Law of Moses — Conclusion

Posted on April 25, 2021 by ehurst

There are two primary object lessons we can draw from the sum total of this series on the Law of Moses. The first is obvious, and flatly stated several times in Scripture. Take a look Stephen’s condemnation of the Jewish leadership in Acts 7. More than once the Bible condemns Israel as the single most obstreperous nation ever. If God had chosen any other nation to carry the mission of Israel — to live in such a way as to shine the light of revelation to the rest of mankind — things would have turned out better.

God Himself says this. Things could have been better, but that doesn’t mean they would have been good. We can be sure things would not have worked out very well with any nation He could have chosen. This brings us the second lesson which isn’t quite so obviously stated: It is impossible to raise up a human nation that will consistently live up to the standards of Biblical Law. It’s a lesson you should grasp from subtle hints throughout the Bible.

This is why the Kingdom of Christ is a kingdom of hearts. There can be no such thing as a Christian nation. Without a personal commitment and loyalty, no law formulated for political organization will keep us at peace with God. And it is utterly impossible to create a political system that excludes those who refuse to fully commit from the heart. There is no human means for verifying a heart-led consciousness.

Keep in mind: The heart-led consciousness was the norm across the entire Ancient Near East. This is what was expected of people as the basic minimum. It was the foundation of language itself, and written into the moral standards, and thus legal standards, across the board. Yet those nations still struggled to keep people in that mode on a daily basis. How much more difficult is the heart-led way in a time and culture that militates against the very idea itself, as it does in the West?

This is the very foundation of Western Civilization. We console ourselves in recognizing that the West is dying before our eyes. What replaces it so far appears to be a little more amenable to the concept of not trusting solely in the human reasoning. There will be at least a little more room for the heart-led way in the future. It remains to be seen what kind of accommodation we will find, but it will be better than in the past.

But that won’t make any difference if we don’t take seriously the duty to live the heart-led way, and to apply that consciousness to Biblical Law. The Covenant is the message; it is our testimony. Not just in the obedience, but in the fundamental value system and the blessings we reap within that value system. Thus, our shalom is our testimony.

So it’s not the specific provisions of the Law of Moses that we should learn, but what those provisions say about the character and nature of our God. You’ll notice how crappy performance in the history of Israel always worked out well enough when the leadership was genuinely trying to please the Lord. He was merciful, in part because His own glory was at stake. The heart-led commitment was the key, not the objective performance of the requirements.

This is exactly what Jesus taught as the Law of Moses. Everything He did up to the Cross was a perfect fulfillment of Moses; He was superior to Moses in His Person and role, not to mention having higher standards than Moses. But He remained fully observant of the Law of Moses until His resurrection.

If you want to know what happened during the years between the close of Nehemiah’s ministry and the birth of Christ, you can see it outlined in my book, Ancient Truth: Old Testament History, Chapter 12: Inter-Testamental Period. I can tell you in sum that the events represent very little of the Covenant passion that drove men like Nehemiah.

It shows us that Jesus offered His nation one last chance to get it right. In theory, they could have seized the moment and turned things around. They could have gone on to a glorious future with Him as the Messiah and King. God would have gladly set them free from Roman domination. They had long ago rejected that, and we should hardly be surprised. You and I struggle to meet the mandate as individuals, never mind as a community of faith with no formal organization of human activity.

And yet, the only hope you and I have is to keep in the forefront the heart-led consciousness of shalom as an informal community of faith. That may change a little in the future, but you may never see it if you don’t first accept the obligation to take the leadership wherever you are, and walk in Biblical Law. Keep the faith you have now and let’s see what God has planned.

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Law of Moses — Nehemiah 13

Posted on April 24, 2021 by ehurst

We skip over some chapters that recount lots of names and details. Chapter 9 is a rich confession of how Israel had failed to honor the Covenant. It’s very worthy of reading purely on a devotional basis. In the following chapters, Nehemiah recounts better organization of the Temple services, the necessary support for the priests and Levites to stay on the job, and other matters of adding to the city population by a tithe of those living out in the villages.

You would think all of this would be enough to get them back on track. Nehemiah returned to his duties in the imperial court in 432 BC, indicating that he had stayed in Jerusalem 12 years. During his absence, things quickly fell apart.

Our focal passage opens with some background for the rest of the chapter. From a wider survey of the history of the Covenant (see Deuteronomy 23:3-7), we know that Edomites and Egyptians were allowed to join the Covenant (enter the Court of Israel) with the third generation of conversion. Thus, a household that embraced the Law of Moses would see their grandchildren fully embraced as Children of the Law. But for Moabites and Ammonites, because they had conspired together with Balaam to subvert the process of the Conquest, were forever banned from full participation even after ten generations.

While a precise translation from the Hebrew and Aramaic texts is never easy, this section is particularly muddy to us. Near as we can tell, during that ceremony dedicating the wall around Jerusalem, a portion of the Law was read noting these conditions against Ammonites and Moabites. There was no excuse for not knowing, much less violating them.

During the reign of Darius II (424-403 BC), Nehemiah returns to Jerusalem after a long absence. The year is unspecified, but it was at least a decade long absence. Whatever change it brought with the imperial succession, Nehemiah still has the same authority over the Judean people as before. He comes to discover that the High Priest at the time (Eliashib) had allied with the Ammonites. Again, Ammonites were declared by God eternal enemies of the Covenant.

Eliashib had cleared out one of the larger chambers in the Temple building itself so that Tobiah could have his own apartment when he came to visit. Ordinary Judean laymen weren’t allowed up on the elevated foundation of the Temple building, but Eliashib was hosting an Ammonite inside it. Nehemiah was so disgusted that he had Tobiah’s stuff tossed out in the street. The room was ritually cleansed and all the Temple items were returned as was proper.

Worse, the Temple offerings had dropped to the point that the Levites had scattered out into the villages just so they could work and feed themselves. Only a few wealthy Levites could afford to stay in the city. Nehemiah forcefully demanded the offerings be restored rather like a Temple tax.

As he toured the countryside where the rest of the population lived, he saw a very degraded observance of the Sabbath. People were working, and vendors were selling. It was worse in the City than anywhere else. So Nehemiah personally saw to it the gates of the City were locked during the Sabbath. He also personally warned the vendors to stop coming on the Sabbath. It became a duty of the Levites to guard the city gates on the Sabbath.

A final issue was the dilution of Covenant identity. As with his previous visit, Nehemiah found that men were marrying pagan women without first converting them. He noted very loudly that this was the sin of Solomon. Worse, some of these men were raising children who didn’t even speak the Hebrew tongue. All of this was a serious violation of the Covenant Law, not to mention Imperial Law (see Esther 1). A man must rule his own household and his children speak his language.

It turns out that a primary reason Tobiah had been coming to visit was that Eliashib had married one of his sons to Sanballat’s daughter (Tobiah and Sanballat were close buddies). This priest was defrocked immediately when Nehemiah found out. Once more, everyone who refused to abide by the Covenant was kicked out the Covenant advantages, treated as a pagan and non-citizen.

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We come to the end of our history survey. The final lesson in this series will not be linked to a particular Bible passage. Look for it in the next couple of days.

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It All Hangs on Shalom

Posted on April 23, 2021 by ehurst

Biblical Law makes it clear that decentralization is God’s requirement. When humanity flouts that requirement, God acts to dissolve the power that holds people together in fallen human purpose. This is the principle behind the Tower of Babel. God will never allow humanity to unite in a single controlling political and economic entity. Human unity without God is pure evil.

There are other divine moral restrictions on aggregation of power and money, but they address underlying assumptions that enable people to unite in sin. This includes the necessity of personal involvement, personal accountability, personal ownership of physical property. Virtual ownership through stock is inherently evil, as is virtual property, and virtual (fiat) currency. All of them together are designed to deprive people of God’s blessings. Those things are carefully structured to defraud and deprive, to disable the hand of God.

There’s not much we can do except pray and trust the Lord. You can’t even boycott the system in any meaningful way. So we wait on His wrath to do its work. In the meantime, it’s possible to know some of the names of those who stand in Nimrod’s place of guilt for building this Satanic empire aiming for a Tower of Babel. I read an attempt this morning to name names, but it’s so badly written I won’t link to it.

It’s not just the bad grammar, missing punctuation and verbal inconsistencies, though those were frustrating enough. It’s even more frustrating how close some people come to spilling the beans, yet their own blindness keeps them from seeing and revealing the whole picture. It’s one thing to come up short, but it’s another to cover up by misdirection. The information tends to be false in effect because it misses critical data.

So I’ll pass on this much: The incestuous ownership of stock allows big players to have their fingers in each other’s activities, so that everything you think you know about commerce is a big lie. For example, Coke and Pepsi seem major competitors, but when you work your way through all the proxies of stock investments, they are both owned by the same people. So it goes with virtually the entire gamut of international commerce, where the appearance of competing brands is a smokescreen for interlocking controls that serve only to plunder us all.

The writer used the image of flying to a vacation. The various airlines are all owned by the same small group of investment firms, though indirectly. It’s the same folks who own the petroleum refineries to make the jet fuel, the manufacturers of the aircraft, the metal producers going into the aircraft, and real estate and facilities at the destination and all of the entertainments you enjoy when you get there, along with the food and drinks.

The writer named BlackRock and Vanguard as the two single biggest institutional investors in global stocks and banking shares. Perversely, Vanguard owns a majority of BlackRock, and BlackRock owns a majority of Vanguard. You could have stock in each one, but your stock ownership is controlled through multiple layers of proxies, at every level of investment, until you discover that these two own the underwear covering your ass.

In all the intrigues and historical conspiracies, it’s been one team of the same folks against another team within the same elite society. At times it was the Vatican, then the Freemasons, then the Rothschilds, then some other bunch. None of them were good guys, but they always portray themselves as such. We could almost say that to organize is to surrender to Satan, because every time some group comes together to centralize and stabilize resources, it’s always evil, because it always dodges the requirements of Biblical Law.

The individual faces today you might recognize: Gates, Soros, the Clintons, etc., are just figureheads. It does little good to attack them directly. In another generation, it will be different faces, but the same evil power behind them. It’s part of The Cult I keep mentioning. For now, it’s BlackRock, Vanguard, Berkshire Hathaway, the Gates Foundation, the Clinton Foundation, The Open Society Foundation, along with Big Pharma, Big Media and Big Tech. For now, the World Economic Forum (WEF) is a major coordinator of all this. The names will change, but the purpose remains the same.

Every discrete exchange of fiat currency we can point to in the world today passes through the hands of Vanguard and BlackRock, in that they own the entire banking system of the entire world through stock proxies, etc. They are slowly seizing control over crypto-currencies. The flow is controlled by just a small group of people. The only thing they can’t touch is private exchange in barter, though they have laws on the books trying to restrict even that. These are the people threatened by the likes of a free market exchange in anything, but precious metals are a major threat to their control, because it’s a medium of exchange they can’t easily regulate, due to the natural limitations on enforcement.

This is why I say that there will be no uncontrolled economic collapse. It has been very carefully engineered, and it’s known by the nickname “The Great Reset.” It’s not merely some final act of plunder, but a removal of a great many layers of deception. They want to reduce the friction of cultural concepts like freedom and liberty. There will always be some level of false advertising necessary to manipulate even slaves, so it’s going to become totally naked tyranny. Still, they would get a bigger skim from the whole operation if they could reduce us to conscious awareness and acceptance of what they consider our proper fate.

And God laughs at all this.

This whole thing is one huge miscalculation. It will appear the work right up until the moment God wants to show His hand. The mechanisms will be varied and numerous, but we who are led by our hearts will recognize it’s His hand one way or another. No human action can save us. There is no human agency with clean hands to bring moral justice. It’s all hopelessly corrupt.

Once again, it throws you back upon your convictions. The only way you could possibly keep peace with God is to obey your mission and calling. Whether you understand the secret workings of human schemes won’t make much difference in the long run, except to help you see the glory of God’s justice. Our Father will build His hedge around the missions He gives to each of us. He will even grant us a lot of nonessentials, with an abundance that should awe us all. Still, He protects and provides what He calls us to do for His glory.

Don’t get hung up on the stuff. It’s meaning to you will change dramatically as the context moves through tribulation and wrath. Get hung up on shalom.

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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.

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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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