Catacomb Resident Blog

Just a Messenger

06 November 2021

I'm no better than any of you. I don't have any special dispensation from God granting me some divine insight that you can't have. All I'm doing is the very same thing you could do if you bothered. You aren't supposed to swallow my answers. You are supposed to compare my blather with your own convictions. I'm not trying to address your mind, but your convictions. I'm trying to help you push aside the rubble of human desires and capabilities so that you can expose what the finger of God wrote in your heart. The best I can hope for is that some of my words can inflame your own convictions to set you free to follow Him yourself.

I am, at most, just farther down that path ahead of you. Don't follow me; find the path God appointed for you. If the things I write here trigger an awakening of things already in you, I have performed my mission well.

The Lord has called me to reassert the ancient Hebrew way. It's not a matter of using Hebrew language, but using any language the same way the Hebrews used theirs. Hebrew language is not declarative or descriptive; it is symbolic. It paints a sign; it draws a map. It invites you to explore with your convictions so that your mind can be informed. We know that the brain already knows how to let the heart rule, but the fallen fleshly nature fights it. The mystical and contemplative approach gives the heart time to still the flesh and make it listen. But the starting point is humility before the Creator. It starts with a moment of worship and adoration, of self-denial. This quashes the fleshly nature just enough to allow the Spirit of God to speak in your heart.

This is the core of the ancient Hebrew way. Plenty of Hebrew people failed to go there, and it shows in the history of Israel. The vast majority of them never rose to the potential of their culture to guide them into the high privileges of the Covenant. But that's what their language and culture were designed for, what God had in mind when He guided His chosen people through the generations and the steps to become a covenant nation.

And it's radically different from anything in Western Civilization. If you approach the written revelation of God from the Western frame of reference, you'll get things wrong. You'll completely miss the whole point of everything. You'll be confined to what your human capabilities can deduce, and you'll be deeply suspicious of the very things God said were necessary to serve Him, and to even know Him.

So you end up having to reject an awful lot of Western Civilization to enter into the Covenant. It's not the products of the West that trouble us so much as the fundamental approach. The foundation of the West is that there is no Spirit Realm at all; there is only a number of things hidden within this realm. All things that matter are within reach of human capabilities. The only discipline is to make the most of those capabilities. Human nature may be broken, but it is not fatally fallen. Thus, it is possible to make a paradise in this world as it is, by using human talents to make the world a better place.

God says that's all lies. The problem is that you have to strip it all away before you can understand what He says. The ancient Hebrew assumption is that mankind is fallen and cannot redeem itself. Only by the grace of God do any of us rise above wallowing in sorrow and fruitless endeavor. There must be an awakening or resurrection of the eternal nature we lost in the Garden. Then, that divine nature must begin to discipline and control the fallen one, though it's a process that will never be completed in this life.

But in order to make the most of what good things are possible in this fallen existence, we must enter into His Covenant. We must reject whatever understanding mankind can reach without His Spirit, and embrace what God has already revealed. Most Western Christians would be shocked at the value system revealed in Scripture, because they tend to keep reading it all through the lenses of their Western cultural assumptions. Without that radical shift in assumptions, you cannot fully embrace the Covenant, and you cannot enjoy the blessings that come with it.

One example: Scripture says this life is not precious. You are supposed to slog through it in obedience to revelation, but never cling to life here. You should be eager to die, but only when the Father is ready to call you home. You'll know when that time comes. He has promised that you can sense your final destination if you keep in touch with Him, even if you have no idea how it will come. Thus, while we do what we can to preserve this life, it's not because it's precious. We do that because it's part of living by that eternal sense of justice.

So we celebrate when the saints die, and sorrow for our loss of their sweet company. The only way we can know them as "saints" is because they walk in the Covenant. You cannot take seriously any claim to spiritual birth if they don't strive to embrace the Covenant. When someone outside the Covenant dies, it's a small sadness, but nothing of real value has been lost. It's sad that the person who died did not seize the opportunity to embrace the Covenant, but it costs us nothing that God cannot supply some other way. You are alienated from everyone who isn't walking in the Covenant, but it's by their choice, not yours.

Thus, we never take seriously any human endeavor, because human endeavor violates the Covenant. There are plenty of things in the Covenant for which we would willingly die in pursuit of them, things that demand our very best effort. But those endeavors are always on behalf of eternity, with no earthly goal that fallen humans can recognize. The Covenant does not lead us to build things except as tools for temporary use, and then discarded once it has served its purpose. The Covenant itself asserts that nothing in this world is inherently valuable. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on this earth." This is why Jesus talked about how the Temple would be torn down and it was no big deal. The building could not be truly sacred except in the sense of contextual use. It was only a symbol; nothing more.

Everything in this world has a shelf life, and it's of no lasting value to Covenant people. That includes every building regardless of purpose. Every spot of ground, regardless of what wonderful things happened there, is just a bit of turf. It was sacred only so long as God was using it in your life. The Presence is what makes anything sacred, and in this world, the Presence is always ephemeral. It has to be in you to make a difference. It's the memory of the experience that matters, not the turf. It might still evoke those memories to visit there again, but no ground is sacred except for the time during which you find God's Presence there. The Burning Bush was just a bush after Moses left it. What really mattered was what Moses took away from there.

There are at least two rival locations for which men claim it was the Mount Sinai of Exodus. Does it matter? Only in an academic sense of perhaps imagining what it might have been like. It might satisfy human curiosity. But then, how many of us could ever get to actually visit either of those sites? Meanwhile, for you and I, the full impact of what happened there is burned into our hearts with or without visiting the place. I'm curious; I've never been there. But going there would affect only my flesh, not my soul. I'm sure it would be a really high emotional moment to stop and contemplate what happened there. Still, I can faithfully serve the Lord where I am now without that experience. The God of Mount Sinai is in my heart.

The whole point of the Hebrew language was to awaken the experience of being there at some moment of revelation, without actually having to go there. Hebrew words evoke; they do not describe and delineate. That's how we must process things in order to walk in faith. The physical reality is just a symbol of something eternal in the character of our Creator.

My mission is to restore to human awareness of the frame of reference in the ancient Hebrew way. That's a part of the larger mission we all have to hold up the revelation of God via our lives under the Covenant. The first thing outsiders will notice are the blessings, the shalom of the Covenant in our lives. They may not understand, but they must see us walking by a different value system, one upon which the written Word stands. It must lead to a completely different behavior pattern.

If these words of mine evoke a fresh awareness of God in your soul, then I've done my job. If these ideas help your mind to settle down and accept the leadership of the Spirit, then truly I have a great reward in Heaven. But even without that result, I'm going to wear the crown of obedience by constantly pushing the message I have been given until He calls me Home.


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