Focus on Glory

Posted on April 22, 2021 by ehurst

I’m with Doug Casey on one thing: the US is a hopelessly cruel and senseless bully to the rest of the world. War with Russia is possible, but war with China is almost certain. And we will lose, simply because, if China does nothing, the US has already started down the path of self-destruction.

In regards to that Deagel report, it could easily be that 70% of the US population separates itself from under the existing US government, leaving a minority to face the communist regime that now runs the show. Still, I’m personally expecting a significant loss of population from various means of death, though I struggle to imagine it being anywhere near 70%. Also, I don’t agree with Casey’s speculation on biological warfare. It doesn’t work like that.

One thing Casey hits on that has been buzzing in my awareness for the past 30 years at least: At some point, all financial instruments will become void. As we get closer to that event, the best way to preserve whatever limited wealth you may have is to invest in real property, not financial constructs. Buy stuff you know you can use regardless of the financial disaster.

It will happen, so it’s better to own stuff, even if you can’t keep it. That we live in a material world is impossible to escape. But within that frame of reference, it’s far wiser and more useful to think in terms of what you could do with the stuff, versus the abstraction of dollars or other currencies. A biblical value system is in terms of how things can glorify the Lord, and nothing about the fiat currency system brings Him glory.

Right now a large number of small investors, which includes a lot of small businesses, but also a huge herd of individuals, are plotting a revolt to force the banking and finance industries to let go of their dominance in the precious metals market. The mega-bankers are corrupting and controlling the regulatory agencies who “report” the value of these metals. The idea behind this system is to maintain their control over the economy by not allowing the price of metals to rise. As long as your average small investor is duped by the artificially low price of precious metals, they’ll keep their money in the bogus financial instruments controlled by bankers. Those who understand how this all works, but don’t have that much control, are working on some kind of strategy to break the grip of the bankers over the precious metals market.

The plan has to do with provoking a run on physical precious metals. This kind of activist investment is not news. Part of the game is that financial institutions hold the majority of precious metals in order to keep the prices low. But the rules banks must obey include keeping that stuff on the market in order to force the price down for all such metals. If enough nobodies suddenly bought it and took physical delivery (which the banks must do by law), it would break the bankers’ control over the market value.

Now, it’s more complicated than that, but this is the gist of the rebellion brewing. The problem is, a lot of those activist investors won’t hold their precious metals once the thing succeeds. They’ll try to sell when the price rises. That’s the flaw in this revolt, but that’s another story.

The revolt by itself would not destroy the banking system, but it would certainly change things, to the point it would contribute to a general collapse from other causes. It could be the one vulnerability that destroys a very fragile and evil system. Meanwhile, those still holding precious metals would have preserved their wealth. It’s another manifestation of buying stuff instead of holding numbers in a bank’s computer. Play the system any way you feel led, but never forget that the collapse will come without warning.

The collapse of the system is neither morally good nor bad. It’s just the way things happen outside of the Covenant. It will be rough, but that doesn’t keep God from protecting what matters for His glory through our obedience to our convictions. The same with war — assessing it as good or bad is missing the point. It’s the common perception that’s bad, not the thing itself. The events themselves are simply the net result of ignoring divine revelation, so it’s all evil, war or not, collapse or not.

Get on the right side of history before it happens. Embrace the biblical value system that this world is broken and hopeless. Focus instead on divine glory and let this world go.

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We Can Be That

Posted on April 20, 2021 by ehurst

Everywhere you look, you’ll find a vast ocean of blather aimed at making the world a better place. You’ll see ideas like progress toward a better human existence. In the Kingdom of Heaven, this is not a worthy goal.

Indeed, the vast majority of what humans do today is senseless and pointless. If the whole of technology suddenly disappeared, and we were left groveling in the dirt with only what our own hands have made, it would not hinder the Kingdom of Heaven at all. Nothing in the stated goals of redemption requires a single technological idea, much less any kind of advancement. Technological progress has no meaning in the Kingdom of Heaven.

The only thing we need in this life is peace with God. The circumstances mean nothing, except as the background upon which we project the shadows of our bowing to the light of His glory. In falling on our faces, we are making room for more light to shine. Following Christ requires nothing beyond a passion for serving the Lord. All the technology of human existence has no bearing on the matter.

Nothing man could possibly accomplish will be around after the Return of Christ. All of it will be wiped away in the renewing of Creation, of restoring Eden. It’s not that moral knowledge will cease. By no means is seeking such wisdom a wasted effort. We ought to do our best to understand what God has made and how it works. But there is zero moral advantage to anything civilization has accomplished in any form since it first appeared on the earth.

It’s not that God desires to see us impoverished; being a troglodyte is not holiness. Rather, simplicity makes it a lot easier for us to focus on divine glory. Everything humanity has produced is a distraction. The things that men seek will always miss the point. All material things are just tools for divine glory.

This is why religious people engage in retreats. It’s an attempt to move away from the hustle and bustle of human concerns and renew an acquaintance with simplicity of living in the joy of the Lord. There’s a beckoning call from asceticism; something inside us recognizes the health in that. It’s a good thing. Monastic movements might miss the point, but you should be shocked when there are no such urges manifested in a given population.

There is only one use for keeping track of human trends in this world: as an assessment of moral failure. We examine politics, economics, social trends, etc., only to point out how those things diverge from revelation.

That business of “to your tents, O Israel” was not for political leverage. That call was aimed at restoring to the people their fundamental identity as nation that was just passing through this world. People live in tents because they can’t be bothered to invest effort and care into building permanent structures. They avoid such building because it serves no purpose. Indeed, it serves only to hinder the return to Eden. Such things become an anchor that drags you down and keeps you from getting back to where God called you. So, you would expect someone to call out, “to your tents” when confronted with something that destroys the very foundation of a covenant identity.

We can be a covenant nation without the trappings of human politics. We can agree to an identity based on the drive to find peace with God. We can share a covenant identity of faith in the Lord. That’s what Radix Fidem is all about; it’s just a name for such a vision.

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What Would You Expect?

Posted on April 18, 2021 by ehurst

Let me recommend a couple of long readings.

Brandon Smith still shows his sharp recognition of some issues with his article, Globalists Will Need Another Crisis In America As Their Reset Agenda Fails. His thesis is that the US will suffer a lot of different attempts to break the common American resistance to the globalist agenda. He mentions how the increasing hysteria over COVID is falling on deaf ears; even Canadian police are getting tired of being the bad guys. There’s also the rising BLM riots. Then he points out how yet another “exercise” could turn into a prediction of what the globalists are planning to do: some kind of massive networking hack of some major element in the US economy.

He also talks about the high probability of Biden and friends getting us involved in some particularly senseless war. This brings up another article by Dmitry Orlov: Putin’s Ukrainian Judo. His point is that the smartest move Putin can make, and one he finds quite likely, is that Russia would evacuate the Russian citizens living in Ukrainian rebel regions on the Russian border. In the process, Orlov gives us a very fine characterization of the Ukraine’s history and what kind of people live there. In essence, what we see today under that one flag is an artificial construct with a huge propaganda/myth of being one country.

My point is to demonstrate how the Lord has cut loose the demons to mislead a lot of people into things that will destroy, without ever giving anyone what they want. The delusions of power and control is worse than any drug.

********

I practice what I preach; I honestly believe that every part of this created world is alive and sentient on some level. This morning I asked my bike if this was the end of our partnership. It said, “No; this is just a pause in our mission.” For now, I assume that means the knee replacement surgery is somewhere ahead of me.

I’m left thinking there’s a lot more work I need to do, some of which is a continuation of what I’ve done before. Parts of my experience seem rather like Abraham putting Isaac on the altar; it’s a matter of establishing the boundaries of Lordship. I’m still trying to feel my way through the changes God is pouring into my life.

I don’t think I’m capable of avoiding making the kind of commentary above. However, I’m wondering if, for the sake of everyone else involved, maybe there’s another way to provide that kind of blather. Maybe it needs to be done more anonymously. I’m ready to dump the mainstream platforms (WordPress, Blogger, etc.). I’m feeling drawn by the idea of a very plain HTML way of blogging, and questioning the importance of a lot of built-in features that come with blogging software. Using a plain HTML format would be more secure and a lot less hassle. It would mean it’s much easier to decide how to get more exposure. I would still pay for it out of pocket and not seek to monetize it. The idea is to serve you and anyone else who might come along wishing to enjoy the noise.

So, I really want some feedback. Not just here in the comments, but by you can reply by email or text messaging if you prefer. Of we can chat by phone call or Skype or whatever. Two questions:

1. Would you want to see a continuation of this kind of commentary on current events?

2. Does it matter to you if certain features disappear? That would include subscription by email to the blog. Could you deal with making comments by email instead of a form? Would you be less likely to comment if it were to go that way? Would you prefer to keep the conversations private in the first place?

Let me know what you think.

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Law of Moses — Nehemiah 8

Posted on April 17, 2021 by ehurst

Once the walls were finished, Nehemiah appointed a governor over the city and organized security. Given how the Persians had in recent memory come to break down the walls, the people were a little skittish about living there. The rubble was eventually cleared and there was plenty of room, but few homes inside the wall.

But there was one more task. Nehemiah pulled out the roll Ezra had made of Israelis who had returned to the land. He double checked and found some priests who were questionable, so they were suspended from their duties until someone could arise through whom the Lord would speak through Urim and Thummim. Meanwhile, he updated the registry of eligible citizens of Israel.

Thus, we come to our focal passage, which begins a week later, 27 September 444 BC by our reckoning. This would be the Feast of Trumpets. At this point there was a large public square in front of the Water Gate — this is the primary eastern gate just above the ancient opening on the hillside for the Gihon Spring. The citizens gathered in this open square for this festival and asked Ezra to read the Books of Moses.

Ezra stood on a raised wooden platform. The text was in the more primitive Hebrew language that was no longer spoken by Israelis. After a couple of generations in Babylon, they had absorbed the more urbanized dialect of Aramaic, a very similar language. It compares roughly to reading the Bible today in King’s English to a bunch of American high school students. Most of the words were familiar, but the grammar, usage of some words, and archaic phrases were incomprehensible. So dispersed in the crowd were men capable of rendering the ancient Hebrew into a more familiar Aramaic equivalent expression. It became common to keep the text in Hebrew and maintain trained translators on hand, a practice called targum.

It took Ezra about six hours working like this. You can be sure the people were quite stirred by the message, and many were weeping over the discovery of sins they never knew about. But the priests who already knew the Covenant well warned that this was not a day of weeping; that would come ten days later with the Day of Atonement. For now, they were obliged to celebrate with feasting.

So the next day the leadership came to reexamine the instructions for the Feast of Booths. It had been neglected since the time of Joshua, seldom ever celebrated in full by the whole nation. So the whole assembly of Returnees fully cooperated and spent the rest of the festival in reviewing the Covenant more thoroughly.

Under the administration of Nehemiah, and the spiritual leadership of Ezra, there was a great revival among the Returnees, as they examined the Law of Moses freshly.

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No Longer a Denizen

Posted on April 15, 2021 by ehurst

I’m no longer a denizen of the Net.

While attending high school way back in the 1970s, I was introduced to a very primitive computer, a simple math machine. In college there were some slightly less primitive machines, but still very difficult to learn. It was only in the US Army a decade later that I had to use them regularly. Somehow, I became quite expert in terms of being a power user, but not as a technician. I dabbled in the technician part much later, starting in the late 1990s. Even then it was a matter of knowing how to do what I really wanted to do. I was not enamored by computer technology itself, but how it could enable all kinds of wonderful things involving shared information.

It led me to using Linux and BSD for quite some time. It was right and proper for me. Still, the focus was more as a power user than a technician. As part of the wider technology community, I translated the highly technical stuff into something most users could grasp. I wasn’t so vested in the technology itself that I had no time for users, but I wasn’t a mere user myself.

Now I am just a user. So there’s not much point to messing with Linux and obscure networking protocols. By no means am I telling you that you should back away from messing with computers. Rather, I’m telling you that God has led me to put it all aside and prepare to focus on more of what I can do in meat space. My message will reflect that.

It’s highly unlikely I’ll stop using networked communications to keep in touch with my brothers and sisters. Rather, it won’t be the center of how I find them. Previously, that was about the only way I could find them. Dare I suggest that things will be changing so radically that it won’t be necessary? It’s what I believe. It seems to me that what God is doing will close the door on spreading the gospel via the Net, but at the same time, He will open the door to meeting more people in meat space who are ready to hear the message He has given me.

They’ll be ready to hear things like this: The gospel message — “how to be saved” — is not about obtaining spiritual birth, but it’s all about harvesting the heritage of that birth. The message assumes you have it already. The mission of the church is to breathe life into that heritage, to teach people who to walk in the truth that already burns in their hearts. We don’t make converts in the sense of what that means in English; we find them wherever they are.

The salvation of the New Testament is not spiritual birth, but the life that arises from it. It’s all about the covenants and covenant identity. It’s about walking in your convictions, the heart-led life.

Considering what God has given me, what His calling and mission is for me, that work is no longer possible on the Internet. I’ll use the Net to communicate, but it’s not the field of harvest any more. The field of harvest is somewhere here in meat space.

It’s not the end of communion with those who joined me via the Internet. How you got to know me and my ministry is not the point. But how you and I maintain spiritual and moral communion will change. It won’t feature that public broadcast any more. It will become increasingly private and protected, traveling upon the networks, but no longer aimed at the Net. That path is closing quickly for me.

That’s what my convictions say. I have no idea what the Lord may demand of you unless you tell me your convictions. But I’d be derelict in my duty if I didn’t warn you of the changes I must implement.

Side note: I’m not sure yet how this affects my photography hobby, but for now I’ll keep sharing some of my images here. It’s part of my gospel message still, until it isn’t. I can’t tell you when/if that will change. I may eventually find another way to present them.

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What’s on My Mind Lately

Posted on April 14, 2021 by ehurst

Something has been haunting me the past month or so. It’s something that grew from unnoticed to a large intrusion into my awareness: We are headed for some kind of massive disaster, something that will reduce the population of the US, if not the world.

I suppose we could have an immediate reference to Noah’s Flood, but there have been similar events since the Cross. How about the Black Death, which came and went several times in Europe? The initial appearance in the mid-1300s was preceded by just a few decades by the Great Famine, taking down something like half the population of Europe by itself. The famine was caused by bad weather, supposedly as a result of volcanic activity occluding the atmosphere of the northern hemisphere.

While human behavior surely aggravated things, the underlying cause was clearly the hand of God. It’s not as if the Lord doesn’t do this kind of thing from time to time for His own inscrutable reasons. There’s plenty of precedent.

My sense of dread points to something that big. This is what was haunting me already when I ran across that report from Deagle. Oddly enough, Deagle had been projecting that for some years now, but I spotted it only a few months ago. Conspiracy sites picked up on it sometime early last year, before the COVID-19 scare. But while we don’t take the wilder conspiracy nuts too seriously, Deagle has been typically on the money with it’s predictions so far. FYI: It’s sources appear to be largely the “Deep State” agencies in the US. My source is my convictions.

Maybe this indicates the Deep State is planning something that would produce the results Deagle predicts. Either way, this thing was percolating in my soul long before I had heard of Deagle. And it’s all totally veiled in terms of details. All I get is the thing itself. It’s big enough to block the sun over a very large area, but hidden in mist. Oddly enough, I’m still confident I’ll survive it. I don’t know about anyone else.

It’s not a question of whether we are doing the right thing, but whether God has use for us here. Frankly, you should rather be eager to see His face; I know I am. Still, I’m pretty sure I’m yet a good ways from that. There’s too much to do for His glory.

Maybe that includes documenting what I see as things unfold. There’s no doubt we’ll have plenty of people keeping track of the details, but my mission is the heart-led way of faith and conviction. What I see and record will result from that. It comes in the context of declaring that God’s wrath is upon us, that tribulation has been decreed. Furthermore, it will be an apocalyptic in the original meaning of the word: a revelation — in this case, of just how deeply inflamed is God’s wrath. It’s meant to display His moral character, to unveil His glory.

If it were a matter of reason, I would not expect such a catastrophe would be required. Just breaking down the system makes perfect sense to me. But it’s my convictions that warn me it will mean bloodshed on such a grand scale. Not all at once, it seems to me it’s more likely to be a high attrition rate over some years. And there’s nothing I can do to plan for this. Aside from ensuring my own health provides God maximum use of my flesh for His glory, I doubt there’s anything I could do to prepare for what’s coming. It’s something that has to happen in your soul.

So, all of the stuff I’ve been doing in preparation for tribulation is just minor, functional change that could suddenly mean nothing once the shallow context is past. How can I explain it? Things in which I’ve invested so much effort will suddenly mean nothing, largely because they are mere things. It requires that I understand how the pursuit itself, faithful to my sense of calling, was what mattered, not the things I pursued in that calling. And for those of you who helped me: Please don’t feel insulted if something you supported is now not so important. God sees and remembers your faithfulness to your own sense of mission and calling in helping me.

For example, good computer hardware is expensive. I’ve tried to obtain the best I could get with the resources at hand, and this matters right up until the moment it doesn’t matter any more. I have a strong sense of premonition to be ready for a day when that stuff won’t matter very much. As humans measure such things, it means a very heavy investment in knowledge and experience is suddenly obsolete. But far more valuable in Kingdom service is that I can learn something new tomorrow.

Personal note: The way I see it, the one thing that will matter in the coming years is communications as we go. The huge volume of what I’ve written may not have much meaning beyond the current context in which we live. But during a time of apocalypse, I believe keeping in touch with each other will matter far more. If what I have to say matters to you at all, it’s what I can yet teach and explain that matters far more than what I’ve said in the past. It’s me while I live, not some static expression from bygone days — that’s how the Bible looks at it. A good cellphone or tablet will be more useful than a hefty computer. Also, offshore encrypted communications services might be pretty useful.

Some more random stuff: I don’t trust Apple. They make the best hardware, but their profit model rests on consumers buying new hardware far more often, and at a far higher price, than any other major technology company. They’ve already been caught trying to force users of their older hardware to buy newer stuff. It’s the threat of regulation, not their love for customers, that has protected users so far.

For reasons I can’t explain, Microsoft online services are more likely to be there for the long haul. Plus, they have been less abusive with all the snooping they build into their products, compared to the likes of Google.

Facebook is on the verge of dying. Indeed, most social media has a short shelf-life. The nature of blogging is changing significantly, and I will have to implement changes to match what the industry will support. There are big changes coming rather soon.

Finally, I wanted to let you know that my left knee is getting worse very quickly. Right now, it hurts just to stand. Not a lot, but enough that I’m starting to calculate how to get the most of each time I have to rise to my feet, so I don’t have to do it so often. It’s still just a tad uncomfortable even when sitting. If my appointment next week doesn’t get me a wheelchair from the VA, I’ll buy my own ASAP. Farther out, I’m looking forward to convincing the Ortho doctors that the knee joint needs replacement.

This should not be viewed as a bad thing; God wants me to go through this for His inscrutable reasons. If the surgery does what it’s supposed to do, I’ll start hiking a lot. I can’t explain why cycling is no longer that important any more. I was committed to cycling across Oklahoma, and some part of me is very sad to see that vision fade into insignificance. I’m not that fickle by nature.

I just wanted to let you folks see where my head is.

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Random Photos 08

Posted on April 13, 2021 by ehurst

I can’t ride Draper Lake’s bikeway any more; the hills are too much for my knees. So I drove out and hobbled up onto Miracle Hill, turned back to where my car was parked on a dirt road and shot the rolling countryside. It was slightly overcast.

This is the Draper Marina, after a bunch of renovation work that didn’t really change much. I was standing out on the quay (that’s what they call it — a high concrete walkway alongside the boat ramp). What you cannot see is the stiff wind in my face driving the waves hard against those rocks. It was a beautiful moment.

It’s rare to see this much water running over the dam. This is the lower dam on the Oklahoma River boating area. The water had eroded the bank some on both ends of the dam, and pushed away a lot of the rocks commonly piled below the dam.

From the same spot, I turned to shot downstream. This is a high water level for the North Canadian River. That’s Interstate 40 running high above the river in the distance, with Interstate 35 swooping off to the left. I was able to cycle out this far from the house (5 miles, 8km) because it’s all nearly flat ground.

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What God Has in Mind

Posted on April 11, 2021 by ehurst

Things I’ve seen lately suggest I need to address this again: Biblical Law is not legislation in the Western sense. Legalism is a perversion of what God intended. It’s not a question of the letter versus the spirit of the law; it’s a question of the Person behind the law. If you don’t see the difference, I’m not sure I can help you.

But I’m going to try. The intent of the Law Covenants is to provide an intellectual frame of reference that roughly translates the character of the Person behind the law. It’s feudalism through and through — you are accountable to a Person who knows you better than you know yourself. Any attempt to make the law stand on its own is idolatry, because the hidden dirty hand there is that it raises up the self as god. The Devil is in that; anything that puts the human capabilities on the throne means self-idolatry. It makes the fallen flesh into a deity, and Satan is the only real presence behind any deity that isn’t Jehovah. The frame of reference behind “the rule of law” is that man is god. And it becomes the excuse for the elite serving Satan to enslave us to them.

The only way to keep God on the throne is to force us to fall back upon our convictions. The convictions are written on the heart by the finger of God. By itself that is not optimal, which is why God has always preserved a written record of revelation. But the written record of the Word is not the Word itself. The Word is God Himself. The written record provides the proper path back to Him. We do not worship the written record — AKA, “bibliolatry”. We worship the God behind it.

However, the word “reverence” is appropriate for how we treat the Bible. It is the starting point, the frame of reference for the mind so that we can obey. The written record of revelation teaches us how to think like those whom God historically blessed under His Covenant.

Did Hosea break the Law of Moses in order to obey his God? If you approach it from that angle, then yes; Hosea disobeyed the law by marrying a prostitute. Yet he obeyed the God behind the law. He obeyed his convictions. It’s not that the law was no limitation to his convictions, but that the law was the background against which the convictions had meaning, by which convictions came to life. It wasn’t some kind of special dispensation, a special permit of license. That’s the wrong approach to understanding what happened there.

It’s also the wrong approach to understanding Jesus. His miracles were already written into the Covenant of Moses, so nothing He did was outside what God might do through any of us. He said that Himself (John 14:12-13). Thus, the law was never a restraint, but a set of powers and privileges based on boundaries that keep us out of defilement. It’s written to resolve the human habit of thinking that everything is a matter of instrumentality, that it’s a matter of mechanics. You cannot explain miracles, but you can count on them as normal and regular.

How did Hezekiah defeat the Assyrians? It wasn’t by human warfare nor by any prescribed ritual. There was no ritual that covered that situation. Rather, the rituals in the Law of Moses informed Hezekiah how to approach the God who made all things, and provided the background on how he should communicate with God.

So when Paul talked about blessing those who persecute you (Romans 12:9-21), he quotes Proverbs 25:21-22. It falls into the same category as turning the other cheek. It’s not a rule of combat; it’s a tactic that has its place in your repertoire. Hezekiah didn’t host a feast for the invading Assyrians. But King David did feed the abandoned servant of an enemy he pursued in the wilderness (1 Samuel 30). It’s not a matter of rules. It’s a matter of fitting the character of God to the context.

Do you have a burning conviction about resisting an evil government? Put it in context. If you use the ways of mere men in preparing such a resistance, you will place yourself outside the covenant protections. Your resistance will subject to the vagaries of secular limits and random chance, acting without the knowledge of God’s will and His plans. If you first form a covenant community of faith, then you are in a position to resist as Hezekiah did, receiving a word from God. You get to approach the Lord and hear from Him His plans on the matter, and you are in a position to see miracles.

In Luke 14:25-32, Jesus spoke of counting the cost. You need the calculus of divine power and plans on your side. When faith and conviction are part of the equation, it can change the outcome completely. He didn’t say, “Surrender every time.” He said to be sure you get with the Father before you decide how to proceed. It’s not that resistance is always wrong, but that you should stand ready to surrender every time so that you can hear God tell you when it’s time to resist. And it’s not a matter of always winning, but of knowing whether God wants you to resist regardless of the outcome. It’s not a question of what works, as humans measure such things, but what works to keep you at peace with God.

Israel marched into the Promised Land and defeated giants, beat down chariots with mere infantry, and chased off much larger armed forces. They also got chased off by the tiny forces guarding Ai. It was a matter of having taken the time to hear from God first, of being ready to obey regardless of the outcome. It’s two separate questions. One is, “Shall we go out to battle?” The second is, “Will you deliver the enemy into our hands?” He may not answer the second question, but He never fails to answer the first.

One thing is for sure: You cannot reap the harvest of shalom without the full weight of Biblical Law behind you. If you do not first come together in a community covenant of faith, any resistance is sheer potluck and meaningless. It is vanity and striving after the wind. Only when you can stand together under covenant law can you begin to see what God has in mind.

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Law of Moses — Nehemiah 4

Posted on April 10, 2021 by ehurst

In the previous chapter is a long list of the groups and their assigned sectors on the wall. Those who lived behind the wall built the section nearest their homes. A primary issue is that the entire city was still filled with rubble. Some of the stones were no longer suitable for building. The walls were made from local mined limestone, and once exposed to fire, it softens into something like sandstone, easily crushed. That stuff had to be tossed down the slope. But there was plenty of reusable rubble from the tightly packed homes that once stood inside the wall.

When Sanballat and his friends got the report that the wall building had begun, they came to mock the effort publicly. Imagine a very loud conversation with dramatic gestures acted out in the hearing of everyone working, and the mocking laughter. Further, the reference to making sacrifices is meant to mock Jehovah. What good would it do to call on their pitiful national deity, who had already deserted them and allowed His house to be destroyed? They also mentioned the problem with burned limestone blocks.

Nehemiah’s prayer is completely appropriate. If God is the one insulted, God can act to defend His own name. The people had been called to rebuild the city, and didn’t bother to even respond to the provocations.

At the point were the wall was about half-finished, the trio of enemies coaxed the remaining Philistines in Ashdod to join them in a plan to conduct raids. This had to be done in secret, to avoid transgressing the published command of Emperor Artaxerxes. So the idea was to engage in fast hit-n-run raids. Of course, they would all deny any culpability. But the plans leaked.

Nehemiah outlines his response. First, he prayed as always. Then, with his military training, he organized a defense. It was bad enough the work crews had so much useless rubble to remove and it was killing their enthusiasm for building. But with the threat of raids, they were really starting to give up.

Ten different times, the leaders of the outlying communities begged for Nehemiah to release the workers so they could come home to defend against the the obvious military activity among the surrounding nations. Instead, Nehemiah organized them to come and stay temporarily inside the city in support of their own work crews. He stationed defenders below the wall. He reminded the leadership that this was the business of their God Jehovah they were talking about, not some mere human pursuit. God is more than able to defend them.

This high degree of preparation discouraged the raiders. This was no longer an easy target. Any attack would turn out to be quite messy; the odds were now against the raids. Seeing how well this worked, Nehemiah forged a plan that saw half the able-bodied in full armor around the work crews in a rotation that probably served also to give folks a break from the heavy labor. Meanwhile, the crews were also armed, if not armored because of their work. It slowed the pace of the work, but it served to keep everyone focused on the mission of defending the city in the first place.

Further, Nehemiah stationed trumpeters with each work sector. Since some of the crews did not have direct line of sight to each other, this would provide a means of alarm so that extra defenders could rally to any part under attack. This gave the people the confidence to keep at it.

Finally, everyone lived tactically. The crews didn’t go home at night, but camped out behind the rising walls. Nehemiah didn’t spare himself nor his bodyguard the rigors, either. The leadership disrobed only to bathe in the evening, and then slept in their clothes in case the enemies tried any tricks at night. Keep in mind that it was virtually universal in that time and place for people to sleep nude, which would have made it hard to respond quickly to trouble.

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Stop Missing the Point

Posted on April 8, 2021 by ehurst

It wasn’t a cry for help when I decided to shut down the old blog. I knew God was preparing me to shut it down a long time ago. The only question was when. The forced shift to the “block editor” was the signal God used to tell me.

Look, it’s not like I can’t learn how to use the “block editor.” It’s very similar to other formats, such as software used to format newspapers and so forth. And this business of “blocks” is the underlying format used in the former K-Office, a part of the KDE Linux interface. It’s not like I don’t understand it. But it’s designed for one sector of the population, and I’m not in that sector. I don’t think like that; I don’t organize and process information that way. It’s morally evil to force it on anyone.

Indeed, it would be very easy to use MS Word. Word has a built-in template just for publishing to WordPress (among a handful of other blogging platforms). And you can install a WordPress plugin to import Word documents, so you can get it from either end. And if that’s not enough, Google Docs has a plugin to publish to WordPress.

This is not a question of how to keep using that blog. It’s a question of when to kill it, since it’s death warrant had already been issued. I had posted that several times already. When it comes up for renewal in August, I won’t pay for it. I’ll remove the whole thing. It will be gone forever, except what was brought over when this blog was opened. That was the plan all along.

Even this blog is expendable. I don’t have a death warrant for it yet, but I’m not so invested in things here that my life will change if I have to wipe this one, too. The time is coming when the Net will go through some major changes, and how the Lord wants me to engage the Net will change, too. Get ready for it, folks. Blogging has a limited shelf life; I don’t know the date yet, but it will expire in terms of its usefulness in my mission.

Right now, we need to think in terms of quality, not quantity. We’ve done the work of trying to get this message to the wider world. The response has been minuscule. That’s okay; the Lord is the only one who can grant us souls. What we need most is not large numbers, but a few people deeply committed. And in a short time, the game will change. How we publish the gospel message is going to become the responsibility of some other folks who will pick it up in due time after the big changes in our world.

The fields aren’t ripe for harvest right now; they aren’t even ready for plowing. There has yet to come the scorched earth to cleanse the land before the plowing. I’m doing my part to prepare the message; I’m sifting everything that has been around for a long time. I’m trying to lay the foundation for a dramatic shift in how people think about the gospel. What God builds on that foundation remains to be seen, and I may not be around when the time comes to build.

This is what’s in my hands. Don’t get lost in what stood before the Lord began to move in His wrath. We are privileged to see changes no one can imagine. Let’s preserve the Word in our hearts for when the storms are past. Don’t miss the point of all of this.

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