American versus Christian

Posted on September 26, 2022 by ehurst

Yeah, what he said.

If you consider yourself a patriot, loyal to the people of America, then you are a fool for believing the government can be restored to the people. Lincoln lied when he suggested the federal government was “of the people, by the people, for the people”. Furthermore, he knew it was a lie; he remains one of the worst traitors in the history of the US. As it was, the US Constitution was a usurpation of the mandate from the states. It was a lie from Hell and represents a refusal to serve the interests of the people.

But the states were only slightly better. Building upon Enlightenment ideals was a rejection of the gospel and the Covenant of Christ. The entire North American colonization has been pagan and idolatrous from the start. Western Civilization is inherently pagan. So trying to restore anything from American history is a fool’s errand. The American people were pagan in the first place; they didn’t really know the God of the Bible.

It was the colonial philosophical foundation that made it so imminently easy to hijack the US government later. Look up the word “Haskalah” — whatever else it means, it points out that Jews were behind some portion of the Enlightenment in the first place. The Church had excluded Jews from participation in western society. The Enlightenment was a rejection of the Church, and was the result of Jewish agitation for being accepted into western mainstream society without actually having to assimilate to western social expectations, except perhaps superficially.

By no means do I defend the Medieval Church to which Jews objected so much. That creature was simply another result along the extended path of conquest by deception that Jews have followed since Christ. The compromise of organized Christian religion with pagan government in the Fourth Century was a result of the Judaizer influence staring back in the First Century. Jews have never let up. If you bother to look into the subject of who in European history were Jews or crypto-Jews working in government, academia and banking, you’ll find their fingerprints on vast trends.

Before that, the history of Israel is a long, sad tale of a people adopted by God as His own household, but who seldom managed to actually embrace the Covenant that gave them their identity. Few and brief were the periods when someone with true faith drove them to a simulacrum of faithfulness so that God could show His powerful miracles in that nation. His prophets warned that He had been far too indulgent with them.

At some point their rejection of the Covenant resulted in God disowning them. It should be clear to anyone that much of what Jesus taught points out how Judaism was inherently a rejection of Moses. It hijacked Moses’ words and authority, but rejected the Hebrew mystical ways. The leadership had worked hard to enslave the Judean peasants to their hedonistic brand of religion. Jesus said they worshiped Mammon, a reference to fleshly comforts, turning away from the otherworldly orientation of Moses.

At the Last Supper, Jesus declared the Old Covenant translated into a New Covenant in His blood sacrifice. All the ancient Hebrew ways were brought forward into the new path of the Cross. There is a very strong continuity between the Old and New Covenants. What was thrown away completely was the human national identity. There can be no earthly nation of Israel; that name now belongs to a spiritual nation of hearts. Just as the Pharisees had turned the Covenant identity into an ethnic identity, so Jesus reasserted that ethnicity is meaningless in the Holy Spirit. “God can raise up from these stones children to Abraham!”

We reject Judaism and rightly call it the Synagogue of Satan. They are quite the opposite from what it meant to be Hebrew and the meaning of the name Israel. All the promises of the Old Testament came to fulfillment in Jesus. But you must know that following Him means we must become what the Jews refused to be: We must be a spiritual nation of hearts walking in Hebrew mysticism. We must fulfill the Covenant teaching of Christ, because that is our only identity. We must make Jesus our feudal Master and be His tribe. We have no other loyalty.

You cannot really be an American patriot unless you reject the Kingdom of Heaven.

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Don’t Barge In

Posted on September 25, 2022 by ehurst

Sometimes I need to post reminders.

This is a pastoral blog. This blog is the pulpit for a virtual parish, a “virtual church” if you will. It’s purpose is to encourage faith and what faith demands. It is not for everyone. Yes, this blog is a publication in the sense of making the information accessible to anyone who wanders by with a browser. In the settings for this blog, I allow random comments, but I do have a moderation policy. That’s because the primary thrust of my posts are aimed at encouraging folks who already embrace, or at least tolerate, my frame of reference.

You see that big “RF” icon there? See how it comes up as a favicon in the browser tab? There’s a reason for that: It stands for “Radix Fidem” — the name we give our community covenant. That’s the frame of reference for this blog. If you can’t be bothered to notice that big icon and wonder what it means, you start out with a major disability in trying to join the conversation. You run the risk of your comments being moderated out.

Stay on topic. The whole point of this blog is to bless the community that came into existence from what is taught here. The only reason there is a comment section is to encourage their faith. If I can bounce off your comments to bless my parishioners, I’ll use them. If your comments can’t be used in that pursuit, I’ll delete them. I have a duty to my God and the parishioners He has granted me to pastor.

By no means are we a mainstream parish. Whatever expectations you bring with you may not work too well here, because you aren’t in charge. I don’t treat random zealots as honored guests. I won’t place you in the pulpit just because you come here with a strong urge to speak what’s on your mind. I’m not going to entertain hit-n-run comments that promote a different brand of faith. I’m guarding the flock.

I don’t expect you to read for days some of the old posts on this blog, going back more than a decade. I do expect you to use the search function to see if I’ve already addressed your favorite topics. If a conversation is such an urgent need for you, try to consider the best way to open the doors to discussion.

This blog stands on the Radix Fidem framework linked above. We aren’t interested in your dissent from it; we are the dissent. We reject the mainstream, though not simply because it is mainstream. We reject it because it failed the demands God made of us. We know our faith offends most Christians. We are challenging the mainstream, who already hold all the publication advantages. The mainstream message represents a bondage that crushes our sense of divine calling. You can keep it. Don’t try to bring us back under that bondage.

If you are intrigued, we can talk. If you feel the urge to correct us, don’t waste your time. We didn’t start this yesterday, so it’s not new and fragile. If you ignore the long timeline, you’ll only make a fool of yourself. Don’t assume we are just waiting hushed and breathless for your divine wisdom (sarcasm there). We’ve had a good number of years praying this through and testing it in our lives.

The Lord has prospered our faith.

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NT Doctrine — Matthew 26:30-56

Posted on September 24, 2022 by ehurst

Parallel passages can be found in Mark 14:26-52 and Luke 22:39-52. We come to the part in the narrative when we need to refer to all three synoptic accounts to get the full picture.

Matthew and Mark, with almost identical words, give us the context for John’s mention that Peter would deny Jesus. The original comment was that they would all be scattered according to the prophesy in Zechariah 13:7. The disciples seemed to have missed the statement that upon His resurrection, they should meet Him in Galilee. Instead, Peter as the presumed second-in-command insisted that he would never panic. But Jesus solemnly warned that Peter would do it not once, but three times before the last guard rotation of that very night began (called “cock-crowing” in those days). Peter insisted that he would die before denying Him, and the others in chorus asserted the same.

Again, Matthew and Mark record the same details in very similar language. Luke has a rather different report that adds a few details. Jesus leads His entourage to the Garden of Gethsemane, a place where people came to hang out at night for typically nefarious purposes, but which Jesus had customarily used as a prayer chapel. He asked the main group to stay in one place to pray with Him, then went farther into the garden with His inner circle of three: Peter, James and John.

In this more restricted company, He began to show His emotional distress. They had no clue, but Jesus knew His arrest, trial and crucifixion was at hand. Like any other man, Jesus wasn’t looking forward to that experience. He stepped away from the trio still farther and began to pray, lying face down. Luke tells us that an angel appeared to Him to encourage Him as He struggled with His flesh in prayer. He was so distressed that He sweat blood.

We know that He asked His Father to let Him skip this coming event, but was willing to obey and endure it. He came back once to find the trio asleep. Granted, it was late at night in a sheltered space and they were all full from the meal. They didn’t understand that there even was a threat, much less what it was. Jesus warned them that testing was coming and they needed to be focused and alert to face the temptation, but it went in one ear and out the other.

This same scenario happened two more times. On His third time returning to them, He said it was over, both the prayer and their sleep. The time had come and the traitor had brought an arresting force. Judas knew where to find Jesus during these prayer meetings. This was a mixed group of soldiers bearing swords (Judean, not Romans), Temple Guards, and various others with clubs, easily the size of a full company of troops.

Judas had prepared a signal with the commander, that whomever he gave the respectful public greeting, kissing on both sides of the face, and calling Him “Rabbi” was the one they were to arrest. He wasted no time in picking out Jesus, marking Him with this elaborate greeting.

The sequence of events at this point is a little confused between the three synoptic narratives. Apparently Jesus responded to this greeting with some sarcasm aimed at Judas. Why was he really there? And why would he choose to identify Jesus in this particular fashion? Just how fake was he?

John’s parallel passage in 18:1-12 adds something very interesting, and most people have no idea what to make of it. Jesus turns to address the crowd and makes a legal query: Who are you here to arrest? The answer was clear: Jesus of Nazareth. To this Jesus declared, “I am.” In John’s schoolboy Greek grammar, it was a rough translation of God’s name, “Jehovah” (English; Hebrew is Yahweh). By a miracle of God’s power, they were all forced backward and prostrated on the ground before Him. When they had recovered, He asked the same question again, but this time made it obvious their response meant His disciples were not under arrest. John says this fulfills His promise in the previous chapter, having lost none of them except Judas.

At this point the disciples realized what was happening, and Peter pulled out his big fishing knife and tried to strike the man closest to him, likely one who was not even armed. Peter lacked the skill for fighting, because all he managed to do was slice off the man’s right ear. Jesus rebuked him, noting that if this was the time to fight, Jesus could have gotten far better troops — twelve legions of angels. Even if such an army were only humans, it would be enough to occupy the city and a large territory around it, but with angels, only a few would be enough to defeat any human force of any size. Then Jesus healed the man, reattaching the ear with no wound.

Speaking loudly to the apparent commander of this company, the Temple Guard captain, Jesus asked why this force was necessary. How often had Jesus stood before them within the Temple grounds, and they didn’t even try to seize Him? But of course, this was all prophesied that the government would act on behalf of the Kingdom of Darkness.

It was then that the eleven disciples fled into the darkness as the armed company surrounded Jesus and officially took Him in custody.

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Desire, Not Duty

Posted on September 24, 2022 by ehurst

You folks need to repent.

When I read between the lines, the dominant theme of writing about church religion these days reeks of a rejection of divine standards. Let’s make this clear folks: God’s Law is the nature of reality. Granted, if you analyze things by the logic of human intellect, you will not even see the moral truth of God’s revelation. In that condition, you are utterly incapable of perceiving good from evil.

However, if you walk the heart-led path (AKA, by your convictions), you begin to hear directly from Creation itself. Reality will speak to you about how God’s Law is nothing more than His divine moral character, which is the framework for all Creation. In other words, God’s Law is the standard for how reality operates. It is reality.

So, if you submit to Christ as your feudal Lord, then His promise is that He will (1) reveal Himself in your convictions and (2) fire up those convictions so that you have the will and strength to obey. You will desire God’s Law; you will become obsessed with making Him smile.

So God’s Law is privilege, not a duty. If all you have is a duty, then you are walking in your fallen flesh. You cannot please God in the flesh. It won’t matter what you can compel your flesh to do, what makes God smile is your heart of passion for Him and His reputation. You’ll want everyone to see just how amazing and sweet is the feudal service of your Lord.

So it riles me to no end the way most people write about Christian religion as if it’s a chore, as if it’s a hard thing to do. What’s hard is getting out the way of God’s Spirit working in you. You will find your own fleshly nature intolerable, as it nags and drags you down every moment. You’ll want to keep the hammer and nails in a carpenter’s apron tied around your waist so you can nail your flesh back up on the Cross every time you turn around.

Over and over again: Covenant Law is a privilege.

* The terms “God’s Law” and “Covenant Law” are synonymous. Those are just names for God’s will for us. Pay attention to the whole context of Romans 6, because the reference to “law” in verse 14 refers to the civil enforcement authority of Judean government, not the divine will of God. If all your holiness comes from human enforcement of a code, then you have no righteousness before the Lord. If you commit to Him with all your heart, then He will grant His Holy Spirit to change you and set you free from your fleshly nature.

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Become a Rock of Offense

Posted on September 22, 2022 by ehurst

I’ve mentioned often enough my concern that we little people will be shut out of sharing information over the Internet. Private communications will continue for a long time, but TPTB will move to squelch actual publication of anything they don’t like.

In the past, I approached it from the angle that I would be censored from sharing my message. I’ve been trying to inject my voice into the freewheeling discussion of things on the Net, something millions of others have been for some time free to do. Previously, the elites didn’t even understand the Internet, so they were slow to act.

Well, now they do understand it. For several years, they’ve slowly introduced the idea that they should squelch unapproved publications on the Net by various approaches. Right now, we have the UN leadership on record announcing they have come up with a plan for this censorship that would affect the entire global Net. At the same time, activist voices in every country that previously lauded free speech have been grinding down the mere notion of it. In other words, it’s been attacked from all sides. TPTB are already implementing their plans.

I want you to understand this: The whole range of what can be published on the Net, such that it can be accessed by just about anyone, is going to change in just a few months. You may well have the means and technical knowledge to get your writing hosted on a server that is linked to the Net at large, but people seeking that writing will be blocked from it. The underlying system of addressing (DNS) will be altered so that all links to your hosted content will be hidden, or outright blocked.

The old guard of total freedom on the Net are passing from the scene. The newer generations were compromised in childhood, and have grown up believing in various measures of wokism.

All of those small, independent operators will be forced onboard with this plan, by how TPTB will seize control of all the bigger connectivity suppliers that feed the independents. In previous years we’ve seen the Borg shut down sharing on the big social media services, and now it’s coming to the little guys.

Stop for a moment and consider: How do you decide that something you hear privately isn’t just a rumor? How do you build a worldview that filters out the nonsense? For most of us, we’ve had trusted sources on the Net, people who seem to have opened the door to thinking and ideas that seemed to call our names. Over the past decade, those sources have been trimmed down by various means. The last few will soon be silenced, as well. We used to have people we could trust to quickly respond to elitist lies, and a few who could beat them to the punch, but in the near future, you won’t have anybody to turn to for a dissenting viewpoint.

Your option to hear opposing voices is quickly being shut down. Granted, some paths will remain open for quite some time, but they will become increasingly restricted to those who are more technically inclined. I suppose there will always be hidden channels, but hiding stuff from TPTB also tends to hide it from those who really want it. Pretty soon you won’t be able to buy a device that allows you to bypass the controls.

There is nothing you can do to fight this. Yes, it is theoretically possible to roll back this awful smothering tide, but the people don’t have the will for it. Given the tactical situation, it would require a million assassins, because anything short of slaughtering the elite will not work. How would you get such a thing organized without using the Internet, and risking detection? Possible in theory, but such a thing is wholly improbable.

The only real answer is that you’ll have to develop the kind of independence of mind to stand for what really matters to you. You’ll need to make sure you are very clear on your convictions and learn to walk with your heart in the lead.

You’ll also need to learn that what really matters is not what you know of the wider world, but what you know in your soul about the foul nature of fallen human flesh. You’ll have to know what sin is, how to recognize it when you see it. You never could really do much about such concerns as the war in Ukraine, unless you are among the few ready and able to go there and fight in battles on one side or the other. But very soon, you won’t even be able to hear any honest reports about what’s happening there. And you’ll have to learn why that really doesn’t change anything for you personally.

Everything you read will be a lie, and you’ll need your own internal source of truth. We’ve seen how even our Bibles have been altered by TPTB — all the more so if you reading it on an electronic device — so there is no objective source in this world. There is only the Holy Spirit speaking through your own heart. You had better know the Word of God well enough to sense directly what is and isn’t true. You’ll have to know internally what God requires of you before anyone tries to compel you to sin.

And you should know that our world is ruled by people who are determined to defile you in every way possible, intent on removing the divine covering, so that you cannot keep yourself from Satan’s clutches. You’ll need to become a rock of offense that withstands the flood of lies.

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Dire Expectations

Posted on September 20, 2022 by ehurst

As always, I walk by my heart of conviction. I have some expectations based on what my heart tells me about what I must do to please the Lord.

The political situation for the West will grow increasingly chaotic. Because of the globalist influence on our society, the likelihood of Americans rising up in revolt against the federal government is just about zero. Every national organization has been infiltrated; without organizing and drilling, they will never do it. Worse, our society has been pickled in materialism to the point that no one is capable of honestly declaring that they would prefer death to living under oppression. All of this is by design.

But the oppressors have also miscalculated, so it’s going to come apart because too many state level leaders are willing to fight the federal system. It won’t be wonderful; far from. Still, it will be an improvement, since the alternative is already getting too awful to tolerate. The US in particular, and the West in general, will shatter into a thousand tiny fragments.

Because of this, when the modern State of Israel finally feels froggy enough to jump into war again, they will lose. And at some point, the Jewish elite around the world will abandon Israel, because Zionism was never their plan in the first place. And the destruction of modern Israel will then cause a huge mess in the Zionist Christian organizations. There will be an exodus from churches whose leadership refuse to admit the obvious, that Dispensationalism was all a big lie.

The Internet will very soon cease to be a means of spreading the gospel message. It will take a lot longer to silence the private communications of those who already believe, but the true believers need to make a plan for this. We need to be ready for it. Of course, the Radix Fidem path already recognizes that the real gospel Covenant of Christ was always spread by face-to-face witness. I don’t mean going from door to door harassing people, but by simply walking in the blessings of shalom and visibly holding to an otherworldly outlook.

I’ve had a very strong urge to pray about the growth of fellowship locally. Right now, there’s just a couple of people who tolerate my Radix Fidem message enough not to turn away. The Lord is signaling to me that the numbers will grow soon. I’m looking forward to it.

Our greatest single advantage in the loud competition for people’s attention is that the Covenant comes with shalom. It’s more than just a serenity and peace, but the blessings of God. Miracles are typically pretty random for believers, but for those who walk in the heart-led path of the Covenant, they are simply standard equipment. As we begin to fellowship and share in the Covenant life, the Lord will pour out His power on the community, and people are going to notice.

If you are someone who strives to adhere to the Radix Fidem path, get ready for a local community to form around your faith. The doors will open in the hearts of others; the Lord is moving already.

But if the political and economic chaos is not enough by itself, God is also moving to enhance the chaos and destruction of man-made structures. Demons are being set loose, for sure, and people are going crazy. However, nature itself will be set loose to object to all the evil around us. Natural disasters will increase dramatically; that’s already started. And we have yet to see the next Carrington Event; we are overdue for it.

Within the next 25 years or so will come a whole collection of solar catastrophes. Weather will become more extreme, with things like clear-sky lightning that scorches the ground. A part of it will include earth’s magnetic poles moving to new locations. Animals that rely on a sense of magnetic fields of navigation will end up way off course. The earth will flip its rotation to match the new magnetic pole alignment. The new poles will be just west of Indonesia and also just west of South America. Greenland will end up on the new equator. Not long after will be a new ice age.

Folks, this life was never worth that much struggle, except in pursuit of the Lord’s glory. Our faith in His Covenant is all that really matters. Kingdoms and civilizations rise and fall, but none of that matters. It’s the Heavenly Kingdom that warrants all of our attention. It’s true that the majority of humanity will die when our sun goes nova, but faith cannot be killed. Your heart-led walk will outlive you. It’s on our shoulders to commit ourselves ever more to walking in faith so that our witness of the gospel lives through the coming catastrophes.

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It’s God’s Problem

Posted on September 18, 2022 by ehurst

You cannot change the behavior of others. You can offer incentives, but to change their decisions is not in our hands.

The Covenant of Christ is feudal and tribal. You have some authority over children and other dependents under your dominion, but even then, the issue is restraining them and guiding them to make better choices more consistent with shalom. You cannot decide for them; the whole point is to encourage better decisions, not wiping away decisions you don’t like.

The Covenant recognizes three levels of participation. You have covenant family, folks supposedly committed to your shalom. You have allies who aren’t committed to your welfare, but are willing to work alongside for their own reasons. You have folks who are enemies, hostile to your shalom. This is roughly equivalent to the family, paid servants and slaves/prisoners of the Old Testament feudal household. There is a sort of fourth category of people who simply aren’t involved. In terms of psychology, we refer to them as “human scenery”.

As you might expect, under the Radix Fidem community covenant, we have precious few people in our lives who are covenant family. That’s the reality we live with right now. There is an allowance for people taking refuge in your covenant domain, being treated as provisional family, but even those are precious few. The rest of the world is for us either allies or enemies.

I have a commission from God, and it includes riding my bicycle. Let’s not get bogged down in all the reasons for that; just know that I regard this activity as critical to my obedience to the Lord. The pictures I post here are also a part of that, though of lesser importance. The riding is the big thing. And quite frankly, I pray every day for guidance where the Lord wants me to ride.

Sometimes it’s a surprise, taking me off my standard routes. Often enough, I’ll be urged to make a variation from a regular loop. A critical element in each ride is stopping at some particular place to pray and contemplate the Word. I’ve come up with a list of prayer chapels. This is all very serious business with me. I regard them as divine appointments to pass certain locations.

Right now there’s a lot of construction on some of my routes. There are just three corridors between the Midwest City/Del City (“Mid-Del”) area and the biking routes of Oklahoma City. One is way south — the Grand Boulevard Trail. Another is in the middle — the Eagle Lake Trail. The third is just a bit north of there — NE 4th Street. The last one is being rebuilt so that instead of being an official bike route, it will have an actual bike path.

As with most previous projects all over the Oklahoma City Metro area (over 600 square miles), those involving bike routes have always remained open to cyclists even when motorists were blocked. That is, if I choose to ride on NE 4th Street past the construction crews, they wave and smile, but won’t try to hinder me passing through except for my own safety, and only briefly at that. It’s been like this for years, and for several projects.

There has been for years a connection in the middle route involving Eagle Lake Trail. It connects via some land along the rowing competition area of the Oklahoma River Recreation Area, to the South River Trail. Recently, there has been a lot of landscaping work going on around the connecting trail, because the First Americans Museum (FAM) is adjacent to that trail. The crews completely tore up our trail, though the OKC Parks and Recreation have promised to put it back as soon as the project is finished.

Meanwhile, cyclist were allowed to go through at their own risk — until a couple of weeks ago. Whoever runs the contract for this project has recently erected signs refusing passage, and the workers enforce it.

You can yammer all you like about the differences in the contracts and liabilities, etc., but the point is this move closes off a route cyclists have been using for decades. The city still owns the route, not the FAM. It’s part of the rowing recreation area; it’s how judges get to their posts along the river bank. There is no valid detour for cyclists connecting between the River routes and Eagle Lake, because the contract crews refuse to permit passage on the only land that connects the two routes.

Nobody is going to stand up for the cyclists. The local organizations refuse to even talk about advocacy for us. Apparently there aren’t any cycling lawyers who have reason to pass that way. Yes, I’m sure a few ornery riders have just flipped them the bird and rode through anyway. I’m not one of those. I have a covenant witness to uphold.

Revenge, or forcing them to change their behavior, is not a valid goal in my consideration. Rather, I have only the Lord who commissioned my choice to pass through there. As someone else has explained so well, this is matter of avoiding being defiled by someone who dares to defy my God’s command.

I am forced to take a very rough route around the FAM property, which includes riding on some railroad tracks that aren’t used much. Yes, that’s technically illegal, but it’s also totally unenforced. It’s the only choice I have left; I’m following my convictions. My convictions also warn me to stay away from the buttheads who are hindering my obedience to the Lord. I’ve delivered them and their project over to Satan (1 Timothy 1:18-20; 1 Corinthians 5:4-5). I won’t ride within the boundaries of their project.

Yes, this would appear to be a highly limited way to handle it. Keep in mind that the core issue here is God and whether He takes offense at someone hindering my obedience to His mission for me. I’m in no position to take any other action. Nobody with human legal authority cares. I have no family or allies affected, only enemies and human scenery. But I take this seriously because my convictions were provoked, so I’ll do about the only thing I can.

Just as surely as I pray for and bless those who allow me to ride through their construction projects without comment, I’ll stop and pray at the gate of this offending construction project and renew the vow to turn them over to Satan. I’ll pray very specifically that God will remove whatever covering they might have, and take all their blessings. My faith says it will make a difference to God, and that He will be inclined to grant my prayers.

I may never know what He does about it, but if something is reported, I’ll be sure to pass it on.

Note: If you look this up on a mapping service, it’s Eastern Avenue just south of Interstate 40 in Oklahoma City. Eastern Avenue is dangerous for cyclists due to high volume heavy traffic; that’s why the Eagle Lake Trail ducks under it. If you want to suggest I take Reno Avenue, that’s just as dangerous as Eastern Avenue. If you would like to suggest I take SE 15th Street, that’s a high crime area where I was personally robbed some years ago. I’m not riding there.

For now, I connect using the railroad tracks and a dirt track along Interstate 35 to get between the end of the Eagle Lake Trail and the end of the South River Trail.

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NT Doctrine — John 17

Posted on September 17, 2022 by ehurst

We are truly blessed that John was able to recall so much of this conversation from Jesus’ final hours with His disciples. He also recorded the audible prayer Jesus uttered in their company that night. It was important that they hear the words and how He addressed His Father. It was a High Priestly prayer offered very near the Temple grounds, yet from outside them.

None of what He says is new, but given how the disciples were still operating in their fleshly minds without the Holy Spirit, the repetition would serve the purpose of drumming into their minds the way Jesus looked upon this whole affair. It was a paradox: Both the suffering of the Cross and His Ascension to the Father were identified as His glory. And both are the glory of the Father.

Then Jesus speaks a lot about gifts. The true name of the Father was His gift to the disciples. The disciples themselves were gifts from the Father to His Son. These men had gained the awareness of all the gifts of truth the Father gave the Son, who in turn gave them to the disciples. Now, they truly believed that Jesus was the Messiah. Jesus notes that those who truly embrace Him should have special treatment from the Father. All of this was wrapped up in the glory of the Father, the greatest gift He ever gave, for it held the power of making everyone united in the purpose of living.

Jesus was about to end living on this earth. The only one of the Twelve He lost in the process was the one prophesied to betray Him. The survivors would bear His joy at the memory of this prayer. This joy and teaching had lifted them from their conformity with the world. Now they were almost like Jesus in belonging to a different realm entirely. And it was not His intent to take them out of the world, but that they should learn how to stay out of Satan’s grip over this world.

They were sent back into the world to liberate others by the same joy and teaching. Jesus was now committing Himself wholly to the task ahead, so that the truth would breathe a new life into their dead fleshly bodies.

Of course, this prayer also covered those who would eventually come to the same truth through the disciples’ message. It was that same premise: The glory and love and joy of the Creator are what hold His people together. That glory is carried into this world by the loving sacrificial commitment they shared with Christ on His way to the Cross.

Some day, they would all face death, and Jesus prayed they would all gather with Him in the afterlife. There, they would see His glory face to face, the same glory that would carry them through life and death. Glorious love was the identity of the Father and Son and His entire Kingdom. The world never knew that joy and love and glory. Yet, it should be obvious that Jesus came into this world with it, and would leave it where they could find it, in their own hearts.

Finally, He prayed that they could in no wise forget any of this, even as He faced the Cross.

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Ride Photos 16

Posted on September 12, 2022 by ehurst

This batch is an eclectic mix from several rides. I’m getting over seasonal allergies and it kept me from riding much for a few weeks. This is a view from the South River Trail back toward the OKC Skyline. You can always recognize OKC by the appearance of the massive Devon Tower.

I was trying to capture (below) the green weeping willows covering the north bank of the North Canadian River from the bridge at NE 122nd Street. This is one of my favorite shorter rides, and bridge sees so little traffic that I can sit here in natural quiet most of the time. The sun was still a little low on the eastern horizon, so the color is vivid.

This (below) is facing upstream from the same bridge. I was trying to capture something with the telephoto function, but it seems to have failed. It’s not bad, but it didn’t get what I could actually see. This was right before I discovered I had a flat tire on the front of my bike. The thorn strap had managed to dig a hole in the tube. Don’t buy Rhino-Dillo brand tire liners.

Today I visited a couple more points on Draper Lake. This (below) is Point 22, where the boat ramp is totally exposed by the lower water level. I was standing on the boat dock, but it was not even touching the water at any point, just lying on the sand of the shore. Some guy came hustling past on foot with his dog, able to walk the entire shoreline as far as he liked because there was no brush at all that far out.

What made Point 22 half-way interesting was this lovely rock formation jutting out into the water. Today, the abnormally light breeze meant very little splashing on the rocks, but it was still quite lovely, if a bit damp and slippery. The rocks here are unusually soft and water soaks right into them.

Over on Point 23 there is a fishing dock that looks the same as all the rest. For a while I had the place to myself, so I rode my bike right out on the dock. The far shore exhibited a very large and solid rock formation. I tried a couple of times but the random motions from the fishing dock made it hard to get a good telephoto capture. This was the best I could do.

The rock formation on Point 23 itself was less inspiring, but turned out to be a very nice place to sit quietly and watch the foam forming on the sandy shore. The soil right at this point is very densely packed and forms a sharp rise. What little wind there was drove the waves just hard enough for foam to form, and then it would inch along the shore to a pocket and collect into a large rolling wad. I was mesmerized by it for a little while.

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Ride Photos 15

Posted on September 6, 2022 by ehurst

Out behind the main Midwest City shopping area, the municipal leadership decided to build this fancy park. It was previously the site of our city hall and a fire station, along with a water tower. All of that got moved to other locations. The site sat fallow for a long time until someone came up with this idea. I’m sure it will be nice, but I doubt it will see much foot traffic. It’s more of a monument than an actual park.

Meanwhile, the latest bikeway build for Oklahoma City Parks and Recreation is coming along nicely. This is where it runs parallel to NE 4th Street. It will connect the Boathouse District with the Katy Trail, via a long, as-yet-unfinished bikeway along the north bank of the North Canadian River. The whole thing is moving along slowly. Last year, I predicted it would not be finished before next month. So far, that’s turning out to be a good estimate.

Where NE 4th passes over Interstate 35, the bikeway means simply widening the pedestrian walkway and making the drive lanes a little tighter. The new wall has been poured and is standing solid, but the original wall had to be chipped away completely down to the deck. That’s why there’s a new concrete form running down the center of the bike lane. To be honest, it would have been okay to just carve down the old wall to level with the surface, as they had done originally, but I guess someone decided it looked tacky that way.

With the recent heavy rains, the water flow over the lower dam on the OK River Recreation Area (AKA, the Boathouse District) has drawn a lot of fish, and with them, the cranes. They were crowded thickly around the dam by the hundreds, and all along the outflow for several hundred yards downstream.

The other thing noticeable is that, with the temperatures a little lower than during the heat of the summer, we have a much larger homeless population camping along the river. There is always a few, all year round, but right now they are about as thick as the cranes.

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