Philosophical Shadow Boxing

I ran across a discussion of the well-known Problem of Evil, AKA "Riddle of Epicurus."

Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?

Sometimes it's actually interesting when citing the question isn't some lame excuse to attack Christian faith. Still, those who put up stunningly brilliant refutations tend to yield the ground of fundamental assumptions to those who pose the paradox. They do this by adopting the logical framework, which is the first point of failure.

Let's see if I can summarize it:

1. God is not subject to question from any other entity, since He created all things. How hard is this understand, folks? It won't even matter if you imagine other entities on His par, since you are directly accountable to Him, not them.


2. The image of the Eastern Potentate, the nomad sheik, and the tribal founding father, are all a direct reflection of God. Those are the closest human representations of God on earth. You won't begin to understand anything about God and His revelation until you embrace that. If you suffer the misfortune of thinking those images are somehow less than optimal, you will never have any hope of understanding.


3. God doesn't reveal everything. That ultimate truth, at least in part, does not yield to human logic seems so obvious, I wonder why it must be pointed out. He reveals enough to justly hold us accountable; nothing else need to be said.


4. Absolutely nothing about Eternity is static. The very concept of a standard independent and unchanging is screamingly obvious by its absence from Scripture. That so many never see that simply serves to point out how thoroughly conditioned we are. I am often amazed at the way this is read back into Scripture by some very fine theologians. Truth is fixed, but only in God's mind, because truth is an attribute of God, as it were. Outside of that is nothing but falsehood. To say "God does not change" is better stated, "God doesn't need to improve."

Thus, "evil" is whatever God says it is. While we can know for ourselves what God calls "evil" in our lives, it takes a lot of chutzpa to assume God is required to formulate the issue to your satisfaction. The nature and content of our relationship to God is the starting point of the question, "What is evil?" Obviously, there's a lot of overlap between all humans on earth. Still, demanding an objective standard is shaking your fist in God's face. Not a good idea.

Who Says?

Who says you can't have church without an extensive database of names and accounting software to keep track of things? Did the Early Church need that?

Who says you can't ask people to drop their materialistic habits and rat-race lifestyle to serve Christ? Win or lose, at the end of the day, participating in the rat-race makes you a rat.

Who says you can't make it in this world unless you own your home, two or more vehicles, and the income structure to support it? I know hundreds who don't, and they are serving God with a vision and passion.

Who says you can't have a modern economy without petroleum products? No one's ever tried it; but it looks like we'll be testing the idea soon with a lot less of it.

Who says we can't go back to the tribal ways on ancient mankind? The Bible is written from the assumption man cannot live in obedience to Him otherwise.

Folks, don't assume because you can't imagine it, God can't let it happen. The Western nations are in deep trouble because of a persistent refusal to see beyond the mere appearances, and a rejection of God's call to rise up to a spiritual level of operation. It doesn't take a prophet, only a clear head, to predict very soon an awful lot of myths in the Western Church are about to explode.

Call It What You Like

Go ahead, give it your best shot. Dredge the English language for every possible euphemism. No matter what words you use for it, the meaning by biblical standards remains "evil."

The security men also demanded he show all the money he had on him, and particular attention was paid to the British pounds he was carrying. His Gellhorn prize money had been awarded in British pounds but he was not carrying the entire sum on him bodily, something the investigators refused to believe.

After being unable to produce the prize money, he was ordered to strip naked.

"At first I refused but then I had an M16 (gun) pointed in my face and my clothes were forcibly removed, even my underwear," Omer said.

At this point Omer broke down and pleaded for an end to such treatment. He said he was told, "you haven't seen anything yet." Every cavity of his body was searched as one of the investigators pinned him down on the floor, placing his boot on Omer's neck. Omer began vomiting, and fainted.

When he came round his eyelids were being forcibly opened and his eardrums probed by an Israeli military doctor, who was also armed. He was then dragged along the floor by his feet by the Shin Bet officials, with his head repeatedly banging on the floor, to a Palestinian ambulance which had been called.

"I eventually woke up in a Palestinian hospital with the doctors trying to reassure me," Omer told IPS.

Naturally, the Israeli government denies doing this, just like we deny torturing people we don't like.

We do nothing to stop it. No, instead we keep giving Israel more money and encouragement. Not just the US government, but Evangelical Christians. Yes, you American Christian -- you are supporting this.

When will you drop the hammer and nails in your attempt to crucify Him afresh?

Life of Christ: Luke 4

In his description of John's ministry, Luke points out the Jews as a nation are not walking where God intended. In the vestment of Jesus as His Father's emissary, we have prepared the ground for a ministry which reveals what the Jews are doing wrong, what they could do better. Jesus is the ultimate reformer, but first Luke explains what sort of reformer.

Now filled with, and driven by, the Holy Spirit, Jesus goes out to the wilderness retreat His cousin John had just left. As a physician, Luke knew fasting would quickly put the stomach asleep until the body had cleansed itself, then hunger returns, typically a month later. Luke does not cite the trio of temptations in the same order as the other writers, but presents a logical order for his patron, Theophilus. Being hungry, Jesus was tempted to take the easy way out of things and make bread from stones, since the round flat stones looked very much like the disk-shaped bread common in those days. But Jesus was not going to let His personal needs and desires interfere with His ministry. He rebuffed Satan with a quote pointing out food and similar basic human needs were not what made life worth living. If a man could not obtain his needs in the manner God provided, he was better off doing without. Jesus would not use His divinity for such mundane purposes, but set it aside that divinity to live with all the risks of human life.

Nor would Jesus take any shortcuts by seizing political power. It hardly matters whether Satan could deliver on his offer. The point was Jesus had no need for such authority. His goals had little to do with the broader affairs of human existence and nations, but with bringing the revelation of God to the world, to put their focus on a higher Kingdom. Nor would he take advantage of human fascination with spectacle. God did not operate that way. Flinging a challenge in the Father's face, forcing Him to rescue His Son from a foolish act in order to leave people no room to doubt would insure the failure of Jesus' message. He was there to act as a man of faith, a man of Spirit. If people were not drawn by the power of truth, they would never listen and be changed.

Jesus had no intention of trading on His divinity. Instead, He set it aside to obey the leading of the Holy Spirit. His whole interest was other-worldly, but with a very powerful impact on human conduct in this world. His agenda on earth flowed from the Kingdom priority of revealing the Father, primarily by acting as the Father intended men should act in every circumstance.

Skipping over a lot of detail, Luke relates the ministry of Jesus as it began in Galilee. Simply obeying the Spirit was all Jesus needed to become famous. He typically taught in the synagogues. When He returned to His boyhood home of Nazareth, He did as always, entering the local synagogue. Luke describes the ritual: standing to read from the sacred scrolls, then sitting down to teach. Jesus read the portion of Isaiah already known to be a Messianic prophecy (Isaiah 61:1-2). It is obviously an expansion on what John had proclaimed. Jesus began His message essentially proclaiming Himself the Messiah. His teaching was spellbinding, though Luke sees no need to recap the whole sermon. Rather, he notes the crowd then remembered this was just some fellow who grew up in their town.

Jesus senses this, and points out their change of attitude. How did this nobody become so famous? How about showing off some of the miracles they had heard about? Having already rejected that sort of spectacle mongering in the wilderness, Jesus points out how those listening were no better than previous generations, demanding things God would not do, and refusing to obey Him. The Jews would reject their Messiah. Because of this, His Messianic power would be exercised among the Gentiles. The hardness of their hearts is amply demonstrated by their attempt to lynch Jesus by tossing Him over a cliff. Luke does not say in what manner, only that Jesus walks through the mob and escapes.

In another synagogue back in Capernaum, it's a counterpoint when we see the demons have no trouble recognizing Jesus as Messiah. Exercising His spiritual authority, Jesus evicts a demon from a man. The same authority extended over sickness. Peter's mother-in-law is relieved of a fever which could surely have been fatal. These weren't flukes, for Jesus continued the same activity of healing and casting out demons late into the evening. Unlike Nazareth, Capernaum had no trouble embracing Him as the solution to all their problems. That next morning, He informed the crowd He had to carry that same message and authority all over the land.

Luke noted in passing Jesus didn't quote previous rabbis, showing off His great intellect by citing a memorized catalog of footnotes. Rather, He taught from His own authority. He needed no reference to earthly authority, but spoke directly from the Spirit who gave the Word in the first place. He fulfilled the promises quoted in Isaiah directly, as a means to pointing out the spiritual truth behind the apparent reality.

My Parents in Town

My parents are in the area to visit for awhile. Of course, there is another reason for their being here, one which is a prayer request.

We had hoped to share quarters in the future. From where I stand, it hardly matters where, because I don't have a burning vision or burden for any particular place. My vision and burden are for the work of teaching and leading. But somebody has to find a place all of us can share. We were hoping for some retail space included, not to mention enough ground to grow a vegetable garden.

Those wishes are based largely upon speculation connected to the vision I propounded in the "Making Noah Work" series. I don't expect to make it all reality, just aim in that direction. God alone knows how far it can or will go. There is, of course, the visions of others involved. I am aware of some of that, and so far see no conflicts. I'll be really surprised and elated if none arise.

Pray with us as my parents begin searching among available properties. We have a fair idea of what's available, but have so far only our own ideas to work from, and it would be unproductive to grab what suits only us and expect them to just get used to it. They will need to find something quite soon. My wife and I are sort of stuck where we are until the end of August. Soon, the church plant must begin.

Isaiah 6

We begin in chapter 6 the second section of Isaiah's published work. It is a mixture of prophetic material given to us within a historical context. He tells the story of Israel's decline toward the sentence already revealed in the courtroom scene of the first five chapters, the courtroom of an Eastern potentate who is Lawgiver, Ruler and Judge. The offense of Israel and Judah is personal, a failure of a covenant relationship.

King Uzziah was also called Azariah. It gets a little confusing because the High Priest who opposed the king when the latter attempted to burn incense in the Temple (2 Chronicles 26:16ff) is also named Azariah. This foolish act brought wrath from God in the form of leprosy, spreading downward from the forehead of Uzziah. Naturally, this disease required he be isolated, and his son Jotham acted as co-regent. The incident came late in Uzziah's reign, a failure at the climax of a long reign great in prosperity, defense technology improvements, and fame. He reaped the blessings of obedience to the Covenant until that last few months. While his son was also faithful, the people had begun to rebel against God. Uzziah died around 740-739 BC.

Having grown up in the royal household during the heyday of Uzziah's greatness, Isaiah had already begun his ministry as prophet. Hardly had his feet been established on that path, but Uzziah does this crazy thing with the incense, is driven out of the Temple, and takes up an internal exile, isolated in a separate house. He died in shame. How bitter the end it must have been for Isaiah to see such a plummet from the heights of fame and power. Was holiness so fragile? As he prays in the Temple, Isaiah receives answer to His deepest questions.

He finds himself transported in a vision into the very throne room of God Almighty. From the symbolic earthly structure to the real thing in Heaven, Isaiah can scarcely describe what he saw. The image is not meant to portray a factual description, but Isaiah points out the hallmarks of what should seize upon every man who finds himself in such a place. It is the extremity of everything which men in that time associated with greatness and power. If a king gets to wear long robes totally impractical for manual labor, God wears one so long it spreads across the entire floor. If most kings get servants hovering with fans around their thrones, God has winged angelic creatures fanning His. If men wear robes and shoes to cover their feet in respect before kings, God has seraphim covering their feet with wings. If men who serve kings respectfully avert their eyes downward in the presence of kings, God's angels cover their faces with more wings. And so it goes, producing the image of power and holiness beyond all human ken.

Indeed, holiness was the primary refrain from these hovering seraphim. So great were God's throne comforters, their very cries shook the structure which housed the scene. The presence of smoke reminds us of Eastern prayer rituals using incense. In the midst of this, Isaiah notes he is struck dumb. This angelic choir sings rapturously of God's holiness, but Isaiah is unfit to even say it. Surely any man of faith, moved by the Spirit of God, maintains in the forefront of his consciousness always a sense of unworthiness before the Lord! This is the primary mark of the Spirit's presence in a human soul. Isaiah had seen unworthiness in the mirror of his own soul, and a whole nation of filthiness around him. None were fit to declare His holiness.

The word seraphim comes from the root word for "glowing" -- their mere existence as holy creatures of God causes them to luminesce. In the ANE, light was always associated with fire, and it is this fiery glowing creature who has no trouble taking in his hand a coal from the Altar of Sacrifice in Heaven's Court, though he used tongs to select it. Symbolically, confessed sin is exposed to the cleansing power of blood sacrifice. Sins kept back from confession cannot be forgiven. By confessing the truth of his life, Isaiah stands in the place of God's mercy. So he is cleansed by the coal of a sacrifice, and made fit to speak of God's holiness. When the Lord calls for one to speak His message, Isaiah now has boldness to volunteer.

The Lord's message is hardly news to Isaiah, but serves as a warning to those who should receive it. The logic of this is they have chosen sin; they shall have it. They have chosen to ignore God; they shall be prevented from seeing and hearing Him. In Hebrew culture, the heart is the seat of the will. A "fat heart" is one which is unresponsive, unable to jump at God's call. Having just presented the vision of God on His throne in Heaven, we should have already figured out our place is sitting in the corner like any minor servant, quietly waiting to be called, at which point we come at a run and fall down before Him. It's not from fear we do this, but a sure knowledge there is no better life in this world. It's really all we could want. Isaiah points out the contrast from this with a nation which can't be bothered to even listen, much less obey.

Notice the very Eastern view of time here. Isaiah's question held nothing of an interest in hours and dates. Isaiah would have expected such answer as he got: The Nation of Israel would remain foolish until they were brutally conquered, taken away, exiled to some distant place. Hebrew conceptions of time is not as a thing to be measured, but a space between pivotal events. Don't ask what date a thing will come, but ask what the sign will be. Until then, keep your mind on your assignment. So Isaiah would preach and prophesy until the march of Babylon.

Once they are gone, and their sentence is served, only a tenth would return to this land. Even then, they will be targets for more wrath and destruction. Like a tree stump that keeps getting trimmed back every time it sprouts, Israel would never be what she once was, what she could have and should have been. However, there is a hint in some far distant time, when the time is right, the tree would grow again, because it would remain alive in its stump.

The good times are past for Isaiah. As he mourns the loss of a glorious reign, a reign which ended disgracefully, all that is before him is the heavy burden of prophecy even while the people have already begun the path of decline. Most difficult for him as a man is the sure knowledge his service would not change the nation. From a human point of view, it would be a futile ministry. It remained nonetheless the thing to which God called him.

Computer Notes

For those who are tracking such things, I'm working from Court again (the name of my Linux box).

Most of us tolerate singular annoyances without much trouble, but when they come in batches, they are harder to ignore. I've moved back to my Linux box for now because the Mac is presenting me with too many little problems: MacSword locks up every time, I still miss the mouse clipboard, I'm tired of not having an INSERT key, and several applications I need don't run on Mac (at least not without a lot of hassle). Right in the middle of working on another lesson in Isaiah, I don't have time to mess with it.

I'm also still making up my mind about running a proprietary system, something which could easily be made to do things I don't like, and lock me out of things I do like. We'll see. I've ordered a RAM upgrade for the Mac, so I won't be messing with it until after that arrives and is installed. The poor thing is running a big chunk of virtual memory, and some of the hassles may fade with more memory.

Meanwhile, I have work to do.

How Would I Do Charity?

I'm sure the series on Making Noah Work answers most of that, but it serves well to offer a concrete counter-point for my complaint.

First, I would surely differentiate between members of our faith community and those outside it. Those inside naturally get the lion's share of any available support. You'll notice this was the assumption from the Book of Acts. Those widows were members of the Body.

Second, by no means would I accept anything from any outside agency with any strings attached. Indeed, I would hope we offered nothing we didn't produce or procure from within the community. I make no apology for my rejection of common FDA labels and industry practices regarding food; if it's not natural and organic by our definition, we shouldn't be eating it, anyway. What we give must be of the same quality.

We would offer to outsiders only what we could spare, for as long as we could spare it. We would have no pretense of being a "one-stop-shop" because that arises from false assumptions about serving God. However, if a faith community as I described did grow large enough, it's unlikely there would be much we couldn't offer, to include services, repairs, etc. The foolish thing is to organize your activity, then try to find willing hands to fill the slots. The right way is to take what willing hands you have and employ them as they feel led to offer. Top-down thinking is from Satan in this respect.

Even when it comes to "surveying the needs of the community," this is inevitably done as a top-down exercise. God's mercy cannot be packaged by human organizational skills. If we note some inescapable need, we pray for His provision, but we never seek to organize a human activity without a powerful move of the Spirit. I don't care who you are and what you've done; I've lived through too much of this, and seen it always fail spiritually, regardless of measurable human success. We offer only what we have, and we have only what people moved by the Spirit bring to our attention.

This does not prevent any faith member with human organizational skills from offering such service to an outside organization, and offering it in the community's name. However, nothing will done in cooperation with a government which does not recognize our spiritual necessities. Outside seekers will be served as we serve, not as directed by any official. We may take referrals, depending on how that works out.

Yes, we'll take names, only so we'll know what to call them. The emphasis will be offering grace and love, to draw them into the community. They must come voluntarily. We want to be involved in their lives and needs to the degree they allow. What we offer, we offer with no strings attached. If all they want is grab some food and go away, that's fine. If they'll stay and talk, that's better. We don't play captive audience games with the gospel, we don't have "case workers," we don't keep written records. If we can recognize frequent visitors, it's to the Kingdom's advantage to build a friendship. That is the only sort of "record" we'll keep.

Will people abuse it? Surely. Is that wasting God's resources? Absolutely not. People who take God's gifts are God's problems. We are merely the conduit of grace, both tangible and otherwise. Will we offer cash? Almost never. Those within the fellowship may well see some gifts, but those will be given individually, according to the training which follows my communitarian beliefs. Since we aren't cooperating with tax exemption requirements in the first place, there will be no need for records of giving within the body.

Naturally, the whole picture requires members of the fellowship will have to learn a whole new way of thinking. Surprise.

How Bad Is It?

Things are getting tough all over. While it can only get worse for a long time to come, I thought I'd share an indicator of how bad it is already.

A local Baptist Church has carried out a food distribution program for the disadvantaged for some years. They even built some brand new buildings just for the purpose of this "Master's Market" program. I know some of these people, both among the church members and among those seeking assistance.

One family has gone there from time to time for help. When they first sought help a few years ago, it was all loving and gracious, but it's gotten downright ugly lately. When people go in there asking for food or any other assistance, the workers want to see the Social Security card -- hands on -- for every resident in the home. They record those numbers for some use they won't discuss. They demand to know the family income, all your bills, etc., then hit you with this imaginary budget they think you should have. I call it imaginary because they do not account for fuel costs and car expenses, for example -- nor charitable giving! They get a little pushy about employment, and a couple of independent contractors have been "advised" to get a regular job.

In other words, the difference between free and independent charity versus the kind of insulting socialist nanny stuff you get from the state is shrinking to insignificance. The church is becoming more like the state in demanding from its charity clients a particular lifestyle of materialism and greed they teach against in their church meetings. In short, they are looking for any excuse to turn you down, because the demand is pretty high.

Worse yet? A significant portion of the food was already inedible. In their last visit, one family I know got 10lbs of rotting potatoes, bent cans that leaked, bread products turning green, and so on. No one complains of the weird stuff included in this food aid because that's just part of the game. But giving people food that's already unsafe to eat is just cruelty, not charity.

This particular family said they won't be going back to "Master's Market" any more, but I have warned them this is the same all over. I don't know of any church which simply gives you food on request without demanding the right to nose into your personal life for an excuse to turn you away, and without mixing inedible food into the package. I suppose it's all they get from their suppliers and donors.

Update: Further conversation with persons who visited Master's Market reveals a few more startling facts.

These counselors appear to display a bias, perverse as can be. If your income is above the poverty line, they do not hesitate to graciously receive you and speed you through the process. If you tend to live close to, or below, the poverty line, the counselors will drag out the process. They push you to apply for welfare. They insist government welfare programs are just wonderful, and seem to have no idea what's involved in that process. They do not seem to understand that a large number of welfare clients are there for life, and willingly lie to receive the level of benefits they do.

Either way, they say things which indicate there is no such thing as virtuous poverty. Note, this is referring to Christians who serve the Lord, and simply ask for occasional food support. In essence, it's no different from any ministry seeking a donation. Instead, they are treated with contempt, as if not chasing the middle class dream is a sin.

And I return to the issue with the Social Security numbers. They have absolutely no business recording them. It is simply wrong for a private assistance agency to use them as ID. It is not an ID card. That may be the de facto use, but it's no excuse.

Thus, I contend again this program is simply an adjunct to state welfare. If they were to say that upfront, it would be okay. Instead, they advertise it as a non-government program, more gracious and Christian. It's not. They slap a little Bible, like a paint job, on something which is fundamentally the same rude socialist abuse you get from government. Socialism assumes you are property of the state, and it is perfectly fine to direct your behavior in intimate detail, not to mention your very thinking. There is no room for the Holy Spirit to guide in directions which don't quite match the materialist assumptions.

If they want to say "no," there's nothing wrong with turning people away. Instead, they make a deceptive invitation. It's wrong to sucker people in so they can pass judgment on something they refuse to understand. All I'm doing is exposing how they treat people, so no is fooled. I have no intention of telling Master's Market how they should do things, but I want to note they will not extend a similar courtesy to anyone who comes in the door.

Tribulation Report #014: Acts of God

First, a note of celebration: my son welcomes to the world his first-born child, Sarah Hurst -- today at about noon, 6#1, 18.5 inches.

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It serves no purpose to say the floods along the Mississippi Valley are God's wrath. While true, it implies somehow the folks living there are a special target. They are not. The nation is the target. The only answer to "why us?" is to note they were living where God pre-planned His wrath. Misfortune is what we all deserve in this life, but we often escape because of God's mercy. This time, folks in the Valley did not. Don't worry; there's plenty enough to go around for everyone.

First, let's address the issue of self-sufficiency. Yes, there will be many more natural disasters because they are an integral part of God's wrath on the US. They will probably come faster and thicker, because we aren't getting the message. Consider your geographical location: What is the most likely means for natural disaster in your area? Surely you know it will come. Have you taken any steps to prepare? If you can afford it, sure, go all out. If you are like me, just make sure your head is in the right place.

Here, the biggest risk is tornado and hail. We've had some of those right in this area, a few miles away, in the past 15 years. Big ones. Let me warn you right now, our police acted really stupid. They were completely unready to take into account the panic, both times, and I really don't think they ever will understand. They somehow believe the government has a right to order people to leave all their stuff and go away for awhile. They somehow believe it's their job to protect you from yourself, and they must prevent you from taking any risks. Some of them were downright nasty about it. Next time, I expect a few will get shot.

However, Oklahoma has on the lawbooks a provision which permits citizens to resist police demands if they happen to know the officer is wrong (more or less). Police here tend to be rather more sane than in states lacking such a provision. So I don't prepare myself for hostility to the officers; I prepare to reason with them. It's known to work. What's it like where you live?

For the most part, tornado prep is having a shelter at hand. Next, you have a plan to maintain control over what really, absolutely matters in your life. In the short term, I would really want to have some sort of weaponry because there are predators everywhere. I can carry what I really need. I would also have some medications I need to carry, and know how to pack a hasty clothing bag. Finally, if possible I'd want to drag along my laptop so I could communicate effectively while away from my home. Food is a concern, but not so big an issue in this part of the world to make me want to carry a huge pack of it. Drinking water matters more.

The second thing is getting out before the police set up their roadblocks and get stupid on us. If we have to leave, we go far enough away to avoid them. If we can manage to stay, we avoid them like the plague going in and out. They will be up to no good, and can change in just minutes from watching over you to making your life miserable. That's with good cops. If FEMA gets involved, I will run as far away as I can. They have only one mission in life: to make you utterly and hopelessly dependent on them. They will lie and promise the moon, then lock you inside a prison and call it "refugee shelter." Do not ever, ever trust the federal government to actually help you.

The most important thing you'll ever do is remain free. That means not just self-reliance in terms of plans, but in terms of what's inside you. Choose today that liberty to act as you feel led by God is more important than staying alive. If a Child of God does not escape alive, they go Home. Hooray! If you can't escape, do what you can to help anyone near you to avoid dependency. You see, governments tend to think they own you, not just your property. They'll break into your homes while not letting you go back and check on them, and who knows what they may "confiscate"? But they also feel free to take control of your entire life, when and where you can go, when and where you are permitted to potty, etc. Justify it all you want as necessary steps in a major disaster, but it's nonetheless hateful and hurtful. It's for their convenience and comfort, and you needs aren't even on the radar. They have already decided in advance what you need, and won't allow anyone on this earth to provide anything else once they are in control.

Don't let them get control. Get out. Make a plan with all the members of your household at what thresholds they do what and go where. Make them all as self-reliant as possible, then pray God it works. Figure out a way to meet up again later.

We are already aware of the floods, and some may have considered the meaning of all that massive crop loss. Food prices will go up, because there's less of the same stuff to go around. This is not over yet. God is at work revealing His judgment against sin. Those living in the US live in a sinful nation, and your personal holiness is no exemption from natural disasters. I have already settled in my mind that I can leave all my worldly goods behind and serve Him with nothing.

Collecting Thoughts: Israel

Sometimes it seems almost a badge of honor when propagandists call one an "anti-Semite."

Consider the irony of modern Jews, most of whom have nary a particle of Abraham's DNA, not at all Semite, complaining people who dare to disparage their behavior are "anti-Semites." The vast majority of those who consider themselves adherents of Old Testament religion or culturally/ethnically Jews are neither. Jesus Himself made it clear, in His teachings and debates with the Jewish leaders of His day, the people of Israel had completely left behind the true religion of Moses, and even that was not an expression of the faith of Abraham. Modern Judaism bears only superficial resemblance to Moses.

Once they were scattered from their homeland by Rome in 70AD, it became impossible to track who was actually Hebrew. While it's known most modern Israelis and Jews are Ashkenazi, descended from the Kazhars who converted en masse to Judaism around 800AD, even the Sephardic Jews would have a tough time proving they aren't simply descendants of North African converts to Judaism. In other words, almost no one living today can prove they are genetically Hebrew.

What we have today in Palestine is a strange group of folks demanding something to which they have no legacy claim. Even if we allow the claim they are Hebrews and Jews, the nation as a whole utterly rejects even modern versions of Judaism. It's a secular State, bearing no resemblance to Old Testament Israel. They can claim not a particle of the Mosaic promises because they flaut the Law entirely, scoffing at it. Worse, it's all too easy to find evidence Modern Israel knows nothing of Moses' commands to be kind to strangers who are harmless. If any other racial identity group acted as Israel does today, there would be no shortage of excoriation for racism. Enshrined in the very laws of the State of Israel is a racial policy far worse than was ever applied to Jews by other nations.

And all for an imaginary "racial identity."

Who can blame the non-Israeli residents of the land for bitter revenge? It is well known Islam lends itself well to terrorism. They did not invent it. Such horrific and shocking behavior is as old as humanity itself. King David engaged in quite a bit of it, himself, as did many other heroic figures of the Old Testament. The US is hardly free of guilt in using terror as a means of changing the behavior and policies of other governments. Of course, when you are the biggest bully on the block, terrorism looks more like imperialism. No, the so-called Palestinians are simply resisting the only way they know how, and there is no need to defend their right to fight back, as there is nothing religious underneath it -- it is merely a standard human response to a vicious and inexcusable pogrom against them.

There is no excuse for believing modern Israel is connected with any biblical prophecies. The source of this damnable heresy is too easily traced. That the majority seem to reject this evidence proves nothing, since most flatly refuse to even look. The manner in which so many cling to, and defend, this false teaching of Dispensationalism is proof enough there is nothing underneath to hold it up. Truth stands on its own. Lies require heroic support to maintain. I would charge most of the strongest defenders are dishonest with themselves, and probably intellectually dishonest, as well.

Modern Israel will destroy the United States. We are already so deep in the red because of fighting their wars in the Middle East, we will never climb out. Even if it were not for massive fraud and trillions of dollars sinking into the pockets of contractors without receiving anything we paid for, we could not afford to continue the war in Afghanistan or Iraq, and most certainly can't afford to attack Iran. Not one of those countries harmed us in the least, unless you consider it our God-given right to take their oil. The only other reason we are involved in that mess is because Israel wants it that way.

The Muslims in this world would hardly know we exist were we not signed onto Israel's design to extinguish them from the face of the earth. They are no threat to biblical truth, because God promised long ago: If we would stand for the truth of His Word, no spiritual force could stand against us, and certainly no human force could assail us. Our actions serve only to strengthen Islam. Satan enjoys our expenditures on behalf of his lies.

The USA richly deserves the horrendous destruction which is already on the horizon. It matters not what race or religion you claim, every color of skin holds behind it the same color of blood. Oh, my people, my fellow Americans, I weep knowing you have been so horribly deceived. I am not your enemy. Israel is our enemy, abusing us for her own schemes. Islam is our enemy because we have provoked her. We are the foolish country, and no one will miss us when our name is wiped from human memory. We who survive will surely wear a different name.

Life of Christ: Luke 3

Even without the full grasp of Hebrew covenantal history, the Roman reader would understand there is a transition here, a shift of great moment. Something old is pulled up, clarified and restated, then replaced. The old must be reviewed to ensure the new has meaning.

Luke offers a distinct sign post of the time frame. Not in the sense we can pin it down to a single day of a certain year, but close enough for the reader to grasp the context. Thus, we currently believe Luke cites the year 28 or 29 AD. At that time, John the Baptist descended from his wilderness home to the Jordan River. Up and down both banks of this river, John preached a prophetic message from God urging repentance, and participation in the ritual cleansing in running water.

John's ministry was prophesied long before, and recorded in Isaiah as the herald of God's wrath -- specifically, that God was coming in person to judge His people. Luke includes enough of the quote to point out the purpose was to ensure all the world, not just Jews, would see the redemption God had offered. In this preaching, John drew a lot of attention. We can't forget there was a powerful ferment of expectation in this time, something of which Roman officials would be keeping track. It's no surprise John drew large crowds.

When they came, John bluntly compared them to snakes, implying they were children of Satan. By the power of the Holy Spirit, John was able to get to the core of the issue: Having Abraham's DNA did not confer any particular standing before God. Rather, it provided only a burden of responsibility to be humble and holy, since they knew more about it than Gentiles did. John echoed the image from prophets of old about bearing fruit for God. Like trees which were planted and tended, but produced nothing good, they were about to find themselves burning in Hell.

The same Holy Spirit who gave the message also made it take hold in the hearts of those hearing. They asked for directions. Luke records specific commands, but it's obvious each represents something far larger. For the common people, the command to share clothing and food was to rekindle the community spirit, to regard the welfare of their fellow Jews as their own. For tax collectors, whom any Roman official knew was regarded by Jews as traitors, John didn't say resign. Rather, since tax collection was simply what governments did, John demanded they do so honestly. Instead of charging extra and pocketing it, they were to accept the generous portion offered by Roman law. For soldiers, it was they should stop abusing their office. Being the only legally armed people around, they should not use their advantage to extort either directly by threat, nor by false accusations -- since Roman soldiers had a higher standing before the law than subjects. Accept the situation and be honest. Together, these samples of John's instructions show the same virtues lauded in every culture of the world.

This harsh speaking man drew huge crowds, and many went under the water with him. With such charisma, could he be the Messiah? John pointedly said he was not. Indeed, while John preached an older righteousness of human change, he was but the herald of One far more demanding. John used rituals and prophecy from the Old Testament, calling the Jews back to the highest standards of their earthly existence. The Messiah, who was coming next, would not concern Himself with ordinary rituals and simple behavior improvement, but with the very souls of people. It was clearly symbolic language, but baptism by fire had long meant a harsh cleansing process, reaching deep into the core of a person's character and personality, a trial so severe many perished in the process. Great Jewish prophet as men took John to be, he knew he was a mere Gentile slave beside the Messiah.

This coming Messiah would thoroughly test the spirits of men, to see if they were of any use to God. Like a man threshing and winnowing grain, the Messiah would discern the real nature, not just the external show a man might put on for human eyes. Those who failed would burn in Hell forever.

Inevitably, such an upright preacher as John would anger someone in power. So it was, Herod Antipas was already wary of John's influence and the attention paid the prophet. How short a step would it be to stirring up a revolt, when it was plain to all Herod was totally un-Jewish in behavior? He was notorious for aping the ancient Persian emperors. When John directly criticized Herod for taking up with the wife of his brother, Philip -- a violation of Jewish Law -- Herod had him arrested. John was standing in Herod's jurisdiction.

However, before this happened, John had the chance to point out just whom he considered to be his Messiah. His cousin, Jesus, came to participate in the ritual washing, directly supporting John's message. As with most people coming up out of the water, Jesus prayed in normal Jewish fashion with His hands raised. In front of a huge crowed, the skies appeared to roll aside, and a Spirit appearing as a dove came down upon Him. In a typical Eastern paradox, this one who came to immerse people's lives in fiery judgment of God, was marked by a Spirit of Peace, of gentle harmlessness. Further, an audible Voice from Heaven declared Jesus was the Son of the Almighty, and quite satisfying to His Father. The phrase was a mark of approval, of more than fatherly pride, but commission to carry on the business on His Father's behalf.

Luke thus makes an unshakable statement regarding the Holy Spirit, whose presence and power had already been seen, was most obviously operating in this Jesus. Further, Luke offers a genealogy which reflects the Roman view of things. Best we can tell, this does not match neatly with Matthew's very Hebrew form of genealogy of direct lineal descent through the male line. Rather, Luke names what we take to be Mary's line of descent, since her husband Joseph was not a son of Heli. Rather, since women are not named in these things, Joseph and perhaps a couple other names in the list, were sons-in-law of their predecessors. Even if Joseph was not His real father, Jesus still came from the Royal House of David via His mother. More, His lineage could be traced to the first humans, since it is all mankind to whom He was sent.

With this, Luke sets out how Jesus entered His ministry very much as a man. While His birth was clearly divine, He chose to walk the human path, waiting on the anointing of the Holy Spirit, before beginning a work as a man of faith and Spirit. He made Himself utterly reliant on His Father, operating as any man of faith might do, should God choose to use him that way.

Isaiah 5

In these first five chapters, God through Isaiah called His People to account for their sins. Here Jehovah delivers His verdict against the sins of Israel and Judah. Standing like any servant before a king, lacking any word of defense, there is left only a thorough run down of the full measure of penalty.

It serves well to keep in mind any nation could have found the favor of God by applying their best understanding of the Covenant of Noah. Going the extra mile with Israel, the Lord delivered a fully explicated suzerain treaty to His vassal nation. In extravagant detail, He laid out a specific application of Noah through Moses. It was fully consistent with already established cultural practices of these people, and included generous allowances for restoring the covenant when things simply didn't work out right.

The purpose was to permit Him to show through mere human government what He required of all nations. Had Israel done half the job, it would have pointed all mankind by example to the higher spiritual realities of faith and personal redemption from the Sin which held all in thrall. Not only did Israel herself quickly lose sight of that eternal spiritual truth, but could not even bring herself to obey well enough to reap the worldly benefits available to all humanity.

The indictment against the nation begins with the Parable of the Vineyard. Having done all He could do to make her fruitful, Israel refused to produce even the pitiful fruit of human success. What would any man do in such a case? Return it to its natural state, for it is rightly wilderness land, unworthy of cultivation. Israel was a spiritual wilderness, as well as a civil and social wilderness. Just to ensure no one misses it, Isaiah points the finger of accusation at the whole nation of Israel: "You are the pampered vineyard which brought no useful fruit!"

We can identify six points of failure noted in this sentence.

First, there is the greed which destroys the community. It's one thing to pile up gold and other portable possessions. It harms no one if you prosper in that fashion. When you turn your prosperity into a weapon to dispossess families from the source of maintaining life on the earth, you condemn them unjustly to starvation. Using financial and legal leverage to amass power is, by definition, sin. In this case, it is the power to exclude others from any hope of surviving, much less prospering as God had planned. Further, it creates a barrier between a small elite landowner class treading down a nation of peasants. This breaks the Covenant of Moses at a fundamental level, destroying the community life. For this, they can expect all their land to offer a reverse yield of roughly one for ten, and their mansions will stand empty.

Second, the life of dissipation as a result of inordinate wealth. Since wine was a major product and recommended by God, it's hardly the drinking which is sinful, but the manner and context. These people don't work as God had intended for all men, but party. Not necessarily sweaty work, but no work at all. They just party all day and night. Scholars, singers, bookkeepers, managers, as well as farmers and herders all work, doing something which engages their time and produces a benefit to the community. Isaiah points out they do none of these things. They bless no one by how they pass their time, and this is not how God planned human life to be.

Isaiah then takes a moment to describe the result of this party-hearty lifestyle. The whole nation is enslaved to such frivolous entertainment, and they are pitifully ignorant of truth. The few who are wise and honorable starve to death, and the core of leaders and teachers which give a nation character and renown are all gone. These partiers are prancing away into death. Whatever else happens, this horror will end if God has to crush it Himself. He would rather see the land of Canaan managed under foreign government than to see any more of this.

Third, the nation's social leaders mock the old ways. They have harnessed themselves to evil as if it were some new fashion. They dare to suggest if God cares He can defend Himself. The implication is God isn't keeping up with the times, and needs to offer a fresh revelation, and is not diligent enough to enforce His commands. If what they are doing is wrong, what's taking Him so long to react? They suggest His patience is lack of interest.

Fourth, these same leaders have seized upon some new fashion in human science. It became their excuse for turning things upside down, for rejecting God's standards. Such intelligent folks, they were sure. Connected with this was a fifth: Human standards of wisdom dreamed up by fallen human intelligence. They had complete disregard for revealed truth, and were enamored with their own mental gymnastics.

Sixth, standards of justice and just good plain sense had disappeared. The social leaders were so proud of their skills with wine and cuisine, but had no clue about standing up for what is right. Thus, justice was for sale. Evil men bought their way out of trouble, while good men went to prison.

Having strayed so far away from God's path for them, they left themselves wide open. Only in obedience could they expect peace and safety. Instead, they had chosen self and sin as their gods. Thus, it was a natural result, Creation itself would turn against them. What was rotten would not persist. But there's more, for they have simply gone too far.

The sentence against them was a massive invasion. God would set forth in invitation to some far distant rulers. Further, the protection and prosperity He wanted to give Israel would be reserved for her enemies. These advancing armies would be swift as the wind, and would not tire at all on their long march. They would arrive as sharp, clean and battle ready as they left -- even stronger, if possible. Nothing would wear out, echoing the blessings of the Exodus, which Israel reaped even during their 40 Years of Wandering.

Rather than the roaring of toothless old lions driving the prey to the young lions, these would be the young lions, seizing their prey without warning. In the middle of the battle, they would remain comfortable and safe, as God would ensure their victory. Israel would find themselves driven to the sea, with no escape, and the weather itself would be against them.

Note these are largely symbolic, but represented the very real earthly blessings Israel could have had against her enemies. All it took was simple adherence, a rather easy level of acceptance, of what God required of Israel. Other nations did not have this advantage, but we note Isaiah says Israel simply threw it all away.

Two Realms

The teacher sat before the group. Deliberately, so no one could miss anything, he extended his arms straight out in front of him. Then, he bent both elbows until the forearms were vertical, palms facing each other. He allowed his arms to slope inward gently, interlacing the fingers in a soft grip.

At Creation, there were no barriers between the Realms of Spirit and of Flesh. God and His angel crossed into the lower realm without any effect on it. Their presence there was utterly natural.

He extended his fingers, then slowly unlaced them and pulled his hands back apart until they were facing again.

Then Man fell. God's steward of Creation pulled the whole thing into Sin. Now the presence of God and His angels was somehow unnatural, often causing a brilliant glow upon them.

He paused for effect.

The Lord set about to redeem Man, to permit him to cross back over the chasm of separation back into the Spirit Realm. This was not straightforward. In the Fall, Man's understanding was darkened. It required some enlightenment first, something which would call to Man's now dead spirit, and awaken him once more to spiritual realities.

The fingers of his left hand folded, leaving the index finger pointing at the right palm. At the last two words, he wiggled the fingers of his right hand. After a moment he opened his left hand again.

Starting with Man's fallen condition, the Lord offered the Covenant of Seth, which required all nature to acknowledge God. Once that had settled in, things went bad and He found humanity had become so deeply corrupted they had attempted to cross back over the chasm using the power of Satan.

With his left hand, he made a clawing gesture toward the right. Then he clenched his left fist.

So God declared things at an end, sent the Flood, but kept Noah and his family alive. Upon emerging, He spoke through Noah a new covenant, the Covenant of Noah. This covenant required man in his fallen state to create an orderly society, to create civilization, so life could be preserved without the previous unbounded corruptions before the Flood. He promised if mankind in his fallen state could maintain some sense of order, He would keep natural events in some sort of order so humanity could figure out how to survive. Mankind could plan for living and gain some measure of prosperity.

He shook the fist several times for emphasis.

The Covenant of Noah had no bearing on the human spiritual condition, but could prepare things... he pointed the left index finger at the right palm ...to eventually begin understanding spiritual things. However, mankind took yet another wrong turn and used their civilization to organize as one mass to again ignore God's command.

His left hand opened again, palms facing.

They built the Tower of Babel. God destroyed that empire by destroying their unifying tongue. His left fingers simply relaxed into a gentle curl. Eventually one man got it. He was more than just obedient, he had faith and could see the spiritual reality.

Wiggling the fingers on his right hand, he all but closed the left.

Abraham was offered a Covenant of Faith. A part of the covenant was to promise his faith would pave the way to creating a nation of people who would be specially selected as God's very own nation. They would be allowed to get a much better look at the earthly requirements... wiggling the left fingers ... so that they could understand enough to see clearly that spiritual truth and bring that truth to all mankind.

Again, the left hand pointed at the right palm.

The Covenant of Moses was all about fulfilling Noah... wiggling the left fingers ...but it pointed to the higher realities of the Spirit Realm.

Yet again, the left hand pointed at the right palm. After a pause, he wiggled the left fingers again.

All the requirements of the Law were strictly a matter of obeying God on a human level, without any direct reference to actual saving faith. You could obey the Law without having faith, and you could receive all the promises of the Law, which are quite substantial. You could expect to have social order, a strong economy, abundant resources, resistance to disease, and no enemies with sufficient power to harm you. And if things weren't peachy enough in the land where you lived under the Law, it could be altered by God's power to make it more comfortable. And should any of your enemies get too big for their britches, He would promise you or He directly -- or some combination of both -- could handle them.

He clenched his left fist again, as if in some sense of victory. Then he pointed the left index at the right palm.

Should you succeed in doing this, you would be in a position to see His spiritual offer of redemption.

He dropped his left hand, and extended the right as if offering a gift to his audience.

At some point, the promises of this world's blessings no longer mean so much, because you realize you can have Heaven. People can obey God on an earthly level... holding the left hand up ... and get earthly blessings. Or, you can can embrace His grace and loving redemption in your spirit... raising the right hand ...and simply stop worrying about whether your life is so peachy keen. Because when you are filled with the Spirit, while you certainly appreciate blessings of this world, you know they pale in comparison to those of the Next.

One last time he pointed his left index at the right palm.

Jesus said the Old Testament spoke of Him. Paul referred to the promises of Noah and Moses as teaching for us in our spiritual childhood. We don't put children in adult teaching because they aren't ready yet. We can give them love and grace, but we have to discipline them under the Law until they are civilized. Once they embrace Christ, we no longer use physical discipline, because they are on a different level.

He spread his hands making an offer.

The rituals of Moses died on the Cross with Jesus. They stayed behind in the grave when He rose. Portions of the Law yet survive as promises to lost souls in this world, and human governments, because they reflect the fundamental nature of Creation. That's how to have a good and happy life, and that's all you get from it. How sad. We who walk with Christ fulfill all that by operating on a higher level. We accomplish the purpose of the Law in pointing to Christ by rising above the limits of this life. While we do seek to obey those principles as concrete examples, they do not bind us when the higher purpose calls for an exception. Live Christ!

It's Just a Symbol of What We Have Become

For quite some time I've advocated the notion we as believers have a clear standard by which to judge human governments, not only in terms of Christian belief, but on their own terms regarding their responsibility before God as sinners who rule on God's earth. That's what I mean by the Covenant of Noah, and that long series last week about understanding Noah via Moses. I hope I've made clear my position nations are required to trust God in the broadly deistic sense and do the right thing, and should expect to fall if they don't.

Like most folks who have served in the military, I can still recall stuff I promised not to discuss outside the boundaries described by the government as "need to know." It's not loyalty to a sinful government that keeps me silent, but loyalty to God, and to His principles regarding how I deal with sinners. Individual figures in government may well be Christian, but the ruling regime of the US right now is fundamentally sinful. So I don't reveal stuff, but that doesn't keep me from rejoicing when, by means I cannot guess, someone shines the light of truth on the inner workings of evil.

Today I spotted on Slashdot, a technology geek news aggregation and discussion site, a link to one of the Special Forces operations manuals. That link was unresponsive when I checked, so I can't inspect the alleged leaked document myself before writing this. One of the standing jokes about Slashdot is how many people will see a story and all at one try to connect to the linked item. The rush of requests for a connection is referred to as "the Slashdot Effect" -- often crashing the server on the other end. However, let's assume for the moment the document is genuine.

I've visited Wikileaks in the past, and wholly support their mission. At least once I've commented on a revealed "secret" military document using my military experience as background to provide what I hope was a useful analysis. Shining the light of truth on what our Green Berets do in service to our government's political and military goals is a good thing, in my eyes. The Slashdot blurb offers this quote:

"The document, which has been verified, is official US Special Forces doctrine. It directly advocates training paramilitaries, pervasive surveillance, censorship, press control and restrictions on labor unions & political parties. It directly advocates warrantless searches, detainment without charge and the suspension of habeas corpus. It directly advocates bribery, employing terrorists, false flag operations and concealing human rights abuses from journalists. And it directly advocates the extensive use of 'psychological operations' (propaganda) to make these and other 'population & resource control' measures more palatable."

It goes a long way toward explaining why such material was kept secret. Do you like the idea you were paying for such a thing, done in your name, so completely contrary to all we were taught to believe about good and right government? Offering General Sherman's quote, "War is hell" won't answer the question. I make no apology for condemning this stuff. I said as clearly as I know how many times here and other place: If we must sin as a nation in order to defend ourselves, we deserve to lose. If we can trust in God enough to do things His way, no enemy on earth can harm us. We have no excuse for not rising up and demanding this sort of thing stop now, for not demanding our government withdraw troops from countries which have done us no harm, and for demanding other wholesale changes in how our government acts. Such an uprising is fundamental to our nation's heritage; it's the way things are done here.

Because we do not take such action as citizens, we deserve the wrath of God. That's on a Noah/Moses level. However, I know in a prophetic sense, we have come too far to turn back. Even if we all rose up today and made it happen, it's too late for the USA. We are doomed. His wrath is already upon us, and we as Christians are now called to focus not on making Noah/Moses happen here, except perhaps on a very small scale, but on making sure we cling to Abraham/Christ as our world crumbles around us and tribulation marks our days.

Isaiah 4

There is a certain ambiguity in the phrase translated, "in that day." As with all Hebrew writing, context is everything. At its root, the phrase refers to the Day of Lord in the generic sense of God acting in judgment and wrath. However, it is clearly understood when sin is punished, righteousness flourishes. Where sinners are destroyed, the righteous reign. Thus, we see either aspect emphasized in different places. All of them share one thing: Each of them is at least symbolic of that Final Day of the Lord, when we would properly write it, "That Day." For those who walk in faith, any "that day" is a good thing, regardless of the sorrow it might bring on this earth, for a taste of Heaven has surely come down.

Isaiah makes a distinct connection between both senses of the phrase by first associating it with the wrath which he has been describing already. When the judging hand of Jehovah falls on Israel in her sin, the result will be devastation. So many men would be killed in battle, there would be widows aplenty begging to marry any man. Never mind whether he was able to support them; they would gladly take care of themselves independently, if only they could bear the name of a living man. A surviving male could have his pick of women, but would be too busy just trying to eke out a bare living to think about enjoying such a thing.

However, we note there will be some survivors. Isaiah explores who they might be, by offering the same phrase again -- "in that day." Those few who are left in Israel will form a sprout from the root of what Israel was meant to be. Eventually, the term "Branch" would refer to the Messiah, the surviving branch of the House of David. Isaiah is intentionally ambiguous here, because of the fundamental spiritual principle: The Lord will not allow His witness to die, even if He has to destroy Israel. In a certain sense, he lays here the foundation for the image of Jesus as Israel. After He comes, to "be Israel" means to be in Christ. Not in the sense of a silly Replacement Theology model, but in a mystical sense -- what Israel was meant to accomplish. The People of God had one primary purpose: to reveal God, to be a kingdom of priests to bridge the gap between God and fallen man. Israel rejected that role repeatedly, ending up fiercely racist and rejoicing in the notion Gentiles would go to Hell. That nation could not survive, because they were dead outside the purpose for which God called them.

The Nation of Israel physically carried off to Babylon was simply the manifestation of the spiritual principle they had long since allowed sin to carry them away from that redemptive purpose. The bare few of Israel the Nation who did not join in that rush to sin would form a tiny sprout, growing into a living tree of grace, an olive tree bearing the oil of the Holy Spirit to light the lamp of witness to the world. God would remove the mass of diseased growth, and those who managed to be left behind, typically those so unimportant they served no purpose for the Babylonian conquerors, these would be the ones in a proper position to become the New Israel. It matters not at all their DNA, but the image is of a people who know they have nothing, and are nothing, and fall at the feet of God Almighty.

All the sinners, who were so sure of their importance in the world, would be gone. That tiny remnant of true believers would once again bring life back to Jerusalem. Zion becomes a symbol, because of what Zion ought to have been. Rather than a city of urbane and pretentious fools, of blood and oppression, of unrestrained sexual impurity, it would become the City of Light, of holiness and devotion to something far above this world. It would be as if tents strung among the ruin and rubble would be the new dwelling places of God, where His presence could be seen as a Pillar of Cloud by day and Pillar of Fire by night. What more clearly exemplifies the hearts of individuals who have cast aside all the cares and concerns of this world, and live simply in purity of commitment to God? There would no longer be One Temple of God on earth, but a few hardy souls where God would be pleased to make His presence known.

Happy Anniversary

Tomorrow my wife and I will celebrate 30 years of marriage. I am reminded often how rare it is these days for folks my age to stay married to their first.

Well, that's easy to explain. I'm not boasting in the 30 years, but the woman who stood by me that long. The smartest decision I ever made for myself was marrying her.

Veloyce, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Happy Anniversary.

Prayer Requests for Summer

By the end of the month, we would like to find another domocile. Concerns include: my parents will be joining us and we need a lot more space, it would be nice to have some sort of retail space involved for their resale business, and lots of storage/work space. Extravagant wishes, but this is laying the groundwork for an extensive mission and outreach plan.

I'm moving my work to Mac computers. Again, rather pricey, but it seems to be His idea, not mine. I've been dragged this direction kicking and screaming. To that end, I'm praying for a decent Mac laptop. I'll still have the big Linux server for our future ministry website, and the old eMac as my training system.

We would love to find folks who need what we teach in this area. Yes, my recent series signals an interest in building a somewhat separatist community. We want to keep the world out, not the world's captive souls. It will be wide open to outsiders, but not to overt outside influences. We have no idea how far the Lord will let us go in this direction, but we intend to do what is possible by His grace. We're hoping to find a place not too far from where we are now. While it will be "church planting," it will bear little outward resemblance to what most people mean by that term.

Thanks to all those who have stood with us, even silently.

Making Noah Work: Conclusion

The Word of God presents a fairly clear image of what is required of human governments under the Covenant of Noah, by examining the Covenant of Moses as a particular model. There is plenty which does not apply to us today in a far away land. A prominent example is much of Kosher Law, and the requirement for a Temple. The rituals of worship and ritual purity died on the Cross with Christ. There is plenty left to work with in the Law of Moses to help us understand what it means to say a government has sinned.

Is it possible for a human government to adhere to Noah? Obviously, yes -- it is well within reach. Is it likely? No. As a consequence, every government will eventually fail, and nations will rise and fall with increasing frequency. For Christians, we have here a clear standard by which to judge them. Not in the sense of justifying an effort to overthrow such governments, but we have the basis for prophetically pointing out how they sin. On those rare occasions when we are in the driver's seat at any level of human government, we have a clear road map for making it right.

In particular, this is a call for Christians to consider pulling back as far as the situation allows, to create a climate as much as possible conducive to holiness. It should be plain the closer you stand to the model, the better you can expect God's temporal promises to come into play. At the same time, we dare not lose our other-worldly outlook, which recognizes in the long run, nothing in the world matters. It's merely a matter of revealing God by our manner of governing, by the things we demand, to enable a consistently spiritual behavior. As much as God permits, build a righteous human community as a lighthouse to the fallen world.

Life of Christ: Luke 2

Few chapters in the Bible come with more baggage than Luke 2. Because of this, it is simply too easy to miss the consistent message of Luke regarding what matters most. The birth of Jesus was divine, as amply testified by the facts and events surrounding it. It fulfilled a divine purpose. The life of the boy after that divine birth was unusual, not by reason of His divinity, but by the operation and power of the Holy Spirit. His divinity removed the normal human impediments of walking in the Spirit, but did not otherwise characterize how He lived, until His death.

We come immediately to a historical note which has been the subject of much debate: The dates of Quirinius as governor of Syria don't match the details, which details otherwise place the birth of Jesus between 8 and 4 BC. While there is plenty of material answering it, I refer readers who need a detailed discussion to The Christian Think Tank. The salient point is Quirinius served in that area for quite some time, and any of those positions could satisfy the Greek term translated "governing" to describe the service of this most notable of Roman officials who might be familiar to Theophilus. To imagine Luke might get mixed up on the details can only come from ignorance and unbelief.

Thus, Luke describes a census, which may not require paying a tax, but does require, in the case of Jews, returning to one's clan city. For Joseph, that would be Bethlehem, the home of David, since he was of royal lineage. Luke establishes the basic fact Jesus was a direct descendant of King David. The legalities required Joseph bring Mary, who was not so far from delivering their first child. The hassle involved in being in Bethlehem during this bureaucratic imposition meant staying long enough for Mary to give birth.

The birth itself was pretty ordinary, although they were still in temporary quarters. In this case, the local rooming house was full, so they were sleeping in a stable. While Greek and Roman families typically left their infants naked much of the time, Near Eastern people tended to bundle their newborns in decorative wraps. Mary put Jesus in a feed trough.

Luke makes much of the incident involving shepherds. While many nations had a low estimate of this profession, it was widely noted the ancient King David was a shepherd before his coronation, and his Shepherd's Psalm was widely received as high literature. Thus, the symbolic importance of the shepherd figure would not be lost on Theophilus. God sent angels to notify those of David's trade to note the birth of David's Heir. While shepherds would keep this tale fresh for generations to come, most people would ignore it as legend. In a blaze of glory, the angels announced the Jewish Messiah was born in Bethlehem, King David's ancestral home.

With such an auspicious announcement, they could not resist running cross-country to find this child, checking all the animal stalls in the town. Eventually they found the one newborn lying in a feeding trough and told of the unspeakably glorious announcement they had received. Then they made a racket all over town that night, and wherever they went the next few weeks, telling everyone angels had announced the Messiah to them. With this, Luke points out how God frequently turns things upside down compared to human estimations. Instead of royal heralds in fine clothing, we have smelly shepherds announcing the birth of the Messiah.

If the shepherds were likely to remember such a thing for long, even more so the mother of the boy in question. She already had been told by Gabriel and her aunt Elizabeth her son was the Messiah. Such insignificant and mundane trappings surrounded the whole thing. Circumstances put the Messiah's birth in an animal stall, and heralded by shepherds, of all things. And as with every Jewish boy, He received the same ritual eighth-day circumcision and naming, as Jesus.

When a few other rituals were completed, they closed that chapter by taking the boy to Jerusalem. There, in the Temple, they presented the minimum acceptable offering for first-born sons. While there, two more events marked this is an auspicious birth. First, the aged witness, Simeon. He had from God a promise he would see the Messiah born. The Holy Spirit led him to the Temple that day, pointing him to this very poor couple presenting their first-born son. His poetic recognition of the boy as the fulfillment of God's promise to bring His revelation to the whole world must have struck his parents as yet one more puzzle.

To top it off, Simeon warned Mary prophetically Jesus was not what everyone thought the Messiah would be. He would turn things upside down, as God often did when He acted directly in the world. More, Mary would experience tremendous sorrow, as the Messiah would be rejected, yet it would serve to expose the spiritual realities hidden in the hearts of countless people.

This was followed up by meeting an ancient woman, a Temple volunteer and prophetess. Anna had spent most of her life serving in the Temple, since becoming a widow at a young age. While the couple were still mulling over Simeon's words, Anna began making a scene. She began celebrating in front of everyone this infant's destiny as Redeemer. She excitedly told everyone she knew she had seen the Messiah.

Who can say how all this affected His parents? Aside from these strange heralds, all pretty much nobodies among men, yet clearly a consistent witness of visions and miracles, things were fairly typical. That is, Joseph and Mary eventually headed back to Nazareth, and the boy grew up like any other. The exception was a unique level of maturity which could only be explained by the presence of the Holy Spirit. The boy was altogether spiritually-minded. During an annual festival visit to Jerusalem, He stayed behind in the Temple. This would be the year of His bar-Mitzvah, when Jewish boys were declared "Son of the Law." So seriously did Jesus take the responsibilities implied by this rite of passage, He engaged the ranking rabbis in Jerusalem in deep discussions. After three days and traipsing back to the City, Joseph and Mary finally found Him.

They rebuked Him for causing them grief, but it's obvious their rebuke would be blunted by a sense of pride. It's hard to imagine the rabbis would not have congratulated His parents for raising such a spiritually mature young man. Though He did go home and not cause them any further trouble, they were still puzzled by His attitude that they should have expected to find Him attending to "my Father's business" -- pointedly not the sort of thing Joseph did. In a quick summary, Luke allows us to imagine for ourselves how Jesus became quite popular.

Given the detailed nature of Luke's account of miracles connected to Jesus' birth, we can justly say further miracles are conspicuous by their absence. Jesus understood His Father's purpose from the start, because He operated under full spiritual enlightenment. At all points, His claims can be questioned by human doubters. No one is backed into a corner, forced to believe. All the supporting facts are easily dismissed by any skeptic. But those who view these things by the same Spirit Who empowered the events would see clearly the mark of God's ways.

Making Noah Work, Part 6: Science and Knowledge

The fallen mind is still capable of amazing discoveries. We make a grave error when we ask, "Can we?" and forget to ask, "Should we?" The rhetorical device of asking, "Why not?" rejects already God's answer.

All human need can be answered righteously. The trinity of temptation draws us to seek every other way but God's. We have no trouble understanding how Lust of the Flesh gets us in trouble, and have done a fair job of opposing sins connected to that. We know sex outside the marriage covenant of man and wife is wrong, we rightly call abortion "murder," and even seem to understand bad eating habits are pretty rough on the Temple of the Spirit. The previous section on politics goes a long way toward addressing the Boastful Pride of Life. However, we seem to have a huge problem with Lust of the Eyes.

This is not merely a puritanical call for making nudity and bikinis illegal, though it includes that. People of the Spirit cannot deny an excessive show of flesh comes only from an immoral desire. It's an obvious call to the Lust of the Flesh via the eyes. Once having seen disgusting porn, we know it is really difficult to forget it. The same can go for witnessing a horrific injury. Something about that experience just shocks the system. Expose the eyes too frequently to such things, and an appetite grows to see more and more. It becomes an idol. Some knowledge is damaging.

Modern Western society acts as if innocence is a disability. Why would we think someone who lacks psychological scars is somehow less fit to take their place in this world? Having experienced some of these things, I can't imagine lacking a desire to keep others from them. Knowledge is not neutral. There are some things we aren't designed to handle, and those who insist on thrusting them upon the awareness of the world cannot claim innocent motives. Should it not serve as a sort of hint the people who make the most alarming movies are some of the most immoral wretches on the planet?

This is all of a piece, a single whole. Yes, investigating all possiblities can bring about some wonderful improvements in human life. Medicine is an obvious example. Some technology advances serve as wonderful tools in the Kingdom of Heaven. Most good things come with a down side. The very nature of the Internet brings together Christians for fellowship and teaching which otherwise would cost immense sums. The nature of the Net also makes passing revolting images of sexual abuse of minors easy. Making something illegal simply because it could be, or is, used for evil would mean removing all tools and binding all human hands and feet. Somewhere you have to make room for evil or you can't have any goodness. That we seldom bother to ask if there is a point of diminishing return is a mark of having lost our way.

The Bible doesn't address technology directly because it was written before there was much technology. God's command to Moses Israel should outlaw the use of horses in battle was about chariots, actually. Riding horseback was exceedingly rare until much later. While we know the issue is partly a matter of avoiding the strong association of chariots and horses with pagan religion, it was also a matter of trusting God to do things His way. Israel on foot did easily overcome massive numbers of charioteers in several battles, even when outnumbered, when they had chosen to trust God. In a certain sense, it was not necessary to engage in an arms race. Early on, Israel with bronze weapons defeated bigger armies with iron weapons. The winning factor was always a trust in God. Specifically, they took care of a very human problem using God's provision. Switching to chariots and iron weapons at that point would have been a serious drain on resources, and that was not God's way. Ask our heavily armed and armored troops in Iraq today if a hundred-year-old bolt-action rifle is still a threat to them.

The question to ask, then, is whether this or that advance is okay with God. Progress is not always progress, but has become the idol of modern man. At the same time, the typical church answer is too often a reflexive "NO!" There are surely some things I would undo if I could: TV is clearly established as a hypnotic device, causing the average brain to suspend discernment. In its current use, it serves to destroy or weaken the faith of many, by implanting unconsidered assumptions of what is good and bad deep in the mind. Not a single major TV network offers anything which blesses; at best, there are a tiny handful of things which appear harmless. However, the problem is the thing itself -- it neutralizes the spiritual defenses. Further, I would not complain in the least if there were no images or media files of any kind passed on the Internet. All text and only text would be fine with me. Your mileage may vary, but I came to my conclusions after a great deal of prayer and consideration. Failure to pray and consider is a sin, itself.

For Christians the fundamental question is: What do I really need to serve God? It matters not at all how much better this thing works, or how much more interesting it is, and whether it drives the human mind to soaring heights. Those things are not the ultimate value in the Kingdom. Most of what we have today is completely unnecessary. Using something more primitive will hardly challenge God to find a way to bless it. Let His Spirit guide.

Making Noah Work, Part 5: Politics

You might call the relationship between two people any number of things, but the moment you introduce a third person, it always involves politics. Politics is the art of persuading third parties to support something, typically against some second party. The academic study of Political Science is mostly about theory and practices as observed from a broad array of historical sources. A similar field is Government, which overlaps a great deal, but tends to deal with a specific government.

In Scripture, the image for any leader is that of shepherd. It does confer a separate status on the leader. The assumption is this status is earned by working his way up through the various roles serving other leaders. Only in Western society would this be equivalent to a warlord. In typical ANE outlook, that's a separate role entirely. The community leader is seldom the oldest, but the most effective. Obviously, it requires winning hearts and minds, because it is a covenantal leadership, not a vested status from somewhere above. He's the father figure, the chief, the trusted head of community-as-household.

Women do not lead, but most certainly do exercise a tremendous influence. In Hebrew society, they formed a parallel system, which operated as only women can. Areas of influence were distinctly gender role associated. It's hard to imagine a better way to run things. Ignoring female input is utterly foolish, just as foolish as letting them actually lead. Even Paul nails this down as essential for understanding.

You should get the feeling very few things were ever presented for a vote. Most decisions were by consensus through trusted advisers. It would sound like the "good old boy network" but we must keep in mind the Lord says this is how it should work. There are ways of dealing with evil, but simply disagreeing does not justify causing trouble for leaders. If your community leader won't at least reason with your strongly held ideas, he has released you to move to another community. This is his loss, because every responsible male is an asset.

The whole purpose of community remains claiming the promises of Noah. People together in community can get a lot more done with the same resources as a disassociated bunch. Specialization of skills leads to efficiency in production of the basic necessities of life. Obviously, a group united can more easily defend their combined resources than all of them could alone. The art of civility is measuring the degree of distance we keep between ourselves and our neighbors to maximize the harmony of the community. The art of politics is providing the sense of unity and vision of how best to keep everyone healthy, happy, and sane to maximize the benefits of cooperation. The Bible assumes there are certain options eliminated because those methods are sinful, and cannot work.

Some of those things are more obvious than others. A list would include, but not be limited to:

• Deceiving the people. Nothing can be gained by keeping things from them. It's all about informed consent. If you have to lie or keep secrets, you have lost God's support.


• Violating the sanctity of the household. It may just tear your heart out to watch how your neighbor raises his kids, but those children were placed in that home by God. Using the standard pressures of a tribal community, you can have a powerful influence, but you are utterly forbidden from taking unilateral action, for the most part. The same can be said of other domestic relations. It's not a question of the rights of people under a man's authority as head of household, but your complete lack of authority from God to interfere forcefully.


• Confiscating property. Only after a strong judicial sentence can life, liberty or property be threatened. Nothing the community needs, or seems to need, can justify confiscation of private property. If it is not willingly surrendered, you have not made your case. If someone is stupid and truculent, you should have already figured that out, and not provoked needless conflict. Ancient leaders typically funded many things from their own personal means; it was the purpose for letting them get wealthy.


• Intrusive regulation. It takes a special arrogance to believe people need to be told what to do and how. Prevent people from harming others, not themselves. Everyone has a fundamental right to be stupid when they harm no one else. God forbid anyone should ever consider regulating one person to profit another.

There is no allowance in Scripture for any person or group to limit their liability by forming a non-person entity to stand before the judge as a person. In the Bible, everything is personal, and there are no contracts. All agreements are covenants, they are commitments of individuals, not resources or some other abstract concept. The same holds for government -- every action taken in any role is personal, and liability is personal. So is forgiveness for mistakes.

This is perhaps the only setting where Christians can engage the political process, to include taking leadership roles. People who desire to rule are morally unfit because of that desire. People willing to lead when it becomes necessary are ideal. The do so knowing they carry a heavy load of personal liability. We do that with the added confidence of Christ working in us. We will be the first to step down when it becomes apparent we are no longer suited for the role. As people of God who love others sacrificially, we are made morally fit to lead best of all, because we can let it go if the needs of others call for it.

The greatest evil on this planet in terms of politics is the modern secular state. Human wisdom came to the secular state because it builds on fallen understanding. That no nation, including ancient Israel, could keep things working for long is proof of what fails. The world has yet to see a nation cling to the principles of the Word long enough to show what works, to reveal the design of Creation.

Making Noah Work, Part 4: Injustice

Justice is working to create an atmosphere which discourages unnecessary harm to people. Injustice is a condition where people are harmed for no good reason. God has made it abundantly clear what He considers good reasons for human suffering. A critical element in this is knowing we are not Him.

A fundamental expectation of Noah is people will be left in peace. To the degree possible, humans ought to be free to pursue their own best interests. The onus of proof lies with those who seek to interfere. Some things are obvious: taking other people's stuff, destroying and killing what isn't yours, playing head games and manipulating people into behavior which causes them harm (lying), and generally failing to treat your neighbor as your family.

We today call a lot things "rights" contrary to God's design. For example, having someone smack you upside the head is not necessarily a crime. It really depends on why he did it. I can easily admit I've done things in the past that would justify a whack or two. Accidents are very well covered in Moses, as is various forms of tort liability. You'll notice there is a great deal of attention paid to roles. Naturally, this leads to a difference in status. Sorry to shock you, but God has designed us to be inherently unequal in many ways. The obvious one is talents and abilities. The role you play in society will affect what you can and cannot do justly, and the same action by one is just and by another unjust.

The Bible grants a huge discretion to parents in dealing with children. Aside from a community concern you don't raise hellions, your children are your business until they reach at least nine or ten years of age. Somewhere along those years, children gain an awareness of self which manifests in several different ways. They have absorbed basic linguistic skills, are capable of formal logic and accurate estimation of cause and effect, and ready to begin modeling themselves after adults outside the home. It may be a tragedy that your actions bring death to your children, but until that age, the Bible makes no room for anyone outside the family getting involved. However, it is assumed the extended family will be involved. There is absolutely no allowance for any authority outside blood kin until that child is around that age point.

Education, marriage, and a host of household issues are completely under the extended family or local community. You notice most everything in life which matters becomes a matter of your community. We find a break point at ten households, and again at fifty. There should be judges at those levels, and virtually nothing rises above them. The focus of addressing trouble is mostly about roles, results, and long term health of the community. The people who correct you are the people who know you best. Western culture does this utterly wrong. On the one hand, we tend to let status become absolute within a very few generations, so we demand there be none, pretending it's possible. To remove the personal element from restoring justice is to destroy justice, for by its very nature it is personal, a move to restore fellowship first, and property is strictly a secondary matter.

There is no allowance at all for a standing armed service, except as a role taken by privilege. That is, if you can't afford the leisure to train and equip yourself, you can't afford to play soldier. There's no such thing as policemen. When something internal just cannot be handled by the community leaders, the local soldier can deputize a force size necessary for the task. Those he deputizes are the same people who would be conscripted for defensive war. Every able-bodied man should be expected to defend his community, and weapons should be available, as well as seasonal training. Professional soldiers are primarily combat commanders of conscripts. Because wars are only defensive, the individual takes responsibility for feeding and clothing, for getting their training, but not necessarily for arming themselves.

There is no allowance at all for projecting military power outside the borders, except in extraordinary circumstances when strategy requires it. The whole point is to keep what's yours and leave others alone with what's theirs. Always negotiate when possible. Make alliances with anyone who will, but always place tight conditions on them.

God promised long ago any nation could expect from Him generous support and protection simply for observing this matter of addressing injustice. It's not a matter of "fairness and equality" but staying out of people's business and giving them discretion consistent with their roles. By honoring justice, we can claim God's help in providing all the natural resources we need to live and be comfortable, all the protection we need to remain safe, and a general expectation of health and resistance to plagues and natural disasters. This promise has not failed throughout human history for any nation. It has been the nations which have failed.

We as followers of Christ see in this promise a symbol of higher things. We willingly absorb more injustice than the we would expect of the rest of society. We choose to forgive for ourselves and seek justice for others. While we might be willing to help defend the people from attack, we are so focused on the business of building the Kingdom of the Spirit, we would tend to be rather poor at martial arts. Not a lack of skill and ability, but we have a strong reluctance to use them.

As a final note here, please understand there is a powerful distinction between social issues and defense issues. Social welfare is a community concern, and all of it must be handled within the community by community leaders. They are the government for such things. Only defense, internal and external, is handled by the sword. There remains a clear break between the two, and your community leadership had better be able to win support enough to need no armed enforcers. Not only is the modern state anathema in Noah/Moses, but Israel was never supposed to have a king, either. The clan-tribe-nation breakdown of government is the whole thing, and local community is the primary level of government anyone ever sees. It is utterly incomprehensible how a national government can set policy which will work across the whole nation. A strong central government is a sin.

Computers: Keep Your Eye on This

I saw this in the technology news a few days ago -- a new ransomware virus -- and this time it's apparently done right. Once the virus is activated, it encrypts all your files and demands you pay someone on the other side of the world before you can get the decryption key. Thus, it holds your files hostage, and you must ransom them. The encryption key is too strong to break by any normal method.

The only thing missing, as far as I understand, is a better delivery method. I suppose this thing usually comes via email or some other standard behavior manipulation trick. However, all it takes is one new hole found in Windows, which allows someone else to execute programs on your computer without your permission, and this thing will be all over the place.

In other words, it holds the potential for being the ultimate Windows Doomsday. No, it does not work in Linux or Mac. Short of dumping Windows, your only hope is making sure you learn how to do backups, and keep that current.

Making Noah Work, Part 3: Justice

Nothing about implementing the Covenants of Noah/Moses will bring about a Utopia. From the biblical perspective, nobody even wants one, because the concept would be ridiculed from the start. We are reaching for two things here.

1. An understanding of the requirements laid down by God for people and nations without reference to whether they know His Son. By no means can nations be "Christian" -- that term only applies to individuals. Rather, nations can be godly when they seek to apply the implications of the Covenant of Noah. We use Moses as a specific application of that. This is what God requires of mankind whether they know Him or not.

2. A uniquely Christian understanding of what the Bible requires of them by laying out the proper view of humanity and the world. By grasping the image of what God requires via Noah/Moses, we gain a sense of man's nature, of Creation's design, and God's own viewpoint. This is how we were designed to work. Promoting any course of action which does not find support in Noah/Moses violates the teachings of Christ, because -- in His own words -- those things point back to Him.

We cannot reconstruct ancient Israel, nor should we desire it. We should understand what it teaches us of the way things ought to be. You note this series does not go into much detail. It's more about asking questions, so that people of the Spirit will seek Him for an answer they can use. My answers may not work for you, and any answers I suggest won't even work for me in every situation. The point is to draw your attention to Him so you'll ask, and ask intelligently and meaningfully.

That it cannot create a Utopia means we have to assume bad things will happen, and we have to know how to deal with them. Conflict is now, after the Fall, a permanent feature of human nature. The biblical concept of justice is how we reduce the tension to a tolerable level. It assumes you will tolerate the results, or move yourself out of the community. It also assumes if you truly know the community is wrong on something, God will empower you to say it in such a way the community will listen. It assumes from the start God is deeply and intimately involved in the details, and will support His own principles even where few know Him.

Jesus implied in the Parable of the Broad and Narrow Ways the majority at any given time will not know Him. Any plan of justice assumes sinners are the majority. Not horrendous nasty people, just not in love with Jesus. The system must address their inherent weakness, their lack of a spiritual Guide working in them. He works outside them, but still works on them. And never forget: They belong here, too, until He comes to Judge all things. He is the Judge, not you and I. In actual practice, any discussion of whether this or that person is "born-again" serves little purpose. Since we cannot read the Lamb's Book of Life, we must accept provisionally anyone's declaration they are. In a broad general sense, the only thing we can differentiate upon is the fruit. If a "sinner" is exceptionally well-behaved and kindly disposed to others, it's pretty hard to justify keeping them at arm's length.

The foundation of justice in the Bible is human conduct. Not in the cold logical sense of military order, but in the broad sense of overall effect. Sure, specific acts can be prohibited as wrong under just about every context. The Scripture places a high emphasis on results, though. If no harm is done, no crime was committed. There is little concern for procedural errors. Yet, even here we can have harm which is measured in other ways. In ancient Israel, private idol worship was still harmful, even if no one found out. When they finally did find out, action was taken as if harm had been done. See how fuzzy it is? That is how it works in God's world. There is no single principle for justice, but to note the health of the community as God sees it. That means we have to have someone in charge who tends to see things from God's perspective.

Yes, that means we should expect tests of office. Yes, they will be religious in nature. This all assumes everyone knows we all have one nation under Jehovah God of the Bible. No, we cannot make room for other religious beliefs. The community is formed on God, and if you join the community, you must declare an allegiance to that God. Otherwise, you can visit and be a non-citizen and keep your other religion very private. The concept of "diversity" as currently promoted is evil. There is no compromise; that's God's way. Get used to it.

This is not to promote the heresy of Theonomy, but to recognize some elements of it are correct. We have no mandate to take over any existing government, but to work toward the goal of ensuring we put ourselves under a covenant community even while suffering under a pagan government. All our aims are to build up a vibrant community health, and justice as we view it aims to identify obeying God's ways as "health." Enforcement is chiefly by nosy neighbors. That's God's way. Not a Spartanesque regimentation, but a wise heart keeping an eye on the real health of the community, allowing maximum individual discretion within that. We choose wise spiritual leaders to function as judges over things which have no obvious solution. There is no need for a police force, but a deep and direct involvement of everyone in everyone else's business. That's the way of Christ, and it's called "fellowship." We extend the fellowship as far outward into the pagan world as God allows. We assume He will promote it in His own way, His own time, according to His own plans. We focus on being faithful, not running for public office or whatever it takes to seize control of the government outside our community of faith.

In all of this, we remain utterly dependent on God. We do not fulfill His promises; He does. The action of faith is to empower us to assume what is often contrary to what our senses and estimation tell us. We want to have peace, prosperity, freedom from threats, and these things are available without Christ in an earthly form. Yet it's all too obvious those things only symbolize externally what we seek spiritually. As Christians, we withdraw a great way from secular politics, because that was originally designed for sinners governing other sinners. Instead, we build inward a community of faith and love, with all the human foibles of those who struggle daily to keep Adam nailed to the Cross. While there are a multitude of pragmatic concerns with justice within the Body, and without, we cannot begin to address them until we have that strong community. Once we have that powerful center of gravity pulling us together in Him, we will find the world outside drawn by the same power.

If you somehow feel prayer for the peace and justice in your community is just something we have to do, and can't quite grasp how God will most certainly answer, your faith is broken. When your congregation of faith prays for crime in your area to decrease, it will -- it must, because God promised it. Our calculations in implementing Noah/Moses must include this as the starting point.

Making Noah Work, Part 2: Society

Hopefully the previous section was shocking enough to demonstrate a critical principle: Satan has done a marvelous job of deceiving us on every level of our thinking. Everything in our world which passes for wisdom militates against, not just the biblical vision for human existence, but the very ability to receive and grasp the truth. We have been crippled by the pervasive deception.

So what would a scriptural society look like, ala Noah/Moses? Again, we do not adhere to Moses directly, because we are not Israel living in Canaan 3000+ years ago. We are not under Law, but under grace. What we see is the Law was included in Scripture because it shows us an example of grace at work in the fallen world, providing a specific model of life by which we activate the power of God to preserve Life. When we believers lay hold of what God built into His Creation, what remains even after the Fall, and live according to the organic design of things, we can expect life will be the best it can be. It will seldom live up to expectations many have, but the provisions of God include a better understanding of what that "best possible existence" is from His viewpoint.

In adopting the fundamental Hebraic mystical-spiritual, other-worldly outlook, we are compelled to reach for a radically different lifestyle. The fundamental element is community. More than just the nuclear family, it is the extended family and close community which functions as family. The Hebrew concept of "neighbor" pulls in a powerful element of brotherhood. While you would naturally give preference to your blood kin, anyone not sharing your DNA who lives next to you day after day is only incrementally less deserving of your love. Privacy as we consider it in these modern times goes way too far. If your neighbor doesn't know your basic habits down to the level of what you have for breakfast, they cannot help you much when emergencies arise. They won't know you well enough to offer more than a bare humanity. God did not plan human life that way.

Conflict and sorrow requires negotiation, because no one person's needs relegates their neighbors to abject slavery. If your stereo plays too loud, it should be a simple matter of letting you know, and you'll turn it down. Not because they'll call the cops to issue a citation, but because you internally believe it's not right to force your neighbor to enjoy your particular tastes. You don't somehow cling to the principle you can't enjoy it if the volume doesn't shake the foundations for a half-mile around you. You'll accept the inconvenience of hearing their normal-volumed music just a little bit through a common wall, and contemplate better acoustics. In other words, taking the shortest path to your own personal preference is not a virtue. You won't demand they pickle themselves in your sorrows by having to accept a memorial to your son's tragic death under the wheels of a passing truck, and you won't demand the closure of the street to build a grand memorial. However, you would be rightly hurt if they ignored his death and didn't make some effort to express a shared sorrow, because in a sense it was their son, too.

Sounds like ordinary civility, no? Except the flavor and elements of that civility should be negotiated over time, and remain stable across generations, not at all subject to the whims of creative fashion. Yet creativity there must be, or life is gone. The balance point is not something anyone can mandate from a keyboard like mine. Rather, the principle is both subtle and obvious when you read between the lines of Scripture: To the degree possible, we let everyone do what they please, when they please. That principle must be observed within the limits of keeping the community stable and safe. It's easy to take pot-shots at obvious failures from the past. For example, the modern Western middle-class culture is horrendous -- materialist, prissy and pretentious, demanding far too much conformity with unreasonable and fake standards. By the same token, the communal hippie lifestyle was disgracefully libertine. Yet both are symptoms of the same disorder. Both ignore the utter necessity of peaceful coexistence with people who possess a different vision of happiness, and both reach for happiness of the flesh. Both devalue people by rejecting biblical principles, and that's the primary sin of all failed cultures.

The fundamental expectation of the biblical model is a tribal existence. Every human, however limited, crippled and contrary, is an asset to future enjoyment of life. Only when someone in the community truly threatens survival and civility should measures be taken to force compliance. At some point, it becomes obvious action must be taken. It can come in a flash when you have to kill a murderer, or over time when you decide sorrowfully to eject someone who just won't learn. It won't take much to realize we in Western society have the wrong break-points on just about everything. The mere presence of regular police forces shows we have no clue. That the police forces are so very insular from the folks they police shows the system can't be reformed and fixed. What we have now in America must be scrapped totally, because even though the tribal instinct resurfaces continually, we reject it and substitute something false.

For the souls reborn in Christ, we go just a bit further. The congregation of common worship is the tribe. We have come so very far from the biblical model, it's hard to know where to start. A separate building, to which we all must drive some distance, wherein we organize and operate by precise rules and expectations, both written and unwritten, and hardly know anyone there well enough to be more than mere acquaintances. We share almost nothing outside the building, in part because we bring into that organization a commitment of only a few spare hours of a life devoted to keeping up a senseless chase for material goods. Here's how crazy it is: The Bible assumes no such thing as clocks. The Bible assumes human attention span, even in children, could be easily be longer than an hour. The Bible assumes you'll change your job if it demands too much of your church fellowship time. It's not as if God had to state these things clearly, because you can't do what Scripture demands without embracing these things. You can't obey God if you don't withdraw from the rat race. You can't obey God if you don't adopt a communal fellowship lifestyle. You can't obey God if you don't take off that watch once in a while. You can't obey God if you don't give Him time -- however much it takes -- to change your heart.

If you have to schedule God into your life, your life is wrong. My heart breaks when I hear wise church organization gurus discuss how many hours per week the average church member household will allow the church activities to take. Sure, "ya gotta make a livin'." But when that sort of phrase excuses a failure of fellowship, it's because the church refuses to organize properly, since it buys into the dominant cultural expectations of a very evil society. How come joining the congregation doesn't offer an opportunity to make a living some other way, at least sooner or later? How come it's not a part of the congregational dream to become a community of its own, more self-contained and self-sufficient, living by biblical standards of prosperity? It's because we never make plans for the congregation to become a tribe, and that is falling short of God's grace.

We have a very long, long way to go.

Making Noah Work, Part 1: Economics

I've always enjoyed teaching economics, and was one of the few Social Studies teachers in Oklahoma certified for that subject. One of the first things I want to know about a particular country in any part of history is what were the economics. Fundamental to the Social Sciences is broad generalizations we have to make to account for aggregate human behavior. If you don't understand mercantilism, you cannot understand what drove European colonization of America by Europe. It's hardly the whole story, but it clarifies the picture.

While those who know economics might associate the biblical viewpoint with backsliding from our advanced understanding of economic principles, the first thing we have to make absolutely clear is: A higher standard of living is not necessarily a blessing. A great many economic choices are made for non-economic reasons, and in the Word of God, justly so. If all you want from a study of economics is how do we get more stuff, what works mechanically to that end, then you have no reason to expect you'll understand the Bible. As we read through the Pentateuch, it's more than just capturing the bare principles of Law regarding economic activity. We have to reach below the surface and realize economic behavior is just a tool for the purpose of revelation. All things serve that end, or they are sin by definition.

In Scripture, we note God requires utter dependency on Him. Not in the sense we have no clue how economics work, but in the sense we know He is not bound by it. If He desires us to have abundance of material goods, it will not matter what mechanism He chooses, it will happen. Further, He has promised those who obey His Law (think Noah as exemplified in Moses), whether we love Him or not, He will provide. Further, what He provides will be, by definition, what we really need as determined by His eternal purpose. Starvation is a distinct possibility for any population, if that serves His purpose. We do know in general He provides abundantly for human need and comfort on the basis of good moral choices. It's only when we let our moral character slide should we expect the discipline of God to appear, among other places, in our economics.

By the same token, no matter what you do right mechanically, God guarantees you will suffer privation if your nation turns away from His Law. You can't ignore Him by carefully following all the prescriptions of economic "science" and expect Him to bless it. Leaving Him out of the formula guarantees poverty. All Creation reacts on the basis of moral principles, and you cannot science your way out of it.

Thus, doing the right thing economically means we avoid a credit-based economy. Talk all day and show a jillion charts and calculations, but God does not favor the morality which must inevitably flow from a credit-based economy. You cannot make it nice; it is brutal and makes God angry. Whatever you hope to gain from it is lost eventually by the sin you must commit in order to use credit as the basis of your currency and economic activity. The fundamental value of all things much be rooted in the possession and use of land. Land is the primary store of value, the root of all human productivity. No land, no food. No food, no life. This is God's way.

Further, we must avoid the unusual accumulations of wealth in few hands. Surely you've read about the Sabbatical Years and Jubilee? Those two items have a distinct economic effect, and for a good reason. There is from God's point of view an obscene level of wealth. Greed is a sin, remember? Those two observances have multiple effects, but the obvious ones are people get out of debt bondage and land returns to a tribal community, so that permanent alienation is not possible.

Yes, there are times when someone's choices and misfortunes will leave them a little short. Scripture places human life above profit. If you are in a position to make a loan, you must do so without charging interest. Further, all loans must be personal. There is no room for impersonal loans by company policy, no stockholders who aren't working hands-on, etc. All things are personal. You borrow only from those who know you well. Those who make loans know before it starts they may take a loss, but must see in the life of their neighbor a value in itself. They prepare to forgive loans. Absorbing a loss is the nature of God Himself; do it for His reasons and you will never lose in the long run.

You may well engage in production and services which find a willing market. You are not permitted to remove yourself from liability in any way. However, tort complaints are highly discouraged, leaving the onus of responsibility on the user. The bulk of activity is always focussed on feeding people. There is an eye to employment, in that becoming too efficient for your own profit and exempting yourself from hiring the usual number of poor working peasants is not necessarily an advancement. This is hardly communism, because no one is going to direct you to avoid efficiency, but you are compelled by God to consider it. If you have lots of money, and your neighbors are broke, you need to find a way to help them, and work is the best way. Nor are you permitted to export for a better price if your neighbor can't afford to match the price and starves. In other words, every step of the way, you are morally obliged to consider the impact on your community. Don't love the money; love your neighbor. The sneering comments about efficiency and "prosperity causes all boats to rise" from economists is a lie of Satan. Introduce changes slowly, giving the market time to adjust. God is watching.

As Christians, we add one more factor: We willingly embrace loss to our own harm. While we do not actively seek to lose without a direct command from God, nor do we expect it is ever possible to relieve poverty once for all, we realize the Lord can require us to act in such a way the result is we go broke. We can't ask those not under a higher covenant of faith in Christ to take that route, but we utterly disregard financial results of obeying the Holy Spirit.

Making Noah Work: Introduction

It's not as if there is no biblical model of human government. Saying we who teach faith should avoid partisan discussions serves merely to note we have a culture so fundamentally wrong there's no point in pursuing it. Not only is the system broken, but we lack the most basic mental equipment for making sense of what God said about government. I won't pretend to set things right; what follows is a distillation of teaching by far better minds. It should be manifestly obvious Scripture is behind all of it.

The standard assumptions apply here: The Bible is the authoritative record of God's revelation. The root nature of that revelation assumes an ancient Hebraic philosophical outlook. Modern Western scholars generally class that as Ancient Near Eastern, a branch of the Mystical Eastern outlook, emphasizing a pattern of logic which is symbolic, deductive, focussed on personal commitments, and produces a society which is tribal in structure and covenental in government. If you approach the Bible from a Western rational analytical outlook, you will not understand it very well.

All Creation is subject to the Fall. The Covenant of Noah assumes a fallen human outlook, in that it predicts sinners will be ruling sinners. If sinners could at least understand the nature of things, and order their lives in their own best interests, they will have fulfilled the Covenant of Noah. That's because fallen humans stand in dire need of civilization. That fancy word "civilization" is typically defined as a pattern of behavior which permits fallen humans to live in close proximity (i.e., in cities) without killing each other. That is hardly an absolute; rather it describes the nature of the thing.

Should we remove the Fall from the equation, ideal human existence is pastoral, thinly scattered, semi-nomadic, and the extended family is the whole of human organization. There would be no need for defense and accumulation of property. Inherent in the Fall is not simply a spiritually darkened human mind, but all of nature becomes a matter of predators and prey. Meat is not a matter of sacrifice given to God and received back as a gift, but is devoured lustfully and selfishly. Grace and redemption brings us back to a consciousness of what should be, a commitment to that, though at best a broken ability to fulfill.

That recovery of spiritual awareness brings an immense sensitivity to suffering, as if the suffering of others is our own. That's how God looks at things, and so we should. The fundamental economy of God's Kingdom is sacrifice. This accords with the nature of Creation, where the supply of needs is sufficient and abundant, but only if we stand in Covenant obedience. The essence of human government in a fallen world does its best to fulfill human need by creating optimal conditions for meeting human needs. Not ideal; that's out of the equation because of the Fall. Rather, civilization of some sort is the best we can hope for after the Fall. One need not be spiritually aware, but being civilized mimics the effect somewhat, sufficient to ensure human survival and a measure of safety and prosperity.

The Covenant of Noah mandates humans try to make this happen. God's promise is nature will remain predictable as long as humans restrain themselves to a predictable pattern of life. This is the fundamental biblical meaning of "orderly life" -- in a general sense, people know what to expect from you, and can make reasonable allowances to live in peace with you. Primarily, your neighbors should feel comfortable you won't prey on them. Obviously, walking in Christ fulfills that. That's what Romans 13 is all about. To make of that some requirement to obsequiously obey the State is heresy, since the State is inherently fallen. The Covenant of Noah preserves civilization as the appropriate background against which redemption plays out.

Paul also made it clear the Covenant of Moses was never about saving your soul. Obviously, it saved something else: A nation which was to preserve the cultural foundation for revelation, and to provide the background necessary to make a Messiah meaningful. We know from the record Israel was quick to depart from that Hebraic mystical outlook, trying to substitute any number of things in its place. The final disaster was adopting the Hellenist philosophical frame of reference. Just about every argument Jesus had with the Jewish leaders points back to this grave error. The leadership of His day were so hopelessly corrupted by Western rational assumptions they could not begin to understand what Moses had written, and this led to perverting the Law, twisting it beyond recognition, and elevating human reason above the revelation of God.

Roll back that horror, and we see clearly the Law of Moses, among other things, offered a model of fulfilling Noah. That is, it points to a concrete example of what Noah intended in a specific context. For this particular nation, in a given point in human history, in that specific land, Moses fulfills Noah perfectly. The cultural essence of Hebrew life, the philosophical background of Scripture, requires we understand that demonstration organically, not abstractly as required by Western culture. We have to absorb the whole, feel it's vital essence, before we can pretend to know how it might look in another setting. You can't pull out a list of features and memorize a formal matrix. The biblical approach to understanding itself is to commit yourself to what's required before you attempt to understand it.

What follows in subsequent posts on this topic is my own thoughts on the matter. If what I propose is truth, the Holy Spirit will bring you to adopt it. If not, then I am just another fool making noise and entertaining myself.

Life of Christ: Luke 1:39-80

In Luke's writing, the presence of the Holy Spirit, typically referred to as "filling" the person, was always in preparation for declaring His Word. The section of text here offers three such declarations. Again, we note Luke's subtle emphasis: The people are not themselves somehow inherently worthy of such expressions of faith, but are made usable by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Ordinary people do extraordinary things when God wants it.

When Mary heard from Gabriel her relative Elizabeth was pregnant, she prepared herself to visit. Luke notes merely the location is in the hilly area of southern Judea, one of the larger cities. Upon coming through the gate into the outer courtyard, Mary called out a joyful greeting. The sound of her voice stirred the boy in Elizabeth's womb, who recognized his Master's mother. The experience pushed Elizabeth outside her fleshly self, as she erupted in a poetic expression typical of Hebrew culture.

She chanted quite loudly, so the entire household could hear. First, she rejoiced in the chosen role of her niece, Mary. Elizabeth knew by revelation Mary was pregnant with the Messiah. Contrary to any embarrassment this would normally bring, it was cause for ecstatic celebration. Elizabeth notes immediately she is unworthy to be in such an august presence. She confirms her knowledge by describing how her own unborn son reacted in such an obvious way. She's left with nothing but to praise Mary for acting in faith and making herself available.

There is a lot of shared ground. Mary will face a lot of shame for being pregnant too soon, and Elizabeth faced decades of shame for not ever getting pregnant. From the context of the passage, it appears she didn't tell anyone at all outside the household, and waited for the birth announcement itself to let people know. All of this is contrary to typical Jewish behavior.

Mary responds with her own song of rejoicing. Luke does a fine job of translating something from a much older culture into the common language of the Roman Empire. Mary is quite happy to risk social embarrassment for the sake of God's plans. As with Elizabeth, she makes much of her unworthiness, something foundational to spiritual understanding. Instead of being shamed, she could expect people in the future to speak her name with reverence. Commenting on God's nature as all powerful, she draws a picture of a mighty king who welcomes the needy to His gates with provisions, but sends away the greedy. He turns the human establishments upside down, implying the world at large cannot comprehend His ways. Finally, He remembers His promise to Israel, made long ago to Abraham first.

Readers unfamiliar with the Old Testament, but with a decent education, would recognize this type of literary reference to some ancient and revered national founder. They would have read over such poetry several times, trying to absorb the imagery and mystical references.

Luke notes Mary stayed until shortly before Elizabeth was due to give birth. She returned to Nazareth just before beginning to show herself, ready to face the social pressures it would surely bring, even in her tiny village. Meanwhile, the birth of a baby to old Zacharias and Elizabeth was remarkable news in their area. The celebration signaled a sort of social restoration for Elizabeth, for she bore a son. The celebration climaxed on the eighth day, something educated Gentiles had already noticed among Jews scattered across the Roman Empire. It was noteworthy when so few cultures practiced circumcision, a ritual almost incomprehensible to Gentiles, aside from the term for it becoming the basis for Jewish arrogance at times. Given the law of primogeniture, no one is surprised when the relatives tried to name this son after his father. But Elizabeth insisted on a different name, a name not among those of anyone in the clan. In most cultures, that would signal something auspicious, for names were often viewed as destiny.

Poor Zacharias, all these months unable to speak. From the context, it appears he was deaf, as well, for they had to use hand signals to ask him what his son should be named. Taking the usual note tablet of that day -- a thin wood plaque layered with wax, used for temporary writing -- he wrote the boy's name would be John. The crowd of relatives were quite surprised, for a stodgy old priest would be the last to break with Jewish tradition. Obviously this was not your ordinary circumcision rite. Indeed not, for immediately Zacharias regained his facility for communication and his first words were another bit of Hebrew poetry. The whole thing was just the sort of thing folks would talk about for days around the water wells in towns all over the region. It was obvious this was some omen, and the boy would be something completely out of the ordinary. Needless to say, the boy was under public scrutiny from day one, and everyone could see his life reflected the presence and power of God.

What Zacharias had to say that first day he spoke again was a prophecy about his son. He spoke of the promised redemption, of the fresh revelation of God's power working in the House of David. This promise of redemption went back to the first prophets. Typical of an educated priest, Zacharias spoke in terms of national redemption and vanquishing of enemies, and a renewal -- perhaps completion -- of His Covenant with Abraham. Pointedly referring to his son, John, Zacharias notes he would be the herald of the Messiah. His mission would manifest as a call to repentance, for God would hardly act to redeem the hardened sinners. He refers to the Messiah as "Dayspring" -- a term for a mystical Dawn of a new age. This Messiah would teach accurately what God had meant to say all along.

For biblical scholars, this is the last of the Old Covenant prophecies. The terminology is full of the standard mystical symbols. While even Theophilus must have known many Jews took these things literally, Luke was about to explain how it was all purely spiritual. He notes John bore a singular spiritual inclination, an ability to think and operate on a spiritual level altogether uncommon even among adults, much less children. All this spiritual emphasis drove John into a solitary existence, often away from people in the open areas. Such was his typical haunt until the day he began his public ministry.

Even without a background in Hebrew History, it becomes obvious already from the symbolic references this signals the end of the Old, and a birth of the New. While a common enough feature in Eastern literature, as well as many Western societies, Luke points out this is backed by the subtle actions of the One True God. No other religion made such a claim as this, that God would work through ordinary people. When He comes Himself to redeem all things, He still comes by a fairly mundane path. If you know the details surrounding His birth, you know it all signals something totally unique. But if you aren't paying attention with a heart of faith, it would be easy to dismiss the wild stories in a day and age when quite a few folks claimed to be the Messiah with far more dramatic proofs. A Roman official would want to know how this one was different from several others the government had dealt with in the past, and would again.

Short Note: The US Is Terrorist

It's not really news, but so well written as to be worthy of a link from here: The Depraved Majesty of Totalitarian Democracy.

Human Rights Watch reports that in Fallujah, the management of the city's public and private assets was apportioned among the various tribes, and arrangement one could call a form of checks and balances. The local hospital contracted with local militiamen to provide security. And local Imams "urged the public to respect law and order."

What is described here is a rudimentary and very fragile form of republican self-government, albeit of a form based on cultural assumptions substantially different from those that informed our own Founders. So of course it had to be destroyed in the interests of the Bushevik Global Democratic Revolution.

Fallujah suffered greatly in the first Gulf War: A February 13 aerial bombing attack on a bridge spanning the Euphrates. The first airstrike failed to bring down the bridge. During the second, a half-dozen of the laser-guided "precision" missiles malfunctioned, missing the target and hitting a nearby residential neighborhood, an apartment building, and a crowded market. Scores were killed, hundreds more were wounded.

By the time the Bush family stretched forth its hand a second time to confer the blessings of armed benevolence upon the ungrateful Iraqis, Fallujah had become known as a stronghold of support for Saddam Hussein and anti-American hostility. This shouldn't surprise anyone with a particle of understanding of human nature. Which means it was utterly mystifying to those whose minds are incurably hostage to the tenets of totalitarian democracy.

This came somewhat before the infamous event involving the four Blackwater mercenaries. It's a wonder the Fallujans were so restrained. Stuff like this puts the US in the center of God's wrath. With all my might I am praying this whole deception, and every other deception from our government, unravel completely. I am fervently seeking God to uncover and expose all the falsehood, so Christians have no excuse.

Tribulation Report #013: Explaining Price Inflation

Are we tribulating yet, Saints of God? The falling dollar isn't bad enough, but forces are acting to raise the price of petroleum products and food at the same time, even after we adjust for the falling dollar. Yes, it is a bunch of greedy folks who know they are doing evil, but don't care about you and I.

The culprit is unrestrained futures trading. This is yet another profit-making bubble, just like the bogus housing market bubble. Yes, it will profit roughly the same group of people as made all that money repackaging mortgage debt from unqualified borrowers, but weren't held accountable by the failure of all those mortgages. The same people who lost their homes are the same people who will be paying outrageous prices for unrestrained speculation in the commodities and oil futures market. There is plenty of food and oil, but the prices do not at all match the realities of the ordinary forces of supply and demand. It's being twisted.

You can find a lot of articles which explain this, but the whole subject is pretty obscure. If you aren't a stock-trader type financial guru, you would have a hard time figuring out what it's all about. The best explanation I've seen so far is here. Having offered that link, let me suggest you tread carefully on the website to which it takes you. Those folks post a lot of stuff I'd consider egregious baloney and fear mongering, but this time they get it right, near as I can tell.

The point of it all is this: For quite some time now, the US government has been falling steading more into the grasp of a bunch of robber barons. While not all regulation favors them, just enough of the important stuff does to make them able to rob you and I indirectly. The means are so complicated and obtuse it requires a college degree just to begin understanding the most basic concepts. You as a Christian don't have to really understand it all. You just need to realize this is not unavoidable. It is completely avoidable, but the folks who should be doing it for us have lied when they promised they would. Yes, the entire stinking Congress of the US is lying to the entire nation. The ones who want to tell the truth have been marginalized, threatened, etc. There aren't many of them, anyway.

Worse, Congress's efforts to obey the corporate financiers and foreign bankers who engineer all this stuff will cause trouble for the entire world. When things go really bad here, everyone else gets hurt. Unlike the fellow how wrote that article, I am utterly certain this won't be stopped until the robber barons have moved on to other methods of plundering. When they've taken all there is to take, massive international slavery will follow. I doubt anyone knows what that will look like in any detail, but there exists a considerable amount of planning which amounts to that among the global intelligentsia (Bilderbergers, Club of Rome, Trilaterals, CFR, etc.).

About the only sensible thing to do now is work toward some degree of self-sufficiency. That will permit you to continue ministering to your world, and showing the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As much as possible, remove yourself from dependency on government and commerce. Shift the emphasis of your life and nail your human dreams to the Cross. This has just gotten started.

The Lie of Equality

It is a sin to expect, much less to demand, you be treated with fairness and equality. The very meaning of those adjectives is wholly missing in Scripture. Yes, we all alike stand before God utterly bereft of any saving grace which does not come from His hand. We all alike have sinned, and are equally deserving of the same eternal damnation. Those of us who enter His presence will do so on the basis of His Son's blood, and nothing other.

That is the precise point where equality ends. Among the fellow worshippers of Christ, there is a certain even ground spiritually, but we are all not spiritually equal. If there were no distinction between us, we could not be saved, for the Lord does not save mankind, He saves only individuals who turn to Him, one by one. Each of us must stand alone before Him. Each of us totally unique and individual, and each of us has a singular calling on our existence.

The distinction is never seen as a matter of "better" or "worse" -- merely "different." In modern Western assumptions, different is inherently unequal, and equal means interchangeable. That is utterly godless. If we stand uniquely and individually before God, then He alone defines for each of us what He shall call acceptable. Yes, there is a substantial similarity in certain things, because they are rooted in the nature of humanity as a whole. There is a whole world of things which are not universal.

Bluntly put, what is sin for each of us may well be different things, even in the same situation. Perhaps both of us are arrested for exercising our faith together. It could be God's plan for me is to surrender and die, and for you to escape and flee. If I flee, too, I have sinned, but you have not. One of the gravest heresies is assuming our particular commands from God are universal.

However, it is worse when we lie against God Himself and proclaim modern Western notions of equality and fairness are "Christian."

Isaiah 3

Sometimes our greatest difficulty in understanding the best of ancient Hebrew literature is the relative lack of equivalence in cultural imagery. Some things are pretty easy to grasp: Do you want to be ruled by petulant children? Other things are much more subtle, and difficult to translate into our modern Western culture. We simply lack the symbolic logic so necessary to grasp the impact of the imagery. As Isaiah continues his list of penalties for rejecting God's ways, we find ourselves in a mixture of literal and symbolic warnings, with no clear boundaries at times between them. Some sections are both.

The very God of Creation and of Israel Himself will act to judge. There will come a time when the entire nation will find their whole food supply confiscated. It is impossible to overstate the seriousness of such a threat. Worse, He will remove everyone from the nation who matters at all. The list of important national leaders ends with a disconcerting reminder which symbolizes why this will happen. The whole laundry list of who's who will be taken along with the pagan conjurers who seem to have made a very good living as respectable professionals. Isaiah uses terms which are somewhat ambiguous because the leaders of Judah can no longer tell the difference between honest advisers and snake-charmers. To some degree, this came true literally when Babylon exiled the cream of society.

That these social and political leaders should be replaced by children is not quite so literal. Rather, they would foolishly cling to rulers who were childish, immature idiots. Worse, the implication is Judah will call them good men, not knowing the difference. They will no longer understand virtue, and so mistake tyranny and harsh treatment for being socially responsible. The natural endpoint of such a trend is the nit-picking busybodies called Pharisees who essentially ruled society in Jesus' day. The Hellenized corruption of Hebrew religion called "Judaism" is so taken with externals, there was but a thin veneer of lip-service paid to deeper moral concerns. Judaism was a religion designed by immature brats who have zero respect for ancient Near Eastern mystical depth.

It would become so bad, so utterly chaotic, it's hard to imagine. So picture it in terms of a land devoid of any real nobility. In those days it was the norm to find several generations of extended family living inside the same walls, where the extended household was the fundamental unit of social structure. So lost and completely bereft of leadership will the nation be, any household where such a family remains intact will be the de facto "nobility class." Should they be reduced to awnings attached to ruins, they would be petty kings. So any group of brothers who finds among them one who can afford more than the basic tunic and pants, and actually owns a cloak, he's qualified to rule. This, in a world where the public badge of importance was wearing a long outer garment unsuitable for working men. A man would wear a long and expensive robe to prove he didn't have to work for a living. Yet, here we have a man with something even poor men usually could afford -- the standard, all purpose cloak, little more than a blanket with sleeves, virtually necessary to survive in that part of the world. Things would get so bad, such a man would be distinguished as "noble," even though he lacked the basic supplies you might find in even the poorest cottage. The ruling class typically kept an emergency food supply for those who lived in their area, along with what served as first aid supplies.

Isaiah compares the elite of the capitol city with the rulers of Sodom, who advertised their filthy sexual practices as a prominent feature in their favor among those considering moving to another city. "Come to Sodom, where there is no such thing as sin!" The civic leaders didn't even have the sense to keep silent about their wretched practices, but considered them worthy of boast. Fine; you will reap what you sow. The righteous will do well, but the wicked will harvest evil against themselves. They preferred the counsel of brats and school girls to show them the paths of wisdom.

Rather bluntly, Isaiah points the finger at the leaders of Judah for a complete lack of even the most primitive level of justice. Instead of taking the tax in kind from a vineyard, they eat the whole thing. They steal from the poor to fund their wealthy lifestyles. Did they not know it was like grinding God's own face in the dirt? God did not place leaders over the peasants so they could enslave the population of their lands. Those were His people. This level of arrogance showed itself all over the place. Women had completely forgotten the old ways. While we might find it demeaning women were expected to avoid drawing attention to themselves, that was the cultural expectation for God's People. Honorable women avoided eye contact with any non-family male unless they had important business with him. The women of Jerusalem openly flirted with any man which caught their eye. Instead of modest clothing, they dressed like show girls on a Vegas stage. So very close to being prostitutes, this is the same underlying fault of justice for sale. Whether men or women, the big shots in Jerusalem manifested their complete rejection of God's ways. They wanted the adoration of other humans, so God would make them utterly detestable. Just like stripping a hooker of her wealth and finery, shaving her head and infesting her with odious, smelly diseases, the same sort of thing would come on the men leading the nation.

In a sense, anyone who saw all this horrendous behavior through God's eyes would react the same as to being accosted by a prostitute with no hair, ragged clothing, smelling worse than a sewer and appearing leprous. And for all this, the leaders of Judah were just so proud of themselves.

Uncover War Lies

When I grow up, I want to be able to write this well. Chris Hedges nails it like nothing I've ever seen. Please read it, two or three times.

War and Occupation, American-Style

The war was based on a pack of lies. Now there are more lies to prevent you knowing what is really going on.

Evil Plans

It's planned chaos:

• perverting a dominant culture to make it prissy and empty of real spiritual value


• creating a professional political class and a professional police organization to displace community leaders, convincing various focus groups this is their system


• setting loose psychotic and sociopathic people at the top and bottom of a society to create false images of horrific criminal tendencies


• causing massive third-world migration into developed countries, bringing cultural and linguistic conflict


• sponsoring through clandestine services anything which can be turned into a boogie man, such as Islam, and fostering a terror service which doesn't know it's being used


• taking advantage of minor political differences to distract the bulk of concerned citizenry, while keeping the real agenda hidden


• keeping a tight relationship between corporations and public officials, semi-secret, while manipulating both to find profit in things which aggravate the divisions

In general, keep the populations stirred up with multiple fake crises. All of this is nothing more than manipulating typical human tendencies. This is, of course, Satan's agenda in action. It need not require a fully informed human leadership, but it's hard to imagine there isn't one somewhere.

Follow the money. The same ultimate source of money which funds, for example really monster fundamentalist churches and their huge TV presence, along with the national GBLT activist organizations. Sponsoring a fundamentalist religious leader even while encouraging pederasts to join his priesthood. Supplying funding and speakers for a green peace organization while funding research into ever more horrific weapons of war. Spreading a very strong anti-government militia message on the web while funding the publication of studies which encourage militarization of police departments. It's all the same people, but since the money passes through many hands before hitting the ground, not many people notice.

It was obvious as early as the 1830s, when two sons of the same rich family came and "independently" provoked both North and South, publishing editorials which served to harden both sides of a silly debate. Then funding a blizzard of almost-but-not-quite true American History textbooks to hide the real story later. It's the same people who loaned money to brutal corporate slavers in Cuba, then funded the communist revolution to take those business assets away. Then keeping the idiot "revolutionaries" in power while ensuring the corporations do not forget and won't allow the US government to make friends with Cuba. Just to make sure, fund a few Russian adventures in Cuba, backed up with manipulation of Soviet policy through numerous agents.

Yeah, just some idiot conspiracy theorist talking to himself on a private blog with few readers, if any. That's okay. People by the millions continue to buy the lies, or just hide behind their entertainments. People who seek the Lord with all their hearts are going to see the truth, and know all this stuff really doesn't matter. For all his noise, Satan is still just a whip in God's hand, because he can't act without permission. It gives the sinners something to do while the more important eternal work goes on in apparent obscurity.

Rush to Judgment

It's all around me these days, keeps getting shoved in my face. The big booga-booga of the day is child molesters. Because of my unique position in the counseling ministry, and some direct experience with perpetrators, along with some really good education on the issue, I happen to understand child molestation rather well.

Could I share some insights? Steel yourself; your assumptions may be totally wrong.

My greatest fear is not child molesters skulking about my neighborhood, but the fear ordinary people have of them. Despite all the efforts to teach the truth, people still don't realize the greatest danger is those closest to them. The vast majority of cases are relatives of the victim, or at least close to the family. That's no excuse to shut out your relatives from visiting, but serves to dampent the image of the lurking stranger. If you want to take action to protect, it helps to understand the actual threat.

Despite what we say about relatives, though, the pure fact of the matter remains the single greatest threat to children sexually is really bad parental attitudes. I've already complained about our phony Victorian attitudes. It sets kids up for predation by making them vulnerable. You'd be surprised how many kids go along with it willingly for all the wrong reasons. Most sexual victims are not forcibly raped. We don't do enough to protect them because we tend to "protect" them from the wrong things.

Since I don't have space here for a couple of books on proper sex education according to Scripture, let's return to the topic at hand -- sexual molesters, real or imaginary. I've already noted repeatedly you can't stop it totally. There comes a point where additional effort does more harm than the molestation itself. That's the number one mistake people make. Do you realize many children are more traumatized by the reaction of adults around them than by the sex act itself? Yes, sex is harmful to immature humans, but how many adults are mature enough to go about it sensibly? It is bad, sinful, nasty, but it's not the end of life, nor need it necessarily destroy them from enjoying a healthy sex life later. Hysteria serves no good purpose, and makes a huge door for Satan to aggravate things. Pray now to know what God would have you do should the unthinkable happen; nail it to the Cross now or you'll never get it right.

Never rush to judgment. There's an element of reality where you have to accept you can't prove what you may "know" in your mind. What if you are wrong? You haven't solved anything, only made the world worse. If there is anything which breeds injustice before God, it is the overreaction of parents to things no one can be sure of. Nobody in this world is truly innocent, but punishing a mere suspicion is an awful sin to hang on a child's future. God only knows how many people suffer today for a child's wild imagination, and how many escaped because kids can be incoherent about the simplest things. It's never simple, and we will never know "the truth" about many cases, but hatred cannot serve the will of God.

Aside from bad parenting and relatives, the second greatest threat to children sexually is government officials and other authority figures. Yes, I mean that. The greatest density of known or suspected child molesters (reasonable suspicion) walk the halls of government. No class of man is more sexually perverted than rulers. Further, people who intend to molest will most often find a job working with children. Predators hunt where the prey gathers. In the real world, you can't withdraw your kids from everything -- or can you? This translates the second greatest threat into "having a normal life" as most people define it. Yes, that means public school is a major problem; no surprise there. That we have laws tending to force you to surrender your children to Caesar's minions only makes it worse.

Now let's take a moment to look at the child molester. Yes, they are real people. Somebody you know is a pedophile, suffering from the lust to engage children sexually. A very few of those pedophiles ever actully molest, so please use the term properly. How is it different from any other perverted sexual desire? They are all a form of idolatry, and we can safely say, they afflict sufferers life-long. That we have so few actual molesters is the wonder. While a tiny handful of culprits are truly hideous creatures, it seems the majority actually care about their victims, love them in a certain sense. As long as you close your mind to that, you'll be a prime enabler, because that's closely connected to the problem with relatives and close friends. The root problem is how they express that affection, and what they expect in return.

We aren't going to solve this problem nationally because we let folks turn it into a towering demon we can't fight. It's a demon, but we are wholly unrealistic about its nature and power. As long as we lie to ourselves, this thing will haunt us. Dear Brothers and Sisters, all truth is God's truth. Punching at shadows on the wall will break your hands and harms the shadows not at all. Learn to understand the real problem, then you can attack it with appropriate measures.

Season of Peace

It's quiet now.

For this blessed time, we have some measure of peace. The street before us is silent. Nothing moves but the gauzy fluff carrying seeds, drifting on the air to who knows where. Warm and overcast, it seems almost a ghost town. The howling winds of days past have abandoned us. Not even the typical sirens wail this day, as if there is no one around to get hurt.

Tomorrow, some tomorrow soon, the howling will return. Sit still a moment and you can feel it. Like the vibrations of heavy vehicles approaching, just over the horizon, somewhere yet far away. Not a calm before the storm, because storms go away. No, this is the quiet of the fault line as the pressure builds, before the volcano bursts and hot ash falls like eternal snow.

Peace will be burned away, entombed under the chaos of a world gone mad. Civilization has died yet again. Perhaps, as before, the seeds of it will be carried in the hearts of those who scatter before the flames. Seeds because the flower of its beauty will have passed, and the masses will not know tranquility of soul, only pretend.

Or have they always pretended?

Peace will not die. It will burn brightly in eternal souls. Living souls, here and there like stars in the open skies. Peace will withdraw into those souls, for we must give chaos and death its time.

That time has come.