Apocalyptic Warfare

Posted on June 9, 2012 by ehurst

No one can ever really prepare for the next Apocalypse.
I, of all people, would not deny the universe has an end point. However, nothing any human can know would serve to predict the approach of The Final End. Jesus denied having any idea, so how could any of us lesser beings pretend we know? All the speculation results from ignoring the plain statements of Scripture which warn us not to waste time and energy on such things. If anything, we celebrate the promise we aren’t stuck here waiting for it.
But when it’s not a false biblical zeal checking off news reports against a false list of preparatory events, it’s the more secular conspiracy theorists warning us of all sorts of plots against us little people. Perhaps you’ve read in the alternative press about the explosions and the radiation spike somewhere along the border between Michigan and Indiana? And all the military flights zipping off from their bases in that direction? What horrible things are They preparing for us?
If you really must know, it’ll require more study and intelligence than the average conspiracy theorist can muster. It’s not as if these things don’t signal evil plans, but understanding them requires a much broader base than what you can read on the Internet. It requires contacts in the military and other government agencies, contacts which can only come from having worked in those agencies and having handled secrets yourself. Then you have to know a lot about geography, history, political theory and all the other social sciences, and actually read the tons of mind-numbing documentation which plainly states their evil plans in stilted language which makes even demons need a nap.
In other words, we have so few qualified to actually understand, much less accurately assess what’s going on, you’d be a fool to trust anything you could read about it on most sites. I can’t count how often I’ve corrected wild reports on the basis of the few facts I know (such as identifying military vehicles). I know just enough to know I am not qualified, either. And all those experts on survival and the “preppers”? They do understand the basics of human survival, but have no idea whether their preparations will match the coming reality. They presume a rather narrow range of scenarios which, while probable in one sense, could mean nothing next to the creativity of psychopaths running the various governments in the West.
Here’s the basic problem: Far too few people understand the US government as a whole has declared war on those it governs, along with the rest of humanity. Even fewer understand how long ago this decision was made. But precious few, indeed, are those who realize there’s almost nothing you can do about it. And least of all is the tiny minority who understand it really doesn’t matter that much.
What really matters is manifesting the Ultimate Truth of things in the midst of whatever is happening. Do you know your mission? Do you have any idea why you are still alive on this plane of existence? Simply surviving the coming apocalypse is not it. Protecting your family is also not it. Those are things we do when we have room in our mission, but human life is not all that important. What matters is keeping yourself free from sin, which serves the dual purpose of pointing out what sin is by how you avoid it. That the entire Western Civilization has almost no real understanding of sin is part of the problem, and Christians are some of the worst. The primary reason we keep having these apocalyptic challenges is because we aren’t wise enough to go back to what keeps things peaceful and safe. We keep coming up with all these brilliant ideas after having done everything possible to ignore or pervert the revelation of the God who made all these things.
As a prophet of God, I’m not any smarter than you. I’m simply chosen, and it perplexes me to no end, because it makes no sense on any level of understanding. I’ve demonstrated quite amply my talent for abysmal stupidity far too often, yet here I am, called to the mission of prophecy. Can you imagine the burden of making very sure what I declare as God’s message isn’t the wild idiocy bouncing around in my own head? That never leaves my awareness.
Here’s what I’m doing. First, on the simplest level, I’m driven to obtain and retain the highest level of physical fitness possible. Yesterday I took a 33 mile bike ride over very hilly terrain on a cheap mountain bike I’ve had for almost five years. Today I’ll ride four miles to a park and engage a series of exercises on the playground equipment that will leave me quivering and very sore, then ride home again. I’m not sure I understand why all this, but I’m driven by my own spirit to keep at it. Second, I’m developing an awareness of the natural environment around me — available food, the seasons and weather patterns, the threats in the environment, etc.
Most importantly, I’m spending a lot of time with my own internal noise. The part of this I can explain in words is learning to discern what comes from me, the conscious and unconscious, and what comes from some other source. What matters most is, whatever I do have is just a tool for His glory, and on this level of existence it is all expendable, and the end of things need not make the least bit of sense to my human mind. So when I write something here, I don’t worry about convincing anyone, because it’s not supposed to make sense. Whether it touches your heart is not at all dependent on me, but the Holy Spirit of God Who impels me to write. I’m not trying to connect with your logical mind, but trusting the Lord will shepherd the thoughts to where He can use them.
Go ahead and read whatever catches your interest on the Net, but don’t you dare swallow the message simply because it appeals to your sense of logic. Trust neither the mainstream nor the alternative press for anything which really matters. Trust in a higher power to point the way for you in this increasingly chaotic world as the West dies slowly, painfully, thrashing about and destroying everything it touches. There is a part of you which it cannot touch, and that’s where you focus to find everything which really matters. Don’t make simple survival your mission.
No mere human can plan well enough for what’s coming.

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Obadiah

Posted on June 8, 2012 by ehurst

As always, we must recognize a significant portion of the text is parabolic. Yet parts of it we can recognize in literal events in history. Most importantly is the clear lesson how God judges the nations impartially, even when the victim is Israel. Had Edom simply remained aloof from her cousins, she would have suffered precious little. Instead, her bitter war against God’s revealed purpose and will was a war against God Himself. We are hardly surprised so much of this is typical of God’s wrath: The exact kind of evil she brought against Israel was magnified upon her own head.
The literary format is a bill of accusation presented in a law court. The Judge is Jehovah, of course. It is He who sent an angelic runner to announce His sentence against Edom, that all nations should rise up together against her, no one as her ally or protector. Meanwhile, the Judge lectures the defendant.
Edom was known for unspeakable arrogance, trusting in how difficult it was to approach the capital city. The narrow gorge was the only entrance, and there was precious little room to assemble troops in front of the city. No matter, because God Himself was answering her bold challenge. Could the city even fly in the sky, it would not escape His wrath. Were it merely robbers or crop raiders, they would take only what they could easily carry. God would send assaults capable of invading the secret treasuries, leaving nothing. Everyone who had ever been allied would betray them, even while Edom’s food bribes were in their mouths. Her wisest men would become fools, and her most depraved soldiers would fear.
What were her crimes? In the ancient world, blood ties were the substance of all God’s Laws. By His command, all governments were supposed to be blood relations to those they governed. This remains today the single strongest tie between humans in their fallen state. However bad a tribal government could be, it could not possibly be so bad as every other form of government man has dreamed up since then. It was God Himself who declared no one should have significant rule in your daily life who isn’t related to you by blood or covenant. So it should surprise no one the Lord takes particular offense when blood kin are set against each other. Esau was Jacob’s brother; their descendants in the nations of Edom and Israel were blood relations, shared DNA. God would not permit Israel to harm Edom, but Edom couldn’t wait to do anything, small or great, against Israel.
Every time any power rose up to invade Jerusalem, to take plunder and captives, Edom begged — even offered bribes — for the opportunity to participate as her enemy. It was not for the profit, but the sheer and unspeakable spite. This destroyed the fundamental boundaries between nations in God’s Laws. Even when the invaders were hostile to Edom as well, she would volunteer to cut off escape routes for any part of Israel. They dared to drink celebratory toasts to their pagan deities in the very Temple grounds.
Thus, Edom would be driven from her home, so that foreign invaders toast their gods against Edom’s losses until the earth was removed. We know during the early part of the Restoration when some tiny remnant had returned to Jerusalem from Exile, that Arab tribes invaded Edom’s territory. Arabs subjugated Edom completely as slaves and peasants on their own ancient homeland. A couple of centuries later, the Nabateans invaded and drove all of them out. A tiny remnant of Edomites occupied the Negev and portions of southern Judah, only to be subjugated by John Hyrcanus. They were finally absorbed into Judah and disappeared from history before the Romans broke the final Jewish revolt.
Meanwhile, when Messiah comes and brings the New Israel, no one will remember Edom, nor any other enemy of the old Israel. The symbolism of the revived Davidic Kingdom against the hopeless end of the Edomites is God rubbing it into her face.

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Obadiah: Introduction

Posted on June 6, 2012 by ehurst

We have no idea who was the prophet Obadiah. We cannot match him to any other Obadiah who appears in the historical narratives. Nor can we precisely determine his dates, because there are four similar events which match what he condemns in his prophecy. Edom’s final perfidy was during the Babylonian conquest and destruction of Jerusalem. Of course, Babylon turned on Edom a couple of years later. Sometime later the Nabateans invaded Edom as the new rulers.
What matters most is the message itself. One of the most ancient customs among humans has been the utter necessity of treating blood kin somewhat better, with much greater forgiveness and flexibility than other humans. Granted, when someone makes themselves your enemy, it won’t matter if it’s your brother. Still, Jacob took nothing Esau didn’t throw away. Nor did it matter how he got it, because God Himself revealed Jacob was the chosen, so Esau had the obligation to step aside. Instead, Esau’s descendants treated Jacob’s with a particularly raw and bitter hatred above all other nations on the earth. In other words, only God’s patience prevented Him wiping Edom from human memory until very late in the game, when He was about ready to remove Israel from her favored position once and for all.
Christ closed the Covenant of Moses. Just a century or so before that, the Edomites were absorbed into what was left of Israel, the kingdom of Judah. Edomite King Herod, having married into the Judean royal family, usurped the throne by killing all rivals. His sons are the last known Edomite blood in history, disappearing when Rome finally crushed Jewish revolts.

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Sinful Legislation

Posted on June 6, 2012 by ehurst

Any legal and political system which is built on lies is inherently sinful.
If your politics assume people can be changed significantly by pressure from regulation,etc., that is evil politics. Evil because it encourages people to sin, rather than inhibits sin, the fundamental requirement under the Covenant of Noah. I’ll cite an example.
You may be aware Canada’s government adds a fee rather like an extra tax to media which might conceivably be used to record pirated music and video. In other words, everyone who purchases such writable media are presumed likely doing something naughty, and all must pay this extra fee. For the moment, let’s not discuss how not a single cent gets to the artists, as it’s all consumed by the big corporations who claim copyright ownership/control over this varied entertainment. The point is the government assesses a fee for piracy which, for the most part, does not happen. It’s a punitive fine levied without bothering to see if the buyer is actually doing that. It punishes everyone, not the wrongdoer. That’s because the people doing wrong can well afford this little fee.
Germany decided to really pump up the volume on this policy. They were charging a similar fee on the likes of jump drives. This week, that fee went up by 200x. Yes, it’s surely because someone on the government staff is also on the staff of the German version of MAFIAA. So your 8GB memory stick, previously with an added fee of about €.08 now costs an extra €1.95.
Consumers are going to notice, and they are going to understand perfectly. In the minds of the average human, they are now paying for piracy a hefty flat rate. Therefore, it justifies every act of piracy, because you’ve already paid for it. The government encourages the very thing they say they want to stop. Either the government officials are lying, that this is merely an excuse to squeeze everyone for the sake of some private commercial entity (fascism), or the government is building on a false understanding of human nature. Probably both. God has revealed the truth, and no human government is exempt from His Laws.
This is evil, and God is not amused.

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Robot Souls

Posted on June 5, 2012 by ehurst

Can we press beyond the barrier to Artificial Intelligence? Can robots have souls?
Maybe. Won’t matter. Oh, I suppose it will appear important to a lot of people and it will herald a yet more inhumane world, but it won’t change anything that really matters.
A robot cannot have a spirit.
Until we get our anthropology straight, we can’t possibly do that much with AI. Humans are the only earthly creatures capable of communion with God. Man is not the Creator, and cannot duplicate God’s work here in this fallen realm, much less in any other realm. Our problem is the foul lie there is no other realm.
So while a great many advances are surely happening, and it will continue, creating an independent intelligent mind is not the final frontier. It’s the final failure. It’s ultimate idiocy in man attaching himself to Satan’s dream of usurping God’s throne. Ain’t gonna happen.

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Abuse of Honesty

Posted on June 4, 2012 by ehurst

Being honest can be wrong.
Saturday, my wife and I went to a picnic. It was for her high school reunion. A few people knew who I was, but there was precious little conversation for me. That was fine, because my brain always has things to do, things which take time. It was just as well I not sit there and speak to the air every thought crossing my mind. They didn’t gather to hear my latest rant. So I sat there mostly in silence.
We call that “civility” — not burdening others with an honest report of things which is none of their business, of no interest to them. Without that, we would have the most inane nonsense paraded before the world as if it really mattered, rather like Facebook, but worse because you can’t log out. We consider people who chatter to everyone that way somewhat deranged or missing some basic human capacity, if not simply incredibly rude and childish.
We struggle to teach children not to blurt out everything that crosses their minds. In a civil society, everyone is prepared to teach a child some small lesson in civility when the opportunity presents itself, rather like dogs are instinctively restrained when dealing with a rowdy and annoying creature bearing that distinctive puppy smell. We don’t want kids asking questions which are none of their business, and we want to them to learn when it’s not their business. We note our Postmodern American society is losing this civility restraint.
It’s not a sin to teach children the basic mythology of their native culture, either. Even when that mythology consists of fairy tales and Brothers Grimm stuff, and we know those things aren’t true, we rightly teach that lore as part of the language. We know they will eventually realize those things are fiction, but still part of our cultural heritage. Nor is it a sin to use sarcasm, saying the opposite of what everyone can tell you really mean. And God help the fool who believes hyperbole has no place in the English language.
The ancient Hebrew heritage is loaded with hyperbole. Indeed, the language itself includes a large collection of words with a dramatic, over-the-top imagery no one takes literally (except Pharisees). So when Jesus spoke what His people called Hebrew, a parabolic language used to tell parables, who would dare to suggest He was lying? Yet when He told people the literal truth, sometimes they didn’t get it because it was simply too foreign. There was a time when Israelis would have thought you were joking when you told them there was only one deity. Moses struggled against that problem, as did all his successors in national leadership, until the instinct for idolatry was broken during the Babylonian Exile.
God decided He was going to use me as a prophet. There are times I don’t announce that when people ask what I do. I have to remain sensitive to the Spirit of God and rely on Him to guide me. What portion of truth is going to glorify His Name in that context? Telling certain people I’m a prophet would be as harmful as an outright lie for personal gain. In most cases, if someone can’t tell there’s something different about me, it won’t do any good to tell them. Pearls before swine, again.
I’m in very august company. John the Baptist denied he was the Second Elijah, though he was indeed. That’s because answering “yes” to the question would have been deceptive, since they were locked into a set of false notions about what that meant. Instead, John gave them what they could use. Slop for hogs; milk for babies.
Yes, it means trying to act on God’s behalf, a sort of “playing God” with people who aren’t on the same wavelength as we are. It’s really demanding and you’ll get it wrong often. Still, all truth is God’s Truth. Sometimes you don’t give a fully honest account because it just doesn’t fit, doesn’t seem pertinent to His glory at that moment. Sometimes telling someone you think they’re stupid — an honest account of your thoughts — isn’t going to help matters at all.
Absolutism is a sin.
Sometimes it’s good and right to keep your mouth shut, because “truth” of that sort can be harmful.

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Pearls, Pigs and Prostitutes

Posted on June 3, 2012 by ehurst

Absolutism is a symptom of a serious moral disease.
Thanks to the Pharisees, both ancient and modern, we tend to read the Bible with absolutist lenses. Our unconscious assumption is we must see all moral questions in terms of universal absolutes, as if truth could possibly exist as objective reality outside the Person of God. Truth is simply another name for God, and there is no truth unless it expresses His character. All truth is God’s Truth; all Truth is an expression of God’s revelation. There is no such thing as absolute truth as some abstract entity with an independent existence. The “it” is a living Person.
That saves us the blasphemy of trying to judge God according to some independent standard. None exists. We are accountable to Him personally, individually; He is in no wise accountable to us. He is God. We are creatures, a word derived from “creation” — we are created by the Creator. He judges us, and there is no appeal to any other standard, no higher court of imaginary, objective “absolute truth” against which we can measure Him. There is only the standard of revelation. Truth is defined as “whatever God says.”
It is not absolutism; it is living, dynamic, organic to life itself. If any human did this, we would call it arbitrary and capricious, because humans are fallen and incapable of self-consistency. But this is God, and His whims are consistent with His character, which is utterly unknowable except what He deems appropriate to reveal. It all demands a personal and active obeisance to God the Person, not some pile of static rules. The Sword of the Spirit is living and active.
People fuss over Rahab (in the Book of Joshua) lying to the soldiers about the Israeli spies on her roof. The narrative takes the obvious position this was okay. To suggest she sinned in that particular act is roughly equivalent to saying concealed carry is lying.
Consider: In the Ten Commandments, the Lord said something which is pretty closely confined, but is usually inflated by modern Pharisees. The words translate roughly as, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” The idea was promoting community welfare, not harming people unnecessarily. Now Jesus solved the problem of identifying who qualifies as “neighbor” by pointing out anyone who isn’t your enemy, but does you good, is your neighbor regardless of whether they are under the Covenant of Moses or Noah. There were plenty of times He did things which amounted to deceiving those who weren’t His neighbor. On the one hand, His being Son of God was altogether pertinent, but He spent the first thirty years of His life not announcing that, though He surely knew it. He hid the truth from most people right up to the end.
Jesus also mentioned the business of not throwing pearls of truth to pigs, nor feeding dogs (repulsive to Jews) the cold stale leftovers from a Passover meal. It had to be disposed of properly, which meant keeping it from dogs, at least. Both images are the same thing, depicting handling truth as an extension of God’s Person. It’s holy, precious and valuable. It was intended we give it to anyone who asks, but it would remain a mystery to those who didn’t want it. Jesus taught using parables with the intent, in part, of keeping His enemies from understanding what He thought of them and their ideas.
Did Jesus deceive His enemies? They were deceived already. He didn’t break off the bent reed nor quench the smoldering wick. Did you get that parable? Those soldiers in service to the ruler of Jericho were already deceived, because Rahab confessed the truth the whole city knew it was “game over.” By preparing to fight, they made themselves enemies of the Truth, enemies of the God of Israel. Instead of throwing pearls before swine, Rahab took care of her new neighbors. The soldiers of Jericho were not her neighbors any more, as Jesus defined it.
You may make the serious error of associating this with Situational Ethics. That broken modern philosophy still assumes an absolutist approach. It still assumes humans can determine what’s good without revelation. What Rahab did wasn’t a necessary lie in that sense, an ends justifying the means. She was acting on Truth, which was the impending victory of Joshua and the people of Israel over Jericho. That was proved when the walls collapsed without any human intervention.
If you hide the facts to cover your sins, it will not work out. Hiding the fact you have a pistol in your waistband (legally, of course) is pertinent only to your enemies. Keeping your plans from the enemy is simply good tactics. In the modern absolutist sense, that would be deception, a synonym for lying. In God’s Word, accurately and honestly advertising such things is stupid, asking for trouble, even to the point of flinging a challenge in God’s face. If you seek a word from God about things, whatever He says is right is right. Sometimes you send out the choir in the vanguard to face your enemies, and the enemy kills themselves. At other times, you wait until God drops hailstones on their heads. And at yet another time He simply tells you sneak around and surprise them. It’s failing to ask which gets you in trouble, because you assume you have it all worked out and don’t need God.
It’s time we understand Truth is an expression of God’s revelation, not something we are permitted to judge for ourselves.

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The Sin of Lot's Wife

Posted on June 2, 2012 by ehurst

Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire, from the LORD out of the heavens. And He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. (Genesis 19:24-26 MKJV)

We refer to the cities of the Dead Sea Plain as the Pentapolis (“Five Cities”), dominated by the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The former has passed into the English language as a symbol of depraved sexual behavior — “sodomy”. What isn’t obvious to us is how that behavior was actually a religious rite in that area. It was common among the cities of the entire region of Palestine at that time. We find records previous to 2000 BC, up through the Conquest. Occasionally it reared its ugly head as idolatry during the time Ancient Israel occupied the area.
In the mythology of that time and place, a high degree of civilization and urban living was always flavored with hedonism and debauchery. It’s not as if nomads weren’t morally questionable, too, but for those cultures which possessed a high thread of high morality, it was harder to institutionalize sin if there were no institutions. In a city like Sodom, as we see from the narrative, depravity was mandatory. Out in the wilderness, you at least have the freedom to be decent if you wish.
From time immemorial, morality under God’s Laws has always carried that element of volition. Unless you were literally chained to the nasty city life, it was better to starve in the wilderness than surrender to evil. In the case of Lot’s wife, the chains were in her soul. It was all she had ever known. Her marriage to Lot was conditional in her mind. As long as she could stay in her homeland, it was fine. When her marriage demanded she leave the nest, she would rather die. We rightly shame Lot for not doing a better job of separating himself from that atmosphere. His wife had no sense of otherworldliness, no sense that there was something more valuable.
Most people have no trouble making the parallels between the Pentapolis, as the story is told, and the US today. Unfortunately, we are silly enough to make it a mere question of homosexuality. It’s one of the primary sins of our nation and culture to oversimplify things that way. It’s bad enough our culture makes so much of expertise while the undercurrent just an inch below the surface violently opposes actual knowledge and wisdom. The politics of sexual orientation is not even a reliable symptom of cultural decline, but is merely entertainment, a distraction to prevent anyone noticing that powerful rip current is carrying us onto the jagged rocks. Yes, God says consistently throughout the Bible He regards homosexuality as sin, but that applies to just about any sexual behavior outside of a solemn marriage vow. We have a far bigger problem with adultery, for example, than we do with homosexuality.
But it wasn’t really about sex at all with Lot’s wife. The entire Hebrew culture rested on the understanding what we can see and discuss is all mere symbolism and parable for things far more critical. This entire realm of existence is one big lie, and until we make that effort to reach out for the Otherworld, we cannot leave behind the filth of this one. All the sins of this narrative are wrapped up in a refusal to regard the God who had already done so much to reveal Himself and His ways. In a culture so fully loaded with mysticism there was no excuse for not having a way to understand that revelation.
Now, here we stand in a culture devoid of any meaningful mysticism, a shallow caricature at best. We have a gut reaction to despise the intellectual space built into us for considering things outside the five senses and our pitiful excuse for logic. This is what will turn America into a pillar of salt, along with all of Western Civilization itself.
No one is more aware of how silly it appears for me to claim I am a prophet of Jehovah in these times. Of all people, as I write these words, I sense the resistance they will meet. I am fully cognizant of how much it paints me with a clown face and a big target on my chest. I don’t belong to this age by any means, despite having been born here. I’m not content to simply hide out in a cave near the Pentapolis and let come what may. I’ve already climbed out onto the heights of the wilderness and pitched my tent. I’d rather fail knowingly in my search for righteousness than wallow in the success of easy sin lying below. I’m not turning back like Lot’s wife because there is nothing in this realm of existence holding me.
Care to join me?

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Amos 9

Posted on June 1, 2012 by ehurst

When the Day of the Lord comes, nothing remains the same. His wrath falls upon sin and destroys it, along with all sinners who cling to it. His grace and mercy build up those who seek His glory.
The final vision for the Northern Kingdom is God Himself standing inside the paganized temple at Bethel. His Name was called there in vain, but when He does appear, it is for wrath upon those who rejected His Covenant. Whether Samaria liked it or not, the Covenant of Moses as originally published applied to them. Having defiled it with these temples, merely a sharp political move, those who worship there would not survive. The Lord speaks to His own wrath, commanding the temple be knocked down on the heads of those who worshiped there. The few who escaped would be taken by the sword. No matter where they flee in this world or the Other, there is no place where God cannot pursue them.
Samaria had forsaken not merely their peculiar national deity, but this is the very Creator of all things. The earth cannot bear His Presence, and Heaven can hardly contain Him. The Northern Kingdom had made themselves so pagan, they were no different in God’s sight than the most remote Gentiles of the earth. He who called the nations to move here and there upon the face of the earth could as easily wipe them off the earth. So the sinners of Israel would be destroyed, but the House of Israel would remain, populated by a righteous remnant, whose population would be swelled from among the Gentile nations of the earth.
All nations would be sifted as grain, and nothing fruitful would be lost. Those who trust in their own wisdom and talents would be destroyed. What Amos says next was taken by the Samaritans as mere political statement, but he’s not talking about some mere earthly kingdom of David. He prophesies the Lord would build a new Kingdom of the Spirit, a Messianic promise of the future Davidic Realm in the hearts of men. It would be everyone from the human race who embraces this Messiah. What the Law had symbolized in earthly terms was a divine blessing on Life in the Spirit, an outpouring of richness too great to measure. No one will be able to take them from that spiritual land of Eternity.

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A Just Mind

Posted on June 1, 2012 by ehurst

It’s all in your mind.
What’s the difference? Why would God spare my neighborhood where there aren’t all that many people, and trash some really fine Christian neighborhoods with massive hail storms? It’s not as if they had better insurance; some of them were actually less well off than we. I don’t know all the answers, but I know something about how God works in this world.
Given what I’ve encountered, and the reactions of Western Christians in general, and American Christians in particular, it’s that Western mindset. You would think I’d get tired of harping on this, but the problem stands like a vast mountain of falsehood, and things won’t get better until people see it for what it is. My spirit cannot rest so long as I keep encountering the spiritual ignorance.
You cannot hope to gain a full measure of God’s blessings on this earth without that Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) mindset. That’s the intellectual background of the Bible, the culture God designed Himself as the only way He would reveal Himself to the world. So long as you adhere to a Western epistemology, you cannot fully engage the moral fabric of His Creation.
No, I do not suggest God requires you go back and get an degree in ANE thinking. But it does take some effort to overcome Satan’s greatest achievement to date, which is Western Civilization. So long as your mind unconsciously clings to this Western culture as His way of doing things, you cannot hope to understand what it means to follow Christ. Jesus was an ANE man, and His mind is freely available to those who really want it, but you have to embrace His viewpoint on this realm of existence. If you aren’t a mystic, you aren’t really a Christian.
To fully harvest the blessings of God’s Laws on this earth, you have to have a lawful mind, and embrace the Ancient Hebrew intellectual approach to things.

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