Introduction to Jonah

Posted on June 16, 2012 by ehurst

Jonah is well established historically. He hails from Gath-hepher, a hilltop village near Nazareth, up in Zebulon’s tribal territory. Does any prophet arise from Galilee? Jonah was one. He appeared as prophet during the reign of Jeroboam II, somewhere between 780 and 750 BC. His ministry intertwines with that of Amos, and he succeeds in many ways Elisha as a statesman prophet.
We see the hand of God building and crushing human political aspirations and accomplishments, sometimes using His servants directly, sometimes less so. That He both raises up, then punishes kingdoms and empires is often difficult to understand, and we have at best a series of snapshots and some educated guesses how these things work. We know God has revealed His wrath on wanton violence and greed in governments, but still uses those governments in His plans.
Once the Davidic Kingdom was split, the Lord raised up Assyria, among others, to reduce the land holdings of both Judah and Israel. Early in his ministry, Jonah received the call to prophesy in Nineveh. It was more than simple racism against Gentiles, but patriotism to resist the call, since it would prolong the stability of his people’s greatest foe. His mission successful, he understood from God the temporary holiness of Nineveh would reduce their lust for conquest, allowing both Judah and Israel to reclaim most of their former territories (2 Kings 14:23ff). However, this led to Jeroboam’s false impression Jehovah favored his reign as it was. When Amos came later and declared it not so, Jeroboam was not ready to hear. We should not assume Jonah had failed to say the same things to his king and the ruling class as a whole. Eventually the effects of Jonah’s ministry wore off in Nineveh, and the Assyrian empire rose to violence again, and returned to crush the Northern Kingdom.

Posted in bible | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Introduction to Jonah

Pastoral: The Coming Trials

Posted on June 15, 2012 by ehurst

The Spirit moves me to offer a few pastoral comments.
We know the political situation is moving toward chaos and repression. We know the economy is going to crash. We also understand this is all intentional on the part of some folks who have lots of power and wealth, and want all they don’t already have of those things. We also know it’s highly unlikely there exists any human agency which can match willingness with capability to relieve us of this oppression.
In short, we rightly see suffering and sorrow increasing as we watch.
What many may not see clearly is how utterly improbable it is much of this will happen suddenly. Yes, it’s vaguely possible to bring about catastrophic events with rather dramatic suddenness, but extremely difficult to engineer. The systems involved are ponderously huge. Even at Internet speeds, there are limits to this beast. Things can be carried only so far before the cost of pressing farther demands a geometric rise in terms of resources. That cost includes the length of time, because it means human hands doing things. Only so many hands can be employed doing the same things at the same time in all places.
There will be drama and trauma, but each event will be limited.
I dare say the primary symptom of discomfort for most folks will be the disappearance of material goods we take for granted. While I don’t mean it literally, it would be as if all the Wal-Marts simply closed over a period of a week or two. Rather suddenly the variety and low price of stuff not locally produced will go away. By the way, the business of “price” is relative to income. The cost of your morning coffee habit will approach car payments, and “eating out” will be limited to picnicking. But milk will simply get more expensive, and only folks in large urban areas will have a hard time getting any.
It’s going to be rough. Whole sectors of the economy will disappear, and most CEOs are cruel enough to deceive all their employees about this. So you’ll get short notice on the day of closure, but he probably knows already when it will happen. Lots of reputations will change if we get an honest report of who does what, lots of surprises. Employees are a disposable resource in America. We refer to the “friction” factor of how long it takes folks to adjust to the new reality and do something different. I can’t really estimate that factor, and I’m pretty skeptical the experts are any better at it. Multiple traumas in each life, against the resistance individuals have to accepting and adjusting to a changed situation, and all sorts of other factors, make it pretty fuzzy.
Yesterday’s post about seeing all this as a game was intended to prepare your mind for the worst. Those who shout “Maranatha” are the same people who long for departure from this world. When you learn to take your personal suffering lightly, and realize with a strong element of fatalism there is only so much you can do for anyone else, then it’s not so hard. You don’t get bogged down in clinging to “necessities” which aren’t actually necessary. You realize there is a God in Heaven and your whole duty is to show His glory by how you handle suffering. The game is all in the playing, not the givens nor the results; the end point is wholly unknown to you.
The hardest part is convincing yourself His glory really is the your best interest. When that becomes more valuable to you than any other thing you can name, you are as ready as any human can be. The ultimate resistance to oppression is not being concerned about it.
Heed what the Spirit says and train your mind to embrace His revelation of Truth.

Posted in prophecy | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Games, Humanity and Ultimate Reality

Posted on June 14, 2012 by ehurst

This universe, this realm of existence in which we hold our consciousness, is fake.
It’s a bubble of unreality within the broader Ultimate Reality. It is in many ways rather like a virtual reality game. It matters not how you can extrapolate what you see and analyze back billions of years; the mere existence of years under the domination of time’s passage is the essence of unreality, because some part of each of us is rooted in a timeless reality. And that part of us is capable of recognizing the Ultimate Truth of things, even if no part of us understands it in the sense of knowing what to do about it.
This lesser reality is just a game.
Why do people play games? Because something about reality comes up short of that thing inside them which demands meaning not available here. If we give too much emphasis to something like survival in this realm, we’ll miss all that really matters. In the end, no one survives; we all die and leave this world to face the Ultimate Reality. If some part of us has not yet staked out a home there, we are in big trouble. It’s the same kind of trouble we have with people who become so wrapped up in virtual reality they can’t function well in meat space. Indeed, these are crippled souls, wasted minds seeking something meaningful in a universe which is meaningless. But the instinct to pursue hobbies, sports and games in general reflects our inability to find a way to pursue all the things we were meant to do.
We were meant to live, and achievement is merely a phantom. A civilization based on achievement is failure before anything starts. Whatever you achieve in the game means nothing outside the game, and human achievement means nothing in the Hereafter. A primary element in pursuing what matters There is recognizing it’s about commitment, about knowing and pursuing your mission, your fundamental calling which drives you to exert effort and expend resources. It’s what gives you meaning.
So long as you know your hobby is simply an expression of this world’s failure to make room for that calling, those recreational things are actually good for us. So long as you realize survival here is one of many games you can play within this plane of existence, you’ll play much better. Only when the goals aren’t that important can you reach them. That’s because achievement is merely a marker for restarting the game, hopefully with a somewhat different, and maybe even a better, approach.
Even the arts become somewhat a game, a means to recreate meaning. Like gaming, the arts can become perverted and consume without giving meaning, without even expressing much that means anything to the artist himself. If his art is simply spilling his guts, his sorrows and unspeakable yearnings, mere frustration, the art fails because he fails. It’s nothing more than boredom with a high price tag. Boredom is the result of personal emptiness, a state of dependence. If all the world suddenly had no electricity any more, the people who would cope are the ones who have something inside them, never mind how it got there. People who can’t adjust are the empty ones, the ones who can’t even handle the game of this reality, much less Ultimate Reality.
If your workout, practice, art, gaming or other forms of creation and recreation are more discipline than joy, you have the wrong hobby. We take it for granted most folks don’t love their jobs, but that simply proves how our society is perverted. It doesn’t understand the game of life, takes it too seriously. All our fears and panics and dreads are proof of the failure of any society, any civilization. Real people, real societies, can always find something worth doing with a sense of joy and peace, regardless of the context. They know the current schemes and structures are simply the context of the moment, and not inherently necessary for the game of life.
Life on this plane of existence is just a game; don’t take it so seriously.

Posted in prophecy | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Administrivia

Posted on June 13, 2012 by ehurst

I am now Google-free. I’ve deleted my entire account at Google, including the old Blogger account. Thus, the address br073n@gmail.com is dead. Thanks.

Posted in personal | Tagged , | Comments Off on Administrivia

Moral Covering

Posted on June 13, 2012 by ehurst

A fundamental element of the universe is moral covering.
While most Christians do recognize the term “spiritual covering”, it’s loaded with false baggage. It is a mystical concept, requiring a mystical epistemology to absorb and use, but it has more to do with morality rather than the silly concepts popular among Western Christians, something approaching childhood visions of magic.
The foundation is the Covenant of Noah. What almost everyone wants to ignore is how fundamental is the proper concept of sexual identity is here. This is where DNA-as-destiny bites hardest. Reject the model God revealed, and you are asking for trouble. The details have been amply covered on this blog under the heading of “Game” and sexual roles. The narrative leading up to the Flood tosses out the barest hint of what it’s all about, offering parabolic language which was meant to be thoroughly expansive in application. That is, symbolic terms used to conjure a far broader set of concepts which should have been common lore, and was when published under Moses’ authority. From our position many centuries later, thousands of miles away, and from an alien mental frame of reference, it’s very hard to translate to our culture.
Part of the corrective here is recognizing moral covering is a form of tutelage. Not servitude; though the disciple does serve the master, it’s really not that significant in terms we recognize. It requires building on the basis of the shepherd’s call. The shepherd extends his protection because he brings the sheep within the boundaries of what he can defend. We are presuming the shepherd performs due diligence in working out with God what He will empower the shepherd to do in those terms. The burden in considerable, a level of stress which can bring men to an early grave. While his end is in God’s hands, the provisions of the covenant offer a high reward which often includes a longer life for all sorts of reasons, including all the other blessings promised. The point is, the shepherd must keep the sheep within the boundaries of his authority.
Obviously, that means discipline of the sheep. The rod-and-staff symbols — the rod defends against threats, and the staff yanks the sheep back in line. All the whining about how this stifles the poor little lamb from sating his curiosity, and the oh-so-pitiful loss of opportunity to explore freely is one of the Devil’s favorite songs. It’s more than the shepherd’s experience keeping the lamb from walking through the fire pit and getting burned; it’s the shepherd keeping the sheep within the protective limits of life itself. It’s part of the Fall. You can’t demand the shepherd surmount his very human limits. He’s not accountable to the sheep for that, but to God. To the sheep he owes the diligence to protect with vigor and set limits with consistency and firmness.
If the sheep resists those limits, the shepherd has to expend a lot of extra resources trying to bring enough force to obtain compliance. Yes, the shepherd suffers a loss himself if the sheep is harmed either way, through misadventure or overly harsh discipline. Within his human limits, he’s responsible to God for working out what brings the sheep back in line without undue suffering, but God requires the sheep to accept the discipline. No, it’s not perfect, nor can it ever be in this world. We still have to deal with the consequences of the Fall.
This is God’s system. If the shepherd is accountable to God’s moral laws, God blesses. What He gives the shepherd falls upon the sheep, unless the sheep run out from under the shepherd’s covering. If someone asks to share my home, they are under my covering. If they reject the moral limits God requires of me, as best I can understand them, I can discuss directly with God about removing my covering because the sheep refuse to observe the limits of my ability to protect. That may not mean kicking them out physically, but it does mean leaving them exposed to the raw discipline of the moral fabric of the universe.
If someone wants my blessings, they’ll have to stay under my moral covering. If they don’t see or value those blessings, there isn’t much I can offer, but it’s all I have. I’ll gladly share, and take up the burden of expending resources and effort to help as much as I know how. You’ll get the last ounce of what I have, or at least a good share of what I have to spread among others, but I can’t help you if you don’t stay inside my reach to defend you against Satan. I’ll have to leave it between you and God whether you actually believe I’m a pretty hard case for the Devil and his weapons. I do suffer some of this world’s sorrows simply because I’m here, but the Enemy of souls has little permit to make it any worse for me.
Satan is the minister of God’s wrath. His authority is limited to those who reject God’s ways and His revealed Laws for claiming the blessings available to this level of existence. Step out from under the covering, and the wrath rains down on your life. The whole point is not subjecting you to my whims, but you accept my covering in the measure you can tolerate long enough to learn how to replicate it, and gain your own version of what God can offer in terms of moral authority to turn aside His wrath.
I can’t make this appealing to you; only God can do that.

Posted in prophecy | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Moral Covering

God Weeps

Posted on June 12, 2012 by ehurst

In some tiny, feeble ways, I believe I understand how God feels about America — it makes me cry, too.
I warned him before the ceremony he would regret this choice. He understood and took it seriously, but did not turn from the path he had chosen. I performed the ceremony as he requested. I’ve never said anything about it since then, because nobody learns from “I told you so!”
Instead, he has learned from experience. Not as much as he is going to learn before it’s all over, but he at least understands the regret part. I’ve done what I could to harden his resolve to stay on course, to remain committed to his mission as the first priority of life. While he is often distracted, he has not departed from it.
She learns nothing at all. That is, while the situation changes, and her behavior shifts with it, her underlying approach to life has not moved one iota in all these years. The sad part is, her approach is harmful to herself and everyone around her. She fears me, and stays out of my way, but learns nothing from what I say. When I try to explain things according to the Word of God, you can almost see it bouncing off her soul.
So after all these years, today it died. The resources in my spirit for trying to teach her have run out. My mind is not finished, or so it complains, but my spirit knows there is nothing left to offer and the time has come to bury it. Barring something she does which actually threatens my mission (it has happened before), I won’t intervene in her world any more than naturally happens as I carry out my calling. Otherwise, I’m withdrawing. There is no helping her any more, not for me.
That’s how God feels about America. Instead of showing some scintilla of sensitivity, some fragment of teachability, this nation has only hardened in her folly. If anything, she understands even less than she might have at one time. And as there are tears in my eyes writing this, so His wrath will come down upon us in floods of tearful sorrow and regret.
I wonder if she’ll even notice.

Posted in prophecy | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on God Weeps

Trying to Be Cool

Posted on June 12, 2012 by ehurst

Everybody wants to be cool, hip, on the front edge of whatever is the new wave of seeming better than the rest.
It’s what suckered the Judean scholars into Hellenism. It’s what brought the church into government before Rome fell. It’s what made the wild Germanic tribal nations embrace a radically altered “Christianity” and something sold as Roman Civilization. It’s what made Christians embrace the Enlightenment. It’s also what made the budding American nation let a bunch of elitists lie to them about what was going on when they formed a government.
It’s always because at least one charismatic, macho Alpha male stands up and sells some stupid idea to a bunch of suckers who want some piece of that Alpha pie. They want the chicks swooning, and whatever seems to make that happen becomes the law of the land. And you thought it was only in modern advertising.
The idea of doing something because it’s actually right gets you nailed to a cross. Not cool, and your momma is the only chick swooning.
How did we get to the place in America where the rising police state sees only token resistance? No one really believes it’s a police state, yet it has been for over a century. Hint: The War Between the States came after a fundamental shift in philosophy about what makes Americans free. Black skinned slaves were merely the propaganda excuse used by people who hated blacks at least as much as, if not more than, slave owners. This sort of bold faced lying didn’t begin in the mid-1800s. It was there from the start.
America is the quintessential middle-class nation. It’s burned into our mythology. In ancient times there was no such thing as a middle-class culturally, only economically. It was absorbed from the Germanic mythology of the common man, which was at war with the mythology of the mighty nobleman. Nothing in our Anglo-Saxon heritage promotes the shepherd’s heart. Instead it’s crush the peasants because it’s cool and manly, or rise up against them with middle-class numbers and wealth because that’s what women say is cool. It’s the materialistic nesting instinct writ large. This is the heart of America.
It’s one of the biggest lies ever embraced by humanity since the Fall, that we can only choose between the barbarism of Germanic feudalism or the “civilized” materialism of the middle class. All it did was set the stage for a whole raft of lies.
Americans, your government lied to you from day one. The insiders of the 1% sweet-talked their way into being elected to rape your children behind your backs. If you buy the American mythology, there is no hope for you. This massive deception began before they began calling this America.
So here we are today, and precious few realize it. The vast majority just can’t believe it’s all one big lie. It was done in secret only in the sense no one bothered to check on the leadership. The few who did were subverted, deceived in another way, and many were simply killed. Most were simply content to accept the toys and lies about how utterly necessary it was to maintain that middle class lifestyle. Esau traded his spiritual opportunities for a bowl of beans. I think he got a better deal than we.
Hear the word of the Lord: You have chosen, Americans, and the die is cast. You have sold yourselves into slavery and chains shall you wear. They will become more grievous than you can imagine, but you could have known had you wanted. Your police state is the wrath of God upon your sin, and resistance is sin. Your only escape now is to turn away from this world of lies, and stop caring about it all. Trust in God for the peace man can neither give nor take.
Fat chance of that. You have sown against your fears, and your harvest is the sum of all the things you feared. Welcome to the future, Citizen. You earned it, fair and square.

Posted in prophecy | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Trying to Be Cool

New Fiction Piece

Posted on June 11, 2012 by ehurst

While it is not a serious emphasis any more, sometimes I have stories in my head which just have to be written. My latest brain spew is here (site is gone now).

Posted in fiction | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on New Fiction Piece

Essence of Human Government

Posted on June 11, 2012 by ehurst

The will and ability to use force is what makes government.
Here is wisdom: Mankind is fallen. Whether it be the appetites of the flesh, the curiosity of the mind, or the arrogance of human reason, mankind is always eager to take the least painful path to sating their lusts. With extensive conditioning over several generations, you can curtail certain possibilities in terms of means to acquisition in their minds, but you cannot remove the underlying sinful demands. Human reason is insufficient to determine good or evil, but reason itself rejects that truth. In the aggregate, humanity will always turn to evil, even when it’s been organized and institutionalized as “civilization.”
Very early in the game of time, the Lord demanded humanity get a clue. Though in a fallen state, utterly incapable of doing it well, He required humanity form governing authorities. His idea was that parents should restrain their children, and build out from there, because fallen human instinct was to let them run wild. But in order to inculcate this bare minimum of social order, it was necessary to wipe out everyone except a precious few who were willing to hear His command. Yes, we understand those precious few still struggled with the minimum requirement to “honor thy father and mother” (witness Ham raping his own father when Noah was drunk), but the impulse to restrain one’s own children was firmly implanted. It wasn’t that women needed such instruction, but men, who don’t have that instinct and are inherently lazy about exercising power which doesn’t meet their immediate personal needs.
Yes, the story is loaded with complications. But I’m not writing a book here.
Fundamental to the image provided in Scripture is restraining sexual appetites, as the lack of that restraint is the single most destructive factor in social stability. If mankind could not at least make a stab at it, God warned He would refuse to make nature follow any particular recognizable patterns, either. Again, these are symbols of a much bigger problem in both directions. It’s not that women can’t govern, but that God never intended they do it alone. The particular balance in Hebrew culture gave women more leverage than any previous culture, while still harnessing the power of manhood to make things happen. Sex has a very holy purpose, and if you don’t keep it on track, it will destroy everything. Lack of sexual restraint is the single strongest indicator of flouting God’s Laws, and the single most significant precursor of His wrath.
Fundamental to the very concept of “civilization” is sexual restraint, maintained by the force of violence. The very most fundamental concept of ownership is ownership of sexual license. Sexual intimacy in all its civilized glory is the single greatest hint mankind has about the need for spiritual intimacy with God, something which is by default broken. A really good marriage teaches us about the possibility of spiritual peace with God. Mess up the earthly image of that peace and mankind has no hope of spiritual redemption. This is why it matters for us. Fundamental to the Fall is the sense of isolation and alienation from God, and thus all Creation. Nothing on this plane of existence bridges the gap of alienation like loving sexual union. No experience on this earth is better than a rich, stable marriage, which means husband and wife both sharing ownership of each other in terms of sexual license.
The protection of that is backed up with the threat of force. Wives are protected by husbands, and by extension, his brothers and other kin. Unmarried daughters are protected in their virginity. It’s sacred; the concept of “holy” means set apart for the exclusive access of one person. When no one values these things, you have no civilization, no sense of righteousness or holiness. Nothing matters beyond instant gratification. Then, any government is reduced to the whim of the powerful. That this is but one step away from a good orderly patriarchy is one those paradoxes with which we must live. It should be obvious by now I’ve castigated the whole of Western civilization, at least in its current late manifestation, as loaded with violent opposition to God’s Laws. All our violent government force is aimed at evil things, largely because the single viable restraint has been removed — the shepherd’s instinct.
The very nature of Western Civilization is a hateful opposition to the shepherd image of government. Among modern nations, America has raised this hostility to a fine art. It is a criminal operation through and through. Don’t we just shine?

Posted in prophecy | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Essence of Human Government

Not Created Equal

Posted on June 10, 2012 by ehurst

It is a blasphemous heresy to suggest we all should treat each other equally.
That line from the US Declaration of Independence is evil: “all men are created equal.” Not simply in the choice of words, but in what they imply. It ignores the Fall. What happened at Creation is irrelevant in this case, because things changed after the Fall. What it should say: All men are equally fallen. While some gave a measure of lip service to that truth, almost all of our Founding Fathers denied it by their assumptions and how they designed our national government. The Enlightenment fundamentally denies it by simply refusing to acknowledge it on any level, and that evil philosophy is the very breath of our national founding.
God’s Laws (expressed primarily in the covenants of Noah and Moses) presume all are fallen. The demands of those Laws require you first absorb that as the starting point. The next thing step is understanding DNA is destiny, though the parabolic language of the Old Testament states it a little more poetically. Where God puts you is His will for you, and you are damned if you resist Him. He, and He alone, is permitted to move you to resist your circumstances, and that resistance itself must remain within the accepted boundaries of His Laws. If any part of your striving is not directly aimed at His glory, it’s a monumental failure.
That doesn’t mean you won’t get what you’re after, but you’ll definitely be guilty of making the world a worse place. You will be fighting against the sort of social stability God demands of fallen men. What few want to admit, even in the mere hint of possibility, is our responsibility for those around us. Abel’s smart-aleck question was the height of arrogance: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Yes, you are, in the sense you are accountable to your blood kin. That’s part of the DNA-is-destiny business. You are commanded to put your blood kin above the rest of the human race.
It is bad enough when you fail to give preference to your kin. In a broad general sense, it is utterly Satanic to treat anyone better than your own kin. Granted, covenant relations are more sacred than blood relations, because they are entered into voluntarily before God, but to hate your brother enough to do him real harm is attacking God, as He sees it. The reason this is such a heavy emphasis is because of our fallen nature. We are inherently less likely to forgive a slight from blood kin because we are required to trust them enough to be far more vulnerable to their sinful choices. Tough. Get used to it. However bad that can be, everything else is far worse.
The modern secular state is an abomination to God. That’s not to say we must of necessity have a religious state, because that is also evil. What God demands is we have a tribal nation. Again, however much sorrow comes from that, nothing better is possible. All the crazy ideas we’ve dreamed up by our human logic and talents has failed miserably, and continues to fail miserably at an increasing rate as we get farther from that fundamental human state on this plane of existence.
On a different level, then, the church should by no means organize under any other format than some ANE (Ancient Near Eastern) tribe. Any church with some other structure is not a church in God’s eyes. Since blood kin is hardly possible as the basis for a proper church in these times, we recognize the higher priority placed on covenant kinship. As before, this is actually more sacred than blood kinship, because it’s kinship in Christ’s blood. A group of people are to form around a common core of faith, and a shared commitment to the welfare of each other, such that we give preference to each other first in all things on this earth. Yes, there are contextual conditions in the Laws, but as a basic principle of life, your fellow church members come first over even your blood kin in favoritism. Favoritism of that sort is God’s Law. Again, the whole point for anyone even holding a Christian belief is God’s glory, and He says this is how He is glorified.
Your church is your closest kin, and should be organized as an extended family household, should operate as one, should not even hint of other means of operation. Democratic, presbyterial, magisterial, etc., are all human inventions forced upon the church by men who rejected a proper understanding of God’s Word.
Hear, then, the Word of the Lord: God has already judged all human organizations governing man’s behavior, and pours out His wrath upon those which do not conform to His Laws. When men strive against His commands, they cannot but lose. In His patience, He gives those governments time to get right, but eventually destroys them as they reach the breaking point in His eyes. America, we are there.

Posted in prophecy | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Not Created Equal