You Must Die

Posted on September 10, 2025 by ehurst

It’s both doctrine and pragmatism that we are utterly dependent on the Holy Spirit’s Presence. Without Him, the Covenant of Christ is merely law. Everything we teach is utterly impossible without that divine power. In His Presence, any biblical law code becomes a manifestation of grace.

The birth of His Presence drives a wedge between the conscious awareness and the flesh. The flesh isn’t gone, but its power over you is broken. You gain the power to reverse things. Instead of its demands steering your choices, you are free to choose the path God has revealed in His Word. It’s not automatic, but it’s now possible.

The worst part about this whole thing is that the sorrows of our fleshly existence still register in our conscious awareness. The death of the flesh still hurts. Yet it is your mission to kill it, little by little. It must be conquered and occupied so that it is tamed and converted to divine use. In a sense, you are the one who supplies the willing choice to hammer in each nail, pinning your own flesh to the Cross. Everyone blow of the hammer causes you pain.

Each of those nails represents a turning point in our lives. At various stations along the path back to Eden, we encounter obstacles that own a piece of our souls. The only way to get any farther is to kill that connection. It’s an experience of death; that’s how you handle it. You treat it like bereavement. You must pass through the whole process:

  1. denial
  2. bargaining
  3. anger
  4. depression
  5. acceptance

Bouncing back and forth between those steps only prolongs the misery and keeps you from moving closer to the Lord. The wounds must heal and scars formed. The longer you live, it would make sense that you get better at facing the whole process. Nothing keeps the wounds from remaining tender for a time, maybe even decades, but it’s all part of our lives on the path to Eden.

You die again and again. The paradox is that for every hardened scar on your soul, you gain a new sensitivity to the Spirit. More to the point, you gain a new perspective on what it means to love your covenant brothers and sisters. You may also gain a new sense of compassion for those who are not under the Covenant.

And that’s the whole point. We get better at understanding Christ through His law of loving each other as He loves. You also get better at discerning who qualifies as covenant family and who doesn’t. The burden of deciding who is and isn’t remains both heavy and necessary. If you do not distinguish, you play into the hands of the Enemy.

To understand, you only have to die.

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Working Assumptions

Posted on September 8, 2025 by ehurst

We’ve mentioned before that we tend to favor annihilationism. That’s the notion that Hell/the Abyss is not eternal, and that everyone already there or going there will be annihilated at Judgment Day. Nobody roasts in Hell eternally.

But as Catacomb Resident (as Tomb Refugee) notes on Sigma Frame Blog, it’s not a doctrine. It’s just our working assumption. That’s because we cannot possibly know for sure. Heiser shared in a podcast that the statements in the Bible about Hell and the Lake of Fire are sourced from outside the canon. Jesus spoke about Hades (Hell) in terms of burning torment based on the common conceptions of His day, but it’s not found in the Old Testament in any clear statement.

Since He spoke so frequently in parables, it would be perfectly acceptable to use whatever imagery was popular at the time. We do it without giving it any thought, and there’s no reason Jesus had to waste time worrying about it. He spoke in the language of His people. John did the same in his Revelation.

At any rate, the sources on the imagery are ambivalent, suggesting that the Lake of Fire is both eternal torment and annihilation. We lean to annihilation because Psalm 82 depicts God as threatening the rebellious members of His staff with annihilation just like mortals. While the entire scene remains veiled in symbolism, it’s as close as we come to a clear statement in favor of annihilation.

When Scripture is ambiguous, it’s not a doctrine. The most it can be is a supposition, an estimate for some practical purpose. Our estimate is that the Devil and his allies on the Elohim Council, along with the Watchers, Nephilim, etc. already in the Abyss will all be annihilated on Judgment Day and the Elect will take their places in Eternity.

It makes sense of other things that are clearly stated as doctrine. We don’t put much trust in speculative theology, and we especially don’t care for western mythology injected back into the Bible.

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Sin and Covenant

Posted on September 6, 2025 by ehurst

Once again, I’m going to ask you to think about the Bible as a whole as we look at some problems we face in getting our message across.

I’ve said this before: the biblical concept of covenant is not the same as contract. While you will find many church folks nodding their heads with this, their entire frame of reference still reduces covenant to contract. For them, it is not personal. When they read the Scriptures about terms like sin and redemption, their whole orientation is on contract structures and objective truth.

Two basic concepts will help to demonstrate the challenge we face.

First, there is “sin”. In western thinking this refers to something like culpable negligence or malice, in which there is a distinct guilt before the court. This is nothing like the biblical view. In Scripture, sin is contamination or defilement. The OT “Sin Offering” was not about specific offenses; the blood of sacrifice was not splattered on the one making an offering. Rather, your very presence in sacred space was defiling, so that blood was splattered on the sacred space to decontaminate it from your presence. The space was protected from your fallen nature; it made it possible for you to come before God.

Sin was not something you did so much as who you were as a mortal. Flesh is intractably filthy; it must die for you to live. It confines and defiles, entraps you in its foul will. You are in a tough situation needing to seize control, to tamp down its rebellious nature and bring it under discipline. But the only way to do that was to appeal to the God who made you and wants to rescue you from this slavery.

The solution was to render yourself — an eternal spirit trapped in flesh — decontaminated enough to briefly enter sacred space and present yourself as a supplicant, someone desiring to offer feudal submission and allegiance. This was not coming before the bar of law but coming to a specific individual who held all the cards, whose personal whim is your obligation. It has always been a matter of personal loyalty and feudal submission.

This brings us to the second item — “covenant” means treaty. Thus, redemption was not a matter of meeting some objective criteria but making a personal appeal. There is no formula. You must sign a treaty with your Lord. While the particulars will include a body of common elements shared with others, there will always be some elements unique to you. It’s personal.

When church folks hear the word “covenant”, they think of theology, of intellectual conceptions about faith. They associate the word “faith” with what’s in your head and your commitment to that. You must learn faith as a body of objective truth.

The Early Church Fathers (up through about 500 AD) seldom used the term “covenant”. They were too busy nailing down their intellectual traditions of Christology, Soteriology, etc. Lacking even a hint of Hebraic background, they never grasped the personal nature of faith (AKA, feudal submission to Christ). They lost all contact with ANE thinking, so fundamental to the Hebrew background of Scripture.

During the Middle Ages (500-1500 AD) they still didn’t use the term “covenant”, but it became synonymous with “law” in the western (Roman-Germanic) sense. Western feudalism was conceived as rather like a binding law of the universe that didn’t require God’s personal involvement. It all became a matter of status before the bar of law. It was wholly impersonal.

Thus, once the Reformation rolled around, the meaning of “covenant” was so badly contaminated that it became a reference to getting the right theology. You must obey the Covenant of Christ, and that requires a lot of formal education to get the proper theological frame of reference. In their minds, grace and law were hostile parties in a conflict. They had no place in their minds for how God giving the law was an act of grace. To them, law was legislation based on objective principle, standing separate from God.

Today, you can scarcely find an English translation of the New Testament that is not deeply influenced by Medieval or Reformation theology. The sense of all this theology is read back into Scripture in the very act of translation. The translators are helping you by narrowing down the definition of terms in how things are rendered, so that it’s not possible to go back and check what writers like Paul actually had to say.

When we use the term “covenant” with folks unfamiliar with the Hebraic outlook, it will be locked up in the prison of Reformed theology. Sometimes it’s better to use terms like “treaty” and “feudal submission” to Christ as Lord. This will help steer the conversation in the right direction.

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The Book of Life

Posted on August 30, 2025 by ehurst

Ref: Naked Bible Podcast #89

The concept of “books” in Heaven is borrowed from Sumer and Mesopotamia. The more ancient concept is “tablets of destinies”. Heiser approaches the question of just how much of our existence is predestined under the biblical Doctrine of Election.

NT Passages: Luke 10:20; Philippians 4:3; Revelation 3:5, 13:8, 17:8, 20:10, 15 21:27.

Heiser cites a 1973 article by Shalom Paul in the Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University. The ancient pagan concept was that the gods would appoint destinies, particularly for important figures. These destinies were limited to how long these people would live. It would not cover the details of your life. In addition, the deities would record your actions and words according to their moral evaluations. This is a very ancient notion.

Obviously, we see only ancient materials written about kings because they can afford to hire scribes, so all the mythology is about the sponsors of the writings. Heiser also cites Andrew George in the Iraq journal (I found a copy here) from which he quotes a bit. It’s about Sennacherib pleading with the god Assur for a good destiny.

The point is not that you should expect God to keep a library about His people. Rather, it’s a parable declaring that God keeps track. He also makes the point that in 1 Samuel 23 we see that God had foreknowledge of things, but they didn’t happen.

David and his men went down to a town named Keilah, less than 10 miles NW of Hebron, down in the Shephelah Lowlands. David went down to deliver the village from the Philistines. The people were grateful, of course, but while David and his men were camping there, he received word that Saul had mobilized forces to come after him. David asked via the Ephod what was happening. God answered that Saul was indeed coming after him and that the town leaders would hand him over.

David and his men left the area. When Saul got a report back, he called off the march. God had foreknowledge and told David precisely so that those events would not happen. We need to shed the western logical assumption that foreknowledge always equals predestination.

These ideas are in the OT, as well. Moses mentions a book in Exodus 32:32 and we are justified in thinking it is the Book of Life. Isaiah 4:3 mentions a “record for life” specifically in Jerusalem. The same prophet in 65:6-7 mentions how God keeps a record of things Israel has done. Jeremiah 17:13 mentions things written in the earth or grave, the netherworld. Right along with this is Psalm 69:28 talks about having one’s name removed from the Book of Life.

Daniel 7:10 records a meeting of the Divine Council where the fates of the beasts were judged by the established record. Later in 10:21 the angel mentions a Book of Truth. Another shows up in 12:1, another mention seeming to point to the Book of Life. Malachi 3:16 calls it a Book of Remembrance. Psalm 56:8 mentions how the psalmist’s tears are recorded while 87:5-7 mentions that God is keeping track of those who were born in Zion.

While Heiser doesn’t mention it directly, we see a lot of this imagery in the biblical narrative regarding Babylonian and Medo-Persian rulers. From the Second Temple Period we get references in the Book of Jubilees to how Abraham was recorded in Heaven as a friend of God. In similar fashion that same source mentions how the Tribe of Levi was selected for priesthood because they had a zeal for God’s reputation. 1 Enoch 47 sounds very much like a Medo-Persian reference describing how God called for the records to be opened in His Presence.

Not everything needs to be seen as predestination in this image of God’s books. None of these references gets hung up on the precise logic of sequence. Foreknowledge is not necessarily predestination, though it can be. It is impossible for us to sit here within this space-time prison and pretend we can understand Eternity. Prophecy and revelation are often more about God paying close attention to you because He has a claim on your life. He notices what you choose and how you live.

You’ll notice there is often some ambiguity as to whether the destruction is literal or something figurative. Nor should you imagine this is limited to real-time recording, since God can foresee events before they happen. The business of recording is not literal, and it’s not limited by human restrictions. Don’t try to pin it down by your own reasoning.

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Glad of That

Posted on August 26, 2025 by ehurst

Why do we bother to share the prophetic word? It is not to prove that God knows the future. The whole point is to warn people that the path they tread leads to sorrow. It’s virtually always a call to repentance, to prepare for something His hand might do.

I was not the only person who felt we were going to end this month at war. Some people with far more influence who warned about it must have gotten through to Trump, because he met with Putin in Alaska. The only thing of importance to come from that meeting is that Trump has a clear idea what to expect from Putin. He backed away from war.

Granted, war is still very likely, but Trump managed to pull us out of it (for now). Let the EU fight all it wants, as they apparently do. The US is still rattling the saber too much, and our troops could see action somewhere like Venezuela, but the nukes have been taken out of the picture.

For sure, I’m glad of that. I’ve got enough on my plate preparing for that long bike ride starting next week.

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Whence Deliverance?

Posted on August 23, 2025 by ehurst

In the 87th episode of Heiser’s Nake Bible Podcast he explores how the OT Messianic profile included the business of delivering people from demon possession. (Get the transcript here.)

If you examine the OT in most English translations, you will see scant reference to anything like demons. Indeed, the Hebrew word typically translated “demons” is shedim. This actually refers to a guardian serving under some territorial spirit being, presumably one of the Divine Council who received a commission at the Tower of Babel. It’s another of that massive army of divine staff members, and refers to something rather specific.

However, you do have the term “unclean spirit” and this is most likely what we associate with the disembodied Nephilim. But you won’t find many references to that in the OT that we have in most of our Bibles. You can tell where this is going: The Masoretic Text used in virtually all English translations is notorious for being different from the OT commonly used in Jesus’ day. For this, we refer to the Septuagint Bible (abbreviated reference: LXX) and sometimes to the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Heiser explains that one of the differences is that the LXX has an extra Psalm at the end that mentions David writing songs specifically to exorcise unclean spirits. The Hebrew concept of “possession” is based on the concept of being assaulted and injured. It can imply being held in subjection because you were defeated and are unable to escape.

In the recording, Heiser refers to the ministry of Fern and Audrey and how they don’t engage in what we think of as “deliverance ministry” as commonly practiced these days. In other places, Heiser warns that typical practices in Charismatic circles are misguided. As noted previously, we do not teach that miracles and gifts have ceased, but that we are a very long way from reclaiming what Christ and the Apostles did because of our perverted culture and how it has crippled our understanding of things. I’m not saying those spiritual events aren’t happening these days, but that what happens most of the time these days is probably not the same thing we see in the New Testament.

Simply aping what you read in the New Testament is unlikely to work out as you expect. In our day and culture, the vast majority of deliverance is performed by the victims. It is a process of restoring the authority of the Most High God in your life so that the unclean spirits are evicted by His hand. Jesus, as the Son of the Most High, still delivers today.

Review Psalm 91:1-5; this translation should sound familiar:

1 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High

Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,

My God, in whom I trust!”
3 For it is He who delivers you from the snare of the trapper

And from the deadly pestilence.
4 He will cover you with His pinions,

And under His wings you may seek refuge;

His faithfulness is a shield and bulwark.
5 You will not be afraid of the terror by night,

Or of the arrow that flies by day; (NASB)

This is a reference to demonic activity. The Hebrew term “terror of the night” is partially derived from an Akkadian word for the night demons and any other terrifying manifestation of darkness. It echoes references to the hostile Canaanite deities.

Further, the arrow that flies by day is actually a reference to the “midday demon”. Heiser recounts the imagery from Mesopotamian myths. These two demons were always mentioned together in pagan mythology. Notice how verse 6 parallels 5 above:

Of the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
Or of the destruction that lays waste at noon.

He finds another parallel in Habakkuk 3:5, using two common names associated with pagan mythology, translated into English as “pestilence” and “plague” or similar words. Those problems were the work of specific named pagan deities commonly recognized across the ANE. Heiser shows similar pagan names in Hosea 13:14, translated into the English words death, plagues and sting.

Finally, Heiser notes that the writings of Josephus reflect common Jewish thinking up through the time he wrote. A quote from Josephus refers to Solomon writing songs/poetry that was used to exorcise unclean spirits. Thus, when Jesus shows up delivering people from demons, His contemporaries never doubted for a moment this was real.

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Domains of Love

Posted on August 19, 2025 by ehurst

Here at Kiln of the Soul community, we aren’t merely non-partisan; our identity and agenda is rooted in another dimension of existence. We are Children of Eternity.

I have a niece who is left-wing, pro LGBTQ+ and other wokisms. Doesn’t matter to me. I keep praying she’ll see the light. Not that she’ll become a righty, but I pray she’ll realize that none of those things matter.

For example, I believe we have way too many immigrants here. I have no problem with them living in enclaves of their own making, but that they are here in the first place. They don’t understand that living here in the midst of imperial decline puts them at great risk. Everything they imagined they came here for is going to devour them.

If they imagine that they will find material progress, it will be short lived. They don’t realize that what made America so wealthy is flatly contrary to their way of life. You cannot bring your poverty-stricken culture into a wealthy environment without destroying that environment and your own souls. What made you poor back home will make everyone poor here.

Wealth is possibly only in high trust cultures. They don’t have that back home. They have low trust cultures that compel poverty. They bring all of that with them.

But the habits of poverty and social disorder in those foreign cultures only accelerate the imperial decline already in progress. Their children and grandchildren will walk through a hell far worse than what they left to come here. Worse, the debased materialist culture here will infest the souls of those progeny, making them, in effect, no one’s children. They won’t be whatever their parents were, but won’t actually be American, either.

My niece doesn’t see the decline, except in terms of intentional destruction, seeking someone to blame. That’s a part of her generation’s outlook on the world. They imagine they want what their elders had without the social habits, but their elders had empty materialism. They are imbued with a sense of entitlement, wanting the spoils of oppression without having to do the work. They regard moral degeneration as just a choice on the menu, same as all the other choices, with no consequences attached. They have departed the core of a high trust culture, keeping only the external trappings.

Here’s the thing: The wisdom of Scripture will explain it to you. American wealth is not sustainable. The European colonists seized the undeveloped resources from another people. Development itself was not the problem; solving problems is what humans do. But some human cultures are quite obsessed withe material outcomes, seeing problems to be solved that aren’t actually problems. Greed for mortal comfort fires their imaginations to go far beyond actual human need. It’s not sustainable.

And Americans kept seizing the resources of others in distant lands. Our economy is a global economy because we have our hands on the whole world’s resources. And we don’t share very much back to the people who reside near those resources. Instead, Americans enslave them. The economics of Scripture is that everyone who is involved in the process is de facto part of your family household. In the domain with which you operate — material wealth — you must seek the welfare of everyone as if they were your own kin.

Following Christ means operating on two levels. My niece is part of my earthly family. I am responsible for her welfare on that level. I would love to see her operate on a higher level and become spiritual kin, as well. We as followers of Christ ache with longing to see spiritual outsiders come into the household. It is revelation that teaches us more is merrier. We value souls above physical property.

Do you understand that the greatest treasure of Heaven on this earth is other believers? It’s not a question of what you can accomplish together on a human level. All that really matters is simply spending time together as humans with a spiritual focus. Just get to know each other better and learn to love that because you love them. Don’t worry about people recognizing your role in the family household. You don’t need a role in that sense. Just be there and be with them and love them as Christ commanded.

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Reblog: Prepping for the Big Ride

Posted on August 17, 2025 by ehurst

Over on my Substack account I posted about my preparations for a long bike trip from OKC to Brownsville, TX —

Prepping for the Big Ride

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Church Offices

Posted on August 16, 2025 by ehurst

Once again, this is something that shouldn’t require citing chapter and verse. It should all be familiar already, just a restatement to remind us of how God says things should work under the Covenant.

1. The Body — an extended spiritual family, a household. They may be actual kinfolks, but that’s not the point. They live together like kinfolks. Americans aren’t too comfortable with shared housing across multiple generations as we once were. There are plenty of reasons, but the biggest one is financial. For the past three generations we’ve been able to afford scattered nuclear family housing and moving away from one’s roots. With the approach of economic collapse, we need to start looking into getting used to crowding into more cramped quarters.

But the point here is that we should do this first and foremost with spiritual kinfolks, not merely our blood kin. The church of New Testament times was just such an extended family household centered on a shared covenant identity. Yes, non-believing family members might be dragged into it to some degree, but they could refuse to participate in the teaching and worship sessions. And if they couldn’t tolerate the living arrangement, the non-believing family members could always leave as soon as it was legal.

The whole point of Christ’s Law is that we adopt a mindset of striving to keep peace with each other. We don’t make rules that drive people away; we don’t regulate things that aren’t critical to following Christ. Paul made a big deal of learning to be tolerant about things like eating habits and manner of dress. What limits there were had to do with keeping the testimony clear. Meanwhile, they made much of sharing material resources as far as possible.

2. Pastor — ritual leader, priestly figure. Of course pastors had to know the Scripture and the teachings of Christ; they were required to preach and teach. Still, in this role was the one person most likely to be someone brought in from outside the community. The conduct of worship was theirs to rule. Their might be more than one pastor sharing the duties, but such was not that common.

3. Elder (bishop, overseer, etc.) — administrative leader, head of household. There were frequently subordinate elders. Some emphasized teaching and others were better at management. They should be able to do some of both. Elders arose from the body itself, men whom the others naturally tended to follow.

4. Deacon (and deaconess) — appointed attendants. These were people who were particularly good at executing administrative tasks to lighten the load on elders and pastors. They were not leaders, per se, but experts who organized work and got it done on behalf of the whole body. Some specialties belonged in the hands of women for the same reason women usually became wives and mothers.

Baptists and a few other groups always get the deacon stuff wrong, treating them like elders, even calling them “elders”, when that is not at all what they were like in the New Testament.

5. Apostle — missionary. His authority bridges the gap between pastors and elders due to his commission to plant churches. His presence stabilizes the body until it’s large enough and they’ve learned enough to operate on their own. Because we no longer have vast areas that have never heard the gospel of Christ, the apostle’s historical role has changed somewhat. Unless someone manifests miraculous powers, their apostleship is limited to mission work these days.

Outside of some recognized office, a lot of men can play the apostle’s role in other ways. We use the term loosely these days to refer to someone who got a major change started in how churches do things, either in practical or theological terms. However, there’s simply not much justification for considering it an office these days.

On the one hand, we reject Cessation Theology. God did not end the miraculous gifts Paul spoke about in his letters. The problem right now is the overwhelming cultural and intellectual outlook that smothers the kind of faith and understanding that lies under the miracles. The West is truculently secular and it is frankly illegal (indirectly) to adopt the frame of reference that would encourage miracles on the scale seen in the First Century churches.

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Joy Is Mandatory

Posted on August 10, 2025 by ehurst

Sinners will sin. Does that bother you? We don’t belong to this world.

“Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you; remain in my love. If you obey my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be complete.” (John 15:9-11 NET)

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, we must get rid of every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and run with endurance the race set out for us, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy set out for Him He endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of God. Think of Him who endured such opposition against himself by sinners, so that you may not grow weary in your souls and give up. You have not yet resisted to the point of bloodshed in your struggle against sin. (Hebrews 12:1-4 NET)

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also behave in accordance with the Spirit. (Galatians 5:22-25 NET)

Don’t let this ugly world get to you and make you sour, bitter, angry, etc.

On the contrary, it’s all one big adventure. I expect to end up on a cross in one sense or another, so when crap happens, I’m not disappointed. In the meantime, I’m going to thrill at the power Christ has granted me over my fleshly nature.

The old damned me was judgmental and demanding, a real smart-ass. The world was never good enough for me. The new me (the one made by God) is giddy at the high privileges, and always looking for a chance to shout, “Woohoo!” Shrink not from adventure! I’ll grab every gusto against the Enemy. When God grants the victory, I’ll shout for joy. And when something goes wrong, I’ll laugh, call my fleshly self an idiot and try again.

I expect to hit the grave all used up and burned out. What a ride!

Yes, joy is mandatory.

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