"Let us bless Elohim (God), the Father of our Master Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ); He is the Father of mercies and the Elohim (God) of all comfort. He comforts us in all our trouble, so that we can then comfort people in every kind of trouble, through the comfort with which Elohim (God) comforts us" (2 Cor.1:3-4, KNT).

I have a rice cooker that's been sitting on the living room table for a couple of weeks now. I'm quite annoyed with it, actually, as I invested in it last summer and it was supposed to last for ever...well, at least for a very long time. And then, a few weeks ago, when my eldest daughter was cooking, it suddenly emitted this foul burned electronic smell, and it was dead. I guess the reason I was frustrated was because the warranty turned out to be no good - I bought it in the UK viâ Amazon and the warranty, it seems, is only good for that country. Why is the dead rice cooker still sitting on the livingroom table? I wish I could tell you. Perhaps part of me expects it to 'resurrect' in some way, or maybe I am just too sad to throw it out as it looks brand new still. Whatever my reason, it's not rational, and I know it. I simply haven't accepted reality.

Yahweh showed me an interesting vision two days ago, even if I didn't like it. It revealed how judgment happens spiritually, within the inner man. It's very simple, really. Whatever mental or emotional circuits - thinking and feeling patterns - that are out of alignment with the Davar (Word) and divine tavnith (pattern), that we have deliberately or ignorantly allowed to literally form within us, must eventually 'short-circuit' ... happened to my rice cooker.

In the vision I was watching some action - mental or emotional - I was undertaking but instead of it leading to the desired result, everything started over-heating out of control, and I immediately had to stop. When I resumed, the same thing happened again until I finally realised that all of this was counter-productive and actually harming me.

And that's the thing - when we pursue a course of action or exhibit a behaviour which is at variance with the Besorah (Gospel), it causes us mental, emotional and - at length - bodily harm. Our beings - our souls - are extremely sensitive, fine-tuned mechanisms. They have a heavenly design specification and manual for use which, if not followed, leads to malfunction and burnout.

Whatever scapegoats we may have invented to keep on pursuing this negative, self-destructive behaviour (and we all have those, don't we?) has to be sacrificed - laid on the altar in the courtyard of the Tabernacle - to be burned up, because until that is done, there is simply no access to the Tent of Yahweh and His Presence, and no answer to important prayers. All the protestations and attempts to do things another way are simply...foolish, unless self-destruction truly is your goal. And by a 'scapegoat' I mean, more often than not, all the fantastic, imaginary, illusiory excuses we invent to justify our spiritually suicidal behaviour, including the elaborate yet phantom conspiracies we invent about other people who are supposedly out to deliberately harm us and who as a result prevent us from being 'free' or 'happy', as we suppose.

None of this is to say that there aren't some actual conspiracies against us. Of course there are, because there are mean people out there who delight in causing pain. If you went back to Soviet Russia in the days of the Stalinist terror, you would find conspiracies galore - what Arthur Koestler called the "Trotsky - Nazi - Menshevik - Imperialist - Well-poisoning - Crop-wrecking - Fire-spitting Monster Dragon", an imaginary creature supposedly unleashed by the West to end the Marxist Pardise. And the one thing about all the 'monster dragon conspiracies' that individuals, cabals and societies invent to justify their insane belief system and behaviour is that you can deal them one deadly blow after another (in order to be seen to be doing something as well as to make you, the crusader for 'right', feel you are actually achieving something) yet never dealing such 'conspiracies' that final, deadly blow. And so the 'conspiracy' never fully dies and "when slightly tickling the solar plexus at once regain[s] its menacing ferocity", thus allowing the futile fight to continue indefinitely until the 'warrior' finally comes to the end of himself and collapses in a heap on the ground, or dies in the process [1].

Friedrich Nietzsche said:

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

This is true of both real monsters and imaginary ones. Cowards are, of course, much braver when it comes to imaginary ones, because the only thing that is put in danger is their own sanity. This is one of the ways insane asylums get populated and one of the ways the pharmaceutical indutsry profits - imaginary medicine for imaginary diseases.

The stubborn, obstinate flesh will pursue such 'heroics' long after their absurdity have been exposed. One of the reasons I am fascinated by the study of communism it that this evil ideology exposes precisely this kind of Adamic behaviour in all its stark grotesqueness. Since communism is extremist, its lessons ought to be all the more poignant.

The honest observer, not taken in by all the hype and propaganda, soon realises that the world system trades, and flourishes, in false dichotomies - communist vs. capitalist, atheist vs. religionist, Protestant vs. Catholic, Republican vs. Democrat, when they they are thrown together and pitted against one another in order to find rationalisations for each other's excesses.

For the communist, the ends justified the means, even when those ends were brutal and murderous in the extreme, just as extremist Islam in the form of ISIS and other terrorist groups, is doing so today. But I have learned, in observing both the obvious violent extremist and the not-so-obvious passive-aggressive methodologies, that the means are the end and that the means define who and what you are, not the ideals you claim to believe, because ultimately you believe what you do. And what that means is that there is essentiall no difference between a radical communist and a radical Muslim, or a totalitarian liberal and a nazi. They all use the same deadly tools, whether they're atheist or religious. The actions therefore are the ideology, not the political theory or religious doctrine.

A lot of people are about to burn-out, and are already burning out, because they are vainly continuing down the route of self-justification in sin instead of just standing still, letting reality present itself, and finally stopping. Will you end the stupidity, the pride, the obstinacy, the stubbornness, and allow Yahweh to finally take over in your life? Or will you pursue your imaginations and rebellions to the bitter end? For the end is bitter - very, very bitter - especially when you cross the abyss into that hopeless place where all fantasy is exposed and you must live with those monsters who helped you create your imaginary monsters in life.

The coming collapse will probably be more horrific mentally than anything else, more than grumbling stomachs, the merciless elements on the homeless, or the plundering gangs of thugs who mean to loot your preparedness because they refused to do their own. Changing from the First World to the Third World overnight will be too much for many.

Dealing with reality - truth - will simply cause minds to implode, when the shere scope of the lies society was told are suddenly seen in their stark awfulness. No one will trust governments again for a very long time, except the final one which will dwarf Stalin's, Hitler's and Mao's grand schemes. They'll believe that for a while, in their desperation, in their unwillingness to trust or sacrifice for the Kingdom of Heaven. And then the real monsters will come out and those who refused to believe the emet (truth) will wish they had never been born.

Endnotes

[1] Arthur Koestler, Scum of the Earth (Eland, London: 2006: p.90)