Reality Inherently Flawed

Posted on January 9, 2023 by ehurst

A lot of people struggle with this: Reality is variable between observers. It is utterly impossible to arrive at a single inclusive answer. It’s not a question of what is, but of how we must approach the question, and what we should expect to find. How do I talk about such a thing?

If you approach scientific research into physical reality with the assumption that, in theory, everything can be eventually nailed down precisely as to how it acts, then you will never arrive. This is particularly true when you start to press down into subatomic levels, as well as the other extreme, to galactic levels or larger. The effort to measure will break down.

In practice, reality itself is inconsistent at some level. It is not possible to correct either the observer, the instruments, or the process itself, so as to overcome this invisible barrier to investigation. The barrier itself is elusive; it cannot be identified except in terms of effects after the fact. A lot of stuff in science fiction will ever remain fiction, because it’s not possible to nail things down to the point that you can begin to manipulate matter and energy with sufficient precision to get the results you want.

The major flaw is in the underlying assumptions about reality. I’ve written about that often enough. Reality is intentionally flawed, and so are we as a part of it. It is not possible to step outside into some imaginary objectivity as long as we are in our mortal frame. To step outside means leaving this mortal frame permanently. As long as we refuse to consider that there is a realm outside this reality, we cannot begin to grasp the nature of things. We are inside of a bubble, and the time-space boundaries are themselves a universal deception. But in our native form as mortals, we cannot ever hope to escape.

This is part of why algorithms inevitably break down. No algorithm can cover all the factors in the first place. But the variability-in-effect of reality will eventually break down even what the algorithm does cover. All algorithms are generated from flawed humans, and the product cannot avoid having the same flaws. The flaws are in the source, the process and the product.

Thus, no AI will ever exceed the flaws. The mythology that foresees an omniscient AI will never become reality. We may have the appearance of such an AI, but at some level of output, it will stumble over the inconsistency of reality. Calling it “entropy” is not going to answer the fundamental question. That fancy word simply acknowledges the effects, not the cause. The flaw is in this reality itself.

Any attempt at AI will always pull up short of human dreams, whether benign or malevolent. It’s not a question of matching the capabilities of human will and imagination; AI cannot escape the limitations of reality’s inherent flaws. I have no doubt that we will eventually see one or more attempts to seat an AI as human government of some kind, and it will probably seem successful. But it will eventually fail; the problem of guiding humans will always break down.

This is how our Creator does things. It won’t matter whether you see it as God’s active intervention or a matter of inherent design; both approaches will miss the point. The point is that you cannot in mortal form ever grasp the answer. The more you wonder about it, the harder you seek to understand, the more you will run into the effects of something none of us can overcome.

Nor would I say we have nothing to worry about, in terms of human suffering. Mankind will always overrun the limits and make this life worse than it has to be. Still, this existence is supposed to suck; it’s a deception in the first place. God didn’t make it that way. We chose it and we keep choosing it. It’s when you make the final decision to turn away from this life and turn to Eternity that you understand how to live while we are here.

If you can absorb this to the point it’s fundamental to how you approach everything, it opens the door to divine peace. It is human nature to pursue everything but that one thing.

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NT Doctrine — Acts 6:9-15

Posted on January 7, 2023 by ehurst

Once again, I am unable to improve on my previous commentary on this passage.

All of these new elders preached, but unlike the Apostles, they had the natural tendency to preach outside the old Hebrew communities. It’s hard to explain Stephen’s behavior unless we assume he had some rabbinical training. He knew not merely the text of the Old Testament, but also much of the oral historical traditions now missing or buried in Talmudic mythology. Highly educated, yet filled with the Spirit such that he manifested signs and miracles, this man took the message to places the Apostles could not. Preaching was not confined to those called to pastor.

Perhaps Stephen had previously been associated with the Synagogue of the Freedmen. The synagogue name refers to Greek-speaking Jews who had formerly been slaves under Roman law, but somehow won their freedom. It was quite an accomplishment. There may have been hundreds of such little cloistered synagogues in and around Jerusalem, catering to one group or another. This synagogue must have held some claim to fame, with big shots from Alexandria, North Africa, and what we now call Turkey and Northern Syria. It would naturally be a Greek-speaking synagogue, and Stephen was quite comfortable, not only in the language, but the Alexandrian style of rhetoric so popular with such people. It is important here to note that no one seemed to have any particular vision for spreading the gospel outside native Judeans; Stephen simply went to those with whom he had some affinity.

In debating with these Freedmen, Stephen was promoting the gospel of Jesus Christ. In this gospel he would surely have included Jesus’ rejection of the Hellenized Talmud, so near and dear to Alexandrian hearts. Stephen approached them on their own terms, with their own style of reasoning. He showed how Jesus was the central focal point of all ancient prophecies, had fulfilled the Law of Moses, and closed the Temple rituals. There was now no other sacrifice acceptable to God but the blood of His Son for forgiveness of sins. So Stephen was arguing that the Talmud was wrong, the rituals were dead, and Jesus was the rightful King of all Jews worldwide.

We are hardly surprised that those who were not moved by the Spirit to accept this impossible message would be infuriated at this smart-aleck attacking everything they thought made them special in God’s eyes. What far too many wish to underplay here is the hateful racist superiority complex of Jews in that day. They might argue among themselves who was more pure in Jewishness, but nobody would ever surrender an inch to including actual Gentiles in God’s blessings. Jehovah made the world, but He was in their minds God of the Jews only, and everyone else was made by God to serve them. Any Messianic message failing to confirm this prejudice was hateful to them.

So they networked with other significant figures in the city to accuse Stephen before the Sanhedrin. All this sounded to them like blasphemy, and an attack on the Temple itself, “God’s Residence.” Luke calls them false witnesses in the sense that they lied against God and His Word, but the claims were more or less accurate from the slavishly literalist viewpoint of the Pharisees.

What had Jesus actually said? When the Twelve were discussing the Temple facility one day, Jesus said it was just a building, and would one day suffer the fate of all buildings. Moreover, it would be utterly destroyed because His Nation would reject Him. While it may well be in the minds of Jews the Residence of Jehovah, His divine Presence had not been there in centuries. Instead, it was born in the flesh of His Son. So Jesus pointed to His own body and said if anyone tried to tear down this Temple, He would simply bring it back in three days. More, He was going away to make His followers into walking Temples of the Lord, just as He had been. He would reside in their hearts as the Holy Spirit. There was simply no room for such truth in the minds of the Jewish leaders.

So arresting Stephen and hauling him before the assembled court, they saw a man whose face glowed with divine presence. It must surely have made them nervous, for to be in God’s presence always makes us aware of our sin. We can either confess it and be forgiven, or close our hearts and cling to sin as our “holiness.” The tension between the truth and the established order was about to erupt.

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Hats and Covering

Posted on January 4, 2023 by ehurst

I’ve been asked about the issue of head covering during worship. Specifically, men in the Old Testament were required to wear something, and men in the New Testament are required not to. The issue is the term “covering”.

This isn’t really that complicated or spooky. This rests on what kind of covenant we are under. With the Covenant of Moses, Israel was under a distinct national identity. There was a human government and military authority, and wearing your hat in worship was a way of marking that you were under that covering. Because Israel rejected her Messiah, the Covenant was moved into a different level. Under the Covenant of Christ, we must shed all national identity in worship. Paul thought this was obvious (1 Corinthians 11:2-12).

Side note: Women are instructed to wear some kind of headgear precisely because they are under the covering authority of their husbands/fathers as their true “national identity” in the Lord.

There are some similarities in the US military, for example. While the military regulations have lots of details and exemptions when you do and don’t wear your military headgear, the basic principle is the same. The point is to show that you are operating under the authority of the US government. Thus, if a trooper is armed (“under arms”), then he keeps his hat on. A military policeman on duty is armed and operating under specific action authority that includes using that weapon, so he keeps his hat on at all times while in that status. Troops mobilized and armed for war keep their hats/helmets on even indoors. One of the alternative terms for headgear in the military is “cover” — you are acting under cover of government authority.

Oddly, the military has picked up on the New Testament requirement for men to remove their “cover” in Christian worship settings. Thus, even under arms, if there is a public act of worship for Christians (specifically, during public prayer), those involved remove their headgear.

Throughout the period of western Church History, a significant minority have taken this principle out of context. There have been moves to refuse all headgear all the time. The New Testament is rather pointed in that men must uncover the head only during worship. There’s nothing in the New Testament indicating you cannot operate under military authority outside of worship. But then, there’s a lot of silly rules out there arising from oddball interpretations of the Bible.

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Guest Post: Catacomb Resident

Posted on January 2, 2023 by ehurst

My friend Catacomb Resident is currently unable to access his account where his blog is hosted. He has asked me to post this message for him. He says that if the situation is resolved later, he’ll post this in the normal fashion on his own blog.

The Big Slide
02 January 2023

During my time in military service, I was often out on maneuver training. Perhaps you can imagine how a lot of standard human habits dissolve in such conditions. You won’t be likely to get ice cubes with your soft drinks; you’ll be swigging questionable water directly from your canteen. The only time you’ll see a warm shower is if you go through a decontamination exercise. We slept on the ground a lot.

We would joke about the situation. Since we were “in the field” for days at a time, we often referred to a “field expedient” version of just about everything that was not provided in conventional form. You learned quickly what was and was not really essential in order to live another day and perform the mission. It changed your whole orientation on life, and permanently broke a lot people from squeamish reactions. There was very little tolerance for complaining about minor inconveniences.

Anyone with that kind of experience is going to do well in the near future in the US. Everyone else is already suffering and likely whining about it. On the one hand, most younger generations already realize they aren’t going to have the comforts the Boomers had. On the other hand, there is a very strong presence of prissy whining from the children and grandchildren of Boomers over the disappearance of typical comforts and conveniences. Everyone has grown accustomed to the brief period of high prosperity the US experienced between the end of WW2 and ending roughly at 2010.

How we got where we are not is more complex than most people understand. Inter-generational conflict serves no good purpose. The real fault lies within our fallen nature, and how easily people are deceived by their own lusts. It’s one thing to recognize that Jewish leadership did their best to seduce the American people into taking the easy path to slavery. It’s another thing to realize Americans took the bait. We should have realized that the Devil “roams to and fro seeking whom he may devour”, and a lot of very influential shapers of society have served him well. What looked like a really good way to pull in wealth and comfort turned out to be short lived. That’s how it works in this world.

The only real question is, “What do we do now?” Even if we saw it coming, none of us were in a position to stop that headlong rush into destruction. There is nothing we can do to turn around evil agendas and the resulting government and corporate policies.

I hope you know how to enjoy going camping with primitive accommodations. You may be forced to literally live in a tent. We aren’t very far from having the majority of the US population homeless. What I see happening around me today has reawakened those habits of mind that carried me through weeks of maneuver training. This will be a year of shocking decline in living standards in the US.

Catacomb Resident

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NT Doctrine — Acts 6:1-8

Posted on December 31, 2022 by ehurst

There’s a lot of background to this lesson that is not obvious to casual readers.

First is that local Judean people were clannish. Despite the urbanization around Jerusalem, and the significant influx of Gentile influences through first the Greeks, and then the Romans, the substance of one’s social life remained the extended family. Thus, several of the Twelve were cousins of Jesus; this was something they took for granted. Nepotism was a virtue in Jewish society, unlike in our culture today. The Law of Moses promoted it via unspoken assumptions. You could not obey Moses without nepotism.

This became the fundamental means of organization within the exploding church in Jerusalem. While a significant portion of members simply brought their immediate family with them into the body, those whose family refused to join them could simply adopt a new family. This was already accepted in their culture, so adding the dimension of shared spiritual birth simply provided another path, and ultimately more valid, to something they already had a tendency to do.

For anyone who grew up in a Judean or Galilean household, this was all perfectly natural. They brought with them the instinct to organize into the same clan structure as the basis for everything the church did daily.

Diaspora Jews might have some faint ethnic hints of this in their background, but none of the connections with the locals. A primary reason they or their ancestors had left Palestine in the first place was the rich commercial opportunities around the Mediterranean Basin. These people were typically much more wealthy than the average local peasants who made up the early core of the disciples. Their large donations to the common treasury were quite welcome, but they had a tough time breaking into the social habits everyone else followed by instinct. These Diaspora Jews typically spoke Greek. They might have still learned some Hebrew Aramaic, but it was not their native tongue, and the local vernacular even less so.

Indeed, for all their lives coming to Jerusalem for Holy Days, they ended up in segregated synagogues, as well, where their common Greek tongue was in use. The area surrounding Jerusalem hosted a wide array of Greek-speaking synagogues catering to all kinds of special shared interests. But when they embraced Jesus as their Messiah, most of the Diaspora Christians would have been tossed from those synagogues. Thus, they had no social anchorage in the city, and were very much outsiders. They struggled to find a place, even with each other. Their association with other Greek-speaking Christians lacked the depth and stability common among the local Jewish Christians.

When it came to the likes of widows and orphans, the Jewish instinct was to take care of them as part of the extended family. Most of the Diaspora Christians had no one to adopt them. Having been outsiders all their lives out in the Gentile world, they were sensitive to being outsiders again. They noticed that the locals had clan leaders who interceded for them in the growing welfare system within the church. They contributed so much, but too many of their own were left out, because they lacked elders who automatically took care of them.

The Apostles understood the problem. Here was a church body filled with Judeans who would have normally been dismissive of Galilean bumpkins, as virtually all of the Twelve were, yet they were embraced as Apostles over this body. The term “waiting on tables” would translate more accurately to being chained to a desk in endless administrative trivial tasks. They were in effect the priesthood, and not political or administrative leaders. It was not their training or mission.

The administrative tasks were properly left to elders. Elders were native to the clan social structure, and the local Jews had it worked out instinctively. The Diaspora Christians had no native elders, so the Apostles directed the Greek-speakers to appoint some. In essence, they were telling the Diaspora Christians to organize themselves like the locals, to embrace each other as family-in-effect. From that effort, elders naturally arose by their talents and blessings from the Lord. Those were then presented as their new elders and recognized as such by everyone.

It was an ancient tradition of the Hebrew people to appoint new judges this way. Someone who was old enough and respected enough would be welcomed into, for example, the Sanhedrin by laying on of hands from the senior members. The Apostles used this gesture as a way of elevating the men chosen as the equivalent of local magistrate within the church body. Luke doesn’t use the term “deacon” because that word means a mere attendant; these men were administrative leaders.

This became the standard for all future churches. A church body was organized like the early Hebrew nomad nation days, where priests led in spiritual matters and elders/chiefs/kings led in administrative matters. God was pleased with this, and used it to call even more souls to join this first church in the New Testament.

And in this case, one of these new Greek-speaking elders became known for preaching and miracles: Stephen.

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Chasing After Wind

Posted on December 28, 2022 by ehurst

Yeah, what he said.

We are not supposed to “change the world” as most people use that phrase. The world is going to Hell and there’s nothing any human agency can do to change that. The best we can hope for is to find the Covenant path that is a narrow and steep climb out of this fallen world (Matthew 7:13-14; see this list of references).

The Book of Revelation reminds us to trust the Lord to handle the political situation. Persecution is our natural element. Jesus said it’s not for us to know the way God works in the contemporary political scene (Acts 1:7). Peter in his first epistle taught the folks in what is now northern Turkey how to handle the government persecution of genuine faith in Christ. There was nothing about agitating against the government policy. Rather, the key was becoming more otherworldly. As soon as Christians moved away from this commitment, their witness fell apart.

Historically, that movement began shortly after the passing of Apostle John. What still exists of the correspondence and books of the Early Church Fathers shows a rapid drift into politics of controlling outcomes, both internally and externally. The early church controversies and councils were not at all like the first Council in Jerusalem in Acts 15. That first council was about process, not outcomes.

There is a distinct difference between the Apostles and the church leaders after John. The latter were far more Pharisaical in their concerns, in the sense that it had to do with picking the right words. It’s one thing for the Apostles to attempt expressing Hebrew thoughts in Greek words; it’s another thing entirely to attempt dragging Hebrew teaching into Greek structures of thought. The early church leaders were asking the wrong questions.

For years I’ve been saying that we do not ape the Hebrew way of life in the particulars, but we are obliged to embrace the Hebrew frame of mind. I wrote whole books showing the flaws of western rational thinking and promoting ancient Hebrew intellectual traditions. It’s more than just calling it “mysticism” — it’s a radically different set of assumptions about what is real and true. There is a vast body of literature showing how the Ancient Near Eastern folks in general, and the ancient Hebrews in particular, didn’t think like we do today in the West.

The West is wrong, evil, false; the Hebrew way is God’s way.

And all the disputes contained in the literature of the Early Church Fathers are western in nature, not Hebrew. Their declarations were chasing issues that would have embarrassed Jesus, who was the ultimate advocate for the ancient Hebrew orientation. All of His disputes with the Pharisees can be summed up as trying to pull the discussion back into the ancient Hebrew frame of reference, versus the Hellenized (western) approach of the Pharisees.

And the Early Church Fathers were distinctly more Pharisaical/western in their frame of reference. There’s nothing wrong with dismissing the whole pile as impertinent to the New Testament. In John’s Revelation, one of the clear elements is his sorrow at how the Hebrew outlook was disappearing from church teaching. He did his best to cast the whole book in terms of ancient Hebrew symbolism. If you don’t dig into Old Testament mystical symbols, you cannot possibly understand Revelation. His Gospel was another attempt to bring things back to a more Hebrew approach; he published his Gospel long after the other three.

John was right to be sorrowful over that loss; it was the true treasury of gospel teaching. By the time we get to the councils under Constantine, the church leadership had completely compromised with secular political concerns. They were so worldly that they were willing to obey the demands of a pagan emperor who simply wanted to use the already faded Christian religion of his day as a political tool. And the institutional Christian religion of that day shows the compromise, getting the leaders involved in a host of disputes over words. I’m not saying there were no problems they needed to address, but their solutions were all wrong. They were operating outside the biblical traditions.

Thus, the entire sweep of Church History after John was all chasing after the wind. Go ahead and study Church History — as a story of failure to adhere to Christ.

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NT Doctrine — Acts 5:12-42

Posted on December 24, 2022 by ehurst

It was summer in Jerusalem. There was more than one kind of heat, though. The gospel of Jesus burned like a bonfire in His disciples.Luke tells us the miracles that accompanied Jesus were even more prevalent in the Apostles. One Jesus was trouble enough for the Sanhedrin, but now there were at least a dozen of Him, and because of them, thousands who lived that power and teaching.

So far as we know, the area known was as “Solomon’s Porch” was along two or more sides of the Court of Gentiles. It was a nice shady spot near on the Temple plaza where rabbis typically gathered to discuss things, but the thick presence of the disciples of Jesus crowded out the previously thin scattering of scholarly groups. Even among those who would not dare join them, the believers were considered good people, a definite improvement in the atmosphere.

It got to the point where the common folks brought their sick and dying out to lay along the sides of the streets where the Twelve commonly walked. Their hopes were that at least the shadow of their leader, Peter, would pass over them and perhaps heal them. It became a real traffic nightmare, because crowds of people from walking distance of the city brought all their sick and demonized folks for healing and deliverance.

And day after day, they testified that Jesus was the Messiah and had risen from the grave by His own authority. The healing and other miracles were a sign of His divine authority at work in His followers. They taught Moses the way Jesus had taught him, a path clearly not where the Jewish leadership was taking them. The mood in the city was quickly turning unfriendly to the Sanhedrin.

The Sadducees in particular were incensed at this whole trend. The High Priest exercised his authority and had the Apostles arrested and put in their jail. They planned to convene a court session the next day, but during the night, an angel came and released them. He commanded them to go out and keep teaching and preaching in the Temple plaza. Upon hearing this, they promptly went at sunrise back to Solomon’s Porch and began teaching as soon as anyone showed up, and that didn’t take very long.

So when the Sadducees had gathered in council, they called for the prisoners to be brought before them. The Temple Guard officers went and found everything secure, but no prisoners. The priestly men began discussing how this could be, and how it could turn out. In the middle of this grave discussion, when one of their associates burst in and told them that the prisoners were back in the Temple plaza, preaching and teaching again.

This time the Captain of the Guard himself went with his troops to ensure things went peacefully. They came and politely asked the Apostles to come back to the Sanhedrin court with him. The officials were concerned that the Temple Guard would be stoned if they were to rough up the disciples of Jesus, because it was obvious the crowds were more in favor of the disciples than they were of Jewish leadership.

When the men were standing before the council, the spokesman demanded to know why they had disobeyed the previous court orders not to teach in the name of Jesus. He warned darkly that their teaching was blaming the Sanhedrin for His death, showing contempt for the Sanhedrin Council.

Peter was blunt. He and his associates were going to obey God, not any mere men. They were guilty of murder, but God had raised Him back to life. He was the Son of God and heir to Heaven’s throne. It was their privilege to offer His forgiveness upon the believer’s repentance. Peter and his associates were eyewitnesses to all of this, and they had the backing of God’s Holy Spirit, a gift He was now giving to all who commit to obeying Him as Lord.

In their minds, every one of the Sadducees was thinking about how they could hold a grisly execution for these arrogant bumpkins from Galilee. But one of the councilors stood up and called for an executive session, and the disciples of Jesus were hustled out into the hallway. This councilor was named Gamaliel, a highly respected peer of the Sanhedrin. He recounted two messianic rebellions. When the self-proclaimed Messiahs died, so did their movements. The rebellions just fell apart because God was not behind them.

Gamaliel advised the Sanhedrin to leave these followers of Jesus alone. If it’s another false Messiah, then their movement would also fall apart. But if God is behind this, no power on earth could stop it, and the Sanhedrin would be lined up on the wrong side. They all agreed to accept his advice.

The called in their prisoners and had them beaten with rods across their backs, according to their legal traditions. Again, they were ordered not to speak in the name of Jesus, and dismissed.

But the disciples simply came out of the place celebrating. Being counted as the same kind of threat to the Jewish leaders as Jesus was fit them like a great honor. And they promptly went back to teaching about Jesus and performing miracles all over the city.

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Make the Devil Smile

Posted on December 23, 2022 by ehurst

I’m not taking any prisoners on this one.

I’ve grown weary of people repeating the lies of Satan — about Satan. There’s a whole bunch of noise out there from alt-media and liberty-minded folks about something they claim is satanic. They are trying to make it the ultimate crime against God’s Word, when the Bible says next to nothing about it. It is a case of injecting cultural taboos into the Bible.

Because of this, Satan is allowed to sidetrack the whole discussion. Worse, it lets a lot of people off the hook who are guilty of serious collusion with Satan’s real agenda.

Let’s get it out there: Child trafficking and sexual abuse is not the ultimate evil in Scripture. It’s bad, for sure, but it’s not the worst that Satan’s servants can do. The few mentions of anything resembling child abuse in Scripture are all symbolic, not literal. It’s not that God doesn’t care about the kiddos. Indeed, He uses them as a symbol because they are important to Him. Rather, their abuse is just a side-effect of something truly serious. If you get hung up on treating the side-effects, the real problem will kill you.

The tendency to see it as the ultimate evil is because of cultural idols. This is a particular sin of westerners. Western folks worship youth; this is why pedophilia is such a widespread issue in the first place. There are other cultures with a problem of child sexual exploitation, but the ancient Hebrew people rarely struggled with it. The ANE cultural background did not worship youth. Youth was not sacred to them, and it is not sacred in the Bible. Children were important for other reasons, but they were not idolized to the point where everyone wanted to cling to youth as a stage of life.

It wasn’t special. It was not imbued with mythical magic. It was simply to be survived. It doesn’t matter why we idolize youth; it’s evil for any reason.

That’s why pedophilia is not mentioned in Scripture as a sin. The Hebrew people had plenty of other cultural problems, but that was not one of them. Nor would I suggest that children were never sexually abused, but that in the ANE world, it simply wasn’t an obsession either way. Today’s western parents panic over the idea precisely for the same reason other folks lust after their children. Both of them idolize youth. If you obsess about child sexual abuse, you have precisely the same moral problem as those who lust after children.

Thus, Satan gets a lot of folks twisted up in this, taking advantage of the defiled pagan cultural background of the West. It keeps folks from noticing what he is really working on.

Satan loves religion. He hates genuine faith. He hates the Covenant and genuine covenant obedience. Folks who cling to the privileges of God’s Law are folks he cannot get his hands on. He is bound by God’s Law, too. He’s not at war with God; he’s at war with our faith in God. Faith makes you obedient to God’s Law.

God’s Law is first feudal; faith is commitment to God’s Person and glory. He is your feudal Master. The connection is personal through your convictions and faith. His will is summarized in the Code of Noah. His will does not include big church buildings and organizations, nor the big budgets and expensive facilities. It does not require a uniform of any sort, though it does require measures of modesty in general — such as no jewelry that doesn’t serve some important function. Oh, and you get one shot at marriage. If you don’t get it right the first time, you are out of the game. Jesus said that.

As long as church leaders worry about how they are perceived by the wider population — it’s summed up in the term “marketing” — then they are not serving the Lord. Because the second point is that God’s Law is tribal and covenantal. It means leadership is not “professional”. But I’ve said enough about elders and pastors already in previous posts. Most institutional religion violates the Covenant of Christ. The rising tribulation is going to shake an awful lot of people loose, because they have no genuine spiritual anchor.

The discussion of the Covenant is Satan’s real concern. He uses the bogeyman of child abuse to distract people from his real agenda. Go ahead and keep chasing that issue; it makes Satan smile when you call it “satanic”.

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Just Keeping Track

Posted on December 20, 2022 by ehurst

Re: Bill Gates Plans for New Catastrophic Contagion

The article starts off reminding readers that the murderous globalists have always telegraphed their moves, and they have already revealed their next move. The COVID scam was just the first run. It was a pathogen targeting adults, older people in particular. If we go by the latest tabletop exercises, the next time they will release a pathogen that attacks children mostly. It appears the target timeframe is 2025, since they are calling this new pandemic “SEERS-25” (severe epidemic enterovirus respiratory syndrome 2025).

There’s a lot more to it, of course. Part of the planning includes a stronger set up for global immunization passports. The UN has already appointed someone to lead that effort. The propaganda term will be “biosecurity” and it will tie together all the various efforts to control the human population of the world:

Biosecurity, in turn, is the justification for an international vaccine passport, which the G20 just signed on to, and that passport will also be your digital identification. That digital ID, then, will be tied to your social credit score, personal carbon footprint tracker, medical records, educational records, work records, social media presence, purchase records, your bank accounts and a programmable central bank digital currency (CBDC).

I won’t suggest that this can’t be derailed, only that it lays out what we have been expecting all along. My point is not to rile everyone up for violent resistance. That will surely happen without my input.

Rather, the Radix Fidem response to all of this is unchanged: trust in the Lord. More specifically in this case, pray that your local/state government will resist. It’s not as if they don’t already know this is coming. If you already know that’s unlikely, you’ll have to pray about other options. Maybe you should move to a safer place, or prepare to resist in place, or emphasize going underground to avoid the iron grip of bad government. In other words, you need to ensure you know what the Lord wants from you. Panic doesn’t accomplish anything, least of all the glory of God. Rather, see the warning signs and pray before you have to decide.

The saints of God will tribulate.

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Bryan Ardis Unsavvy?

Posted on December 18, 2022 by ehurst

In recent years, particularly as a reaction to the COVID-19 lockdowns, some of you may have come to notice Dr. Bryan Ardis. He’s a retired chiropractor and nutritionist; make of that what you will.

He’s charismatic and offers a really strong counter to the lies of the establishment in clear terms that most laymen can follow. He’s a very popular face in interviews. He appears to be honorable, in that he admits to his mistakes and offers corrections.

I cannot vouch for his medical advice; I’ve not felt much need for the remedies he suggests. I avoided the vaccines when they were proposed for the simple reason that I oppose most vaccines. I don’t trust the mainstream medical system on that issue in particular. I’m glad there are people like him able to get the attention of at least some.

But there’s something that really bothers me about Dr. Ardis. I’m not in a position to comment on his medical advice, but there’s something very dirty that clings to that man. He’s being used for evil by a lot of hucksters. That doesn’t mean he’s a bad guy, but my heart sounds a note of caution whenever his name appears.

One example: Someone I never heard of has recorded an interview with Ardis and posted it on a website. Once that link was shared among the email activists, the guy who runs the site began using the link to hijack browsers. Not in the sense of malware, but the bait-n-switch of automatically replacing that page with another that offers a bunch of overpriced supplements of questionable quality. You can no longer watch the interview with Ardis.

That’s just a sample of the kind of crap that follows Ardis everywhere he shows up on the Net. It may not always be that extreme, but his videos often show up on pages cluttered with scammy advertising. I feel like I’m back in the early days of the Net when the most repulsive porn advertisements were hijacking browsers that weren’t protected.

What bothers me even more is that Dr. Ardis never seems to notice how his message is being abused like this. You can find him all over, and he seems too willing to be used by these hucksters. If he’s a good guy, he’s not a very savvy one. Then again, his own website is extremely pushy about selling his skin blemish remedies.

I’ve lost all interest in whatever Dr. Ardis has to say.

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