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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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?

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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.

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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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