Dire Expectations 2: The Silence

Part two is not so obvious. This is an intuition, something I can’t directly reason out, but which bubbles up from someplace in the subconscious. It’s a broad pattern I see.

On the one hand, we have some interesting revelations lately. For example, the case of Rev. Annett being booted from the UK all secretively. This is a coordinated illegal action where the detention officers kept their IDs secret from the man to prevent any real recourse. It’s obvious they didn’t want his powerful presence involved in the investigation into child abuse. You’ll need to read the link if you aren’t familiar with his work. But this sort of action by government officials is becoming more regular, more common.

This sort of incident we should expect to see more often in the coming days. You’re also going to see much more about the economy, the dollar declining as the reserve exchange currency, the fake mortgage asset bubble collapsing further, etc. So much is not really news, just public announcements pointing some of the whens and hows of the operation. Timing and particulars is about the only thing we didn’t already know. If that interests you, then the news reporting by non-official channels will be quite busy for you.

On the other hand, I want you to notice the business of closing ranks, as it were. There’s a tremendous rise in squelching dissent on certain topics. This isn’t just the basic slide down into a police state, but there is more of it targeted in specific directions. Take a look at what in particular is being shut down in terms of digging and reporting, and what would be the obvious link. Who benefits, and what would be the underlying essence of their benefit?

I’m guessing it’s still about the money. We could probably guess about some of the actors, but don’t always assume it’s obvious. Rev. Annett is about the silencing of the mostly Native American children, mission students abused and exploited in Canada, but it happened a lot in the US and elsewhere. It’s not any single mission group, nor any single church organization, but those with close ties to the government, either as state churches or with other, more secretive ties through politics. I’m not in a position to chase it all down myself consciously. The time factor is too tight, and I’m not all that familiar with most of the background. But the primary means of power application and transfer is currently through wealth, so it’s mostly about the money in my eyes.

This kind of dirty laundry is what drove me from the institutional church, also known as organized religion. This is why I worship at home, why I lead a house church. It’s why we don’t have a church budget, and we avoid trying to grow an organized ministry with big numbers of people. It’s not because I don’t know how to do that stuff; believe me, it’s not that hard. I’ve participated directly and successfully in that sort of thing in the past. Rick Warren would be proud of my past work. Nowadays I avoid all of that sort of thing to prevent any possibility of corruption and coverup, to avoid being a target for the kind of corrupting influence which has made every church organization I know a political machine.

This is why I try to write posts here which are timeless, based on principles and spiritual yearnings which have no name. The really juicy stuff is not going to be reported. When places like AntiWar.com go broke and shut down, it’s because they were only slightly less crass than Alex Jones, in some ways. Better, cleaner, more principled, but in the long run, still missing the point too often. They fight for good things, but don’t fight hard enough, because they compromise in too many ways with what’s ultimately wrong with all the organized movements: they are organized. They require machinery and money, and in the end, it’s just politics, it’s keeping the system alive.

Intuition is not designed to answer a “when” question except when it’s almost on top of you. It is designed to help you notice patterns which can’t be consciously managed. I don’t know when; I figure it’s pretty close, but that may not mean anything useful.

What I do sense very strongly is over the next few days and weeks, we’ll see a lot more leaked stuff which isn’t really all that important. I believe the really good stuff is going to be shut down in ways that would shock us if we know, but we probably won’t know. The wild idiots who have cried wolf for too long (Icke, Fulford, et al) can report whatever they like, and it won’t make any difference. The only people listening to them have no idea what to do with truth when they get it. The alternative news sources who stay alive will be part of that in one way or another. The real reporting will fade to black.

Some of you are smart enough to intuit something useful from what will be available. You already know what’s coming, and how you will act. Only the details will shift as particulars begin smacking us in the face. At this point, I doubt I can add much to your commitment. While particular events will provide grist for the mill to grind down the lies and demonstrate yet another particular principle or truth, I’m seeing a dearth of real reporting has already started. Whatever I’ve been able to add to your spiritual enlightenment is mostly done, now, in terms of preparing for what comes this way.

That’s not to say I’m going to stop posting, but it’s probably going to seem a little repetitive to some of you. Barring any more prophetic revelations, or perhaps some fresh data on the structural analysis of this big ugly thing bearing down upon us, I expect things will seem a little slower in the coming days. I hope I’m wrong, because that means my Net research and news reading will be pretty boring. I hope I’m not quite so boring to you, dear readers.

Dire Expectations 1: The List

Thinking about this is keeping me awake very late tonight. This is part one of two.

We have the Fukushima mess in Japan. If you’ve been reading the alternative press, you know by now at least three of the four active reactors have been in full melt-down since day one. The people responsible for fixing this knew it and lied about it. They have steadfastly refused to do what might have worked because it costs too much money. So now we have two months of toxic radioactive materials spewing into the air and the entire Northern Hemisphere will never be the same. But the worst part is what has been leaking into the Pacific, much worse than what has been drifting on the winds.

Radiation damage to life will not create new and dangerous adaptations; it inevitably sickens and kills early. There is no safe dosage of this crap, and some it will persist beyond human occupation of this planet. In a few years we will see some nasty results in the waters near Japan, where this stuff has the highest concentration. However, the entire Pacific Ocean is going to become a radioactive sewer with no end in sight. That’s because neither TEPCO nor any government agency will do what it takes to staunch this flow any time soon.

If you’ve been paying attention, you also know the Gulf of Mexico will be another kind of sewer. You may know the well they capped with so much fanfare was not the one spewing the most oil. The alternative news sites made much of the coordinates reported by the submersible robots showing two distinct sites, and all the noise was about some older well, leaking indeed, but hardly on the level of the one which exploded. There is now no trustworthy news about the one which was a petroleum volcano; that information was shut off.

What we do know is the vast ocean of dispersant has turned the Gulf Shores into a toxic swamp threatening to all life, particularly human life. Those who haven’t already fled stand a good chance of dying in the next few years. Now we have a vast layer of sunken oil on the sea bed, which has been aggravated by the flooding of the Mississippi River. All the flooding has swept up agricultural runoff, industrial runoff, and urban sewage, all in quantities no one can calculate. Look for news of these things to slowly be choked off.

That’s because the Internet is under attack.

On the one hand, the boundary between cellphone networks and the Internet is going to disappear. That is, in terms of the entertainment and commerce, we will see as much as the economy will bear. The economy is another issue. The point is, the part that makes money will get bigger and better. Meanwhile, the actual transfer of useful information will fade. This business of freewheeling, anything-goes communication is all but dead. Never mind the direct and publicly announced censorship. The best sources are under attack, and this will only get worse, with servers crashed and burned, domains confiscated, funding cuts, and DNS sneak attacks which route traffic to other places. What’s left is now being copied and cataloged wholesale by the NSA and other security agencies, and so-called restrictions based on law and court rulings mean nothing at all. They have yottabytes of data and Net traffic analysis already.

It is possible a more geek oriented network of sorts will continue, with only the more technically literate able to operate with any degree of freedom. They may find a way to piggy back on what remains, using some new protocols, or find another way of keeping the real Internet alive, but for most of us, surfing our favorite alternative news sites will become increasingly difficult.

Now on to part two…

Sorrows of Memorial Day

Most Americans don’t really understand Memorial Day.

Today is a holiday in the US; we call it Memorial Day. It replaces separate holidays we once had for the various branches of our military. Ostensibly, it’s the day we stop to remember all those who died in war, particularly those in uniform.

So far as I can determine, we militantly refuse to consider those who died on the other side. Most galling is our refusal to remember those who died innocently. I’ve not heard a single Memorial Day speech, prayer, or other statement that made note of such things.

So far as I can determine, not a single declared war has been legitimate in the history of the United States. No, the American Revolution was not legitimate. What I mean is, not a one of them was actually for the reasons stated. In many cases we secretly or openly provoked the conflict, and too often it was a false flag operation, and in each one we committed unspeakable atrocities. It’s pretty hard to find any mention of our war crimes. Only a tiny fraction of our war criminals were prosecuted; almost no war crimes were investigated honestly. We went to an awful lot of trouble to hold show trials for others, though. In the end, our hands are not the least cleaner than anyone we’ve attacked in battle or in words.

America, the land of the hypocrites. There is nothing of which to be proud.

Of course, there were a lot of things we did which amount to war, but were never declared — thus, illegal by our own Constitution. Today we are engaged is several acknowledged undeclared wars, and a number of clandestine illegal wars.

Today is for me a day of sorrow, not the typical barbecue cookout, swimming, etc. It’s not simply a holiday to open summer’s activities, but a day to remember our vast ocean of national sins. Together, this day alone marks sufficient evil for God’s wrath to destroy us. A nation that has to lie and cheat on their own much ballyhooed principles to win deserves to lose. For all this and more, America will be destroyed. Let the justice of God fall down upon us, for there is blood on our hands.

Let us remember with sorrow all the innocents who died.

Defying Demons

I’ve been asked to explain something in light of the previous blog post. Our common Western cultural image of demons and the Devil are laughably inaccurate. I spend a couple of posts debunking and correcting some of the false ideas about them.

I don’t fear them. Not because they can’t hurt me; some of them owned me in times past, and I’m hardly finished chasing them out of my life. Their presence is simply part of the package of living here on earth. Under highly ideal circumstances with a proper culture and intellectual background, it’s possible to weaken their hold on you to the point of insignificance, even in this fallen world. Having a spiritual connection helps, but does not of itself drive them out of your soul. In other words, “born again” is not a panacea; it’s just the faculty by which we learn how to deal with them, and how spiritual power and authority works. They can still harm me, cause me suffering, but they no longer hinder my service in the Spirit Realm.

So using my talent for spiritual understanding, let me reveal something which should not be a secret: Defeating demons is a matter of clinging to God’s Laws. I’ve said that often enough, but sometimes it requires a shift in context to provide a fuller meaning. A commitment to the Covenant of Noah is the key. Once I understood that, and spent some time developing the implications, my fear went away. I remain fully aware of their presence, though it’s not my gift to sense them individually. Rather, I can recognize their footprints at the scene of the crime, their smell when I get too close to them. But I have to turn it on consciously. When I do, it’s not a matter of seeing shadows, smelling sulfur, or anything so melodramatic. It’s much more subtle.

It’s not brave combat one on one, either. The real field of battle is inside myself. I have to conquer the territory, turn the sword on myself, as it were. Once the truth of my sins have been brought into the blazing light of God’s Presence, then I can conquer them. That done, there is less in me which the demons can grab as leverage for manipulating me. Again, it’s not in terms of absolutes, because that’s one of their favorite lies. I don’t pretend I’m privy to the details, but the Courts of Heaven have ways of preventing certain excesses of demons based on purposes and technicalities beyond my ken. What I do know is the part left in my hands. I embrace the Laws of God; I confess my weakness and sin. I know I cannot meet the standard, but I also know God is merciful about such things. He meets me part way. That’s part of His justice. Purely in terms of this world and it’s underlying moral structure, I am covered well enough to be fairly safe in spiritually rough neighborhoods because they can’t afford to hinder me.

This situation is dynamic, and my safety waxes and wanes, but the general trend up to now has given me a measure of confidence. When you tell me some place is haunted, I would be one of the first in line to check it out. Surely I will evaluate the situation on a more mundane level, as most legends have some basis in fact. And other-worldly beings do exist, can cause real harm, but I’ve been allowed to learn their limits and defy them in a general way. Some parts of this simply defy explanation in any language I know, but the underlying truth is fairly simple: Embrace Noah’s Covenant and your situation regarding other-worldly beings, such as demons, will improve dramatically and quickly.

There’s no reason to imagine my understanding of this is out of your reach. It does not yield well to classical academic approaches, but it does yield to those who are inclined to pursue it with the higher faculties. If anything, I am simply just ahead of you on the same path of truth.

Government: A Class Apart

People who work in government are not at all typical, and usually not normal, either.

On the one hand, we know good moral people have no interest in governing. Godly people aren’t interested in telling others what to do, and would find utterly repugnant any job requiring them to enforce bad laws on others, even if the others are of questionable character. It’s called “common decency” and most of us have some. So people who gravitate to government work are already somewhat weak in this area.

On the other hand, the system is an entirely different world, and forces conformity. This is by far the greater issue at hand in what makes government so awful to the rest of us. Just about anyone can enter government service with the best of intentions, but the system simply will not permit good intentions. It’s not merely the moral corruption, but the whole thing is militantly closed to good and responsible action. It will tie you up and prevent good action, by dragging you down into pointless tail-chasing.

Furthermore, this system is so amazingly secret, few outside it can comprehend how pervasive this closure can be. To this day, you cannot get the straight story on a certain US Air Force officer whose death remains listed as a suicide. His own family, who found him hanging at home with his feet touching the floor, were not savvy enough to read the evidence in front of them, and they don’t know the truth of how he died. It was kinky sex-for-hire, something well known in the sexual entertainment underground, where cutting off the flow of oxygen near the moment of orgasm increases the thrill; the medical term for that reduced oxygen is “anoxia,” a symptom of which is euphoria. Of course, guys do forget to stand up from time to time, and their bodies are found every day somewhere in the world, still attached to some choking mechanism. If this is news to you, it’s just a symptom of the diseased mind which creates such a secret world, because everything about that world is totally separate and secret.

A primary feature of this secret ghost realm of government is the vast depth of pervasive sexual weirdness. Perversion is one thing; we all know what inappropriate sexual desires are, mostly because we all have them. But these people do stuff you simply cannot imagine, and it turns your stomach when you find out. The previously mentioned Air Force officer was a friend of mine, and it was frankly a kindness to his family they weren’t told the whole story. Better to think he was depressed and died from stresses he never discussed, because his job was deep in the military secrecy stuff, which he never divulged to his family. This is not a military thing; it’s a government thing. This was a pretty decent man who was perverted by his situation. He was just one anecdote among so many others. He did not carry around a fake decency while a raging psychopath inside; he was a decent man who was forced to engage a raging psychopathy, and chemical escape was simply not an option.

We then realize things like the Franklin Scandal here in the US, and the Dutroux Affair in Europe, are really quite tame. They are glimpses of what is rather pedestrian for this other world apart. If someone were to reveal the more perverse stuff, we could not believe it simply because our minds would recoil in horror. We are decent. Normal decent people can’t handle that sort of stuff, nor should they have to face it. Humans aren’t wired for that, and it shocks the system. (Horror flicks and porn are designed to break down our decency.) That’s what the real psychopaths count on, because it allows them great leverage in gaining and keeping control over the vast army of servants they must use.

Nor am I tossing around the term “psychopath” lightly. These people are not of us. They look the same, and the successful ones act the same. They are not the same at all. They are wired differently; they don’t fear consequences, learn nothing from unpleasant experiences. Hook them up to an electroshock devices, warn them they will get a jolt with a countdown timer they can see, and even on the third or fourth time, they still don’t anticipate the shock. Normal people tense up and dread even the harmless shocks (until they get a really large number of them over an extended period of time), because they are wired to avoid painful consequences. Not just electrical shocks, but any sort of event which shocks the human neural system. Psychopaths feel pain, but don’t remember it, in that sense.

Right now, this is the kind of people who run all Western governments. They may or may not be the faces we see in the news, but the real government is in the hands of people who would have to take acting lessons and practice on reacting to shocking sights so as to appear somewhat normal. When you spend time in the company of such, it spreads like a disease. You either adapt, flee or kill yourself. Most people adapt, because that’s another human instinct, but it deeply scars the psyche. It’s seldom a conscious decision. Another friend of mine in that same military security business was hanging on by a thread, aching for the day he could retire, and complained to me privately how sickening his job was. His job within the system exposed him less directly to the pervasive insanity as our other friend, and I suspect he kept himself from being promoted to avoid getting sucked in any deeper. I lost touch with him over the years, but pray often he’s recovered some of his sanity. I didn’t know what he knew; I was aware of this stuff because it was my job to escort these people when they carried anything requiring an armed guard. I had my own demons to face with a far lower security clearance. But those demons were everywhere I went in those NATO offices, and I know from indirect contacts they can get worse and are in every part of Western governments.

This is why I militantly dismiss any notion these things can be fixed by reform. The system will not heal itself. I realize there is no way on this earth to get rid of such a mess once and for all, but we hardly need to put up with what we have now. An armed revolt is simply not possible; we aren’t ready for that much killing, and it only beckons a fresh set of demons. Natural processes will do plenty of killing soon enough as the system comes apart. Just try to stay out of the way. Our best hope is to minimize demonic influences in the rebuilding process, and that’s been described here often enough. But when your local party apparatchiks are sickos who think nothing of torturing or assassinating someone who disagrees with the party leadership, you have to realize the system is broken by design, not simply worn out and needing some refreshing.

How I have managed to stay sane after my brush with such filth is entirely a miracle of God. Don’t try this at home; God can do anything He likes fixing our problems, but it would be foolish to fling a challenge in His face. “Keep me sane while I consort with demons!” You can’t prevent all exposure, but there’s no need to chase trouble down dark alleys.

Stopping Forum Spam

(Yeah, it’s a slow day.)

A friend asked me to join a discussion forum. Then he gave me admin rights. I’ve been moderator on a handful of mailing lists and forums, in part because I tend to go after problems rather quickly. I have time and I’m proactive.

When moderating a forum with membership controls, one of the things we always hate is forum spam. Most of the time some weasel will sign up for a membership, then begin immediately posting crap with graphics and links. Their objective is not to advertise to the forum users; that’s not much of a market. It’s to create a large number of links which show up in search engines. This raises the profile for their spammy site. The first thing I do is delete their account, which has a switch to allow deleting all their posts. Nice trick, and it’s standard these days on the forums where I work.

Sometimes it’s a little more subtle. Perhaps the same person is joining dozens of these forums, not posting anything. Instead, they add a link to their profile which serves the same purpose. You have to actually check each profile to see if anything shows up. A few go so far as to post something innocuous, or perhaps even on-topic, but still their profile features links which are offensive. In the case of a forum set up to discuss Christian faith, it narrows the allowable topics a great deal, and it’s easy to spot purely commercial links.

Sometimes you just can’t tell. A good place to double-check is Stop Forum Spam. This is a place which keeps a database of profile details searchable by usernames, email addresses, IP addresses, and so forth. Yes, it’s possible there are false positives, and you can still decide to hold off deleting the account until you run a broader search. Still, I’ve found all the checks I’ve run so far to be a reliable indicator someone belongs to way too many forums, and too many different types of forums, for their membership to make much sense.

Two Chains of Slavery: Police and Debt

We’ve already seen how the key to enslaving America in particular (and the West in general) is debt. I’m hardly the only person who sees this coming, but I was focused on how I felt the Illuminati were using the tactic. Comes now Anthony Wile who warns us the particular tool for this might be the IMF.

Late last week, London’s prestigious Financial Times carried an editorial on the subject entitled Easter Parade of Worries. According to the FT, “S&P’s aim plainly was political. US politicians must agree on a policy to reduce the deficit. This must involve cutting spending, reducing entitlements and raising taxes. Who exactly bears the brunt of these remedies is a political question, not an economic one. No politician wants to be responsible for such things, so it is no surprise that they avoid the problem.”

Notice the telltale language in the article: “This must involve cutting spending, reducing entitlements and raising taxes.” This language is directly out of the IMF playbook. Rather than question the fundamental alignment between the public and private sector — the basics of regulatory democracy — the IMF treats a country like a business and prescribes cost-cutting, privatization and other methodologies that address the symptoms instead of the cause.

While I doubt the IMF has anywhere near enough funding to pretend it can bail out the US, I don’t doubt the same language will be used for the same ends via some other entity.

But the whole thing smacks of the last dying gasp of a fading regime. It’s a race to see whether the West will collapse completely before the US government does. When the money goes away, so does the power, so financial collapse is all it takes. The problem for us here on the ground is what we have to suffer as this thing topples. It’s not just personal debt, but the swelling rate of violent crime as social order collapses without it’s one defining factor. Never mind actual wealth, as long as people felt they had money, things were fine. When the sense of prosperity goes away, the society built on the knife edge of consumer/debt based economics will crash very hard.

It’s not the predatory gangs of criminals that worry me; it’s the police. Keep in mind, I was once in law enforcement, and I’ll be the first to warn you never, ever trust a policeman. And it only gets worse as their numbers increase, as they become more distant from the rest of us, regarding us as the enemy. Of all the functions of government, this is the one which can do you the most harm, and is frankly most likely to try. The pretense of accountability is long gone. On a purely utilitarian level, we are facing the certainty that we would be better off if there were no police, simply because less harm would come to us as a whole.

As always, I insist there is really very little we can do to change this; the train will follow the tracks until it eventually wrecks right next to the tracks. It was falling apart long ago, and is past the point of repair. Our best bet is on the small scale, trying to remove ourselves and whatever we value from the tracks.

Guns and Chariots

Brother Benjamin asks for some clarity on the issue of weapons and self-defense:

My own pastor claims to be for gun ownership, but when asked about carrying concealed in church he used a verse from Psalms about trusting not in chariots but in the name of the Lord to defend his stance against it. Could you generally speak to when self-defense makes sense and when it doesn’t, and whether being in a church building has a bearing on that? I find myself less reliant on Doctors and the medical system compared to my pastor (trusting rather in God). But when it comes to personal self defense, I see that as part of providing shelter for my family and not as a lack of faith in God. Plus I think using the verse he does is applying it out of context. Also, in the same vein of discussion, can you explain Jesus reasoning behind telling his disciples to buy swords?

I’m guessing your pastor is a typical American Protestant Christian in the sense he supports the popular ideals about church and government and the mainstream view of American History. Thus, for him it’s one thing to favor the 2nd Amendment as a civic virtue. That’s our duty to our nation, to be ready to defend against invasion, terror attacks, civil disorder and so forth. He probably sees it differently when it comes to defending the church as a physical entity, and perhaps defending life and safety while there. If you ask him, he would probably agree with the notion “this is God’s house” and He doesn’t need the standard human methods to protect His property and His people.

He does take that passage out of context. The issue for Israel was a matter of direct command from God not to use cavalry, but to rely entirely upon infantry tactics. We can guess at why God put that in the Covenant of Moses, and I agree with the scholars who note this is preventing pagan associations. It’s not simply clinging to some pure ancient ways versus a “sinful” technical innovation. God did not forbid using iron weapons, for example. So far as we can tell from ancient literature, every single nation employing chariots and horses in that part of the world welded their use to pagan worship. It was no possible to see them simply as good equipment and tactics. No one could imagine a separation between the thing itself and the pagan associations. All horses were dedicated to some deity; all chariots were places of pagan ritual, even with Rome. Our rarefied secularism would be wholly objectionable and silly to the ancients.

You have to understand how humanity as a whole viewed warfare in that historical context. It was always a battle between the respective gods of the warring nations. One entered into battle with the spirit of your particular war god. When you lost your courage, you lost your spirit, you lost your sense of your god’s presence. When the whole army turned tail and ran, it was said their god was not with them in the battle. Jehovah used this same language when He warned Israel, if they sinned by developing a cavalry, He would not be with them in battle. Literal superiority of forces meant nothing, because His Presence was necessary for the troops to hold their formations. He would abandon them to their own petty human passions and the resulting chaos, and they could not win in battle if they didn’t obey His Law. He meant it in a rather literal sense; it was not simply a quaint figure of speech from ancient times.

This is precisely the point when we discuss issues of human behavior under the Laws of God. The Nation of Israel was dedicated to One God, His personal divine property. Every other nation was shared among various other deities. The notable elements of daily life were covered by this or that deity. Most nations did have a chief deity, their national god, the one which was their own particular god who owned them under all circumstances. While this particular god might also be known for this or that particular area of concern, there were also deities of places, even types of places (mountains or valleys), and various critical functions of nature (weather, crops, etc.). It was considered necessary for the nomad nations to be aware of which god owned which place they passed through, and whether the perceived politics between these various deities made any difference. All religion was politics, and all politics had an underlying religious motive. There was no such thing as “secular.”

Granted, there is plenty in life where all humans do pretty much the same things. God didn’t command Israel to be utterly alien, but to be very circumspect when some particular issue was simply unjust, or if it smacked too much of honoring other gods. Frankly, a great many details of the Levitical Law (rituals) were a close echo, when not precisely the same as, accepted rituals for Baal and Astarte.  That’s part of the reason it was so easy for Israel to slip into local cult worship; it was quite familiar. They could rationalize it was the same God one way or another. Could not a woman’s husband be many different men, as it were? That it required a form of muddled thinking we find repugnant simply shows we don’t get it, not that they were so messed up and primitive. God chose to reveal Himself in this context, so there is something fundamental we must grasp here. Who’s to say whether Jehovah might masquerade as some Baal? The name “Baal” was simply a word for “lord” or even “husband” — the head man of a particular household. In a world where the pagan Balaam can get it right, and God speaks to him, it requires we study things from that ancient intellectual context to understand the subtle blending and differences presumed by Scripture. But one thing is obvious to even us: It made things peaceful with the natives to join their pagan feasts, made for good business. Again, business, politics and religion are impossible to separate in that historical context.

The Israelis were no different. When a prophet said to them, “There is no other god but God,” it simply did not register as monotheism in their minds. Such a concept was simply out of bounds, not possible. To them it registered in the mind as, “Jehovah won’t share you with other deities.” Those other gods were very certainly real and had powers in the minds of Hebrew people. It was for them a question of whether their own God could protect them from the consequences of angering some other god. This problem with polytheism and idolatry did not go away until the Exile in Babylon. Even then, it came at the awful cost of corrupting their pure Hebrew Mystical intellectual heritage, setting them up for being suckers to Hellenistic rationalism. That in itself was a form of idolatry, but not so overt. It was easy for the self-rationalization hamster to run that wheel as if accomplishing something, when they were still in the cage of idolatry. The problem with pagan idolatry, whether characterized as a named god with rituals, or whether it was simply the sublime delight of letting the intellect overrule the spirit, it drew on the same moral weakness which permitted someone to stray from their marital vows.

We struggle with this because we are intellectually unwilling to take the risks God commanded we take. The very warm loving context of a strong church family is precisely the same setting in which adultery is so very easy, because we struggle with separating one kind of warmth from another. We’d rather build all sorts of artificial barriers with formal social rules to prevent warmth itself because we imagine it prevents unseemly fraternization. It also kills marriage. It’s not for nothing Christ and the Apostles kept using the marriage covenant as a close parallel and parable of Covenant of Grace. Dismissing the mystical element of this world as primitive and barbaric is simply inserting an artificial construct which prevents the necessary spiritual warmth to understand God. If we can’t get comfortable with mysticism and all the spooky stuff men like Daniel had to wrestle with serving in the Babylonian Imperial Court, which required a PhD in Chaldean pagan literature, then we can’t ever see God’s truth from with the same depth of understanding which makes Daniel’s writing clear. Instead, we twist and pervert his prophecies to suit our frankly pagan fascination with literalism, and come up with some of the goofiest notions about modern Israel. We end up supporting some truly hideous injustices, even to the point of kissing the Devil, as it were, because we just have to make sure Israel gets whatever it is she wants. You and I might get it, but almost everyone we encounter in American churches will not get it.

Of course, in another sense, your pastor could be right to use that passage from Psalms if he were consistent about not doing things the way the world does them. The whole point in God demanding Israel stay with pure infantry tactics was to avoid anything which required an association with idolatry. To be holy means dedicated to a higher purpose, but is cast in terms of dedicated to God alone, not shared with other-and-lesser deities. Under the Law of Moses, the Temple was sacred ground. It was not to be treated as real estate elsewhere, to be bought and sold and used to keep you alive in one way or another. Other land was under human control, to do with as they liked (within certain limits established in other parts of the Law), but the Temple was not like that. You had to treat it differently. Almost everyone in Christian churches in the West tends to think that way about their facilities. It’s a temple of sorts. The problem comes in whether those same facilities are then used for purposes which were not ritually pure.

Is your pastor under Law or under Grace? If you ask him, he’ll surely say “under grace” even as he insists on certain matters of Laws. I seriously doubt he properly distinguishes between the two. I’ll be willing to bet he has no clear grasp of the concept of Two Realms, of the Spirit Realm versus the Fallen Realm, and how they properly overlap and interact. Is there an American flag in the auditorium? Then by that moral standard he has to allow concealed carry to be consistent. If the god of civic duty and virtue has a place in the sanctuary, then so does the civic virtue of gun ownership and gun-toting. I cannot possibly regard any part of American civic religion to be consistent with Scripture. It is a different thing entirely, and either the place is holy unto Christ, or it’s holy unto the civic religion. There’s nothing wrong with holding to a distinctly Christian lawfulness drawn from Scripture, because all tangible property is under God’s Laws, and church organizations must conduct themselves according to those Laws of God. I seriously doubt your pastor realizes what he’s mixing in together there.

Under the Laws of God, whether you are a mystic or not, you do have the burden of responsibility for guarding and guiding those God places under your authority. We bear a duty to all those who are weak and defenseless, and to the degree they are so. Your wife can negotiate as an adult something which you both agree is logically consistent in terms of what you will do to defend each other. Children are born utterly defenseless, and only as they mature and take responsibility under God’s Laws are they permitted to negotiate more and more of their own wishes. Other family relations will bring their own level of negotiation, and all of this within the context of the moment. And in a broader sense, I am my brother’s keeper on some level simply because he is a fellow human.

A pistol-packing mama who knows karate needs little help from me. A woman stupid enough to take a swing at me deserves whatever response I might give a man under the same circumstances. A kid who gets violent with me will be handled according to the actual level of threat I perceive coming from their hands. In the same way, I may or may not offer to defend others from various attacks. However, I am less likely to defend myself than I am to defend others. I can choose for myself how much suffering I will bear, but I am not so free when it involves others. It’s all a matter of my duty to God, but refusing to defend myself is not precisely the same as refusing to defend my own children.

My children are now adults, and my wife knows I am reluctant to use violence as a matter of conscience. She also knows I am trained and somewhat experienced, and we have weapons here at home. She knows how I am likely to react under various imaginable situations, and says she is at peace with that. Your choice for concealed carry is entirely a matter between you and God. The government wants a say in the matter, and you’ll have to work it out with God how much you will comply with those laws. Your pastor may or may not have the authority to say what happens on church property; that’s a matter of church by-laws and such. As you describe it, he’s wrong on several levels, but what you do about it is between you and God, particularly in evaluating the validity of the pastor’s objections and the church’s rules.

It’s the same thing you do with medical treatment, even as you know the state claims an interest, and could conceivably view your faith as a threat to their “mandate” for child welfare. Particularly dark on our horizon is the increasingly intrusive claims they make over our very own bodies. You might need that gun to deter some attacks from the state, just as much as you might need one to protect from car-jacking thugs. What is in the Kingdom’s interest? The matter of child custody is one of the few issues where I openly promote violent resistance against civil governments, but I also promote smart tactics and strategy. On the basic question I take a nearly absolute stand that no human authority is permitted by God’s Laws to interfere with parental custody, unless that authority is directly related by blood or covenant. Covenant is on a different level from contract and civil law. Even then, I place limits on what blood/covenant authority can do. You’ll have to work out for yourself how such things apply in your situation.

Open Line: Ask Your Questions Here

Please ask. I would very much appreciate if you would submit questions in comments to this post, or via email to user account “eddie” at my static domain. Anonymity at your request.

It occurs to me some of the things I have written in previous posts may have provoked some questions. Or, perhaps you simply have some rude personal query of me. Then again, maybe you just wish to poke fun at me. No matter; I delete very little here, and even less for something like this. Here’s your chance. If nothing happens, I probably won’t try it again.

Issues requiring a full article length answer will warrant another post. Anything less will appear as an edit to this post below…

Voting in elections

There is nothing wrong with civic participation. It’s no different from helping my neighbor with something like a tree blown down by the storms, or chatting playfully with their children. Getting involved in any community activity is most certainly the best way to promote the message of the gospel, and Christian Mysticism is no excuse for hiding out and playing hermit.

But when I see something unjust, it’s not always possible to fix the problem. It’s not always possible to even declare the thing unjust. Sometimes the best you can do is keep your distance. In the US in particular, the election system has long been a sham. I’ve studied it up close, seen the mechanism and talked to folks involved. Everything about it is broken, not at all consistent with the stated goals and purposes. It’s not what those who promote it claim it is. They are lying. Voting as it now exists cannot possibly achieve the stated ends of representing the will of the people.

That I don’t believe the will of the people can bring justice in the first place is actually a separate issue. Condemning democracy as a form of participatory government is a prophetic statement about changing our understanding of God’s Laws and civilization itself. So long as there is a vast system already in place which violates fundamentally violates God’s justice, we have to seek the level of justice available. Voting is not evil; it’s ineffective at best when it comes to delivering justice. Our problem is it’s not working at all. The entire political system is hopeless corrupt. That’s the natural result of a poor design, but I would be willing to play along in order to be involved in the community, if it actually accomplished even that lesser goal.

Berries and Plums in Season

It’s the berry and plum season again in Central Oklahoma.

This winter was cold enough, and it kept coming back again and again, but in short bursts. So while we had late freezes that required me to cover our vegetable garden several times after planting time, it still registered as a mild winter. I suppose that explains why the blackberries and sand plums are already ripening a couple of weeks earlier than last year. The problem is the big fire took out quite a few berry vines in one area. Then the grounds keeper crew cut back a bit too deep in the fancy neighborhood just west of here where most of the berry vines were so easy to reach. Most of my picking takes place along a very nice divided boulevard just over a half-mile long (approx. 1km). So the berry crop will be a bit thin this time around.

Still, the first walk through today yielded about a cup of berries. Once I’ve gotten a couple of quarts, we’ll puree them in the blender and cook them down into preserves. I’ll keep gathering so long as they keep producing. I’ve already been trying get the sand plums, so we have about a pint of them now. Because their pits are so large, we cook them down, then rice them and keep the pulpy juice for jelly.

Because of the threat of chiggers, I have to nearly bathe in insect repellent before I go. Because of poison ivy and certain thorny bushes which grow right alongside the berry vines, I have to cover up all but my face. I wear knee-high rubber boots and a long rubber glove on at least one hand. It’s a pretty sweaty exercise in the summer heat. So far, it’s been worth it.

Oh, and our apple tree is doing better this year. I’ve been careful to water it every day, so it’s not losing so many before ripening. We should get about a bushel this year.