New Testament Doctrine — Luke 1:57-80

Posted on May 8, 2021 by ehurst

The very last three verses of the Old Testament (Malachi 4:4-6) mention the Forerunner of the Messiah coming in the spirit of Elijah. Luke notes for us that the Messiah is a cousin of His Forerunner (their mothers were cousins). Eventually five of the Twelve Disciples are also cousins of the Messiah. Nepotism is a virtue in Biblical Law. The tale of this meeting between Mary and Elizabeth add support to Luke’s contention that Jesus was the Messiah. We don’t know if Mary was there to witness the birth of John, but it would seem obvious this was the whole point for staying that long.

The birth itself was quite conventional for Jews of that time. However, it was viewed as a miracle that a couple this age could bear a son. The eighth day after birth was marked by circumcision, much as we christen children today. Everyone assumed he would be named after this father, but the mother insisted his name would be John (Heb. Jochanan “Jehovah is gracious”). Why would she choose a name shared by none of the boy’s relatives?

The folks who had gathered to celebrate the moment beckoned for his father to name the boy. Let’s take a moment to dispel the notion that Zacharias was somehow deaf, as well as mute. The phrase for signaling Zacharias was a common expression for trying to get the attention of someone distracted by some task. They didn’t shout at him; that would be rude in this setting. They tried to get his attention politely.

He hadn’t even managed a whisper since facing the angel in Temple. Zacharias asked for a tablet. This would have been the drill for the past 9 months at least, so there would have always been a soft wax tablet pressed into a wood frame with a stylus attached so Zacharias could communicate. It was a common implement in that day. Someone passed it to him and he marked it with Aramaic letters indicating the boy would be named John. It was highly unusual, but the message was obvious to the folks in attendance that day: the aged couple were naming the boy in celebration of God’s grace on them.

But of course, for Zacharias, it was also obedience to the message delivered in that shocking meeting over the Altar of Incense. Not that he could have told them the whole story that easily. The moment they read this, Zacharias got his voice back. This simply amplified the atmosphere of wonder. This thing was told over and over again for quite some time, far and wide. Everyone marveled at all the signs and wonders attending the boy’s birth, causing a lot of speculation about what it presaged for him.

Zacharias’ first words were in praise to the Lord. We are treated to the prophecy he spoke that day. It was plainly Messianic. Granted, the majority of the Jews, the leadership in particular, were deeply mistaken about what these words indicated, but that didn’t hinder Zacharias’ blessing. He knew beyond all doubt that his son was that promised Forerunner. John would call for repentance in preparation for the dawn (“dayspring”) of a new age in divine revelation. The ultimate purpose was to establish a new level of shalom.

Luke summarizes the boy’s upbringing. He was ever sensitive to spiritual things, something exceptionally rare in children. Since ancient times, the vast majority of people gained such sensitivity through a lifetime of ardor for divine truth, but this boy was born with it. So unique was he in his personal drive that he spent a lot of time in the high semi-desert wilderness east of his home. He just didn’t fit in with the normal social activities of children around him.

Posted in bible | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Bricktown Canal

Posted on May 7, 2021 by ehurst

I decided to try running my wheelchair along the Bricktown Canal. These are the pictures. First is the entrance down near the southern end of the canal. I rolled up the ramp from the parking lot, then turned back to shoot across the parking lot. I can tell you that whoever designed the wheelchair accommodations never used one. Still, it was mostly adequate in the southern half of the canal.

The southern end is quite nicely landscaped, but the slopes were rough on my cheap wheelchair. Still, the stuff looks pretty nice, and there’s plenty of shade from the heat of Oklahoma’s summer. By the way, the canal is only a few feet deep.

Down at this end, the canal is dominated by the Oklahoma Land Run monument. It gives the appearance of running across the canal like it was just a shallow stream. The statues run in a wavy line all around this part of the park.

This southern half of the canal features almost all new buildings that replaced some structures that were unsafe or otherwise unusable as part of a tourist attraction, along with the interstate highway that once ran through here (it’s been rerouted since). The idea to capitalize on the nostalgic aspect dominates the northern half of the canal. So here we have the national headquarters of the Sonic Drive-in restaurant chain. It’s a bunch of little drive-in fast food places all over most of the US. There is a working restaurant on the opposite side of this thing.

There is a canal taxi system with yacking tour guides. This is about the half-way point, where the canal runs under Reno Avenue. After passing a large number of newer buildings (including Toby Keith’s big place) with lots of decent wheelchair access, the shaded passage under Reno begins the section of relatively ancient buildings, all from before WW2. The wheelchair accommodations disappear, because those buildings stood long before such access was fashionable or mandated by law.

The sidewalk turns to laid bricks, and they aren’t kept smooth. It’s humpy and bumpy, and rather narrow. The canal is one floor down from street level in this section. The restaurants here are more expensive, and accessible only when they have room for tables on the sidewalk level. There was one little wheelchair lift up to a single restaurant’s platform. There were a few doors down at the sidewalk level, but I couldn’t see inside to discern how much trouble I’d have. But then, I could never afford those places anyway. This shot shows one of the water circulation pools that keep the canal from stagnating and stinking. It makes a hard left turn at this point.

Following the canal to its far end, it stops at the infrastructure for the rail line that passes through the old city center (running north-south). There’s lots of nice artwork here, and it’s the only wheelchair ramps, which run off to the north (right side of the image) in a long sloping series. I didn’t try to get to the other side of the canal here, but I know it’s pretty tricky, since the only way back down on the other side is an elevator inside of a building with a lower-level restaurant on the canal sidewalk.

This far end of the canal spreads out a little, with an arm that runs back south a short way for some more artwork. It also allows the canal taxis to turn around. While some of this is tiled or painted permanently, a few places I noticed had shrink-wrapped plastic prints, glued to the old brickwork. This is a nice place to hang out, but it’s out in the open sun. I’ve seen it packed with tourists nonetheless.

On my way back, at the hard corner where the canal taxis take on passengers, I spotted this miniature golf course, really tiny. There were some carnival rides scattered along this section, but nothing easy to line up with a camera. There was very little activity during my visit.

Farther back toward the end where I started stands this Native American monument on the far side. It’s a little ironic, standing so close to the Land Run monument. The Land Run was to parcel out real estate left over once the tribes were forced to surrender their tribal holdings. That was a sad chapter in Oklahoma History.

Posted in photography | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Space Weather and Disasters

Posted on May 6, 2021 by ehurst

Today, I want to address a hobby of mine: astrophysics and geophysics. This will be a bit long, because I want to introduce a set of ideas about how God does things. Let’s not forget that Our Father controls all things, so the outcome is always in His hands. However, it would appear that the grave warnings about God’s wrath on human societies that reject His revelation may include wrath from directions the vast majority of humans would never expect.

I don’t believe God created a world all shiny and new. I’m convinced He built something in a usable condition, and that such condition includes something that was well developed and ready to receive human life, with a distinct end point programmed into it. Whether or not the rest of the universe was already existing, or whether it’s just background, is unknowable. What we can deduce from Scripture is that our world had a distinct purpose and shelf life. So on the one hand, we can examine the wider universe, but the focal point is how the things we see affect our lives in our fallen state.

To no one’s surprise, the wider universe is apparently cyclical. The mechanics of everything runs through a pulsating rhythm with vastly long time ranges. Our God is truly wise and intelligent, and the beauty of this system is beyond our knowing. We do get to catch hints now and then of some parts of it. Thus, stars can be seen in various stages of their own individual cycles, and give us clues about how our star might act on a longer time frame.

I’ll over-simplify, introducing the basic concepts so you can make sense of the more in-depth material, if you are inclined to pursue it. It’s a tremendous amount of evidence to absorb, especially if you haven’t had much curiosity about it in the past. I’m not hard driven to learn such things, but I do have a broad curiosity, so I was already familiar with some of what I’ve learned recently. Over at the forum, Jay DiNitto mentioned this particular source and I’m rather intrigued. I took the time to review their basic thesis and some of the evidence they present.

According to their research, a part of our broader cyclical existence is that our sun can periodically spew out a micro-nova. It works like this: As our solar system rotates in its cycle through the galaxy, every 12k years or so, it passes through a dust cloud. Being a natural gravity well, the sun absorbs a lot of this stuff and it affects the equilibrium. At some point, the sun then ejects this excess mass in a kind of nova, but which isn’t so destructive that it changes the sun forever.

This means that super-heated particles are spewed across our solar system, and they crash into all the planets. It’s somewhat like a very massive CME (coronal mass ejection). The particles aren’t just hot, but magnetic. Thus, their effect upon impact includes a lot of things hard to explain. But part of that explanation is that it could easily overload things like our electricity grid, all electronic devices, etc. More than that, it would overload the protective magnetic field around the earth. It would cause the poles to shift, for example.

But it gets even more complicated. It appears the earth itself is sort of aware of all of this, and internally acts to prepare for it. There’s that idea that all of Creation is alive; the folks at this source don’t say it like that, but what they do say leaves the door open for it. The earth is not a neat little ball with nicely layered spheres inside. There are bulges and imbalances that drive long term changes on the surface, and those bulges make the earth vulnerable to sudden shifts along its own set of cycles.

Part of what makes all of this seem so wacky is that this stuff has been intentionally hidden. Not completely buried, but like everything else it seems in our world today, the information has been discredited by the mainstream system. This is part of the same system trying to cram evolution and materialism down our throats.

Anyway, these “suspicious observers,” as they call themselves, theorize that our near future is likely to go one of two ways. In one scenario, if our sun’s own cycle of surging and sleeping continues according to the established pattern, then we are going to pass through a very quiet period this next year or so for things like sunspots. That means it’s absorbing the dust quietly. Then, in a couple of decades, it will produce one of the micro-novas that it does every 12k years or so. So we have only to wait until 2030 to 2040 to see this happen. It would provoke that pole shift, making the earth’s polar ice caps migrate to new positions. It would also bring on a general ice age of sorts. A lot of modern infrastructure would be fried by the magnetic swamp of particles washing over the earth.

The other possibility they cite is that the sun could flare up quite a bit and get rid of any excess load of particles more slowly. It’s the same effects, but with a lower intensity over a longer time frame. It would still produce disasters. And the earth’s poles are still drifting, anyway, a process that has accelerated in recent years.

As you might expect, this group appears to cherry pick the data they use. That doesn’t make it false; you have filter out the crap that means nothing. A lot of crap is tied to the very big lie we call “global warming.” The GW nonsense is politics with a scientific mask. Still, there may be other explanations for what these “suspicious observers” are citing. I’m not saying this is the best answer to all the questions. Rather, I’m intrigued by something I honestly confess is partly over my head. It certainly fits with my moral understanding of things, and gives what seems a viable explanation for some of the prophetic parts of the Bible.

I still say this is not The End. Rather, it’s more like a pretty strong combination of the Flood with the Tower of Babel, a sort of divine reset. I would think the Lord is going to act strongly merely on the grounds of moral discernment. Scripture says during times of apocalypse, there are signs and wonders in the skies that go along with the moral revelation through natural processes on our shorter time scale. Celestial events as part of the cycle of sin and wrath on the way to the Final Apocalypse do fit right into all of this.

At any rate, if you are interested in checking out this stuff, start with this series of videos that run a couple of hours together. They have several affiliated sites across the Net; try Space Weather News. If you have money to throw around, they would naturally be glad to take it. They sell books and other merchandise. They’ll even offer you a chance to join their little community out in the boonies to prepare for the coming disasters. I don’t think that’s the right approach for Covenant people, but it’s not stupid altogether. It could be handy for a lot of other reasons.

Posted in prophecy | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The Chinese Grip

Posted on May 5, 2021 by ehurst

Here’s something interesting: China has concrete plans for taking over the Internet itself. It’s not as if this is news, but it’s a much more explicit statement than we would expect. China is not known for public honesty on much of anything. But lest you think this is just more China-bashing, the CCP’s attitude about the open Internet has long been very clear by how they work internally, and how they interact with international Internet boards and technology forums.

Keep in mind how China operates. It’s not like the abusive muscling of the US, wherein the US tells the rest of the world, “You want this, and we will supply it — at our price.” The price usually comes out being political control and plundering of all resources. The Chinese come in very friendly and simply offer to help fund and build whatever it is the locals actually want. All the Chinese want in return is a cut of the action to repay loans.

Naturally, China is quite willing to loan more than the clients can easily repay. But they are patient and rather kind about it. That’s because their plans are long term. They want the client states beholden to them across multiple generations. At some point, they will use the leverage for things like “helping” the client state with their Internet. And that’s how they gain control of things that really interest them. The Chinese don’t actually want to rule those client states, just certain aspects of how the world at large does things.

In other words, China works like a drug dealer. She gets you hooked and then uses you until you are no longer useful. She does not hesitate to manipulate on the basis of human frailty. You’ve no doubt seen hints of how the Chinese have wormed their way into the US. Every month brings another story of someone caught spying for China, and it always turns out to be a matter of various inducements, whatever it takes to get the spy beholden to China.

Side note: The Russians aren’t as good at espionage as the Chinese. The Russians have too much of their own cultural sense of honor, though it’s different from the Western version. But the Soviets were never as driven as people claimed. However, the Chinese will wallow in anything to get what they want. For them, that is their sense of honor.

The Chinese sense of loyalty is quite different from that of the West. It’s openly tribal, but hard to explain. On the one hand, it’s not that Chinese people cannot be decent to other humans. On the other hand, they don’t hesitate to run over each other without shedding a tear. They have a totally different sense of moral duty. Thus, the CCP makes Machiavelli seem quite friendly. They are frankly better at this game than the most psychopathic Western tyrant. The inherent inefficiencies of this are the only thing that has kept them from owning the whole world. It’s a very low-trust society, and cheating is pervasive, which is bad for business.

But a great many other tyrants in the world admire the Chinese way of controlling the Internet. It gives tyrants everywhere ideas on how to control the public dialog. The Chinese aren’t trying to take over the world; they thrive on competition in the marketplace. They honestly don’t want to rule the world, which gives them an advantage over our delusional Western elite. The Chinese are far more realistic about what’s possible, and don’t long for things they can’t have.

There’s a certain sense of live-and-let-live, but when it comes to anything that interferes with their internal control over their own people, the CCP get very nasty. For them, the openness of the Internet with all these cultural influences that threaten their grip is intolerable. Thus, they are altogether eager to take over the Internet itself, not the rest of the world population. There’s no realistic way to keep the kind of control they want over their own population with an open Internet, so they are quite willing to spoil it for everyone else. This is a critical element in the future Networked Civilization.

To the degree there is a threat to the gospel message on the Net, nothing is a bigger danger to us.

Posted in computers | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Wandering Thoughts

Posted on May 3, 2021 by ehurst

It’s not as if nothing out there is happening, but there’s not much that requires a reaction right this moment. There is nothing we can do for people who reject the Covenant. So long as they remain outside the Covenant, they aren’t our problem. Then again, those who attack the Covenant do come to our attention, but only if God has placed in our hands the means to respond, and a calling/mission to do so.

I have a mission to point things out from time to time. For example, from what I can see, TikTok is, at least in part, a gateway for young ladies to enter the porn market. The TikTok app doesn’t exclude porn, even though the primary user base is juveniles. It doesn’t matter what the young ladies imagine their audience to be; it’s one step away from the infamous Only Fans, a DIY porn site for pay. Look for that market to expand.

That we can do nothing about this kind of problem doesn’t keep us from praying. But when we pray about it, it helps to keep a clear eye on the larger move behind it. The more modern manifestations of the Tower of Babel always include a major push to degrade the little people. The best way to do this is not by force, but by provoking an appetite for dissipation. More the point, it makes degradation normal. TikTok is all good clean fun, no? Just a generation ago, it would have been shocking and scandalous.

We can dispute generational value systems, but that would be missing the point. The Bible distinctly prohibits that kind of exhibitionism. In our fallen state, nudity belongs only in a very private context. All the human reasoning about that means nothing; God says what He says. It’s part of my mission to point out these things.

There are plenty of issues over which other people expend a lot of emotion, but that don’t matter to me, things that do not represent a fundamentally moral choice. There is no one righteous computer operating system; they are all born in sin. There is no Christian car brand, etc. A Jesus Frisbee isn’t going to fly better than the others. The market is loaded with nonsense branding.

Sometimes I think I understand where God is leading me on something, only to find myself obliged to reverse course. But I don’t represent my choices as any kind of indicator for you to follow. I’m consciously trying to avoid the “look at me” impulse. On the other hand, I realize that God has touched my life, and everywhere I’ve ever gone on the face of this planet, people decide to follow me, even when I deny that I’m trying to lead. This is simply the way humans are. There are just a handful of people who forge ahead in the assurance they have a mission to fulfill. The rest tend to follow one or another of those driven individuals. If you follow me, you may end up wondering if I actually do know where I’m going.

But those things on which I waver are not critical to the mission itself. Despite my efforts to back myself out of the Internet, I still have things to write and the Net is the only place I can publish. I need the tools to simplify the job. So when I ran Windows on both my computers, I actually had some trouble keeping track of the stuff I write. Windows no longer offers easy networking on a home LAN. It has gotten very convoluted and Byzantine. I had to revert my desktop to running Linux so I could run the network services I needed for all the other machines in the house. It’s not a statement about the superiority of one OS over another, just a matter of choosing the best tool for the job.

Unless you have peculiar needs, don’t follow my lead on this. There are plenty of things I thought I had figured out for the the coming persecution, but I was blindsided by plans God wasn’t going to tell me about in advance. It’s easy for my flesh to imagine that it has things under control.

So now my planning needs to include wheelchair usage, not bikepacking. Did that kill my photography? Not yet, but it has certainly changed the kind of subjects at which I point my camera. I can assure you there’s a lot of subtle stuff I’m not going to see alongside the road because I can’t drive like I used to ride. On the one hand, I’m constrained to spend more time in places where humans have changed things a lot. It’s a more art and less natural stuff, more urban and less rural. On the other hand, the natural stuff I’ll shoot will be more a matter of grand landscape vistas, not the little delights I used to run across all the time.

I don’t anticipate knee surgery any time soon. What the medical staff have told me so far indicates I’m still quite a ways from meeting the threshold the system requires. This is not where I wanted to go with the photography. The limitations on my cycling are not at all what I hoped to see, and I’ll definitely miss the hiking. I’m still trying to process what this signals about God’s changes in my mission. There’s a lot of stuff He lets me figure out on my own.

Posted in personal | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

New Testament Doctrine — Luke 1:5-25

Posted on May 1, 2021 by ehurst

We seek shalom — peace with our Creator. The Messiah came to offer His Nation one last chance to retain all the promises and blessings of the Covenant of Moses. This ancient covenant — a suzerain-vassal treaty — had to be updated a bit in particulars, but would be unchanged in substance. The Messiah came as the personification of that Covenant.

We need not belabor the point: Jesus (Heb. Jeshua) was the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies of a coming Messiah. Luke begins by first settling the issue of the prophesied forerunner.

Zacharias was a priest; his wife Elizabeth was from the same clan. He would have considered himself privileged to have a priestly wife. However, things didn’t turn out that well. Everyone would have assumed that her barren womb was a matter of God’s disfavor. This, despite how both were faithful to the Covenant as best they knew. By the time they were both old enough for everyone to have given up hope, and likely ceased praying on their behalf, something happened.

Zacharias drew the lot for burning incense during one of the two prayer services in the Temple; nothing indicates either the morning of evening service. By this time in Israeli history, the rotation for his division would have come up twice each year. However, to be chosen for this particular privileged duty was easily once in a lifetime. A majority of priests never saw more than the most menial duties, much of it little more than make-work. So this was a big moment, and there was a lot of pressure on the aging priest to get everything perfect. By this time, the ritual was quite complicated, so it required a good bit of time.

Consider this: He is entering the actual Temple. Two chosen helpers would briefly step inside before him. One would remove the ashes of the previous incense offering. The other would enter and place live coals in the center. Both would worship a moment, then back out of the Temple. Nobody else goes in with Zacharias. He brings the incense that represents the prayers of the nation for forgiveness. After this signal opportunity, the other priests would refer to him as “rich.”

At the point where Zacharias entered the doorway, the priests and people around the altar for burnt offerings would have backed away from the burning sacrifice, and the people would be face down on the pavement, asking God to receive their prayers. Zacharias then steps reverently to the incense altar and pours the incense, very specifically with the palm of his hand, not his fingers, onto the glowing coals.

It was a fine art to blend this holy incense. What should happen is that the smoke would rise up like a thin stalk of a plant, bump the ceiling and follow the slight incline up into the top of the Holy of Holies, over the top rail of the curtain. Naturally, some of the smoke would also billow back down and fill the area around the incense altar.

It was a sight to behold, and there’s no doubt Zacharias thrilled to the moment, watching with fascination something rarely seen by any man. He would have bowed in worship and then backed out usually, but this time he was arrested by the presence of an angel by the incense altar. His natural expectation was that somebody was in serious trouble, and it might be him. Angels didn’t show themselves for frivolous reasons.

The angel told him to relax; everything was okay. Indeed, the Lord had heard his years of prayer for children. His wife was going to bear him a son. This will provoke a lot of celebration, but for more than just the one obvious reason. This son would be a special servant of God, and would be raised under the Nazarite vow. Indeed, he would manifest the divine Presence of the Lord from birth, and grow up with a unique sense of divine awareness.

His mission would be to call his nation to repentance. Not just any ordinary revival, his ministry would presage the coming Messiah. This call to repentance would be specifically in preparation for a divine visitation. Zacharias would have associated the angel’s choice of words with the promised return of Elijah (Malachi 4:5-6).

Zacharias was gob-smacked; it was just too much to process. He just could not believe it. Indeed, his wife was too old to get pregnant. How would he know this was not some private fantasy, a delusion he experienced under all the stress of this particular duty?

The angel replied that he was not just any angel, but the divine Messenger Angel of Jehovah, Gabriel. Since Zacharias was so dubious about the whole thing, he would be forced to bear his experience in silence. The Lord would seal up his voice until this promise was fulfilled in reality.

Some of the people outside on their faces began surreptitiously looking around at each other, wondering why the priest was taking so long. Was he in there risking God’s wrath by enjoying the show a little too much? He did come back out eventually, but then when his fellow priests tried to ask what was going on, he was mute. It was clearly something miraculous.

Eventually Zacharias was able to make signs, and perhaps play a little charades until he managed to get across that he had seen a vision. So the let him serve out his rotation voiceless and he traveled back home, somewhere in the Hill Country of Judah (generally between Bethlehem and Hebron).

Sure enough, Elizabeth did conceive a child. She kept it secret for five months, presumably to make sure it was a viable fetus, after which time still birth was far less likely. She didn’t want to celebrate too soon, but she certainly did glorify the Lord for taking away her shame.

Posted in bible | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

New Series — New Testament Doctrine

Posted on May 1, 2021 by ehurst

This would be a kind of analog of Moses’ Law, but for the New Testament. I didn’t consult with any humans on this. Ya’ll tend to be reticent about such things, so I just went where the wind blew me.

As with the previous study, I’ll bounce through the text to find those passages that emphasize the central thesis. It starts with the Gospels because this is where Jesus ties together the Old and New Covenants. We’ve just finished the Old Covenant, so we need to see how the Messiah completed it and closed it out, by incorporating the underlying thesis into His New Covenant.

So keep this in mind: The whole purpose of revelation is to clarify where we are and what God requires of us. We are fallen creatures. Our progenitors rejected the proper ways for living in God’s Presence. We were thrust out of the Garden, out of ultimate reality into a false reality. We now live in the Shadowlands, where things are, at best, a mere symbol of what’s truly real. At worst, everything that is real has been perverted and hidden.

So the escape plan from this fake reality, and entrance back into the Garden, is recovering the divine revelation we left behind; we need to restore access to the Tree of Life, and that means we stop eating from the Tree of Judgment. Because it’s a living revelation, it has been adapted and expressed in terms that fit our circumstances. The written Word is not God, but a manifestation of what it looks like to obey Him as Lord.

We’ve seen the Covenant of Moses. We’ve looked it over with an eye to what the Covenant actually required, and what it offered. We’ve seen how it was intended to give shape to the mission of participating in divine revelation. Israel was a mission, not a people; their identity was the Covenant, not their DNA. It was meant to make them a shining light to clarify for the fallen world who God is and what He intended for us in Creation.

Having proved it could not be done on human terms, God now intends to show how restoring us to Eden is a matter of the heart, not politics. It requires a changed nature, and nothing less can substitute for that. Nothing external to the soul can provide the necessary shift in focus; it must come from inside.

But as we shall see, the Law still has meaning. Instead of the Sword, it is now the Cross. We still have to experience the death of the fleshly nature, to begin the lifelong process of separating ourselves from the fallen nature that comes with a mortal frame. Insofar as the Old Covenant painted a picture of the moral character of God, it remains an accurate portrayal. It points out the first few steps mankind must take in breathing life into the reborn soul.

Thus, in this study we will emphasize the continuity between Law and Gospel. If the Law is to be understood as divine privilege, and not a restriction, that the Law was the one best way to get the most of this shadowy existence after the Fall, then the Gospel even more so represents a set of boundaries that give shape to the spiritual goal.

Later today will come the first actual lesson.

Posted in teaching | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Living in Interesting Times

Posted on April 30, 2021 by ehurst

Brandon Smith offers another thoughtful analysis of likely political events here in the US. It’s not a question of agreeing with him on specifics, but of giving thought to what is likely.

For example, he hints at, but does not explore, how some major industries are dominated by left-wing sympathies. If a strong division erupts between red and blue areas of the USA, some of those big corporations will act to cut off the reds. Can you imagine being blocked from major Internet platforms based on your geographic location? Can you imagine Google being leveraged to cut you off if you live in a red state or red county? Not just your account, but you browser would be blocked from even accessing the sites.

I find it dubious that Microsoft would go with that, but Google doing so would not surprise me at all. I can’t guess about Apple, and Facebook would probably take a more complex approach.

And then what about corporations that supply varieties of food items? Can you image Coke refusing to ship product to red areas? Do you know what products are actually part of Coke’s corporate collection? How about certain retail giants closing operations in some markets? You’d be guessing, but it’s wise to give it some thought.

Meanwhile, if you live in a blue area, think about how leftist government officials would suddenly feel free to enforce all the repressive measures for which they have been hesitant up to now.

I find the broader idea of the rising tension and disputes highly probable. Smith notes how red states and counties are already drawing lines that challenge the authority of blue politicians to act. I’m certain there is no particular coherent plan on either side, so I agree that it’s hard to guess when some event will trigger certain responses. We live in interesting times.

Posted in sanity | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Living in Interesting Times

Say What He Tells You

Posted on April 28, 2021 by ehurst

Let’s try another approach; maybe I can trace out some of the implications you aren’t seeing.

There is a Biblical Law, the Covenant of Christ. It calls for certain basic requirements that humans will deal with each other, and that they will do so in certain patterns He has revealed. I have summarized that with phrases like, “feudal tribal covenant.” While it includes a lot more stuff, like the heart-led way, we’ll let that hang in the air for a moment.

My God has also said in His Word that this world is doomed. Quite specifically He has said that at no time will His people see a human political situation that favors His Biblical Law agenda. No government will ever espouse our divine principles. There should be brief moments when we catch a breather, but nothing sustained. Indeed, as time wears on toward The End, it should get consistently worse for us in pursuing His agenda.

If at any time you actually espouse any human political philosophy, you will have strayed from God’s agenda. You will be guilty of worshiping pagan idols, violating one very clear command from God that He reigns in His children’s hearts. It’s one thing to recognize that certain political philosophies are more comfortable for us, particularly if we grew up in the culture behind it, but if we do not fully shift our fundamental loyalty to God’s agenda, we are very disobedient children indeed.

This leaves us with a consciously acknowledged conflict. We can never be genuinely loyal to any human government; we can never hope to influence things very much. We sure as hell will not be allowed to run things. Even if some of us randomly end up in positions of power, the system itself will inhibit our actions. We will never be fully in charge under any circumstances. How we handle that can range widely, but there is a sense in which we are rather mercenary. Whoever gives us the most room to operate according to God’s agenda will get our votes, so to speak, insofar as any of us bother to get involved.

We are forbidden assimilating to the dominant culture no matter where we are in this world. The biblical Hebrew culture had its place in this world, and that place died on the Cross. Now it belongs in our hearts, but God has warned it will never find a place in this fallen world again. It is a culture and kingdom in hearts alone. We will always be outsiders, a tribe that refuses to assimilate.

A critical element in our agenda is that we will press for the freedom to live as God directs. We would demand the liberty to touch the hearts of those whom God has hidden out there in the world for us to find. How we go about advocating that liberty varies with the context. In general, we have already been warned that doing so within the human political system will risk defilement. It’s a burden we cannot dismiss, so it requires each of us to seek God’s face for clarity of convictions to support our individual calling and mission. Most of the time, it would seem our pressure in favor of that freedom comes by simply acting like we have it, without addressing any human power directly.

Catching hell for that is part of the mission. Persecution is our natural element; it is the proper context for a strong witness. Our whole point is that this world is one big lie, anyway. “Don’t get wrapped up in it,” we tell each other, because God’s messengers said it often enough.

Now, the brand of moxie my Father has given me means that when non-covenant folks start talking politics, I confess openly that I am quite mercenary in the American setting. I have zero principled loyalty to any of the pagan agendas currently seeking popular support. I call them “pagan” quite openly. I stand ready to refute any arguments suggesting that America is in any way a Christian nation. But there are plenty of times when that doesn’t fit the context, so I just chuckle about being mercenary. I don’t take myself that seriously in such company.

You need to establish for yourself whatever it is God wants you to say, and how you are going to say it.

Posted in teaching | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Say What He Tells You

Inherent Enemies

Posted on April 26, 2021 by ehurst

There’s something fundamental here that we need to make very clear: Western civil government is inherently evil.

I’m still amazed at number of people who share with me their advocacy of using one branch of government against another, of trying to get “the right people” into this or that government office in order to “preserve our liberties.” When it depends on government to preserve our liberties, it’s already too late — if classical Western liberties are what you want.

You see, people of the Covenant don’t want that system in the first place. We want a different system altogether, based on Biblical Law. Even if we had the maximum civil liberty envisioned in the Enlightenment philosophy of the West, we would still not be allowed to have a biblical tribal society with a government ordained by God.

It’s great to celebrate however much we are allowed to associate virtually and discuss these things, but if we lose sight of the ultimate goal, then we’ll always be trapped in that pagan background. Never forget: America is not Christian. It’s pagan, with a syncretic mix of blather using Bible verses taken out of context. This is why, at the very minimum, we must remain aloof from the pagan society around us.

It’s either under the covenant protections, or it isn’t. American political imaginations are entirely outside the Covenant. We have to be clear about that over and over again. What little functional freedom we had to associate together in faith is just about gone, and the civil government is long past the tipping point. There is no hope from that direction. It cannot be rescued from the bad guys.

And let’s make this clear: The bad guys hate you. It’s not that they are so eager to kill you; they’d much rather torture you for the rest of your life. They long to rub your face in it. They prefer to use horrifying measure to force you to confess their damned propaganda. That’s the victory they seek.

Those evil people are in turn steered by another group who really do wish you were dead. These folks in the background share an obsession with reducing human population by about 90%, and folks like us are first on the list to die. We are true believers who cannot be led by human persuasion; we do not submit to reason. We live by conviction, and they consider our convictions inherently evil.

If you’d like to resist in some fashion, God will not bless it unless you first form a proper feudal covenant tribe. That’s a fundamental requirement; you still need His move of the Spirit to resist. It’s not a matter of permit; it must be clearly God’s demand for your tribe. Otherwise you are operating on your own as an individual, and you should expect no support whatsoever from other people, except by accident.

It’s not that God can’t tell you to fight as an individual. You hardly need my permission for that. Conviction is what it is. That’s the whole point in having a teaching about tribulation and persecution: The fundamental assumption is that you are mostly on your own. If you are able to form a genuine covenant tribe in the real world, then it’s a different set of rules. It’s a matter of shared faith and conviction. There has to be a shepherd role and things take a path none of us have ever trod.

Could there be a Christian tribe of assassins? Certainly; assassination is valid under Biblical Law as a means of protecting covenant blessings. Could there be a Christian tribe of political activists? Nope. Engaging the secular system makes it pagan, non-Christian. An assassin’s guild would have motives and goals hard to verbalize in the first place. Political activism is all about slogans and concrete goals that would never meet the definitions of Biblical Law. The American tradition is founded on the assumption that people are not fallen; it’s an inherent rejection of the truth of God.

We should understand American culture and law. We should understand it well enough to despise it as an abomination to God. We should understand why His wrath is falling on America. We should understand how God uses His Covenant people in times of tribulation — both, in terms of what’s possible and what specifically is decreed in this context. Your mission arises from your convictions; that’s God’s decree for you. I’ll do my best to share my convictions, but you have to act on your own even within a presumed shared covenant of Radix Fidem.

If you promote political activism in any way, you have stepped outside of that covenant. Any public statement, any social media posting, in favor of a particular political goal within the American system of government is inherently pagan. Even on places like Facebook, I never hit the “like” button on any post that promotes an American political ideal, regardless who posts it. Correcting false historical presumptions is fine, though at times it can appear to advocate a political policy. Pointing out how propaganda is false is also risky, but it can be done. Getting accurate information is difficult to slice away from advocacy, but I believe it’s worth the risk. Still, you must keep that Sword of the Spirit sharp and cut cleanly between the two activities.

Yes, there are well-meaning fools involved in the system of government. However, the overall system is inherently pagan and anti-Christian. You have to operate under the assumption that all secular government officials are your enemy on one level or another. That’s because the system itself is an enemy of Christ.

Posted in teaching | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment