Laws is why we exist. Failing that, we might as well walk straight into Hell. From the context of his book and the world in which he lived, we could translate that as, “The only reason God keeps this operation running is for His own glory.” If you could peruse the rest of the Hebrew Scripture, you’d understand how the context of the Bible shows us that God’s glory is in our best interest, both here and eternally. He will have glory; if you chose to participate, you get the warm reflection of it in your existence.
It’s not possible for me to pass from my soul to yours the depth of what this really demands. You may well be saying and writing often how the only reason we exist is to glorify God. I know I did, way back as a kid. Yet, I realize now I’m just beginning to understand what that means. I honestly don’t care about anything else on this earth, at least by comparison. Everything that really matters is in the Spirit Realm, and nothing here matters much at all. By glorifying God, I am pointing out to everyone how essential it is that we stop focusing on this Realm of Shadows and focus instead on the eternal meaning of things. I can’t make that as important to you as it is to me.
I can’t wait to see Heaven. You recognize the metaphorical expression, that I don’t plan to kill myself so I can get to Heaven right away. You rightly understand I’m saying that what I have and experience here, at its very best, is a pale reflection of what I already have there. In intellectual terms, I really don’t understand why God keeps me here and won’t let me come home. My brain can’t answer that, but my convictions hold up a truth my brain is required to accept: He isn’t finished with me here. That is, what I would consider in my best interest is not the truth of the matter. This is not about rescuing me from sorrow; it’s about making Him look good. Everything I experience here is part of His plan to reveal His glory. Something in His nature and character demands that. As one accountable to Him as Creator, it’s my duty to hang out here and do what it takes to maximize that revelation.
His glory shines brightest when I obey His Laws. That sounds easy until you realize His Laws were revealed entirely in that other, Hebrew Mystical context, not in our Western rationalist intellectual tradition. Even decent Western scholars realize the vast difference between the two. Dr. Clarke was a Western scholar; he was the one who helped me start examining the differences. I honestly missed most of what he said, but the Lord burned it into my consciousness until His Spirit could reveal the importance of what Dr. Clarke taught. It’s the same kind of thing Jesus indicated when He told His disciples that He realized they didn’t get what He was teaching, but that the Holy Spirit would bring it to their remembrance after the Ascension. The key to making the most of our knowledge is the Holy Spirit bringing it to life. I’m not Him by any means; I’m just another poor copy of whatever Dr. Clarke was for his students. But he would tell you himself it wasn’t about him or us, but about the truth. It’s how that truth changes us into a force that shines a light into this Shadow Realm.
It’s all about the glory of God.

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Feminist Power Trips

Posted on February 11, 2013 by ehurst

She was provocative, always dressed inappropriately and flashing as much flesh as she dared. She played the sexual tease game with consummate skill already, having just turned 14. She was attending a tiny private Christian school; always in trouble. She tried flirting with the male teachers to get her way. Not missing anything intellectually, either, she was all too smart and crafty.
One day during the religion class, the Associate Pastor was teaching. She said something about her feelings, to which the vicar replied he didn’t care about her feelings on that matter. She retorted petulantly, “Well, you should.”
Constantly jockeying for power by any means available is a fundamentally Western feminist trait. I recall reading one of those subtle propaganda manuals issued by various government or government sponsored agencies claiming to help parents understand their children. A major element in the manual was viewing children’s behavior as jockeying for power. The book tried to portray this as a fundamental human trait. It’s not; it’s entirely culturally derived. It is specifically the result of feminism.
In the Medo-Persian Empire, we see it once rearing its ugly head. In the ruling class, most marriages were politically arranged. Thus, precious few men married within their own national roots. The latter days of the empire were quite cosmopolitan, and it was not a good thing, contributing greatly to their demise at the hand of the Greeks. A critical manifestation of the weakness was the practice of these foreign wives asserting their own preferences, developing a shadow court within the the household. There she would gather people who spoke her native tongue and her husband would have little idea what was going on. At some point, this sort of thing actually threatened the reputation of the Emperor himself, so he issued a decree which turned back these practices rather sharply. The men could have their wives executed for rather minor infractions, but presumably in pursuit of correcting this business of politics and power plays against the man’s stated policies.
I’ll save you the time: You can call me a sexist or misogynist. Like the vicar above, I’m not interested in your feelings and I’m not interested in your protestations that I should care. The Bible approves of the change in Medo-Persian imperial policy. In a Hebrew household, the woman called her man “my lord.” This has nothing to do with dark visions of primitive European feudalism. It arises from Eastern feudalism, which is entirely different; it’s all about people and them as the principle measure of man’s wealth. Whether he actually ruled over people or simply had friends, this was his treasure. His land and other real property could all be replaced, but good people were hard to find and cultivate. That includes a good woman.
The Bible does not lay out and description of womanhood. Rather, it offers manifestations and symbolism. In a given context, she would do this or that. She certainly exercises her own brand of dominion, but she never, ever forgets whose team she is on. If she is not the single most powerful support of her husband, he is better off tossing her out on the street. The whole social fabric is better off. That’s how humanity is wired. It’s not like software where you can reprogram it; this is hard-wired. Any other model will fail every time.
From the narrative of the Fall, we learn — bluntly stated — women will seek power over their men. In wider terms of symbolism, it’s acknowledged this tendency is the result of the damaged mothering instinct. Women since the Fall will be possessed of an instinct to control everything with any bearing on her nest-building instinct. That instinct manifests in a very wide range of ways, but the whole thing boils down to nest-building. Whatever she regards as her nest becomes the subject of political wrangling unless she seeks the face of God and tries to understand her own weaknesses. The woman of God builds her household largely by building up first her husband. She knows how he is wired, too.
Most of the revulsion and arguments from modern feminists assumes the Western model of broken manhood. You cannot get a feminazi to even discuss this part of the whole question. They are building on that European mythology and any other view of reality is unacceptable before it’s even mentioned. Like a rotting rug, pull out that false covering over the ground of truth and feminism dies. If there is anything Satan loves it’s a Western feminist.

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Trilemma Again

Posted on February 10, 2013 by ehurst

There is a real human behind all this blather.
So, here we go again. You should recognize the drill. Major figures have been going through the scripted drama of making Iran look threatening. Over the past few months, lots of stories planted, loaded with opinions and false intel. Now we have a bunch of lesser authority figures running around to small forums of self-appointed intelligentsia trying to see if this crap has taken root. Essentially the question is: “Have we reached a sufficient density of deception that we can get away with illegally bombing Iran?”
I’m not going to recount here all the reasons why this is wrong. If you don’t get that already, you are reading the wrong blog. I don’t love Iran nor her ruling regime. I am not pro-Islam, but I do understand it better than the average American. I also know God’s Laws regarding such things. The question is not whether Iran is good or bad, but that God is in charge of deciding her fate, not the US government. Wade through all the crap and you realize this is nothing more than a long-standing plan to bully, and if necessary, take over Iran again because the current Iranian government is inconvenient for the plutocrats. The real problem is that the plutocrats who run the US government policy are evil. It so happens the idea of attacking Iran is particularly evil.
So much I’ve said already, for such a long time I can’t even find the record of when I first understood it — maybe sometime back in 2009. It was the first real impact of genuine spiritual perception, in the sense I knew it had nothing to do with what I thought intellectually. It took a few days, but I realized it was a prophecy. And it recalls the question, the trilemma — prophet, liar or lunatic?
So far as I can tell, there’s nothing dishonest about any of this. I honestly believe this is a word from God and I’m doing what I can to honestly report it. That leaves lunatic versus prophet. If the US and Israel manage to stomp Iran without any significant losses, then I’m a lunatic.
You see, I do not find inside myself any exits. This stuff holds me and I can’t ignore it. I can make jokes about hearing voices in my head, but that’s oversimplifying the whole thing. If this prophetic word fails, I’m forced to recognize I should shut up and stick to something safe, something where I don’t have to worry about misleading people. I can’t allow whatever is driving me to hurt other people. If what I call a prophecy fails, it destroys everything in the sense of credibility. So while I can’t simply stop believing what calls me deep inside, I do have a responsibility to contain the damage to myself.
On the other hand, I’ve been pretty careful to announce that my vision does not need a wholly literal fulfillment. That’s part of the background upon which I build, that mysticism stuff. Lots of Hebrew prophecies in the Bible didn’t come literally true, but within the intellectual assumptions of the Hebrew people, all of them came true. Nearly as I can tell, the vision I received indicates a disaster for the US arising from any attack on Iran, but it’s my human logic alone that assumes anyone who joins us will be hurt, too. The disaster I foresee strikes me as one involving major loss of military lives and equipment. I note again for the record: I have no idea how this will turn out for Iran. That’s not part of the vision. Nor would I suggest I have any idea how — by what means — this thing will come about. There may be perfectly logical explanations in the minds of observers and analysts. None of that matters. The prophetic word is a warning to the US: Don’t do this; God won’t allow it.
It occurs to me if things happen more or less as I predict, I could end up in trouble of some sort. Stupid as our government people are, they could somehow surmise I knew something, was collaborating with our enemies or something. That’s if they notice me at all. Either way, should this all pan out as I suggest, I suppose it will change things for me. Right now, the only reason people read this blog is because it either entertains them or they have a real interest because some of it seems to jive with their experience. To make such a bold prophetic declaration can be put aside if/until it faces the acid test of reality. It could be they’ll back off again and not try it yet. Still, I rather think they mean to do it this time around.
If the prophecy fails, I have to stop what I’m doing; there will be sweeping changes in this blog, to say the least. If it passes, I’m guessing I’ll be a little busier.

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Zechariah 12

Posted on February 9, 2013 by ehurst

God is poised to make things happen which haven’t been seen in a very long time, and many things not yet seen before. If Judah will repent and obey the Covenant, she can expect a bonus, blossoming from such a tiny remnant to a world power again. That grand future is within reach. Will they seize the moment?
Do they suppose they’ve faced opposition up to now? They haven’t seen anything yet. The lesson of Moses before Pharaoh was how God raises up human opposition only so He can crush it in the eyes of the world. If Judah were truly faithful, the whole world would oppose her. And God would crush the whole world at her feet. God says He is ready to make Jerusalem a cup of His wrath, to make the surrounding kingdoms stagger at the unimaginable blow to their arrogance and pride. They might as well try to lift a massive stone buried in the earth, because it will hurt them just trying. Was Judah ready to see God work so powerfully that the very horses of the attacking hordes would be blinded? Are they ready to then lead the world into His holiness?
If the people choose holiness in their hearts, God will grant them mighty kings like David again, setting on fire everyone opposing God’s plans for His people. Yet, God Himself will defend Judah, so the kings can focus on more important matters of justice among the people. The oldest and weakest will be like David, and the king would be like a mighty angel of God. No one would ever dare attack His people again.
With such a heart of valiant obedience, you can imagine how the king would lead them. The whole kingdom would be the home of repentance. They would remain deeply conscious of how their sins have hurt God, and how He bore the thrusts of their sins willingly. In the context, God pleads with Judah to open their hearts, to embrace the conviction of sin God holds out to all humanity, but especially those whose gift is the full revelation of His glory. John rightly says the sorrow of many on the day of Crucifixion was a manifestation of what Zechariah meant.
While there is an obvious literal meaning, it symbolizes something far more important. God had revealed Himself rather plainly in the Law, and then with utmost clarity in His Son, but this earthly nation rejected Him. They had done so in the past, which got them the Exile. They were too near rejecting the prophetic command to build the Second Temple. There is little left to do but offer one last look at what they could have if they would embrace Him. If they would turn and lament their sins, as they did on that awful day when they lamented the loss of Josiah at Megiddo, they can recover what was lost there that day, and far more. However, the price is penitence not merely of their leaders, nor even every man, but women, too. Everyone old enough to be a child of the Law must confess their sins.
What genuine repentance could buy had not yet been seen on the earth.

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Nowhere to Hide

Posted on February 9, 2013 by ehurst

Quite literally, you cannot hide from the US government. Should some US bureaucrat or official take umbrage at your existence on this planet, no one can protect you except God Himself.
I’m hardly the only commentator to note leaving the US out of principle would serve little purpose. The oppression we flee would follow us. We already have on record a full-blown daylight kidnapping from the streets of Milan, Italy, not to mention assassinations without number. Several American citizens have already been blasted into oblivion by missiles from drones. If you believe the propaganda that these were all horribly evil people who deserved their fates, you are too stupid to read my blog, so go away. I’ve worked in federal law enforcement, and it’s about as corrupt as anything you can imagine. I know there is seldom any justice by God’s standards. Never mind Jesus and His unjust execution; Paul, John, John the Baptist, Peter and several others were all put in prison by various governments. Our government consistently does far worse; it is run by psychopaths.
But running away to hide in another country is simply not possible. Not only am I too poor to move even as far as the next state, there is no place to go where the US can’t murder. Consider: If my primary objection is oppressive government, then I’d at least want to find one less oppressive, particularly oppression of the same type. What countries in this world aren’t bullied by the US? You might suggest Russia or China, and I’m sure I’d do fine in either, but they are hesitant to accept Americans for the obvious reason of our history in espionage using nobodies.
But what most people refuse to recognize is how the US flagrantly violates national sovereignty without the slightest hesitation. This government ignores all law when it suits some evil agenda. It doesn’t even observe its own constitutional limitations. Name one of the Bill of Rights still intact today; in one way or another, the underlying principle of each one — clearly documented — is violated for the convenience of the ogres in the system.
The only real refuge is God. If He needs me safe, there is nothing any or all nations can do to harm me. If He’s ready for me to come home, no power on earth can protect me.

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