Shooting Blind: Fitness

Posted on June 29, 2012 by ehurst

For once, I have no clue what God is up to with a particular message.
Even though I have an inclination to physical fitness, it’s always been more about playing than work. That is, I could never maintain a program unless it appealed to my sense of fun and games. Even in the military, where fitness has a very specific goal, I only did what was fun for me, with some slight attention paid to preparing for the various fitness tests. It worked out okay, because I always kept a score of at least 290 out of 300, but during the actual training, I never gave that much thought.
At the time the Lord made it clear I was to devote all my time to serving as His prophet, He also hit me hard with a requirement to be as fit as possible, and to keep it going. While I hardly argued with that idea, I’m puzzled because there is no particular purpose revealed for it. I’m sure it will become clear when the day of need arrives, but for now it’s just an urge from my spirit with no explanation. There is also no particular urge to practice anything like self-defense, so it’s not about that at all.
Granted, I’m aging and arthritic, so there are limits. I can no longer recover from a hard workout every other day; it takes three now. So I have a three day cycle repeated twice weekly. I have no clue why I feel such a heavy burden about sharing it with you, dear readers, but I must be obedient.
Day One: road march. I never got comfortable with race walking, but no one with military experience forgets the road march. It’s a different motion from race walking, and somewhat less speedy, but a good workout. During the heat of summer I carry two military canteens on a harness, one quart each. I simply cannot run distances any more, and have to wear a knee brace just to walk very far. On my worst bad-knee days, I do two miles, but most of time it’s four. On really good days, I do six. It’s all over the hilly terrain out here where I live.
Day Two: long ride. If I’m traveling and not in a hurry, the steepest hills don’t bother me at all. But for workouts, I need some flatter ground. So I ride north out of the hill-n-dale country to the North Canadian River Valley. It’s a huge flat expanse of rich farmland, and the roads are quiet. The distance is seldom less than twenty miles, usually around 25, and occasionally over 30 miles round trip. I’ve done as much as 35, but the route was simply too hilly for a good workout, and too ugly for any fun. So I usually pick a relatively flat course and ride as hard as I dare the whole way. I carry my 24-oz. water bottle plus a half-gallon jug on the back rack.
Day Three: upper body. I long ago reached the limit of progress on the high-tension workout. For now, I’m hitting a park with playground equipment, which is a four-mile ride from here. I alternate pushing and pulling from the shoulder girdle, different angles, alternating the grip, different amounts of leverage using my own body weight. The pushing exercises always drop my chest below the plane of my hands, for full range of motion. The goal is between 12 and 20 repetitions, adding another set when it gets too easy. The whole point is hardening the joints so injuries are less likely, but not stressing them to the point the arthritis flares up too much.
Then I do some jumping and my elliptic sit-ups before riding painfully back home. An elliptic sit-up is raising the upper body part way, and one leg, knee straight, reaching with one hand to touch the opposite toe. It’s a balancing act, briefly forming a V shape. The body twists at the waist just a bit, so every part of the abdomen gets involved, along with some of the lower back.
There are substitutions to this routine. For example, today is payday, so my long ride will be to a selection of stores, picking up a few items. I have a set of baskets I found at a thrift store which rests neatly on the rear rack.
Given we are facing a measure of tribulation, economic collapse, possible nuclear explosions from Fukushima, and who-knows-what-else, improving fitness is never a bad idea. However, my spirit witnesses this is more than simple convenience. There is something very specific coming for which high fitness is utterly necessary for my service to Christ. Given I have a pension (your federal tax dollars at work!), I have no excuse for slacking off.
All I can suggest for now is the burden to share this serves as a general warning from God: Things are going to become very, very difficult rather soon.

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Morality Bits: Charity

Posted on June 28, 2012 by ehurst

People who hammer you with guilt over the needs of another are working for Satan.
Here’s the way it works in God’s eyes: He gives you resources and talents. He saddles you with the responsibility to keep in touch Him regarding how to use them. In general, you offer them to everyone you encounter (with lots of complicated details, but you get the idea). Those who accept them are blessed, and you should seldom be concerned how they are used once given. If they are rejected, you ask the Lord whether you should keep trying or move on.
Nothing — nothing — in this equation is based on need. You cannot possibly know your own needs, so how can any human decide what another person needs? God decides. His directions to you in disposing of His gifts to you do not include a calculus of need. It’s the calculus of obedience. Do not attempt to work out in your feeble and fallen intellect what you think someone needs. Respond to what you encounter in the way the Lord leads you.
Don’t let anyone manipulate your feelings based on what they say someone needs, including themselves. That is not how God works. Every system which attempts to organize what they do based on perceived need is just a human attempt to unseat God from His throne. In case you haven’t noticed, a lot of churches do this and God is not pleased. Never mind whether it accomplishes anything measurable; it’s not where God works and you won’t find His lasting peace that way. It’s a bottomless pit that will consume your life to no good purpose, and interferes with God’s sovereignty.

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Guilt and Shame

Posted on June 28, 2012 by ehurst

While I am not happy with the video portion, this song will help set the tone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpGh8HN2G30
The point, as I understand it, is the sense of guilt and fear which comes over many Christians at times. You are certain you’ve messed something up, and it’s probably something which nags and nags at your conscience. It bites and burns, and you’ve been through it a hundred times and can’t seem to beat this one sin. The last thing you want is to make God sorry He chose you for redemption.
I’ve been there. It was so bad I was very near to suicide, repeatedly over a period of several years.
Chances are there is some of my experience which is unique to me. Yet there are some elements which are universal. The problem is the real solution lies in Heaven, and human language can hardly begin.
It’s not as if you can simply wave a magic wand, quote some Bible passages, and it all goes away. If that works, you are probably still spiritually dead. Psychology is not the answer, nor emotions or any other thing man can conjure by his talents and will. Because the real cause of genuine sorrow and depression like this, aside from the possibility of serious chemical imbalances in the brain, is a demonic presence.
The reason demons are present is because you let them in at some point. That is, some part of what you experienced on the way to this point provided an open door to Hell in at least one part of your soul. As noted previously, demons are bound under God’s Laws. That is, if you are living justly by the Laws of Noah, they typically don’t have any authority. Spiritual matters are never absolute, but if you don’t fix this problem first, you can’t make any progress with other issues.
My recovery, my peace, came from embracing His Laws and then waiting for His calling. What I thought had been my calling was wrong, and it had to die. That was quite a painful valley to walk, but it’s behind me now. The final piece, the keystone in the arch of protection for me, was Christan Mysticism. Once I tossed aside all the pretense of manmade theology (all systematic theology is manmade) and fake Western churchianity, and took on the mind of Christ, everything became clear.
As always, I’m just a messenger. I don’t pontificate; I simply share what I’ve seen and heard. You’ll have to find your own answers, but if what I write calls to you, obey the call.

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Admin: I'm on Facebook Now

Posted on June 27, 2012 by ehurst

This blog is now posting directly to my Facebook account. You can find the link near the bottom of the navigation bar on right side of this blog page. It should be easier to “share” these posts using my Facebook account, which is public.

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Abusive Preaching about Tithing

Posted on June 27, 2012 by ehurst

You hear it from pulpits all across the land, heavy manipulation about tithing.
It comes from the notion a church budget is sacred. Somehow, God can’t lead the membership to give less than the mighty Spirit-led leadership simply knows what they need for salaries, operations, etc. This is not how it was done in the Bible.
First, let’s clarify things from the very beginning. From ancient times there were only two activities from which God demanded a tithe: agriculture and war plunder. We can ignore the latter, because nobody pays attention to anything God has to say about that, and focus on the former. If you grow it or raise it, you tithe. You give the first tenth of the harvest to God, via an offering to those who serve in worship. The symbolism of putting God’s work first is obvious.
No other economic activity was tithed.
If you made money without being involved in agriculture, you were not required to tithe. You were expected to give through other ritual offerings, but mostly you were expected to give thank offers based entirely on your own conscience, a conscience which did not arise from preachers grumping about your criminal failure to meet their budgets. Go ahead and search the New Testament, and all the references to tithing are connected with growing and raising stuff.
So preachers who demand you tithe on all income are heretics and liars against God. You need to reject all condemnation which arises from such teaching. On the other hand, you should feel very guilty if you can’t give to the needs of others from your worldly possessions. However, the highest ideal here is learning to listen to God. The other half of that is not caring very much about the things of this world in the first place.
Further, any doctrine which says God wants you rich is lie from Hell. That’s just the same old worldly materialism with Bible verses plastered on the outside. God gives you stuff so He call tell you when, where and how to pass it on. The whole purpose is to show His love and glorify His name. If you care about stuff, you are wrong, regardless how it gets used. If you care about God’s calling and mission on your life, you’ll easily understand what to do with your stuff.

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Honk If …

Posted on June 26, 2012 by ehurst

Perhaps you recall the older bumper stickers which used to say, “Honk if you love Jesus!” Then it became more trendy to say, “Tithe if you love Jesus; any fool can honk.” Both are stupid, but for different reasons. Both fall into the same idiocy which brings you emails and “dares” you to forward them to everyone you know. “If you love Jesus, you’ll…” It’s nerve gratingly Satanic.
Let’s get something straight: Satan knows the Scripture better than you or I. He was there when anyone spoke God’s Word, when it was committed to writing, and Satan knows precisely what God wants it to mean. He also does his damnedest to lie about what it means, steal your power to obey, and kill your connection to the Holy Spirit. His use of Scripture is always a misquote in one way or another, and Jesus called him on it during the Temptation in the Wilderness. Most people don’t realize how they mimic Satan in their use of Bible passages.
We do not serve Jesus when we sling slogans, goofy stories (most of which are utterly fictional) meant to manipulate your emotions, or someone’s brain-dead political agenda. Draping any national flag on the Cross of Christ is blasphemous because not a single government in this world today is obeying Christ’s teaching. Serving Christ is more than a Facebook posting with pictures of doves and babies, flowers, or people with wings, paired with syrupy poetry.
The Spirit of God makes His own path through the soul, and His power cannot be duplicated with mere human manipulation of mind and emotions. Nor can such measures invoke His power. There is nothing holy about all that sickly sweet pietistic nonsense. What is holy is the stark and earth-shattering power of God to make you not care about this world and it’s ways.
If you love Jesus, nail your human existence to the Cross. Live like someone who is not attached to this world, but can’t wait to leave it.

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Wrath and Natural Disasters

Posted on June 25, 2012 by ehurst

The failure of Western Civilization to understand God’s ways does not force God to change those ways.
We have ample precedent in Scripture. There are two basic streams feeding into natural disasters. First, there is the Fall and the loss of divine management privileges over Creation. The point of the Fall narrative is not the particular details, but the bigger picture. Adam and Eve exercised some management process in the Garden which we could not possibly comprehend. It involved working from a spiritual connection of moral innocence to their Creator, who gave them the assignment of management. By choosing to use human intellectual judgment versus God’s revealed judgment, they lost all the privileges of moral innocence. In essence, they surrendered their position for something far less, in that human intellect was never designed, is inherently incapable, of judging right and wrong from its own resources. The intellect was designed merely to formulate human obedience to spiritual guidance. So their spirits died, and by default all humans are now born spiritually dead.
While spiritual death is reversed on God’s initiative with individuals, the Fall itself is not reversed. Creation as we know it is doomed — period. This mess will not ever be fixed, except in the sense it will all be replaced. This plane of existence is terminal. So long as it remains, it will remain in a damaged state. That means bad stuff happens because we are incapable of preventing it. That’s part of the curse of the Fall, and God said bluntly He has no intention of fixing that. This is where most Westerners, even Christians, choke intellectually. We can’t imagine the intellect is fallen, and we can’t imagine a separate plane of existence superior to, and surrounding, this one. We can’t imagine this is all simply a temporary bubble. In our language, we refer to this universe as “reality” when God says it’s one big lie. He says “reality” is in His Presence in Eternity. So we have bad stuff happening to anyone who lives in this world because it’s inherently broken, and that bad stuff happens to Christians, too.
The second stream is the direct results of defying God’s Laws. Just because we have ignored His Laws, tried our best to bury them by creating a false intellectual context does not make those Laws impotent. God didn’t simply choose the Hebrew intellectual culture as the place to reveal Himself; He built that culture Himself. He steered the entire process from Noah, through Abraham, through Jacob/Israel, through Moses, etc. The Ancient Hebrew Mysticism is as close to how God thinks as any human can know. That Western Civilization is hostile to the Hebrew Mystical intellectual approach is easily proven, but does involve a bit of academic study. God was gracious in allowing me to pass through such study. I’m not smarter than anyone else, just available. It’s not about me, but His inscrutable choices. It all makes perfectly good sense to me that God’s Laws hold the promise of certain limited blessings on this plane of existence if we strive to obey. This is actually separate from spiritual birth, but is surely enhanced by being spiritually alive.
If you defy God’s Laws, Creation will not be kind to you. That scales up from individuals to governments and nations. Ignorance is no excuse, though it may offer some limited mitigation. We all as humans have a duty to seek the truth regarding the moral fabric of this universe. If you, individually, strive to obey His Laws in the midst of a lawless nation, your protection from wrath will be enhanced somewhat. It’s not precise because that’s not how the Hebrew intellect works. There is no objective standard possible, because it’s very personal between you and God. Even the Laws are fuzzy, intentionally so. That’s how things work; that’s Reality.
The fires in Colorado are not so much God’s wrath on Colorado as upon America in general. Other locations will get their own version of His wrath in due time. Not all wrath is natural disaster. The very existence of our growing police state is part of His wrath on the sins of America. If you imagine this country as a whole can be saved, I warn you as God’s prophet that will not happen. That millions are spiritually alive does not change the equation; it only offers the potential for doing a better job of obeying His Laws. So long as Christians cling to Western analytical thinking about these things, they will not do a good job of obeying, and will not reap what little protection is offered to individuals while God pours His wrath out on this nation.
America as an entity is doomed, and there is no turning back. Your only hope is to cling to Him individually, in faith He can show you what is required to make the most of a bad situation. In the end, what happens here is for His children nothing more than just a living opportunity to manifest His glory until our time is done here. We aren’t tied to this world, and we should be the first to realize it’s all one big ugly lie. We should welcome His wrath on sin as a critical element in His revelation, His glory.

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New Article: Fundamentals of Socio-Sexual Development

Posted on June 24, 2012 by ehurst

Posted on my static website, a new article Fundamentals of Socio-Sexual Development (site is gone now). The concept is to understand Game better by seeing how it works with different age groups. As always, the objective is to improve your Kingdom service, bringing glory to God.

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Jonah 2

Posted on June 23, 2012 by ehurst

We can imagine Jonah inside whatever creature God prepared for this occasion, slipping in and out of consciousness for something like 72 hours. Even with all the miraculous provisions, this must have been incredibly unpleasant.
What we have here is a hymn of thanks marking this event, composed afterward. It follows typical Hebrew poetic expression, loaded with symbolism. In essence, Jonah was pretty sure he was going to die, and knew he deserved this most sorrowful end. There is nothing here of negotiating, but repentance and submission. Jonah promised, should the Lord relent, he would be faithful and obedient. Otherwise, this was surely his just end for defiance.
When Jonah was fully broken, the Lord directed the swimmer to discharge its passenger. Notice the Hebrew explicitly says Jonah did not have to swim ashore. He was vomited directly up onto dry ground. There is no reason to suppose this was anywhere far from Joppa, when Jonah sought to flee. The poetic justice of Hebrew thinking would predict Jonah found himself right where he left off. He still had a hard three days’ hike home, probably passing through Jerusalem and stopping at the Temple to fulfill his vows, on the way home.

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Pastoral: Don't Be Surprised

Posted on June 22, 2012 by ehurst

What would it be like for you, if you were suddenly cut off from all your bank accounts? What if all banking activity were suspended for a time? How would it affect you.
God commanded humanity to form governments under the Laws of Noah, but for the past millennium at least, not a single government of note has followed His revealed plans. John predicted that in his Revelation, but most people misread it. They believe it refers to some horrific and unimaginable evil government at the End of Time, but John was describing the rather normal behavior which slowly, steadily worsens as men think of new ways to oppress each other. As we drift farther and farther away from God’s model, you would naturally expect the depravity to increase.
Most Americans will be caught off guard. You can blame any part of it you understand, but the full complex of our social and cultural customs and habits keeps us from really paying attention — movies, music, TV, sports, political theater, etc. Pick out any details you like, but it’s all one big effort to keep us pacified, and it’s working rather well. Preppers miss the point, investing lots of money in things which eventually enrich the same plutocrats seeking to plunder us all in the first place, at the same time saving up useful stuff which can be easily confiscated later.
You should probably look up “capital controls” as simply one single expression of the plundering. I recommend you read this article, for example, as a brief examination of the concept. Given all our major banks are already technically insolvent, as is our entire government, things will have to change sooner or later. God hasn’t given me a word about when, but my personal inclination is to think it will be during this calendar year. I’ve been wrong before, so take me with a grain of salt. The elections this fall are no more than internal competition between factions of the single controlling system. Actually amending the system is simply not going to happen. But most of what you see is theater, while the capital controls are already being put in place over the past few months.
Spending today feeds the beast early, but savings will feed it later. The justification for capital controls is keeping the economy alive, which is another way of saying they want to facade to remain in place for as long as possible. Keeping the money inside the borders applies only to us little people, the productive folks who make things happen. At some point, the capital controls become the mechanism for cutting you off from all access to your savings, your paychecks, your operating funds. This makes it easier to begin the massive confiscation operations. Those could take any number of different flavors and styles, but the net result is the same. The justification for this is, without all this wonderful government protection and guidance, none of us could make a dime on our own. Thus, it all belongs to them in the first place, along with all your future productivity and your children, as well.
I won’t pretend there is much we can do about it. Stockpiling currency might help, and so could precious metals. Hey, you might even consider saving up barter goods. Rather, I hope folks are mentally prepared for what’s coming. This is one of those things which will tend to be rather sudden, something designed in part to keep you all in shock and fear. Social turbulence is a tool of control. I’m not hoping for a mass revolt, not even under the principles of leaderless resistance. We’ll see some of that, both artificial and very real, but I offer this pastoral point: If you don’t panic, you’ll have room in your consciousness to stay on mission.
Our God has a plan, which surely includes letting us suffer a good bit as humans normally do. He’s hoping you’ll pass through it according to His revealed plans, which means you face it as all one big lie in the first place. We change with the circumstances only because the truth is not static, but is manifested through them. So we keep our steady gaze on the distant destination of leaving this world behind, not with eyes darting around in fear because of all the ambient noise. Don’t be caught off guard when the plundering starts in earnest. If they have learned anything from the Fall of Rome, the plutocrats know it can’t be stopped, but that doesn’t prevent them making maximum use of such a collapse for their own profit. That also doesn’t prevent them steering us into collapse at their convenience. Parts of it are out of their control, but they are convinced they have enough leverage to get what they want from it. But God understands it completely, and is more than capable of letting them run with it until it’s time to snatch it out of their hands. Within the vast and forbidding landscape of human sorrow, we can always find elements of His mercy.
Put on the armor of God; clothe your soul with the protections His peace offers. The only valid question in the midst of this mess is, “What do we do now to manifest the Truth?”

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