Laying Claim to Shalom

Posted on June 13, 2021 by ehurst

While attending college at Oklahoma Baptist University in the mid-1970s, a lot of good things happened to me. I don’t remember them as good years in my life, but the Lord was at work, reshaping me.

One of the most formative moments came during one of our regular Wednesday Chapel/Assembly events. There were no classes on Wednesdays, just these events — sometimes worship, sometimes an academic speaker, and a few times we had bands, like the Imperials Quartet. One assembly featured a speaker I remember as Dr. Starkey. I’ve researched and can find no record of him, so I probably got his name wrong. He was supposed to be the pastor of some big church in Washington DC, and served as the team chaplain for the Washington Redskins football team at that time.

The one thing I do remember is something he said. It went like this: “The Bible is an eastern book. Jesus was an eastern man. Christianity is an eastern religion.” His point was that we should study to understand why that matters, instead of buying into the bulk of assumptions handed us from our Sunday School teachers. That’s much of what going to a Christian college is all about.

That statement haunted me over the years. I often sensed the need to reevaluate what “eastern” meant in that context. Some of my college professors did a decent job of helping us absorb some of the background behind that term. I never got to seminary; I could never pull together enough funding for any of the seminaries I felt led to attend. Also, I was married and needed to work for a living, but I didn’t just throw away my education. I kept going to libraries and bought a fair few books myself. I kept digging into the Bible.

It wasn’t until I had consistent access to the Internet, sometime around the turn of the Millennium, before I finally realized that ancient Hebrew intellectual culture was a very far different thing from Judaism. The critical key was reading The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah by Alfred Edersheim, a former rabbi who found Christ. He is widely hated among Jews today. It’s not that I agree with so much of what Edersheim taught, but that this particular book was rather like blowing the whistle on Judaism. He details how Hellenist intellectual assumptions were bought wholesale by Jewish rabbis, and how Pharisaical legalism came into being. In particular, he notes how it was a radical departure from the ancient Hebrew mystical intellectual traditions.

But Edersheim didn’t say much about that Hebrew mystical background, so I pursued that on my own. It meant digging into the entire Ancient Near East, because the Hebrew people were a part of that. It’s a task that no one can finish. Our civilization is so very far distant from the Bible narrative that I often wonder whether it’s even possible to make a meaningful move in the right direction. Still, I’m driven by the burning conviction that we can’t just ignore that call. We have to try.

Some of you have told me that my work has made a difference in your lives. I have no way of assessing whether it will ever reach any others someday. My convictions tell me that the coming cataclysm will see a significant increase in folks receptive to the message. How many will survive and carry that with them is impossible to guess. It’s not part of my mission; my calling is to make the message coherent and available.

It’s not a rejection of intellectual endeavor. Rather, it redirects that energy in a more useful direction. It first requires the intellect to bow the knee to the heart, for the heart is where God speaks through our convictions. We still need a very rigorous effort from the intellect to breathe life into those convictions, to organize and implement those convictions. You have to study and communicate. It’s not a free-for-all; we have to come together in covenant communities. That’s a critical part of what divine revelation is all about. We are commanded to find common ground with others who exhibit the same spiritual sensitivity. This is hard work. It’s not conforming people to some thing we can dream up, but finding sufficient common ground to work together.

If the Hebrew nation, with all its flaws and divisions, was able to generate a consistent documentation of imagery and events, all tied together in a consistent thread of moral awareness, then we can surely restore at least some of that. The results don’t have to please me or anyone else; it has to please God and gain His support. The issue is defining what it means to succeed at winning God’s favor, of claiming His shalom.

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New Testament Doctrine — Luke 2:41-52

Posted on June 12, 2021 by ehurst

In late March, faithful Jews would make pilgrimage to the Temple for Passover. The distance was some 70 miles, and only the hardiest walkers with little to carry could make it in about four days. Your average family would take a week or so, unless the children were too small to walk, which would take even longer. But since there were relatives and neighbors sharing the road, there was always a little help in rough spots.

The temperatures this time of year would be around 60°F during the day, dropping into the 40s overnight. It was the very dry season; not even dew fell. It wasn’t necessary to carry a tent, just a bedroll and a little clothing. They would carry perhaps a hot plate for simple cooking, but nothing more. The normal pita bread was carried for several days, along with dried or pickled stuff that would keep. A lot of villages along the way saw people offering prepared food for the pilgrims. It was common for larger groups to go in together and sponsor a wagon to bear the baggage.

So the journey would last a week, and then they would camp somewhere within easy walking distance of the Temple. They would have to arrive in time to prepare the Passover meal, which meant bringing or buying a lamb that would pass inspection, plus all the side dishes, and purchasing a clay cooking dish made and sold specifically for the Passover. Several families often shared the meal together. This was followed by the week of Unleavened Bread. The wealthy would stay for the festival of Weeks leading up to Pentecost. It’s not likely Joseph and Mary could afford that, so they would have to pack for a trio of weeks.

This was during the barley harvest, but the fresh crops could not be eaten until after the Firstfruits offering at the end of Unleavened Bread. Still, people would have been eager to sell the older silo grain to pilgrims to make room for the fresh harvest. The same goes for just about any food crops that could be preserved during the year, dried or pickled. It’s not likely anyone carried enough food to last a family three whole weeks. Keep in mind that, by now, Jesus had younger siblings, complicating things for Joseph and Mary. Everyone saved up during the year for this trip.

At age twelve, a major element in His journey to Passover this year was His own bar-Mitzvah (Hebrew “Son of the Law”). Up to now He would have attended classes at the local synagogue to learn basic literacy and begin learning the Covenant Law. Despite all the heavy-weight nonsense about Jesus being so miraculous in childhood, the one thing we can know for sure is that He was morally pure, and so was already highly heart-led. While still just a regular boy in every other way, He would have been morally precocious.

So during His family’s time around Jerusalem, He would have lined up with crowds of other boys for their bar-Mitzvah. He would hardly be the only one to shine at this test. However, at the first opportunity, He engaged the ranking rabbis in some question and answer. He became so engrossed in this that, when His parents left, He stayed behind. We have no idea where He stayed at night, but with such a crowd and all the food available as freewill gifts connected to the festival, He would hardly have suffered.

A boy who passes his bar-Mitzvah would have been granted a new level of freedom, so wandering off with friends was to be expected. Joseph and Mary would hardly be surprised, given that men and women typically traveled in separate companies of their own. At that first stop for the night, Jesus was missing. No one had seen Him on the road. It was another day hiking back, and the next two days seeking Him. They probably left their other children with relatives on the road.

Finally, they spotted Him in the Temple grounds among one of the many discussions sessions one might find scattered among the several acres of porticoes around the open plaza. When they remonstrated with Him, His answer would be closer in our vernacular to, “You should have thought to look here in the first place in My Father’s house.” He was surprised they had wasted so much time looking elsewhere.

At that point, what He said didn’t register with His parents. Nonetheless, realizing His duty to them was at issue, He went back home with them and was a little more careful after that. His mother savored all this, along with all the miracles of His birth. Meanwhile, He grew up more or less a model Son of the Law.

Nothing in the later narrative makes any sense if we do not get the idea that the elder rabbis with whom He was found would have made strong recommendations that He receive rabbinical training. Further, He would have sought it Himself when possible. Someone with that level of moral understanding was a natural. By the time He was ready to begin His ministry, He was recognized as a rabbi. We can’t guess how He obtained such an education in Nazareth, but it’s likely He traveled a bit to larger communities with larger synagogues, even as He learned Joseph’s building trade. His parables are loaded with references to stone masonry.

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Not Our Homeland

Posted on June 11, 2021 by ehurst

Sometimes we need to state things in blunt terms in order for the mind to adapt. Just leaving the door open for folks to explore the implications can still require a starting place.

We who live by the Covenant do not assimilate to the prevailing society around us. We are outsiders; we don’t really belong, and never will. And those around us don’t belong to us until they enter the Covenant. For those of us living in the US, we are not Americans. We are Covenant people, and America was never part of the Covenant.

If we are careful enough to live shalom and demonstrate the power of Biblical Law, then we might not need to say anything explicitly about being a separate society. Everyone is going to know, if it matters to them. However, we must be careful to keep this truth alive in our minds: We are just passing through. This world is not our homeland.

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No Earthly Treasure

Posted on June 10, 2021 by ehurst

I’m not doctrinaire about currencies. Societies will use whatever serves the purpose of a medium of exchange for them. Meanwhile, Scripture is rather agnostic about it simply because the fundamental orientation of the Bible is anti-materialism in the first place. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures on the earth” (Matthew 6:19). Private property is not a sacred right in God’s eyes. It’s just a tool for eternal purposes. He wants us to respect what He has granted others, but not get too excited when fallen humanity at large, or fallen human governments, don’t pay any attention at all to Biblical Law. We can’t hold anyone accountable unless they have agreed to walk under a covenant with us.

So we don’t steal or defraud anyone inside or outside the covenant. We seek to make fair exchange at the market rate, whatever that is at any given time, and leave it in the hands of God. If someone rips us off, we have to know in our convictions what God wants us to do about it, if anything. If the government wants to rip us off, there’s not much we can do anyway. “Render unto Caesar,” but make sure you trust God for the things He says He controls in your life (Mark 12:17). It’s not defeatism to trust God to supply the things He says you need for serving Him (John 14:12-14).

We know what works. On the one hand, in terms of what best serves human need, precious metals are the way to go. However, I’m cynical enough to realize that no secular human government will long tolerate a system of exchange that it cannot control. Right now it’s really easy for governments to confiscate such things, and all too easy for others to simply steal them. So while fiat currencies are not good for the people, it’s what I would expect to find most usable in the current situation.

I also have no bone to pick with crypto-currencies, but I’m no particular fan of them, either. What matters here is that apparently TPTB have decided crypto-currencies are not good for us. They are building a narrative to justify making them illegal. They don’t hate it completely; the elite will use such things for themselves. They just don’t want you and I to have access to something they can’t control. I would never put it past any part of the US government to crack into private computer networks in a false flag operation that generates hysteria. Indeed, we’ve had powerful officials demand for the government the right to snoop on our computing devices at will.

The most useful thing you can do is invest in yourself. What you know how to do is the most valuable asset you can hold. That’s a biblical principle. The second most important way to invest is in physical property that you know how to use: tools, equipment, real property, etc. If you sense that God wants you to store up some value for His use, silver or gold is a good bet, but only if you have secure storage under your personal physical control.

For fiat currency, you’ll have to make up your own mind which institutions God wants you to trust. Physical cash will work, until it doesn’t. The US government is working to make it worthless. They will succeed eventually.

For crypto-currency, you really need to learn how to control your own e-wallet, and not trust any storage sites. There are software wallets you can run on devices, and they are only as secure as the device itself, and the password you use. Hardware e-wallets are simply smaller devices. I would never trust a web wallet. Even if it all becomes illegal, there’s a high probability you’ll still be able to use it.

Circumventing government controls for online activity has been too easy in the past, and given how poorly most government officials understand the virtual world, it will continue to be easy for those who have a will to learn the networking protocols. The Chinese government has a much higher level of competence, but they have barely constrained their own citizens who bothered to learn the technology. It’s been a game of whack-a-mole so far, with new circumvention tools being spawned even before fresh restrictions are put in place.

Most of this is a moving target for us, as well, in terms of keeping the lines of communication open to each other. We are entering a period of rapid and radical change, and we should learn not to be surprised by the unexpected events moves of evil people. On top of all this, we should expect our sun to release a micro-nova within thirty years or so, or something equally devastating. God can easily shape this event to suit Himself, but that His wrath is going to fall should simply be too obvious to heart-led people.

Anything that we might do to meet the future must be viewed through this lens. This is not a game of survival, but of glory. We need to make ready for an apocalypse that cannot be estimated in any useful way. All that matters is our testimony in the midst of it all. It’s our testimony that we can bank away in Heaven for eternity. Lay up treasures for yourselves in Heaven (Matthew 6:20-21).

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What Matters for Glory

Posted on June 9, 2021 by ehurst

The alleged glory of civilization is nothing compared to the glories of faith.

Biblical faith does not build civilizations. The most we might do is build a small, enduring community of faith. Civilization is the context in which we live, but we don’t promote any civilization. The word “civilization” is closely associated with cities and the customs necessary for urban living. It promotes material progress. In the Bible, such a context appears only as mankind drifts farther and farther from the Garden of Eden. The more you ignore God’s revelation, the more you need civilization to survive — and the more lost you will be. The whole point of faith is to get back close to Eden so that you don’t depend civilization to live in this world.

So, we have no need for all this blather about privacy, for example. It’s not that we don’t need privacy, but the fierce guardianship of privacy against government is an artifact of non-faith living. In a genuine faith community, privacy is just a factor to be considered against the necessities of living together in faith. Some things should be private, but the faith life requires people being in each other’s armpits, so to speak. It requires we be wide open to those within the covenant.

Once again: The boundaries of the covenant of faith is a prime consideration in all things. There’s an ambiguity in the term “government” in that the covenant tribe has a government that is part of your spiritual family, while outside governments are kept at arm’s length.

But the question of dealing with the society outside the covenant boundaries is loaded with ambiguities, if intellect is the only level of discussion. That’s what we confront with most discussions about rights and such; the people are reasoning, but nobody wants to address the matter from revelation. Instead, they try to bend revelation to fit their reasoning.

It’s a general principle of the Word that we should expect intrusions from outside the covenant and not get too worked up about it. Most of the blather on liberty-minded sites rests on the a priori assumption that this world is all there is. Even when they specifically say otherwise, their reasoning assumes there is no Spirit Realm, or that it doesn’t matter. Their concerns are very worldly.

We don’t assert our rights; we assert our convictions. The only reason we need for anything at all is that our convictions demand it, or deny it. Whether we can, or would bother with explaining it is not at issue. It is a matter of what our God requires of us. We would generally hope we can explain it; that’s part of our witness. However, the truth of walking by conviction in itself is not subject to debate with any authority below God’s.

Does God want you to assert privacy? Then hit it hard. Close the walls tightly and never surrender. For the most part, biblical teaching is that we don’t take it too seriously. We aren’t absolutists about the thing itself; it’s just a tool, a matter of tactics.

The same goes for a lot of things about which people are up in arms these days. I see no need to fight the move to a cashless economy on principle; it’s just a tactical issue. We don’t consider private property ownership as sacred. God will supply our needs, and that’s not a mere blandishment. It actually works that way. Focus on what He calls you to deal with, and let the other things slide. We should expect persecution; the saints of God will suffer tribulation. It’s not a question of God’s protection, but the primary emphasis is how we face difficulty, with or without shielding. Divine protection never conforms to our convenience. What really matters for His glory will never be lost, regardless. That defines what is in our best interest.

Our concerns look past civilizations. Humans outside of His covenants are just cattle being herded; they have no clue what really matters. They are continually obsessed with trivialities and ephemeral matters. We look for cues that mark eternal concerns, because we are just passing through this world. Not only does God not hold us accountable for making the world a better place, but He specifically warns us it’s a waste of resources. Rather, we sometimes do things that make the world seem better for some folks because it’s part of our mission. However, that amelioration of suffering is not the objective; it’s just a means to an end.

That end is the Father’s glory.

Here’s a laundry list of things that exemplify an eternal perspective:

1. In computers, the biggest issue is not protecting data, but keeping the message clear. Protect your identity/persona so that you can prevent people putting words in your mouth. Make your message and actions clear and consistent. Order your computer security measures to that end.

2. Avoid the vaccines if you can. There is no benign intent at all behind them. However, if you can’t avoid them, trust the Lord to glorify Himself in the results. Pray and focus on His sovereign power.

3. Don’t expect law enforcement or law suits to accomplish anything that matters. The messy secular human politics will get messier, more egregiously stupid and bizarre. Don’t worry about pleasing any authority, or anyone who poses as an authority. Try to avoid being noticed in the first place. This is a very good time to stay under the radar as much as possible. By the same token, don’t be afraid to cause trouble when that’s part of your mission and calling.

4. It’s far, far more important to render an honest report than to achieve any specific outcome by structuring what you say and how you say it. Meanwhile, sometimes the best thing you can say is nothing, because anything you say could be a provocation. Pearls before swine…

5. On a related note, one of the biggest threats to shalom is a secular cultural orientation that rewards the flesh. A major problem is that we are encouraged to demonstrate our intelligence or virtuosity (“attaboy”), when it’s perfectly okay for people to be wrong about us. Learn to not care if people like you; live agape regardless. Act like a predator against the instinct for “just trying to help.” If you suspect that motive is lurking in the background anywhere, squelch the thing you feel the urge to say or do. Don’t try to help; try to glorify the Lord. It never makes sense to the mind; truly righteous conduct baffles most people.

Biblical culture is not civilized as the world views it. For us, civility is defined within the covenant of faith. While our manner of engaging each other by faith would make a good basis for a civilization, the problem is that civilization requires laws that aren’t as flexible as faith. Civilization requires boundaries on the wrong level — rules instead of morals. It focuses on the outcomes of shalom, but not the thing itself.

However, “civility” is a term with broader implications. It’s an orientation that seeks to lubricate human interactions by emphasizing what is necessary for coexistence, without compromising convictions. Civility allows that some people are hopelessly stupid and seeks to reduce exposure to them, avoid interaction with them. It never presumes to correct, but to keep stupidity from affecting the outcome of the business at hand.

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Not a Vox Day Fan

Posted on June 8, 2021 by ehurst

Apparently I need to say this again for some of you: Vox Day is by no means a model for our faith.

Let us never forget that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is a symbol for trusting human reason to discern good and evil. The word “knowledge” in that name for the tree refers to the kind of knowledge that represents a willful assertion of judgment. It is not just being aware of the difference between good and evil; it is deciding what is good and evil from one’s own resources. It is a specific denial of faith and trust in God and His revelation.

It’s okay to reference some of the things Vox Day has to say. Nobody disputes his intelligence. However, whatever religious ideas he holds are not a matter of pure faith, but rest too much on his reasoning abilities. Yes, it’s possible to be caught somewhere between faith and reason; it’s not either/or in terms of how humans operate. However, his reliance on reason is far too great to trust anything he has to say about matters of faith. He revels in his lack of progress toward the primacy of faith. He is not a heart-led man, inasmuch as he still believes the Western mythology about what the heart does, in contrast to what the Bible assumes about the heart as a faculty of faith and awareness of moral truth. His epistemology is wrong; he worships his own intelligence. He is elitist to the core.

So, for example, while his exposition on men’s Red Pill matters is excellent, his vindictive spite for anyone who doesn’t bow the knee to his intelligence is pretty obvious to others. It’s not that he cares what anyone else thinks, nor should he. That’s not the point. Rather, he has obviously never really submitted to Christ in his heart, and cannot muster the power to promote the redemptive way of Christ. Vox’s work is not redemptive in nature, but vindictive. He cares far too much for this world, and rejects the biblical emphasis on the Spirit Realm. Vox Day is very much Dominionist, even if he never references the movement itself.

Worldly conquest is not a biblical goal. Defeating your enemies in the flesh is, at most, a mere tactic in Scripture. We are rightly cynical and skeptical about anything the flesh can accomplish. The business of expecting evil to win in this fallen world is straight out of Scripture. It’s not defeatism if you learn that it won’t matter. What matters is winning hearts to Christ, and when it’s convenient for the Lord’s glory, we’ll also build a community of faith that resists the evil of this world. But until God pours out His wrath on this earth, the systems of oppression do not end; there is nothing we can or should do to defeat them as a strategy.

I have no problem with admiring a warrior who has no mercy on his enemies. The shepherd soul does not spare the life of a predator against the flock. David is held up as a model for spirit-led leadership, and he killed countless thousands in defense of shalom. This life is not precious, so causing human death is not a sin in itself, if such death happens as a side-effect of your obedience to His Word. Yes, Scripture more than adequately supports taking human life for just reasons according to Biblical Law. But we acknowledge that such instances are increasingly rare as we move closer to the Final End of All Things. Instead, it is God’s own hand that will take massive numbers of human life, and the days of such wrath will increase as we approach the Second Coming. That is prophesied in Scripture.

If killing others is a mere tactic, then it shouldn’t matter if we often don’t bother. The gospel mission is not changing human government, but changing human hearts. The Word promised that things would get progressively worse. Using the weapons of secular government against the enemies of Christ is a very bad tactic. Scripture specifically condemns using secular courts to obtain divine justice. Our hope is not found in fixing the problems of his world, particularly in using the means of this world, but in seeing people turn to the heart-led path of Christ. Yes, we are endlessly optimistic about His power at work in us to touch individual lives around us. God Himself said we should have no hope in fixing the human condition, so the idea of carving out our worldly kingdoms is contrary to His Word. He Himself warned that there could be no Christian government over anything bigger than the small, private, feudal body of faith that gathers around under-shepherds of Christ.

Don’t bother him with my critique. I’ve warned him and his merry band, and they have rejected the message of faith over reason. Even I read his blog, so go ahead; I read a lot of stuff on the Net. Often it’s just a matter of seeing how Satan is at work in this world. There are a lot of nonessential things I pursue because they work for me, but I never represent them as essential to our community of faith.

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Discerning the Coming Changes

Posted on June 8, 2021 by ehurst

It may well be one of the shortest-lived civilizations in human history.

How you characterize the past depends on what you value most today. Conventional Western analysis is just barely able to see certain turning points ahead, but only to the degree that what one sees can be explained in familiar terms:

See, the nation state is more than just a country or a government — those have existed for thousands of years. The nation state aims to bind massive numbers of people in a territory together with myths of common cause, culture, and patriotism. This allows a single government to extract much more revenue and build much bigger armies. And this large scale government rose with the industrial era, because countries required large scale armies to defend the industrial production in a given area.

The scale provided by nation states allowed industry to invest and grow in areas that were relatively safe from plunder and destruction by barbarians or rival countries. Since a factory can’t so easily pick up and move, it needs a stable environment and protection in order to make the large capital investment worth the risk. Therefore, powerful nation states attracted more industry, and thus became richer in the process. Less stable regions, with smaller governments unable to protect their capital did not become as wealthy.

But that situation is rapidly changing as wealth becomes less about material production, and more about information technology, and human capital. These things are extremely mobile, and not very susceptible to plunder. They therefore do NOT require a massive nation states to justify investments.

This explanation is not false, but it’s also not how things will be explained once society stands on the other side of the shift. The Networked Civilization will no doubt use some of the same terminology and categories, but the fundamental nature of the shift in values will generate a different outlook. It is the characterization that will change. Once society becomes geographically rootless, the concept of what it means to be human will morph dramatically.

The sense of tribal identity never left us, and never will, but was driven into the background. In a decentralized and rootless networked world, your sense of tribal identity will become almost entirely virtual. This is the fundamental nature of the coming shift in society. Your physical presence will become a mere afterthought in everything you do. The people closest to your soul will be largely folks you never encounter physically.

It’s not that you physical existence will cease to need care and maintenance, but that society will completely shift in how we think about it. It will suffer a new kind of neglect.

Truly understanding this requires that you learn to think from a more eternal frame of reference. From that perspective, contemplate what it will mean. Social interaction will cease to be physical. You’ll find yourself communicating, even with people in the same physical room, through network protocols, if not networked devices. The awkwardness of nerds and geeks will become the norm, as the network protocols hide that disability. Instead of physical interaction dying completely, though, it will be the assertion of the network protocols over the physical. The fundamental sense of being human will be dominated by what happens on the networks.

Frankly, this is what will kill the elitist plot they call “The Great Reset.” It all depends on power and influence that will become wholly irrelevant in the Networked Civilization:

People, companies, and capital are more mobile than ever, and frequently shop around for the best jurisdictions in which to live, work, and run a business.

Smaller countries and city-states are actually better positioned than nation states to take advantage of this — without the need for massive military and government spending, they can offer government services as a product, based on the actual cost.

There are already a number of signs of the transition to government as a service provider, such as Caribbean nations selling citizenship through investment, Estonia selling e-citizenship, places like the country Georgia, Panama, Portugal and so many others offering competitive tax rates to attract residents and business.

Of course it may seem like these small nations will be threatened by massive governments with huge armies that could take over, sort of like what has happened with China and Hong Kong. And this is still a threat. The dying nation state will not go out without a fight. They will fight to preserve their power in a changing world. They’ll exploit crises like pandemics and terrorism to make it seem like we still need the nation state.

But these efforts will inevitably fail, because nation states can no longer grow rich through conquest and plunder.

It’s easy to move vast wealth when it is all in information technology, and the human mind, capable of working from anywhere in the world, connected via the internet. The need for large governments and armies to protect the capital is fading, because the ability of large governments and armies to take the capital is fading.

I believe the author of the linked article is too optimistic about governments, though. There will always be The Cult, and the attendant elite who seek to rule and oppress. The current crop of devotees will fail with their bogus Tower of Babel. Once this cultural shift takes hold, a new techno-elite will arise who will ally together to oppress. It won’t be long before a competition between governments will not drive prices of government services down, but will give birth to virtual governments that cartel together to drive prices up.

One thing does seem certain: You need to treat technological expertise as more than a mere business or hobby. You need to see it as the language and customs of human interaction itself. The analog of today’s social awkwardness will be tomorrow’s technology incompetence. If you don’t have a ready, almost instinctive, grasp of things like Android and iOS, you will be utterly dependent on those who do have it.

The point I’m making here is that we need to translate the gospel message into the new language of the networked society. We must speak to them where they are today, and where they will be tomorrow.

On a related noted, I’m personally predicting that Microsoft will have no choice but to ditch the Windows OS at some point. The corporate leadership is already leaning hard on making their identity and profit from Office 365. Expect them to rename it several times until they settle on something that people recognize for what it is, the premier standard in data interaction. Given how completely MS has embraced running the Linux kernel on their OS, you can expect them to shift operations farther in that direction. Already, major MS software products can run on Linux natively.

Google will fail to compete against them in that market, but will most certainly eclipse them in the OS department. The Chromebooks will explode and become the standard, much as Android has on smaller devices. Apple has already felt the fatal bite, as their very good ecosystem has become ever more marginalized, due to their arrogance toward their customers. It will become a niche market for those desperately trying to be cool. It’s not that Linux will take over the market directly, but a tamed and corporatized version of it. The Linux community has already been betrayed, but largely doesn’t see that yet. Still, the free-form Linux distros will continue to grow their presence on the Net.

The breaking point for general consumer acceptance of free-form Linux would be when connecting devices is as easy as it happens with Windows now. There are some things Linux does well automatically, but there are plenty of devices that simply won’t work. Those that do work often require too much hassle to get there. Right now, I prefer to use my Windows laptop for anything about which I have doubts. It has so far worked well with every random device I plug into it, but for my Linux desktop, it requires research and choosing devices carefully. It doesn’t matter why this is so; consumers have zero interest in why Linux developers have trouble with this. Until it changes, Linux will continue to see very low adoption.

But I’m confident that a significant number of barriers will fall soon, as the difference in fundamental system security becomes a dire necessity against the rising ransomware attacks. Linux is simply less vulnerable, and easier to recover. The market will shift against Windows on this issue. Already, both Russia and China are moving wholesale to Linux, partly for reasons of cost, but also for reasons of having more control over how the OS works, particularly in terms of leveraged espionage through Windows.

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A Tool for Whom?

Posted on June 7, 2021 by ehurst

Yes, they do intend to turn us into worker ants.

Joseph Mercola talks about something besides medicine. It’s the case of Mark Crispin Miller versus NYU. If you have the time to look at this story, you should be surprised at how egregious the whole thing is, especially when you consider that Miller starts out as a lefty pursuing the exposure of right-wing cover-ups. It’s not something characteristic of left or right, but The Cult typically eats its own children.

Miller was a useful tool until the elitist plans hit the turning point. Now it’s all about overwhelming any resistance to the final moves. His exposure of the ways of propaganda got in the way of their propaganda. I’ve tried in the past to point out how this steamroller seeks to crush all dissent. Not only does the MSM and Big Tech give no voice to alternative ideas, but they participate in hounding anyone who dares to even think differently.

This is malice. It’s not a difference of opinion; it’s sheer, unmitigated hatred. Maybe not all the lackeys are that way, but the leadership is.

Their vision is easy to discern: They want us to live as, and reproduce, worker ants. We get trained up to meet their plans, get used up until we are old, and then we are supposed to die. A critical element in the lock-downs and quarantines was to kill off old people who are no longer productive. Yes, it was entirely conscious and intentional; housing very sick younger patients in nursing homes with the medically vulnerable was intended to clear out the nursing homes. At the very least, it was testing the capabilities of this man-made bio-weapon.

I don’t give Miller’s case a good chance of accomplishing anything. I’m deeply cynical about the system, and I am convinced cases like his demonstrate just how far things have shifted. If you are going to resist, don’t waste time using the system, except as a mere tactical consideration. In the longer term, the only useful resistance is deadly violence. If you aren’t ramping up for war — whatever the means for you — you aren’t ready to face what’s coming.

My personal strategy is to avoid as much as possible getting caught up in this mess. I realize that some of it is unavoidable. However, I view that as a matter of tactics, a short-term consideration along the path to something much more important. Nor is this a left versus right thing. To the degree I find it necessary to resort to violence, it may well mean having to strike those on both sides, because the real concern here is the domain and shalom delivered into my hands by God. The Cult is well represented on both sides; the apparent conflict between left and right is propaganda in itself.

This is the time to search your convictions and know what God requires of you. Bounce off your convictions likely scenarios, or even some unlikely ones, so you that you can discern the boundaries God has drawn in your heart.

For myself, I remain utterly certain things will quickly devolve into very literal warfare here in the US for sure, and quite likely throughout the West. I doubt it will come in a single day, but all of us will be stunned at the things that do fracture suddenly, exposing the nature of this conflict. I sense that the biggest problem for all of us will be economic. Our just-in-time delivery system of consumer goods and services will break down rapidly. Some of that has already started.

Somewhere down the road it won’t matter if I’m in a wheelchair, but right now, I need all the fitness I can get. My spirit has renewed the demand for me to work out and maximize physical capabilities. I was ready to give up a couple of months ago, but the Spirit has provoked me to get off my duff. I’m ready to use it up for His glory, and let Him worry about what’s left for use later.

I’m a servant for the Kingdom of Heaven, not some tool for a revival of the Tower of Babel.

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Our Prime Directive

Posted on June 6, 2021 by ehurst

Only the Spirit Realm is real. Everything else is a lie, a deception to trap the unwary. The biggest lie of Satan is that this world matters, and that the things of this world matter. This is the fundamental conflict, the one issue that must be settled before all others. You can be all kinds of deceived about the particulars of the Spirit Realm and God will work with that, but if you aren’t first and foremost heart-led, you’ll never find your way to Him, because God speaks in the heart, not in the head.

It’s almost amusing how the folks in the Liberty Movement have captured so very many, seeking to rise against The Cult. What’s really sad is how often they come so close to that central truth, only to turn and chase the particulars of something that is merely a manifestation of what matters. We can read their stuff and benefit from their head-knowledge of very real conspiracies, but they always come up short. They keep chasing the tail instead of striking the head of the Beast.

For example, I agree with the basic statement that the bogus “vaccine” is consciously designed to be a path to population reduction. I have no argument with that notion. However, if you get lost in this fact, you’ll miss the prime directive: We must keep the gospel message alive. Our lives are forfeit from the start. Taking the injection or not isn’t really the major point here. God is able to save those whom He intends to use, and the injection cannot hinder His hand. So sure, avoid it if you can, but don’t act like God can’t use people whose convictions moved them to take the vaccine. The issue is not staying alive. The issue is in how we live and die, because this life is not the ultimate reality.

If The Cult uses its power to silence opposition to the vaccine, that isn’t the real battle. Yes, it would be a whole lot wiser to find an alternative means of communication, a way of keeping up with the facts instead of being herded like sheeple into bad pastures where censorship is possible. But if the people at large refuse to leave those evil social networks, there’s nothing you can do to help them.

We should expect Satan to win in this world; this is his domain. Not in some absolute sense, of course, but he is called in Scripture “the god of this world.” Whatever we do to help set the sheeple free has to be guided from Heaven. Don’t get entangled in the dirty details of methods that are rooted in this world in the first place.

The globalist dream of a Great Reset is going to fail. It cannot work; it stands on a lie about reality. There’s nothing wrong with delving into the details of how this conspiracy came about, it’s methods and means, and what the conspirators hope to achieve. What’s wrong is to believe that Satan is actually going to deliver on his lying promises to those who serve him. There’s no doubt it will look like they have won, right up to the point when God crushes the whole thing.

The vaccine is not the Mark of the Beast. The Mark of the Beast is a commitment to acting in this world as if there is no Spirit Realm. If you are committed to real-world action, then you have taken the Mark of the Beast. If you simply use actions in this world to point to the glory of the Father, then you are free.

There’s nothing wrong with keeping an eye on the evil men plan to do. It’s a good idea to know what to expect, because when you are surprised is when you are most likely to miss an important cue from the Holy Spirit. Go ahead and read up on things we should expect. For example, that business of the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, with the subsequent fuel shortages spanning from Texas to Virginia? That was sponsored by The Cult; it was part of their planning as discussed — “in theory” — in the World Economic Forum (WEF) scenario gaming last year. And the more recent attack on JBS meat company was part of it, except JBS was far better prepared, and recovered much more quickly.

Learn how the common supply chain we all rely on is a major element in herding us to the Great Reset. Recognize just how vulnerable the system is. The Cult will turn up the pain level until we cry out for their “benevolent” controls over the world’s economy. Oh, wait — Russia and China don’t appear to be in on this. It only applies to the West. In the coming decades, the West will collapse while something rises to take its place.

Meanwhile, if there is any truth at all to what the Suspicious Observer folks tell us, the whole of human existence could be reduced to a tiny stone-aged fragment within my lifetime. See? This is not a fight to be among the survivors of such a catastrophe. The question is where my God wants me to stand for His glory. Survival is just a tactic, not the prime directive. Our prime directive is His glory. This world is merely the place where we pursue that.

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Matthew 2:19-23

Posted on June 5, 2021 by ehurst

Why such a short passage? Once again, the background story is huge. To make full sense of what Matthew is telling us, we need to be aware of at least some of what was common knowledge in the time this passage covers.

Do you remember the Maccabees? That’s the Jewish family that revolted against the remnants of Alexander’s empire — in this case, the Seleucid rulers around 167 BC. The Seleucids were trying to force the Jews to ditch their religion by ramming pagan Hellenism down their throats. A family later called the Maccabees led the revolt. One of the Maccabean sons was John Hyrcanus, and he reigned as High Priest. By his time the Edomites had migrated into what we think of as southern Judah, and one of his conquests was the Edomite kingdom in 150 BC. John forced them all to convert, and they were absorbed into Judea.

King Herod was an Edomite noble with a particularly bogus claim to being Jewish. Things under the Maccabeans were chaotic for another century before Herod came along and earned the support of Rome by running the Parthians out of Palestine (43 BC). Rome made him king over the lands of his own Edom (Latin Idumea). Caesar added Judah, Samaria, Galilee, and some of the small kingdoms surrounding all of that. Some time later, Herod made sure to slaughter all the Hasmoneans he could find (the native Judean dynasty arising from the Maccabean Revolt) to ensure there was no one with a claim against his throne.

His reign was marked by an odd mixture of sometimes being quite solicitous of Jewish Law, and at other times remarkably insensitive to Jewish sentiments. He was notorious for his hedonism and bad temper. As he aged and approached death in 4 BC, his physical ailments mounted up to torment him sorely, making his bad temper even worse. It was in this awful state that he ordered the slaughter of the infants around Bethlehem. While Jesus and His family waited in Egypt, Herod could not die without a significant amount of drama.

King Herod was perhaps more vicious with his own sons. Part of his claim to the Judean throne was marrying a Hasmonean, Mariamne. Herod had her executed along with the rest of the Hasmoneans. The elder of her two sons was highly favored by the Jewish leadership, but with all the bad blood, Herod eventually trumped up charges against the two brothers such that Rome approved their execution in 7 BC.

At some point, Herod decided to honor Rome by having a golden eagle mounted near the main gate into the Temple. This served only to increase the hatred of the people against him, as it represented an egregiously blasphemous provocation. A couple of famous rabbis at the time stirred up quite a group of young adult men to take action. In broad daylight, they engaged in some acrobatics to get themselves on top of this thing and chop it down. Of course, they were rounded up and brought to Herod. Professing that death in defense of their faith was better than life under such an evil king, the young men were publicly burned alive, along with the two rabbis. This set in motion cascading tensions with the Jewish leadership.

As part of his attempts to find relief for his maladies, Herod in his 70s went down to a winter palace in Jericho. His heir, Antipater, had managed to provoke tensions with him some months before. But this time, it was a Roman official that arrested Herod’s son and tried him. It took a while for Caesar to approve, but the execution was a done deal. This left Herod with one less heir while he was staying in Jericho. Thus, he changed his will officially, granting his son Archelaus his title as king, but with two other sons sharing some small pieces of his kingdom as tetrarchs.

Within a week Herod died horribly. While Archelaus was waiting for Rome to confirm his father’s will, he tried to establish working relations with the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem. During his first day on the job, he did make some effort to appease them, but asked for a reduction in public protests in return. The deal failed, as there were way too many people still furious over the immolation of the young men and their rabbis who cut down the gold eagle in the Temple grounds. They wanted Herodian blood for that.

Things got out of control that night, as a crowd met in the Temple for a very contentious sacrifice ceremony. Archelaus sent officials and a few troops. The crowd around the altar turned and killed them, then calmly went on with their ritual. Archelaus sent his entire army into the Temple and slaughtered roughly 3000 people.

By the time Joseph and his family could get themselves ready to go at the word of the angel, this was the news of the day they encountered heading back to Bethlehem. It’s only reasonable that Joseph was afraid. We could rightly imagine they were stopped on the road somewhere short of Archelaus’s jurisdiction, praying and trying to decide what to do.

Right about this time there was a fresh uprising in Archelaus’s domain. A family of shepherds, famous for being very large and physically powerful, gathered an army and managed to take down a lot of both Judean and Roman troops. A major point of their revolt was that Archelaus was not their king, so one of the five brothers declared himself the rightful king of Judea. We don’t know if they had any connection with the shepherds who saw the angelic choir and came to celebrate Jesus’ birth, but it’s hard to imagine people didn’t know the story about those shepherds and their strange experiences in connection to an alleged Messiah and Herod’s slaughter in Bethlehem. It would take a while before Archelaus and Rome could capture these rebels.

Meanwhile, during this revolt, Herod’s other sons ruled in their own jurisdictions with a great deal more peace. Herod Antipas held Galilee, and the angel told Joseph this was a safer place. The only reasonable choice, then, was to return to Nazareth, whence Mary came. Hebrew people always sought out the closest relatives they could when moving to another town. Now, there had been a recent revolt nearby when someone sacked the city of Sepphoris, but that revolt was quickly put down by Roman troops. So this allowed Herod Antipas to play peacemaker by having the city rebuilt, and it’s almost guaranteed that such a large project employed Joseph.

Matthew ends the chapter by engaging in a Hebraic pun, but using Greek language. Westerners aren’t used to the idea of God having a sense of humor, but this kind of thing shows up all over the Bible. Matthew quotes Isaiah 11:1. Isaiah uses the Hebrew word for “branch” (netser), which became an established Messianic title. The name of the town Nazareth never shows up in the Old Testament, but it’s a typical Hebrew play on words to associate “Nazarene” (Grk. Nazoraios) with the Hebrew term netser.

If nothing else, you should notice the oddness of Jesus being born in Bethlehem, but very few people knowing that. Everyone assumed He was born in Nazareth. Thus, Matthew is tweaking all the Pharisees who complained that Jesus could not be fulfilling any Messianic prophesies, since He was born in a town never even mentioned in the Old Testament Scripture. Matthew is poking fun at their closed minded obtuseness; this is no different from their goofball semantic games recorded in the Talmud. They had made up all kinds of ridiculous associations simply because one word in spoken Hebrew sounded a little bit like another word.

Imagine a senior man gravely nodding his head: “Why, yes, Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would be a Netser … aios.”

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