Cynical Politics

Posted on June 17, 2023 by ehurst

If we were going to discuss the political situation, I believe the best approach is looking at who or what is least harmful.

To imagine that anyone in American politics is actually “good” is beyond the pale. Nothing good can possibly come from the political process and the people currently involved. What we have now is so far removed from the biblical standard that it is utterly hopeless. The best we can do is pray that God will be merciful to His own household as the whole system is being torn down.

Lord, spare us as You destroy the evil empires; pass over us. Help us to bless Your name by upholding Your ways in the midst of turmoil, even as we seek to pull farther out of the path of destruction.

The common assumption of most commentators on every side is that we need a hero to rescue us. Most political commentary attempts to raise up one or another figure as the next hero we all need. Sorry, but I don’t see any. All of them come with a big package of stink. The only question is which brand of stink is less odious. Yes, the lesser of evils is still evil, but somebody is going to rule, and we pray that the Lord limits the damage to things He has prepared us to handle.

We often encounter underlying principles that stood in the Old Testament, but were not directly stated because everyone involved took it for granted. Instead, we discern them from the pattern of how God did things. One of those principles is that ambition for power disqualifies you from holding that power. If you really want it, you are already on God’s hit list. The best rulers in history were those who had other plans, but graciously accepted the role God assigned them.

Our political system turns that on its head.

I can understand the ambition to fix things and reduce the broader human suffering. Still, the answer is not to run for office, but to destroy the system that the oppressors are using as a weapon against us. You don’t rescue the people by putting “better” office holders in the role of oppressors. The office itself is the problem. The system is designed to attract the worst psychopaths. It rewards them for abusing their position.

I realize how hard it is to ignore the whole thing. It’s being thrust upon us every day by those around us who don’t understand our position. You have to decide how you are going to answer their concerns in a way that glorifies our Lord.

Most of the policy debates center on ways to plunder the people without admitting that’s the goal. Shall we plunder them through faux “green” policies? How about wokism and social scoring? Or maybe we should use the corporations to promote policies that will do that work for us? The Fed’s sole purpose in life is to tilt the economy against working people and in favor of the .01% who rule through financial games.

But if there is one policy that is most satanic, it is Zionism. It would be a true miracle of God if we could just end American funding of Israel (and the same for other countries). We are Israel’s proxy for bullying the rest of the world, turning our officials into the worst oppressors. Almost nobody is proposing stepping back from it, so it’s a lost cause.

God’s wrath on America is richly justified. The only question is whose agenda is least likely to interfere with our faith. Second to that is: Who is the biggest threat to our lives? The current drift of government policy is to exterminate the majority of the America citizens and replace us with immigrants who can be more easily exploited. This is actually a part of the Zionist agenda, though it’s not that obvious to most people.

The preferred mechanism is to keep using pandemics to herd us into the kill zone. This is a form of warfare targeting everyone, not just believers. For me, it’s coming down to hoping for any candidate who discusses curtailing that abusive weapon, regardless of other policy agendas. There’s no doubt they’ll promote a bunch of other objectionable crap, but given my cynical expectations about government in general, it’s the quarantines, lock-downs and forced vaxxing that becomes the single biggest issue of all. This is an immediate death threat.

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Too Late, It’s Here

Posted on June 14, 2023 by ehurst

Technically speaking, we are already in economic collapse. We have been for some time, but it’s not always obvious when something like this starts rolling. Don’t let your imagination run away with you. As I’ve explained in the past, our situation does not lend itself to a sudden total collapse. The meaning of the term “economic collapse” refers to a slow-down or stop in economic exchange. Because of the sheer size our national economy, a complete stop is not even possible. And slow-downs have come and gone for various reasons, so you can never be sure that once we start to slide, it will keep sliding, nor how far.

Right now, it’s virtually guaranteed it’s going to slide a long, long way. The current system is dying, and there is an awful lot that must be replaced with a different way of doing things. And I’ve already said it won’t be the same everywhere. Here in Oklahoma, we are doing rather well. Other parts of the country are already in pain, and getting worse. I doubt anyone is in a position to estimate with any precision what it will look like or feel like for us little people. All I can offer are broad generalities.

But I haven’t changed my advice for those of us near the bottom. Keep some canned goods, and if you can afford it, a stocked freezer. Granted, you may be like me, with no significant storage space for the prepper kind of thing. Still, the whole point is not to survive as if in isolation, but to ride out the rough spots as the system changes.

What we should expect to see are sudden closures of stores. In this atmosphere, the businesses that are going to close will decide far in advance but they will flatly refuse to tell their customers. They don’t give a damn about you. You’ll need a small stock to get past these sudden closures while you search for alternative suppliers. The whole economy will not simply shut down all at once. Some specific types of items will disappear for decades, but the basic needs will be available for most consumers within a reasonable distance from home.

The bigger problem will be the drop in quality against the rise in price. Can you imagine your local Dollar General suddenly being the only store open with highly inflated prices for what they sell? The biggest unseen terror here is the collapse of our transportation network. It’s not that transport will be unavailable, but that costs will soar, causing demand to fall. And when the volume drops, shippers shut down. Some will be smart enough to scale back and keep operating best they can, but too many are in no financial position to do that. They are over their heads in commitments. It will take awhile for someone to replace what they do on a smaller scale. There will be an initial friction when one part of the system breaks, before someone else can fill that smaller demand.

Too much of what we have been doing in the past is fragile. In the effort to squeeze every last bit of profit from the system, everyone went to the “just-in-time” delivery system. That requires a great many players cooperating at a break-neck pace. A more robust and reliable system would have been priced out of business, so there’s no one doing things that way. The fragile system is all there is, and if any one participant closes down, the whole thing screeches to a halt. It’s the interconnected system that makes the most money, but is also very fragile.

And it’s no secret that this collapse is engineered by people who have their hands on some really big economic levers. Their plans are to make us terribly miserable and wholly dependent. Miserable we will be, but dependency is very hard to enforce. For decades our ruling elite forced a centralization through policies in both government and banking. But they have gambled on making us blind to our options, and it’s not working that well. The bulk of the population believes those lies, but the distance to discovering that they are lies is not as far as the rulers had hoped. The blindness is not permanent. But it is still blindness, and there will be a tremendous friction as the population slowly begins to see again.

And yes, there will be a portion of the population who refuse to see. In other words, there are too many variables and we cannot predict what will happen for any of us as individuals. The only hope we have is faith to walk by our convictions and the fortitude to face what comes.

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Dealing with Allies

Posted on June 12, 2023 by ehurst

Basic rule: Emphasize common ground.

I’ve seen this problem all over; it’s not just on the Net. I’m hoping the Radix Fidem message doesn’t become tiresome and objectionable. It’s not about being respectable as the world sees it, but we need to find that fine line between telling the hard truth without driving people away. We must establish a hearing by how we manifest the love of Christ before we open our mouths.

This is a matter of practice, not theory. There is a large body of research for this, but I find the best answers come from reading between the lines of Scripture. It’s one thing to know you are among covenant brothers and sisters. It’s another thing to deal with outsiders. Given the nature of our world, it is virtually impossible to restrict your activities to those within your covenant community.

And not all outsiders are the same kind of problem.

In the Old Testament, there was a section of Law that dealt with visitors to the Covenant Lands, and it was all about helping them survive and get through life. We must demonstrate the kind of acceptance that celebrates the way Israel was allowed to live in Goshen and tried to avoid troubling the Egyptians in Joseph’s day. Today, we are the visitors again, and God reserves to Himself the privilege of causing trouble. We are required to avoid provoking where possible.

Thus, this is not a matter of mere human wisdom, but the Word teaches us, if we will listen. In that vein, there has been plenty of wise experience from men who knew how to stand up for the truth. It depends on the boundaries of your domain granted from God.

America is not our domain. It never was, and never will be. For us, we are rather like Israel living in Egypt. At that point in Egyptian history, the Nile Delta was pretty much reserved for those wandering tribal nations, while the core of Egyptian life and productivity was in Faiyum, upriver a ways. During that period the imperial family was centered around the fresh-water lake and the canals that took advantage of the Nile and Faiyum Lake interaction. The Egyptians of that time considered themselves and their forms of agriculture sacred, while the sheep herding grasslands of the Delta were defiled.

The reason Israel came under oppression is that a different ruling dynasty took over with different plans; they wanted more direct use of the Delta for a massive construction project. They still regarded sheep raising as nasty, but they wanted the clay and grass for bricks. God used this political shift to carry out His plans for the Children of Israel. There were other nations in the Delta besides Israel, but He wasn’t focused on them. He took action against Egypt for a very clear purpose within the historical setting.

We have a prophetic message of repentance and heart-led living, but the reason Samuel established a School of Prophets in Israel is because it’s too easy to let the fire burning in your heart become the excuse for ignoring the long history of God’s prophetic message. I can’t count how often I’ve seen young prophets crash and burn because they focused on their inner fire to the exclusion of that history. God has an agenda that crosses vast ages of human history, and we must build on that foundation.

This world is not our home; we are called to be vagabonds. We have no particular goals that the world recognizes. We are looking for those whom the Lord has called, and they don’t yet know it. I’m not referring to whether they are religiously converted. I’m referring to the Elect, those whom the Lord has called to join His Covenant household. Some are already in churches (most of them, even). But it’s not about becoming a “Christian” as defined by organized religion, but becoming an actual follower of Christ and His covenant. That’s two entirely different things.

This is not Replacement Theology. We are not supposed to replace the earthly presence of the Nation of Israel. That covenant ended in terms of its effects on the political landscape of this world. We are no longer a political entity. We ignore political boundaries. There is no such thing as “Christendom” in the Bible. That’s a man-made lie. Our covenant nation is hidden from human perception; it is written in the hearts of God’s family on this earth.

So, we are by default in a dependent position from the human standpoint, in that we wait on God, and He is the one who controls the political scene. Our position is hands-off; it’s not our calling to engage much of anything outside the Covenant Kingdom of Christ. In order to simply exist and make our gospel message known, we must interact with the prevailing political and social order on whatever basis we can, making no attempt to interfere in their plans. That’s the default position. When that changes, we must note the winds of change as He blows on things to suit His whims.

The current situation is that both the politics and economics are being manipulated by forces whom Satan is guiding to destruction. It’s not just our daily situation they afflict, but they are being guided to self-destruction. Their war against the people cannot win, but they don’t realize it. The rulers honestly believe their agenda will work. But they are not attacking our faith at all, just lumping us in with everyone else they identify as their enemies. If we do anything at all about this, we must work to some degree with everyone else.

Just staying alive and sharing our faith requires that we find room to cooperate with non-covenant people. We don’t make common cause with outsiders, but we work on common ground. There is no way their mixed bag of political agendas will serve the gospel calling. Rather, their ambitions simply give us a vehicle, an atmosphere, in which we can manifest divine revelation. We infiltrate. We cannot save them; that is not in our hands. Salvation is a miracle in which someone realizes God has a claim on their lives. We cannot direct God’s hands, but we are standing by to help those who find that our witness speaks to their spiritual condition.

No one of us, nor any of our covenant communities, will reach everyone. God has divided us up into numerous groups for a reason, and if you really want to know, it is addressed in the Tower of Babel narrative. He demands that we form hundreds of thousands of different little communities for reasons we could never comprehend. You cannot understand, but you can obey. In order to operate on common ground, we should avoid picking at minor differences.

Sure, if someone asks, then we can humbly share our sense of where the the boundaries of Biblical Law stand. But in our sharing, we must be careful with the tone. If it reads to someone else as grouchy and harsh, then we should expect it will pollute any common ground we might have tried to share to address the common threat. And if we can’t tell when our expression sounds harsh, then we should enlist the aid of those who do a better job of that. We cannot afford to alienate others when we are working outside of our domain. We should be slow to dismiss others, but show long patience with them. You never know when or how God works behind the scenes.

We should never be surprised at the differences among. We should take it for granted differences will be there, and decide if those differences are more than we can accept. If it’s all about your message, then don’t be surprised when someone objects by offering a different message. Is it really supposed to be a debate forum to address your particular issues? Or is it a forum for discussing something else? Your tone can make a huge difference. If you want to keep participating, don’t make it sound like you can’t tolerate differences with little or no bearing on the subject at hand. It’s not your turf.

We have a lot of problems in common with people outside our non-covenant communities. We have to work with them to handle those problems. There is a hideous ruling class that wants us all dead. If you feel called to lay down and die, do so. But there are plenty of us who are utterly certain that’s not what God wants for us. We are going to find a way to resist the rulers, and we don’t see room for debate on that calling. Take your exclusivity somewhere else. We are walking by our convictions, and your convictions are your problem.

Following Christ is not a question of objective right or wrong. If that’s how you see it, you are already barking up the wrong tree. You have zero hope of finding grounds for cooperation; you need to prepare to work alone facing whatever warfare the ruling elite carries out. There is a fine line between having your say and attacking someone who happens to see things differently. If you want cooperation, then be aware of how others read your expressions of faith.

The Radix Fidem teaching is that God’s household is not a matter of either/or. This world is not black and white; that’s a Plato thing. This world is all black and the only way out of the darkness leads out of this world. Meanwhile, the Lord does pay attention to the path we all take and how far along we are at any given time. At various points, we gain access to new privileges because He says we are ready for them. Thus, our perception of others is that there are family folks, allies, neutrals and enemies. We need to make room for allies who aren’t quite in the same place we are. Don’t address allies as enemies.

And those allies may or may not claim to be Christians, never mind our personal definitions of what it means to be Christian. The reason we have allies is because they are impossible to avoid. God puts them in our lives, so we need to learn how to handle them. Don’t harass them with issues that get in the way of drawing them closer. Sense what they are ready to discuss. Assume they have their own sense of calling and mission, and respect the possibility that God speaks to them, too. None of us are the Truth Police.

Again: Emphasize common ground.

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NT Doctrine — Romans 1-3

Posted on June 11, 2023 by ehurst

This post was delayed because I was traveling and had no computer access.

The major doctrinal elements are all too obvious in Romans. Let’s not get bogged down chasing too many details and enjoy the broad sweep of what Paul teaches here.

After his introductory stuff, Paul jumps right in with the teaching that humanity at large has no excuse for not knowing God. It should be obvious he refers to the fundamental purpose of revelation: We are supposed to get to know God personally. All humans are equipped for this, so much so that there was actually no real need for a written record of Scripture. That’s just extra mercy; everyone could have found God without it.

They knew Him but refused to give Him the praise due. Their minds got lost in their own selfish desires and their hearts became darkened — they were committed to darkness. They became so lost from the truth that they worshiped just about anything and everything except God. The Lord honored their choice and turned them over to Satan to rule them through their fleshly natures. The human race has been self-destructive ever since.

Continuing into the next chapter, Paul shows us that our fleshly nature is inherently hypocritical. We see certain sins in others because those are our sins. Those who pursue peace with God will find a rich harvest. Everyone else will find the Devil’s harvest. Knowing the Scriptures won’t save you. It requires you obey them. Paul cites the example of Gentiles having never heard or seen the Word, and somehow managing to hear the divine call so that they find peace with God. Meanwhile, a great many in Israel knew the Word and did not find peace with God.

The Scripture is not the key, but a heart that answers the divine call. Thus, the false witness of Jews who rejected the call in their hearts resulted in diminishing God’s reputation. Circumcision was just a ritual. Too many people had unclean souls and their circumcision meant nothing, especially compared to uncircumcised Gentiles who reached out to the God of Israel without even knowing His name. Paul establishes the principle that circumcision means nothing by itself.

A real Jew is someone whose heart has been purified by submission to God as Master. Those Israelis who ignored the opportunity to become friends with God aren’t real Jews.

Continuing into the third chapter, Paul notes that God still used the Hebrew people, despite themselves. God’s plan required entrusting His Word to someone, and Israel was chosen for that task. Their lack of faith did not frustrate His revelation. Once declared, accountability to His revelation was established.

Despite the arrogance of Jews, they are no better off than Gentiles. We are all born with a sin nature that makes us hostile to God’s ways. Paul quotes several prophecies that declare it all too clearly. The law code simply clarified for Israel their need for redemption. There is nothing redemptive in the Law itself. It certainly didn’t do Jews any good.

However, God has offered a final clarification of who He is and what He demands in the coming of His own Son. He is the New Covenant, open to all humanity. All the rituals have been fulfilled in His sacrifice. And the kind of faith commitment that He now requires wipes away the imaginary privilege of Jews, who honestly believe they have God over a barrel. It’s not that faith voids the law code, but rather it validates the law. The law was the manifestation of that old covenant. The purpose of that Covenant was to identify Jesus as the Messiah.

Thus far, it’s all quite pertinent to our focus on the continuity between the Old and New Covenants.

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Introducing Derek Ramsey

Posted on June 8, 2023 by ehurst

Dear readers: Today I want to alert you to a blog that might interest you — Derek L. Ramsey. If you want high intellect and strong reasoning discussion, he’s your man. It’s quite possible you will grow attached to him as a persona on the Net. He’s not a bad guy at all.

If you want to know more about the Bible and divine revelation, you might want to look elsewhere. Derek is all about that Aristotelian epistemology, something entirely foreign to Scripture.

There’s no ill will here Derek, it’s just that your writing and thoughts are totally impertinent to what my blog does. Go ahead and keep writing about my ideas, but the links won’t be posted here. Your comments about this blog, Catacomb Resident, and Radix Fidem in general all miss the mark. You clearly have no idea what we are talking about. In fact, I’m willing to bet you have never looked at the Radix Fidem pamphlet or Radix Fidem Booklet.

For years this blog has addressed the vast gulf of between the intellectual foundation of the Bible versus modern western rationalism. My readers know this drill — Jesus Himself was a Hebrew man, preaching a Hebrew religion, and the Bible is essentially a Hebrew book. The Hebrew culture was a part of the Ancient Near East (ANE). The ANE is intellectually quite different from the West. I’ve noted on this blog for many years that the bulk of American religious scholarship might know this, and yet that scholarship in itself insists on clinging to the western approach. There are precious few sources of scholarship encouraging people to become more like Jesus intellectually.

The western approach is wrong. It means you’ll read biases into the Bible and come away with a false notion of what the Lord is trying to say. I’m not suggesting I have all the right answers; I’m referring to the approach to those answers. This is not about me, or you, but the ideas themselves, Derek.

On the other hand, Jesus and His followers never hesitated to engage in ad hominem attacks. Jesus cracked a whip at least once. Paul and John castigated several men and women by name. It wasn’t always about the ideas, but often quite personal.

That’s because faith in Christ is personal, not a mere collection of ideas. It’s not that ideas don’t matter, but that they must stand on the personal relationship. They have no meaning by themselves. And I assert flatly: God will lead His servants in different directions, and in ways that cause conflicts between them. Not because His leading causes conflicts, but because of their fallen human nature, conflict is inevitable. The human form is inherently disabled. So rare is the escape from it that only two men in Scripture have been recorded as so pleasing to God that they didn’t die, but simply left his life.

And it wasn’t because of their ideas, but because of their very personal bond with the God who called them. Elijah, at least, still had conflicts with others who claimed to serve God, but apparently that wasn’t an issue with God.

You have your thing, Derek. Run with it as your calling and conscience demand. I have no problem with it. But I am called, too, and my calling is not invalidated by your reasoning. I hear from God, too. Up to now your writing is wholly impertinent to mine. You aren’t talking to me at all; we are on different planets. I left your planet years ago, and I’m not coming back.

You mention me often lately, big long walls of text. Can you find no better targets for your picking? How did I become so significant? I’m mentioning you just this once, and it won’t happen again until you change your intellectual orientation. That would be a miracle, of course. When you start talking about the Covenant of Christ as it is revealed in Scripture, then we might have a conversation, but you have made zero effort to converse with me at all.

When I say that you are the Christian equivalent of a Pharisee, that’s not attacking you personally. It’s just shorthand for how you approach things and what kind of thinking that goes into your writing. My readers will understand; they won’t be hostile.

Folks, let’s pray for Derek. I think there’s hope for him.

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The Vaxx Fight Continues

Posted on June 8, 2023 by ehurst

Many of us have wized up about the ruling regime’s plans and intentions via the COVID policies. There have been a lot of recent articles and videos about that and how it telegraphs their next moves in a future planned quarantine and vaxxing.

Some of the recent articles and videos discussing this are clearly hysterical nonsense. Some are far more careful about how they approach the issue. This article is a mixed bag. All I can offer here is my own summary.

I tend to agree with the claims that the originating agency for the COVID pandemic was the US DoD. It fits the pattern, given what I know about the military in general. The vaxx was already formulated by the military and the contracts to mass produce it were not medical in nature, but more like biowarfare manufacturing. Thus, the liabilities are totally different, and there’s no need at all for the usual medical testing procedures for safety, etc. That was buried under propaganda.

As to whether any vaxx could have a triggered toxin release waiting for some kind of signal, as Dr. Buttar claimed, that’s really weak. I’ve read some of the research on that. What is actually possible in that direction is nothing like the wild theories. Nano-particles can be made to react, but not with that kind of precision — not yet.

A couple of years ago, we got our first hints that the globalist rulers planned to repeat the pandemic exercise again. Those hints indicated they would use another common respiratory ailment, but now the indicators suggest the Marburg virus will be used. That’s plausible, both as a real engineered threat and as a false cover to excuse another clamp-down. It’s offers a much stronger fear factor, since the MSM has already established it as a threat of 88% mortality. But this is based on statistically tiny samples. That Marburg actually isn’t that communicable is being hidden from us.

Regardless of whether the labs can engineer a more virulent Marburg, I still believe that any proposed vaxx is likely the real threat. In other words, as with COVID, it will be a lot safer to face whatever sickness is actually going around than to let them poison you by injection.

So my own expectation is to resist any mass vaxx program by any means necessary. To be honest, I’m hoping my state government will buck the system as they did the last time, but harder. If not, then I’ll end up having to consider more radical efforts to resist locally. I have no expectation of any human agency derailing this oppressive action completely, but any partial roadblock would be a welcome relief.

As I’ve said before, our government wants most of us dead. Arguing about the “why” is pointless now. There’s nothing we can do to attack that. God is going to handle that His way in His time. For us, the issue is how we glorify Him now. This is not analogous to the Roman persecution Christians faced up through 300 AD. The Roman government singled out Christians for their faith; our government is trying to kill everyone. I believe it’s right and just to defend the human race itself.

But there are limits to what we can actually do. I regard the vaxx as a very real threat to humanity itself, and that it justifies violent resistance. It seems rather apparent that the mRNA form is becoming the new standard model for all vaccines, so I’m planning to refuse all of them in the future. I am in no position to defend the whole world, but I can defend myself and my family.

Follow your own conscience.

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Evangelistic Arrogance

Posted on June 7, 2023 by ehurst

You’ve met them before: that super eager zealous evangelist who tries to take advantage of your civility and lay into you with a manipulative sales pitch message they call “the gospel”. You gotta get saved or you’re going to Hell! It is harassment and quickly becomes intolerable. They are out to get another notch on the soul-winning gun.

When I was a young preacher boy, several pastors did their best to teach me that stuff. They got angry because I declined. I knew it was wrong, but I could not at that point articulate why. So I was marginalized and never invited into some circles. Yes, it affected my career in the ministry, and it’s part of what I don’t miss when I left behind the religious mainstream.

Here’s the pitch behind that crap: “The best thing you can do for people is to tell them about Jesus, no matter how they react. Don’t fail, because you may be responsible for sending them to Hell if you pull back.” How many times were people on the fence pushed away from the gospel because of the insufferable arrogance behind that approach?

The guys pushing this crap never understood how much damage they did to the Lord’s reputation.

Now, it’s bad enough they did this to people they identified as “sinners”, but they then kept judging anyone who wasn’t part of their religious tribe as a sinner. Even when they don’t say it this way, you get the message: “What I got is better than what you have, so listen to me!” They assume anyone who isn’t in their tribe is inherently evil, even satanic.

I’ve actually come very close to punching them out a couple of times, but I knew they would simply count that as somehow equivalent to persecution for their “faith”.

It’s even worse online. How many times has an online conversation been spoiled by such arrogance? You see, in our online communities, it’s well nigh impossible to demonstrate faith. All we have are the words we type on a computer. We don’t have the ability to create a context of walking in faith before the world. In real life, if a goofy zealot at least walks the talk, it’s more tolerable. But when there’s no supporting evidence of any kind of faith, it’s even more exceptionally rude when the messages they post shout at you from that arrogance.

I’m glad to see that sales-pitch behavior has been suppressed some in recent years. The problem is that we still have a more subtle form of it. Try going to a forum of mixed Christians trying to have a conversation without stepping on each other’s faith, and then one or more idiot barges in and starts castigating everyone who doesn’t agree with them.

They don’t have the decency to say, “Well, I’m from this background, and we look at it like this…” No, they have to act as if a different conviction cannot be genuine. To them, it’s blasphemous to suggest God might not be leading us all on the same path. You would think it was an insult to God that He isn’t limited to whatever is in their heads.

This is the sin of the Pharisees, by the way. They had the Messiah all mapped out before Jesus was born, and if anyone claiming to be the Messiah differed from their preconceived notions, he must be some kind of satanic liar. God could only be what their logic dreamed up, and it justified killing someone who could perform miracles outside of the intellectual boundaries they set for God.

Well, that kind of aggressive disputation in online forums is just a step or two from nailing someone to a cross. It’s a sin to harass someone for having different convictions.

I realize there’s nothing we can do to help those people. When it’s up to me, I ban them from the forum. There’s no place for that crap. We have enough trouble helping each other find a better way without having to deal with that kind of arrogance. Sadly, there are still a few of them hanging around. They will destroy any community you might have built.

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The Shape of Things

Posted on June 6, 2023 by ehurst

Jeffrey Tucker presents a very perceptive review of the situation: Twenty Grim Realities Unearthed by Lockdowns. I recommend reading it. He outlines how the globalists implemented their dreams of total control using the faux pandemic.

It would be easy to get riled up and decide this was a call to war. If that’s your bag, you don’t need any advice I could give, but that’s not the Radix Fidem path. The reason this article matters is because we need to understand the mechanism through spiritual eyes. How is Satan steering his servants? We are fighting Satan, not his minions. You’ll notice that, as already explained on this blog, there is nothing in this that attacks faith itself. Rather, religion is regarded as a mere social factor our overlords must regulate. And that’s pretty accurate; most mainstream religion is a mere matter of shaping social behavior toward man-made goals, and painting Bible verses on the outside so they can claim it is faith.

What the rulers are doing to the world is unlikely to be knocked off course by any kind of rebellion. Think about how the outline uses the system of government, and shapes it to do even more. We are long past the time when a popular rebellion could change anything. If you understand the depth and breadth of the control system, you realize it would require the slaughter of millions to stop it. And in so doing, you would also destroy everything that keeps most of us alive. That’s the true sinister nature of it.

Maybe you are one of those hardy individuals who can survive off grid; go ahead and celebrate your specialness. I can handle that myself, but it’s not my calling. As a faith elder, my mission is shepherding the sheep, and the vast majority of them could not follow your path. We rely on the power of God to get us through, or to take us Home at His whim. Our purpose is not to survive, but to shine the light of His glory. And in order to do that, we need to know enough about the situation to find places and moments when something we can say or do will shine that light.

We are calling out to the Elect. That’s the real specialness that matters; divine election will outlive this world. The Elect aren’t survivors unless that’s how God uses them for His glory, but they’ll be around for eternity. The agenda of Eternity does not include seizing control of human government, since that would make us just one more bunch of fools participating in Satan’s affairs. Jesus closed the door on a human government that His Father would use directly; He quite consciously and consistently avoided involvement in human government. After the Cross, human government is just background noise against which the Eternal Kingdom of Heaven shines. The Covenant of Christ recognizes no human government outside of the Covenant, and that means all human government.

Tucker is encouraging people to organize on a human level to build a more amenable human government. That’s not possible; all human government is under Satan’s control. But it’s still a good idea to understand how human government operates so that we don’t waste the Lord’s resources on things that won’t glorify Him.

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Radix Fidem and Weddings

Posted on June 3, 2023 by ehurst

I’ve said this before: We are the New Israel, not the Old Israel. Some of what the Old Testament commands is not valid in Christ. Fortunately, Jesus and His Apostles did a fairly good job of helping us understand the difference. For example, the single biggest item is the entire body of OT ritual law. It’s dead. The symbolism still matters, but we are not bound by that stuff.

Short answer: I do not recommend any kind of ceremony for weddings. In moral terms, there is one core issue — Your faith and obedience to Christ and His Covenant. The second issue should be obvious. However much of a community you belong to needs to know who is being joined in matrimony. They are the only ones who might really care enough to lend any kind of support. In general, I do not officiate at weddings any more, except as community leader acting as close as possible to a tribal elder and/or priest.

1. It is flatly illegal to attempt to reconstruct an Ancient Near Eastern tribal feudal society. You might get away with some elements of it in private, but no government these days will take it seriously. So your tribe cannot be your government, and the secular government will darn sure stick its nose in your private business. Even if you hate that, you still have to account for it.

2. Most churches, those based on any religious organization or institution that arose after AD 300, are compromised with pagan/secular government. Yes, an organized church may still be useful, but it does not represent what God had in mind. Thus, when it comes to weddings, the business of officiating and blessing means nothing. It does not represent Scripture nor the will of God. When churches start toeing the line on Biblical Law, then we’ll talk.

3. Society at large is approximately as hostile as government to any tribal feudal social structure. If you really feel obliged to take non-covenant society seriously for any reason, then you must accommodate their expectations in some way. A wedding ceremony will mean something to them.

But a wedding ceremony means nothing to God, nor do rings and vows. His attitude has always been that you should do what it takes for you to get your head in the right place. That’s what rituals do; the ritual itself means nothing otherwise. So I let the couples decide what they want and try to accommodate according to my own conscience. Personally, I do not recommend a church wedding. I recommend that you give consideration to the implications of secular law and act according to your conscience.

I see nothing wrong with a secular ceremony for the sake of the state. It’s okay to have a church wedding if you need the support of that community. With neither of these would you get my involvement. There are plenty who will do that for you. What I will do is ensure I feel comfortable getting involved in a private faith ceremony, by discussing it with the couple and everyone else who should and does have an interest in how the marriage turns out. The ceremony is just a public announcement to what society needs to know.

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NT Doctrine — Acts 24-28

Posted on May 27, 2023 by ehurst

This is not so much a study as an outline of events. The Book of Acts yields no further doctrinal material. However, we cannot leave Paul in the royal quarters at Caesarea.

By now we are somewhere around AD 58. Paul faced the Sanhedrin in the presence of Felix. This governor was married to a Jewess, so he wasn’t ignorant of Hebrew religion and culture. Felix realized that the Sanhedrin did not have a case, but wanted a bribe from Paul. It never came and after some unnerving discussions with Paul about sin and eternal destiny over a couple of years, he left Paul in custody as a small favor to the Jews when he was replaced by Festus.

Paul has been under mere house arrest, free to wander the Roman facility and to see any visitors, along with whatever gifts they might bring. Festus comes on the scene and visits the Roman facilities in Jerusalem. The Sanhedrin approach him about Paul, but it was a cover for getting Paul out in the open where they could ambush the Roman guards and kill Paul. Festus must have smelled something nasty was up and declined to make any moves until he first visited Caesarea, and he already had plans to go there in a few days. This brings us to around AD 60.

Festus was trying to offer an olive branch to reduce the tensions from the rising Jewish nationalism, and asked Paul if he would return to the Sanhedrin Court in Jerusalem. Paul appealed to Caesar. But lacking anything definitive to write about this prisoner, Festus took advantage of a visit from Herod Agrippa to see if there was anything of substance in the Sanhedrin’s complaint.

Luke spends a whole chapter recounting Paul’s speech. It summarizes pertinent parts of the Book of Acts itself. Festus interrupted when it got to be more than he could take. Paul turned back to Agrippa, but the king jokingly parried without saying anything of substance, and rose to signal his lack of interest in any further discussion. In a private conference between Agrippa and Festus, it was agreed there was no case, but Paul’s appeal to Caesar forced them to send him to Rome.

They set sail at a bad time of year and Paul prophesied that the ship would be lost. Eventually it was, as harsh storms drove it into some shallow rocks near an island. But Paul had prayed for the lives of those aboard the ship and all were saved when the ship broke apart. Paul and his friends ministered and performed miracles on the island where they landed, staying three months while waiting another ship.

The weather became much milder and the ship made its way up the coast of Italy to its destination, and the entourage traveled overland the rest of the way. Paul met with both church leaders and those of the Jewish community. After some days, the latter group split as usual between those who believed and those who did not.

Meanwhile, Paul was granted leave to rent his own quarters and remain under house arrest in Rome. His influence saw many believers among Roman troops, the imperial palace staff and others who came to visit. He remained there another two years where Luke ends his narrative. The Roman Emperor was Nero, whose early reign was considered rather good.

We are quite certain Paul was released some time around AD 62. Piecing together hints and comments scattered among his letters and some contemporary stories from Christian writings, we believe Paul headed to Macedonia for a while. At some point he visited farther west along the Dalmatian Coast and eventually went to Spain. Somewhere in his travels Paul was arrested again, and we have no way of knowing if it was provoked by Jews or something directly offensive to Roman Law. Nero was becoming quite unstable by this time, and had already set fire to parts of the city and blaming Christians. Either way, in custody again around AD 66, Paul writes a few more letters and was eventually executed, as he expected.

Then came the revolt in Jerusalem in AD 70. The Apostles and their flocks left the city before the Roman siege. John makes his way to Ephesus, which soon became the new center of gravity for Christian religion. The other letters are written over the next two decades. John finally writes his Gospel in the early 90s, and his Revelation around AD 95. According to those he taught, he died around AD 98 or 99.

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