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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Truth's Two Edges

Posted on May 31, 2012 by ehurst

It’s like an old Roman style sword; it cuts both ways.
Yes, those who adhere to God’s Laws can expect things to go differently. Those Laws are fundamental, the moral fabric of the universe itself. Since we moved here a few years ago, for example, storms and other natural disasters quit ripping this area. Two nights ago, I watched on radar as a fast-moving storm cell swept up from the south and collided with a very large batch of storms creeping our way from the northwest. The small cell steered the massive collection of storms away from us. People all around us faced hailstones ranging up to 5 inches (13cm) in diameter, fierce winds and heavy flooding rains. We barely got rain. We aren’t better than the people in those other places; we simply obeyed God’s Laws and reap the blessings. If more people obeyed His Laws, things would be different. That’s the way things work in this universe.
But that’s only half the issue. We were quite willing to face the total loss of all things we own. The Truth is more valuable to us than all the material goods of this earth. Indeed, we have already placed our lives in forfeit for His glory. We remain confident whatever we face is for His glory, and we glorify Him by how we face it. This is the other edge of the same sword. It’s not so much we have no trouble, but we view all such trouble differently. Nothing we do can keep God from working His own glory, but by our willing participation, that glory brings blessings. That is, what such participation brings is by definition a blessing. The only question is: How does God intend to glorify His Name through us? We give Him the credit, by our grateful thanksgiving, for sparing us from the destruction and sorrow.
He is the One who decides what “glory” means. That glory sword of Truth has two edges.

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It's Not About Us

Posted on May 30, 2012 by ehurst

Truth lives in Heaven, so it’s not about us.
This blogger is a non-profit prophet. This is not about me. It would be a huge mistake to offer me any form or degree of reverence. I’m not holy, just chosen. No part of this will make sense on a human level, and it’s frankly not what I would have chosen for myself. It’s part of the same package where the Apostle Paul didn’t choose to become a Christian there on the road to Damascus. I’m not worthy to wash Paul’s dirty feet, so there’s no arrogance here.
Ignore me if you can.
The Truth cuts its own path in your soul. I won’t pretend it’s important because it happens to come from my fingers or mouth. I offer no proof of anything. If the message doesn’t carry its own proof for you, just move on and find something more entertaining to read. Don’t take me seriously, because I don’t.
There are some things which come with the package, some implications of this label “prophet.” I don’t surrender my personality, but you probably won’t see a lot of it. I don’t have room for expressing myself; it’s not about me. This thing is all-consuming. In the biblical tradition that means I don’t take up offerings, never ask for anything, but accept anything you decide to offer. I think of it as an offering to God from you, and a gift to me from God. If you ask me to pray for something specific, I’ll take it quite seriously. That’s because in that ancient tradition, a prophet is more likely to get an answer from God regarding your request. It’s not a privileged position or anything; it’s just part of how God does business. I’m an agent, conscripted at that. It’s not the agent making anything important, but for Whom he’s an agent.
Ask questions about the Bible and morality in general, and you’ll get my understanding of things. Not “The Official Answer” in that sense, but the answer I find myself compelled to give. If you have read anything I’ve written here so far, you’ll understand how Truth seems so fuzzy on this plane of existence. It’s a problem with life here, not Truth. This realm is all warped, twisted and broken. Truth is rooted in that Other Realm which is perfect, and is only somewhat expressible here. Truth coming into this realm is always somewhat flavored by the vehicle, including the people God appoints to express it for Him. I do my best to grasp the Bible from the mental frame of reference held by those who wrote it, and I’ve long contended most Western scholars get that wrong. You can decide for yourself whether my contention holds any water.
I’m not trying to convince you of anything. Whatever I could do by my human talents to change your mind is not going to have eternal consequences. It’s that “eternal” business which drives me, and I don’t trust my own abilities to accomplish anything which matters. So you can review my messages here from any perspective you choose, and I won’t take it personally. I’m not doing this for you, nor for me.
I’m doing this because I can’t avoid it, can’t turn away from it.

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