Counterfeit Religion: NAR

Posted on October 13, 2011 by ehurst

The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) — look it up with your favorite search engine.

You’ll get lots of names, places, organizations. It’s big and growing fast, with money pouring into by the truckload every day. If there is any religion today threatening humanity, this is probably it. I’ll give you a clue: They think God votes Republican, which in reality plays out to Fascism. Worse, it has one foot deep into blasphemy.

You can read all you like, but the best way to spot a counterfeit is to have a sure knowledge of the real thing. I’ll raise a few issues of the real deal so you’ll understand why NAR is fake.

Jesus never had any interest in politics, aside from knowing enough to avoid getting involved. Granted, everyone involved in politics will interpret a genuine Christian faith as a political statement, but they would do that with a drop of bird splat. Jesus said His Kingdom was not of this world, and His disciples would not be involved in changing the political situation. If politics need to change, we leave that in God’s hands, because we have too many otherworldly concerns to occupy our time.

Christians are looking to escape this world, not fix it. Of course, true religion is taking care of widows and orphans, and anyone else who suffers in some way, powerless against a broken world. That’s because the message is our sacrificial love, a willingness — nay, an eagerness — to lay down one’s life for the sake of the message. And if that means dying from a thousand voluntary cuts to our own welfare, fine.

That business of being a “victorious overcomer” is a reference to conquering one’s own personal demons. God may choose to extend His hand to perform signs and wonders, and may grant some of us a limited authority to direct that power, but only because we have demonstrated to His satisfaction a certain level of commitment. That’s the meaning of that fancy word, “faith.” We are committed to tossing aside all our worldly concerns, and though we hardly expect to succeed against our own fallen flesh every time, we are committed and ready to keep trying until we die. We overcome death by facing it head on, and passing through it to the other side. No miracle from God is granted based merely on human need, but upon some revelatory need to express a higher truth, to correct some spiritual injustice.

There is nothing wrong with using the term “apostle” to describe an office assumed by some human person at any point in human history, and on into the future. That’s because the term is synonymous with “missionary.” It implies a certain amount of authority over those who respond to the missionary efforts, but even Paul considered himself accountable to those who sent him. We all recognize we are ultimately accountable to God, but we also know He works through other people as surely as He does us. It’s not about rank, but role. Paul said he would rather lose his influence over someone if it meant they went out and preached the gospel.

There are also prophets throughout human history. In broad terms there are two types, with a lot of overlap, because it’s all by the same Holy Spirit. There are prophets under the Laws of God, such as yours truly. There are also prophets who receive a particular spiritual gift, considered part of the so-called charismatic gifts. The difference is the internal process involved, and a broad difference in how the ministry operates. Neither of them says anything contrary to what is well established in Scripture. Everything is merely an application or contextual refinement arising from deep and ineffable truth. No prophet today will add to Scripture.

Scripture is a Hebrew document, even the part written by the Gentile, Luke. It’s based on a Hebrew intellectual world view, which happens to be distinctly mystical. The logic is symbolic, and the language is largely parabolic. It is not analytical in logic, and not often literal in expression. If you start from the Hebrew assumptions, the literal portions will become obvious. To assume a literalistic rendering of clearly symbolic language is asking for trouble.

Real religion is a matter of tagging alongside while God does the real work. Teaching faith is not about talent or charisma. Paul was notoriously untalented as a public speaker, yet so very effective because he didn’t rely on his personal abilities. The message carries its own power. It also does not depend on money, because God supplies by free will, voluntary offerings. If people won’t ante up, that’s their problem. God’s work gets done regardless of any human agency, but He surely prefers to use all the servants He can get.

If/when we have a national government dominated by Republicans, we will have to contend with the very real threat from this NAR stuff. And you thought the Spanish Inquisition was rough.

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Hidden Economies

Posted on October 13, 2011 by ehurst

You may be aware of the concept of unofficial economic activity, that which isn’t calculated into the formulas because it’s illegal, black market, or in some other way underground and unreported. There are some good estimates and some bad ones, and it’s hard to know just how much of the actual economic activity is off-the-books.
I’ve said before the coming economic collapse won’t stop TPTB. First, most of them have skimmed off huge amounts of productivity and socked it away somewhere. They won’t be broke. On top of that, however much unofficial economic activity may be going on, here in the US much of it is actually the work of the CIA and other clandestine agencies. Ever hear of Iran-Contra?
That was the nasty bit of work where the CIA was trading arms secretly with Iran to buy back some hostages. The money for the trade came from arms and drug smuggling between the US and the Contra Guerrillas in Nicaragua. More than one exposé has been published showing the CIA has long been involved in drug smuggling. The job of the DEA is to keep the competition under control so the CIA has a free and open market, but somebody forget to explain that to the DEA. That’s why the CIA bombed that Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, because a relatively honest DEA agent on that plane had the goods on CIA drug smuggling in the Middle East.
One of the best books explaining how our foreign policy blunders were almost entirely the result of CIA drug trafficking is The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia by Alfred W. McCoy. Virtually the entire mess of the Vietnam War was all about keeping the Asian heroin supply in the hands of the CIA, or at least a sizable portion of the profits. It also explains almost all the MIAs and POWs we left behind there. They almost surely knew about this nasty business, and would have spilled the beans back here in the US. It was cheaper than assassinating them.
Perhaps you can extrapolate quite sensibly from the Mena Incident and CIA smuggling of cocaine detailed in the book by Gary Webb, Dark Alliance, and why he was found assassinated, through the current troubles in Mexico with their drug cartels. DEA agents have been severely disciplined when they insisted on inspecting various mass cargo vehicles (such as rail cars) coming out of Mexico. About all they are permitted to catch are symbolic shipments and small timers competing with the CIA.
Do not make the mistake of thinking the worst activities of our government will be curtailed by an economic crash. You and I may well starve, but the CIA will continue as if nothing happened. If anything, their market will be improved and they can gouge the prices at will. And do you suppose one of the reasons we sent troops to Afghanistan was to set the farmers free to grow heroin, which the Taliban had not allowed? There are surely plenty of other reasons, but this one counts large in our policy planning.
I reiterate my conviction TPTB will always have enough money for whatever it is they wish to do. They own The Fed, all the largest banking and investment houses, everything on Wall Street that matters, control all the government agencies they need, and if they need money, it’s as simple as snapping their fingers. When the economy goes down, it will be our economy, not theirs. You shouldn’t imagine it would mean bringing the troops home or anything like that. All the wars, drugs, petroleum, and everything else they like will continue apace until something fundamental for them breaks.
That’s a little farther down the road, just yet.
Addenda: After posting this, I ran across an outstanding summary here at LRC Blog. If any of this post interests you, you’ll want to pursue the blog post at LRC and the links to more information to the primary actors in this nasty business of the narcotics ghost government.

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Futility, Says the Prophet

Posted on October 12, 2011 by ehurst

It’s not possible to be sure exactly what the facts are in some situations, even when you are there seeing it first hand.
For example, did you know the label “natural” on most foods has little resemblance to the meaning you and I would naturally assume? We think it means the only difference between the raw product and the stuff in the package is some basic physical handling. Something has been harvested, chopped, maybe dried, then mixed, and perhaps baked or boiled. Then it’s packaged and sold, right? Almost invariably, when you see that word “natural” as advertising on the package, it’s not even close to that definition. It’s just a sucker word, an outright lie, which is the the definition of “advertising.” You can find the label on food which has seen contact with toxic solvents, not to mention significant residues of pesticides and such. You can’t taste those toxins, but your body knows in the sense that stuff affects your health incrementally, and causes entirely unnatural medical problems and premature death. Yeah, “natural.”
The OWS protests have manifested in my area. I could take a 20 mile (32km) ride to Kerr Park in downtown OKC and find our local version of OWS. It’s pretty peaceful so far, and I’m sure it would be very interesting to meet some of the people involved. But I’m not going to go there. Much as I like what it represents, I doubt the majority of the participants really understand the dynamics of it all. Yes, many of them are seasoned veterans of various forms of political protest and activism, including a very high-powered lawyer helping lead the thing here in OKC. Still, I doubt they realize what is truly necessary here.
I’m guessing the OWS folks in Boston know. I confess I don’t have a solidly researched assessment at hand regarding the relative belligerence of the various major urban police departments, but I seem to recall the Boston PD has never shrunk from breaking their own laws. Seattle is notorious for it, too. Then again, the OKCPD has never hesitated, either, but you probably haven’t read much about their moral failures unless you are tuned into our local news. Even then, you have to read between the lines, because precious few reporters from any agency would dare to rat on the OKCPD with any reliability. Seems to me it’s partly that OKCPD has never faced something which really sells papers nationally. Whomever might be blogging about it gets little attention. Bloggers revealing the sins of Boston or Seattle are probably more numerous, and are certainly more famous. Their populations are much larger than OKC, but I imagine the real difference is we just don’t get much notice.
Besides, right now there is no conflict between our OWS crew and the police.
But a major issue is the effectiveness of the protest itself. Moral persuasion arising from activism is seldom of any significance. How badly the voting population dislikes something has no bearing on the matter. The whole nation despised TARP, saying quite loudly they didn’t want it, but it went through. I can recall the massive anger locally at Senator Henry Bellmon for signing the treaty which released US ownership of the Panama Canal, but that didn’t stop him. He faced recall, and still retained tremendous influence. Lots of things have happened like that, but the sheeple hardly did more than bleat impotently.
Other protests have been more effective, at least apparently. The sheeple lost interest in supporting the Vietnam War and it did have an effect on our involvement. The protests did make a difference. There are a lot of factors going into that, such as the timing of the whole thing, coinciding with a long planned major shift in our national social consciousness on a whole range of things. The very character of the US shifted dramatically during the two decades following WW2. Significant to me was how several Christian denominations were dragged kicking and screaming by a leadership coup from the pacifist side over to the pro-war side. At about the same time, Dispensationalism was taking over the same bunch of evangelical denominations. The two are obviously connected, and together paradoxically connected to the polarization arising from the rather effective antiwar protests.
It’s not the same world today. Moral persuasion is simply not possible, unless it doesn’t matter. So long as sheeple sentiment is unlikely to affect plutocrat activities, the protests are harmless and permitted. To be effective would require the sheeple being more afraid of the thing protested than the crushing hand of the plutocrats. What OWS is protesting is the plutocrats themselves, and their greedy actions in destroying what was once a pretty strong economy. That the banksters did destroy it is simply not in dispute. It’s a fact, and they did it intentionally, whatever may have been their reasoning behind it. They have no intention of repenting. In that sense, you can say the 1% are functionally psychopaths — completely devoid of any capacity for human feelings like compassion, empathy and guilt. Changing this situation would require something I don’t believe the protesters are willing to recognize consciously.
It would mean at the least a genuine revolution where the plutocrats lose all their powers and privileges. Because of the depth and breadth of their control over the levers of power, the means to project their power and will over the population, this would almost certainly require a massive human slaughter. But short of that, should the OWS protests manifest even the least manifestation of leverage to actually accomplish a genuine change, it is they who would be destroyed. The plutocrats, working through the various agencies they control, would not hesitate to slaughter the protesters, and even a large portion of the sheeple, if that’s what they felt was necessary to preserve their position.
For now, it’s enough to allow the police to rough them up, arrest them, etc. It’s not a simple formula, because some police departments, as noted, are more eager than others. Each city has its own unique atmosphere, and the protesters involved appear to have a different collective character in each city. But if the protesters are determined to effect a change, many of them will die in the process. Were that the only consideration, I’d be involved myself. However, I am utterly certain it won’t happen. That is, changing the system is a pipe dream, because the system simply is not vulnerable in any meaningful way to whatever the protests can possibly accomplish. Were their actions sufficient to stir a genuine revolt in the sheeple, the plutocrats would still win. We simply do not have what is necessary, regardless of how you approach it.
That’s not simply a tactical and strategic evaluation, either. It’s not the right time; the fruit is not ripe. Nor can it be harvested in this fashion. This will be a huge mess, and it may contribute to the final ripening, but I doubt it will do even that. Mostly it will serve only to prove how it’s not yet time. I most certainly am interested in seeing the current regime fall, and I do possess the intent to get involved in bringing it about, but not through any such means. There will be a massive loss of life, both in this and in the end itself, but I will not put my hand to causing it, much less participating directly. I serve a God who won’t permit it, and He has His own plans.
I don’t profess to know much about those plans, but I do understand them in the sense of how such things pass as a type. This thing will die by its own violence, consuming itself internally. The plutocrats will destroy themselves. These are just human beings, in some ways less than that, but for all their eminence, they are just people. They aren’t capable of calculating accurately everything that’s going to happen, much less control events. Smarter than most of us, they’ll take full advantage of mass human response and all the failures that entails. But they don’t see accurately their own failures. Whatever it is they think they are trying to gather and keep will simply flow through their fingers like sand. Without that stuff, they are actually more vulnerable than sheeple. They got into their positions by a powerful driving sense of insecurity, and that insecurity will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I’ve rattled on long enough. Let me reiterate I have a prophetic assurance we Americans deserve this ruling regime, and we are forbidden to raise our hands against it. It is our punishment for the vast sins of our nation in essentially stealing everything we have and pretending we built it ourselves from nothing. We have trespassed and transgressed almost every other country on earth, used and abused them based on philosophical assumptions which arrogantly denied our culpability. So the police state oppression is the rod by which God will punish us. The punishment will stop when some critical mass of souls — He alone decides — have repented. Then He will break that rod. Things have been set in motion already, and the only few exemptions are for those individuals who repent now. All that means is God will reduce your personal share of the wrath due America as a whole.
This is what I plan to promote, support and how I’ll get involved; this is my activism. The shortest path to relief from the 1% is quite honestly breaking away from the system which put them in power, not by direct action to tear it down. It’s that old business of “serenity”: Don’t waste time bumping your head against a stone wall. Put your hands to things you can actually change.
Red pill or blue pill?

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Dunbar and the ANE Lifestyle

Posted on October 11, 2011 by ehurst

Sometime near the beginning of my clerical training in the 1970s, I learned a single pastor could be supported full time beginning around 50 members, and was pretty solid at 75. But as the congregation grew, he would not be able to lead effectively by himself when it got above 150 in regular attendance.
Sometime later, someone named Dunbar presented solid evidence this is wired into the human brain. A single human leader is unable to maintain sufficient emotional attachment to more than some number ranging between 100 – 230.
In Scripture, we see references to multi-generational households with a living grandfather as elder at about 50 people. This accounts for his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, married in folks, servants, etc. A larger clan household around 150 was the same bunch a couple of prosperous generations later, when the elder was not the literal grandfather, but the most competent leader of the eldest generation. The district of several villages and one big town was a tribe, around 1000 – 2000. Granted, at some point the designations stuck to the same group as it become much larger, so that a tribe might easily be over 100K. The terms were applied at the earliest point appropriate.
Compare this with the modern Western military infantry units. A platoon was maxed out at 50 (four squads of 11 each, plus support personnel and leaders) fully manned. A company was about 200 (three platoons plus), and a battalion neared 1000 (three maneuver companies, but other organic subunits, because many essential administrative and support functions are handled at the battalion level).
There is a reason for these breakpoints, and perceptive minds keep stumbling across them as the most effective breakpoints for handling large numbers of humans and keeping them organized for whatever purpose. Informal relations, a strong social bond of trust, with a single focus of leadership are possible up to the Dunbar Number. Beyond that requires greater formality with sub-leaders. As the size grows, the amount of specialization which necessitates adding support people rises exponentially. Small groups can handle everything internally and informally. Adding people to the same amount of space, or adding space to accommodate each successive level of size, both require adding extra bodies to maintain the minimal level of organization.
My blather about the tribal communal lifestyle isn’t totally blather.

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Election Grumbling

Posted on October 11, 2011 by ehurst

Part of me wonders if we will even have an election. It could easily be halted by a declaration of martial law. The probability of it grows incrementally every day. But just in case we do have an election, here are my crazy notions about it.
Democrats are really strange, but not quite stupid. There is a strong move to ask Obama to step down and let Hillary run, instead. Could happen, and she’d probably win. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure we won’t see Biden again. Some may breathe a sigh of relief, but you have to keep in mind, Obama-Biden has been about as harmless as we can hope. That should indicate how bad it really is, because it simply isn’t going to get any better.
I genuinely dread a Republican victory.
Romney is the anointed front-runner. He’s about as establishment as it gets for a non-banker. What hinders him is the Mormon affiliation. For all the silly noises in every direction, likely voters view Mormons as pagan cultists. Republicans pretend they are dominated by the Christian Right Wing, so it just doesn’t matter whatever else is going on, Romney ain’t happening.
Perry is just an aging rent-boy. His support for immigration grates on Republican nerves, but being from Texas, that’s where the money is. But honestly, all you need to really know about Perry is captured in merging his two primary college photos: one as a cheerleader, the other in that silly tall boots military cadet uniform. Merge them in the your mind … then remember he had really poor grades. He’s rather like Obama, an empty suit, a man for sale to the highest bidder, but a different flavor.
Cain is the rising challenger, and very likely to be the nominee. The main point is he’s not just a banker’s candidate, he is a banksta. He is one of those 1% who gambled all the deposits on mortgage swaps and other silly things, lost big, and applauded the plundering of the taxpayers to recoup. To him, the current banking mafia elite is the sacred temple of God and all else can go to Hell. Bonus points for being all black and all American, versus half-black and half-American like Obama.
As we all know, ghosts in the closet can change everything, just like musical chairs. Still, from what we now have, I am guessing we’ll have Cain for President unless Hillary is the opposition. The latter makes her husband look tame, and she won’t suddenly become regal and reasonable simply because she gains the throne. The bright side is our national policy misadventures won’t get any worse. That is, they’ll continue on the same path at the same rate. Cain is Babylon, pure and simple, a fascist dictator. He’ll accelerate the de facto martial law slavery to the military industrial complex, and is the kind to bomb Iran yesterday, and China next week.
Third Party? Not in Ameristan.
All of this because our voters are just that stupid. We deserve so very much the wrath of God.

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Silly Disputes over Jobs and Apple

Posted on October 10, 2011 by ehurst

Go ahead and use your favorite search engine. You’ll find many tributes to Steve Jobs, and a growing number of slams. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll see a somewhat finer division among the tributes. Most say he did big things. That is simply the facts. Then there are those who worship Jobs, if for no other reason than as a proxy for worshiping Apple/Mac products.
I’ve owned a Mac. I traded it off for something I wanted more. Having said that, I now expose myself to attack.
The academic discipline of Social Sciences presumes a fundamental notion: Humans in the aggregate display shared character traits which can be cited and explored. Thus, we can gain some insight into human behavior at large because, while no two individuals act exactly alike in every context, a great many together tend to act alike in certain key areas of life. We can theoretically group humans together in examine certain trends of human nature as a whole.
Over the past two decades, I’ve interacted with a lot of folks in the technology sector. There are trends you can detect, and I’m hardly the only one who might say the following. Linux fan boys (and fan girls) tend to be a little pushy, often crowing about the lack of viruses, for example. The sales pitch gets old when they insist on inserting it into conversations where it is frankly and factually irrelevant. Break down further into various distributions and Linux and you can really get some interesting traits. BSD fan boys are typically real SOBs, and it’s almost as if they hate humans to the same degree they love BSD. It’s reflected in what features will never exist — stuff most people like — in the various branches of the BSD operating systems. MS fans are smart alecks. All the more so because when their favorite stuff fails, they simply ignore all the failures and talk about something else. Oddly, though the vast majority of systems on the Internet run Windows, there aren’t that many real fans of Windows.
Then there are the Mac people. With a precious few exceptions, I have never encountered any Mac people who don’t worship their Macs and the Apple company. Literally. They act as if Apple is no less than the highest High Church, with a leadership whose very farts are each a divine revelation.
So if you dare to list the real facts about Steve Jobs, both good and bad, you’ll be shredded. Even the Zionist shills, who actually get paid for it, aren’t as ruthless and actively pursuing every obscure mention of their sacred cow like a Mac zealot. Indeed, you can’t refer to a Mac “fan boy” because none of them is less than a complete, berserker zealot. Because they were so unstintingly lavish in their worship of Jobs before his death, and even more so after, it could be said they fired the first shot. The Net was loaded with putrefying, sickly sweet articles, about how the world would have ground to a halt long ago were it not for Jobs and his immeasurable genius.
You don’t need to know what I think of Jobs and Apple and Macs. Just wait for it. There will be someone out there come and make ugly comments here and I’ll have to delete them. I cannot tell you how rabid and silly are the comments I’ve seen, with massive long threads, on other blogs whose authors don’t moderate, but do respond to comments. It’s like getting acid splashed in your eyes. It’s possible they might miss this post because they are too busy shredding the others, but I will be surprised if I don’t get at least one stupid comment.

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Complexity of Reality

Posted on October 9, 2011 by ehurst

We shall have a staged revolution.
While I confess to a preference for natural gardening, that doesn’t mean there’s no place for effective shortcuts. To avoid having to use pesticides, I try to grow stuff which has few natural enemies here in Central Oklahoma, crops which actually belong here. But if the ants get bad enough, I’ll consider spraying their hills to limit damage. And I’ll typically use something like Miracle Grow during part of the growing season. There are small risks to such choices, simply taking advantage of natural tendencies in natural processes, without wholesale manipulation.
I’m not all that intelligent. When I can see certain patterns in natural processes, surely there are far smarter people who see them, too. It applies to human behavior, as well. The revolt in Egypt was staged by the CIA. It’s not as if the CIA simply created it wholesale, but took advantage of the venality of her previous ruling class to make them push too far. As that point was approaching, the CIA held training camps for young Egyptians, among others, to promote the kind of thinking and particular methods in revolution which looks just like a reasonable complaint. It was a calculated risk, because it spilled over into a few countries in which the CIA was hoping to maintain the current ruling regime. I see these things simply because I’ve had an education in Social Sciences (history, geography, political science and economics), and I’ve worked in federal government services where you could see what sort of secret policies are executed. I don’t think it requires a brilliant mind to see these things.
The pattern is pretty obvious. Where the military already rules or is useful to the CIA’s policy plans, the revolts are put down. In Egypt, the military was painted as a positive force to protect the people. In places like Afghanistan and Iraq, our government is trying to build a military force more amenable to those policies, finding it necessary to destroy the military power holding sway before. In a few places, it’s enough to simply create and maintain a level of chaos to prevent interference with the CIA’s appointed mission. The CIA isn’t the only player, just the preferred conduit for conducting such broader policy objectives worldwide for TPTB. Here at home, the CIA still acts, but is needed less because other agencies can accomplish much of the plan.
I reiterate here my belief the pattern is (a) using debt to control the whole population so that (b) the military-industrial complex remains firmly in the driver’s seat. But the eventual destination is the choice of the secretive plutocrats, perhaps the Illuminati themselves. Here in the US, I feel certain now there have been repeated attempts to get us under martial law from the 1990s, at least. TPTB are pretty patient, having offered any number of provocations to the federal government — Waco, the Murrah Building bombing, 9/11, Patriot Acts, TSA, etc. Each event justifies greater oppression; event pushes us farther toward the inevitable revolt. The Tea Party was too dangerous, and had to be compromised early.  We may be seeing it now in the OWS protests at last.
It takes only a little fertilizer here and there before a revolt surely sprouts. Every revolt is subject to hijacking, as was the one in Egypt. We currently have a high degree of public favor toward our military, and few understand it is not our friend. Fools have already called for a military coup. But it doesn’t have to be called “martial law” to offer the same degree of control to the chosen instrument. Regardless how this thing progresses, the result will be the same. If it seems the momentum of the OWS protest takes off too quickly, it will be hijacked. If not, it will simply garner the reaction for a more direct assertion of power. I tend to think the latter is more likely, but only if we add in the even greater provocation of an economic collapse. We should expect the controlled opposition to alternate between facetiously picking on it, while also making it seem utterly magical and beautiful. So the contributions and direct food support, for example, should last until the crash. Longevity would contribute to the credibility of the thing.
My thoughts on this are hardly original. Just today I spotted similar thinking in a comment to an article at Activist Post. The article itself gets caught up in supporting the OWS protests. I offered a moral argument in favor of them myself, but only as an opportunity to point out the more fundamental Laws of God on such matters. That they are morally more correct is the nature of things, and whether the actors are aware of those cosmic morals or operate from some wholly different motives makes no difference to me. To the degree their actions reflect God’s justice, they will prosper. That has nothing to do with whether God plans to protect them or allow them to be hijacked. His logic is far more complex than that. These things criss-cross on multiple levels, and the human mind is simply not equipped to handle all of it.
The part which we can understand is the part conceived by the human actors. That’s already complex enough.

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Less Than a Month?

Posted on October 8, 2011 by ehurst

Even the MSM is now admitting the current banking system of the West is just two or three weeks from collapse.
The focus of attention is on Greece. Ever met any Greeks? I have. The national pastime is gaming the system. The government simply gets to play with bigger numbers, because they are in the upper class. It won’t matter what the Greek ruling class agrees to in the face of what the various national and international agencies decree, the Greek people won’t go along with it. They’ve been scalped and have nothing left to lose, so rioting is just the beginning of their resistance. Never mind right or wrong, good or bad; it will happen. The Greek government runs out of cash in two or three weeks, they say.
They could attempt to bypass the cash system, but it won’t last more than a few days, at best. Given the nature of modern Greek culture, the people will be revolting before it even gets there. They understand all this even better than we do. They know the plutocrats aren’t broke, having hidden their golden parachutes outside the country. Does anyone seriously expect them to give back all they’ve stolen?
Everything we’ve read about this whole economic crisis boils down to that very thing. A certain portion of the population have created a class conflict on the sly. They are the corporate officers and upper management, all serving on each others’ directorship boards, and holding big chunks of voting stock, etc. It’s a closed system, which only looks good on paper. They have spent the past few decades feverishly awarding themselves huge bonus payouts from failing business operations. Did they honestly believe this mortgage swap fraud would work? Did they honestly believe sucking up all those tax breaks to send jobs overseas would still leave a functional economic base? That huge fantasy about the Information Economy came out of those boardrooms.
You can’t keep an economy going simply by shuffling the dollars faster and faster amongst the plutocrats. Everyone working in the information industry were actually doing little more than that. Such esoteric electron chasing simply served to mask the legalized embezzling. So now we have our own ruling class with their fat off-shore bank accounts, and every bank and corporation is failing. Were you aware there is virtually no bank fully solvent in reality? Hasn’t been since the first bubble burst in 2008 (credit unions don’t have this problem). All that fraudulent mortgage foreclosure activity was a hurried attempt to fatten the bank balance sheets. Too little, too late.
I suppose the prognosticators are exaggerating, since in reality things take longer than that when everyone is desperately trying to keep the current system going. So let’s see if we can play this out. It’s only my best estimate plus a smidgen of intuition, so you can come up with your own, if you like.
Greece runs out of cash, and the other players simply can’t afford to front them any more. Everyone who has already loaned them money will take a major loss. It’s been my experience the Europeans are slightly more honest about such things than we are, so the Greek bond and debt holders will report the loss, and many will be insolvent that day. I’m sure the repercussions will vary, but a lot of businesses and banks will simply be dissolved, assets sold to settle with their creditors, folks sent home. People who know a lot more about this than me say it will spread like wildfire, because the whole system has been trying to stabilize by spreading it out. But when you depend on a line of credit and your bank closes, you may have to shut down operations. It gets harder when you consider most governments will declare a bank holiday.
So the electronic fund transfers halt, and only cash is exchanged. That would indicate you might want to consider having a store of cash, if possible. But then, for most of us, there’s too much risk in tying up our limited resources that way. That’s the way it is for a huge majority of small businesses, because for quite some time, folks have been forced by circumstances to operate on the edge of failure for the past few decades. Everything is “just in time” and only those who have resources on hand set aside can survive the shock.
It takes awhile for current stocks to be depleted, but as you surely know, consumables go first — food, tobacco, etc. The predators who just barely get by in the best of times will go berserk. A lot of folks who were willing to play by the rules in the past may forget those rules. Some people will be slow to catch on that it’s all over. Most of them will be victims at first.
What you’re actually made of shows up when all your stuff is stripped away. It helps if you’ve been pondering it for awhile already.
Because of the vast number of folks involved, the vast amount of stuff, and all the links in the chains which tie us all together, I seriously doubt it will all come apart overnight. Heroic efforts to keep things going for awhile can see parts of the system stumbling along for weeks. Local variations will be hard to guess.
But in general, every major disaster has gone somewhat like that so far. But instead of a microcosm, like Hurricane Katrina, this will be international in scope. It also gives a big clue how the various levels and agencies of government will react. Ugly.
But don’t take my word for it. Think for yourself.

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Paradoxical Choices Soon

Posted on October 7, 2011 by ehurst

The primary purpose of a mystic is to bridge between this plane of existence and some other. The inescapable imperative of a mystic is helping others find their own bridge. If nothing else, your actions declare the existence of that other world.
All my rantings about God’s Laws reflect that truth. We weren’t designed for this world as it now is, and there most emphatically is something better. You cannot possibly understand that something better without digging into God’s Laws, because He revealed them as the one proper path out of here. In religious language, that’s what it means to call for repentance.
It’s one thing to assert at length all the things God requires of us as humanity at large. It’s another to realize we cannot possibly engage every part of it for the obvious reason there are large chunks of our lives not under our control. More specifically, we will not be granted the authority to change everything we see wrong. The biggest mistake you’ll make is trying to fix things that aren’t yours to fix. You can’t even fix yourself, really. A fundamental element of the Laws and repentance is committing yourself to the Laws. What most modern Western people fail to understand is the ANE assumption this was all about your commitments, not your performance. There is an unspoken assumption to the Laws you must inevitably come up short.
That’s why the Laws offer symbolic ritual means for confirming your recognition of your imperfections. The brokenness of this domain includes the brokenness of everything which belongs to it. Some part of us belongs to it. Mysticism is about recognizing there’s another part of us which does not belong here. That part which does not belong has to make amends for the part that does, until the time the lower part can be shed.
It’s really not possible to explain it with words, but there is an element in that shedding of this mortal coil which is a reward for fighting it tooth and nail to make it behave. Not in the achievement of some success in beating down the broken humanity, but in the faithful commitment and desire for victory which endures for so long as whatever time we are stuck in this form. The only thing pragmatic about this is struggling to understand how the broken part works to capitalize on its inability to win.
So we carry the fire of Heaven in broken vessels. The light leaks out through the cracks, as it were. While the Western obsession over walking the talk is wrong, it’s wise to remember how we admit our limitations before we open our mouths, so that our words indicate a healthy dose of self doubt. Our peace with human failure is our glow.
The rest of the world around us is typically even more broken. It will fight with a massive overwhelming power to snuff that fire. It has its own inherent weaknesses, which is why so many mystics live so long to keep up the glow. But we remain the biggest threat to this broken world, in that we realize it’s one big lie.
So far as I can determine, there is not a single human on this plane who is actually free in any significant sense of the word. Those most free in the flesh are most enslaved in their spirits. Indeed, those spirits are dead. We who are most free are subjected to the worst forms of human slavery, though it tends to vary across the sweep of human history. Right now, anyone paying attention can see the trend is to more thorough and more degrading slavery of the flesh.
For all my blather about God’s Laws and holding the world accountable, a critical element in our personal accountability is seldom raising our hand in violence against the broken system. That belongs to a higher power. There is no blanket prohibition for all mystics, though some are sure there is for themselves. That’s another critical point: No two of us have precisely the same requirements in terms of how we shine the light of truth, because we all have cracks in different places. In theory, some of us may find it imperative at one time or another to act vigorously to protect something on the fleshly level. It is surely quite rare; otherwise, we are no different from the rest of broken humanity. The light goes out if we all become activists.
It is lawful to fight the system, in theory. It is seldom wise. I remain utterly certain in my spirit the system will demand yet one more service from me before this body expires. It will most likely be in pursuit of goals which broadly I must despise. At the same time, the service itself will be imperative for the sake of the higher truth. If left to our feeble human logic, what I suggest here is impossible, but in the logic of God’s Laws, I must submit to this slavery in order to be free in that other sense. Call it destiny if you will, but my mission as a mystic will be incomplete without bearing my bit of flame one more time in the den of the beast I despise. Nor will it be simply some subterfuge for sabotage. I will render faithful committed service within the limits of my conscience.
Granted, my conscience in terms of what I can describe is somewhat fluid. Truth is bigger than my poor addled consciousness. Just when I’m sure I’ve figured it out, some demand comes down from the Spirit Realm which doesn’t fit into my neat little understanding of things. I don’t doubt I’ll be confronted with more of that, countless times, before my time is up. It’s not the truth which is fluid, but my understanding of it which cannot ever be perfected. The highest virtue of a slave is flexibility and adaptability, to bear an indomitable spirit. If the God Whom I serve orders me to bear the yoke of government service again, it is His prerogative.
No one who shares this mortal coil with me has the authority to tell me I’m wrong on this. They may sense in their own limited abilities some discontinuity, and most certainly will be obliged to tell me so. But even as I denounce the service of this beast as something which will bring forth a crop of evil, I know it is my sense of calling to be ready to go when that day arrives. I have already been told.
In my feeble grasp of all this paradoxical truth, it seems to me that day is mighty close.
If you take the time to read between the lines of MSM news and alternative news sources, you’ll likely sense an accelerating pace of drift into a global police state. It’s not possible to estimate any kind of proportion, but of a certainty, some of you, my dear readers, will face some hard choices in the near future.

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Profits of Sin

Posted on October 6, 2011 by ehurst

The CEO of Bank of America says, regarding the new fees he’s charging debit card users, that his bank has the right to make a profit. So far, so good, but he’s trying to ignore one little problem:

[P]eople aren’t protesting Wall Street because of 9% unemployment and slow growth, they’re protesting because they know Wall Street gambled big, lost heavily, and then robbed them and went back into the casino.

This includes BoA. They have played at the casino and lost big. They have participated in the robbery of the taxpayers. They now demand even more via their own customers. What the CEO means is he is demanding the right to a huge bonus pay-out for himself and his lieutenants regardless of how poorly they have performed with their customers’ money.

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