God is Consistent

I like watching Christian testimonies on Youtube. I prefer testimony to teaching. Teachers tend to anoint themselves. They decide they want to teach, and then they make things up, or they look for other misguided people who have created “institutes,” “centers,” “schools,” or “seminaries.” They may look to people who have created Christian franchises, like Calvary Chapel or Hillsong, as if God were using the McDonald’s model. The ones who learn from others usually repeat nonsense, but they justify themselves with their references and impressive-looking logos. “Joe Jones the famous evangelist who gives 90% of his salary to blind orphans and started the Hol-E-Mart church chain says THIS…”

One of the weird things a preacher may do to impress people is to call himself “ministries.” It’s just him and his laptop and GoPro, but the name is “Harvey Anderson MINISTRIES.” It’s not just one ministry. It’s “ministries.” I live in an area where a lot of farms, including farms where no actual farming is done, have signs saying “Farms” on them. “Windy Ridge Farms,” with no wind, no ridge, one property, and no farming. Same thing.

Some teachers are angry as they can be, as though they themselves were God, coming to get us for our sins (without a lot of discussion of their own failings). A certain amount of annoyance is normal and unavoidable, but when you give people the impression they sinned against you, personally, instead of God, you have a self-righteousness issue, and you probably lack love. On the other side of the coin, some teachers are aggressively warm, while still managing to be condescending. They’ve mastered the weary, all-knowing smile. “Oh, little children. What am I going to do with you? Come bask in the glow of my patience and false humility while I tell you AGAIN how to be as holy as me.”

If I want to hear from someone who is better than I am, I’ll go to God, and if I want the weight of authority, again, I’ll go to God. I won’t look to some guy who had his video-game-playing kid use Photoshop to make him a big shiny logo. Apart from hearing from God, I would like to hear from honest, knowledgeable people who know they’re not better than the rest of us.

Here’s something funny: a lot of people think they’re anointed to teach because their parents or husbands are anointed. Hello? Did Moses’ wife run a ministry? Did the apostles automatically hand their ministries over to their sons? I don’t think so. You shouldn’t give your obnoxious, spoiled kid a ministry just because you’re afraid he’ll end up working for Uber if you don’t. It’s not fair to the people who trust you. You can pass your chain of shoe stores on to your kid. Ministries are not yours to give away.

People who testify are better than teachers. Things happen to them, and they tell us what happened. If they’re truthful and what they say is scripturally sound, they’re considerably more trustworthy than teachers.

Testifiers often get in trouble because their stories don’t line up with doctrine. To me, that’s a sign that they’re right. The world is full of bad doctrine generated by teachers. No meat on Fridays! Pray to dead people and call them saints! Mary never sinned! Baptize babies who have no idea what’s happening! Don’t eat pork! Give God huge cash offerings on Jewish holidays!

The people who disturb me are the ones whose testimony lines up with Catholicism, Mormonism, and so on. Those people are just looking for attention or money.

Yesterday and today I watched a video featuring a former atheist who says he died and visited hell. His testimony is really something. He keeps verifying things that have come to me by revelation. Over the years, through prayer in tongues, I’ve learned a lot of things directly from God, and they are things no preacher ever told me (Actually, they did a great job of keeping truth away from me). In his testimony, the former atheist, Bryan Melvin, goes through a whole bunch of revealed ideas. He says they were shown to him during his visit.

This confirms what God told me a long time ago: “Authority comes from time spent in the presence of God.” This man apparently spent time in God’s presence, and he came back with authoritative knowledge of things self-anointed teachers don’t know.

Here’s one thing that shocked me: he confirmed that heaven is guarded so the flesh can’t go there and screw it up. Months or years ago, God showed me that heaven is a long way from the earth, and he made me understand two things: God wants to bring the rule of the Holy Spirit into the earth, and Satan wants to bring the kingdom of the flesh into heaven.

Down here on earth, human beings are ruled by the flesh. The flesh is a worthless animal. When I talk to God, I call it “this meat sack.” It’s about like a pig, except it’s malevolent. There is no type of filth, moral or physical, that bothers it. It is completely selfish. It is lazy. It is cruel. It can come to love any type of sexual perversion. The flesh is the receptor Satan uses to control us. He wants us to remain under its power until we die and beyond. He, himself, has the character of the flesh, even though he’s a spirit. He wants to rule heaven and earth in his filthy state, and for that reason, he had to be cast out.

There is a hierarchy of authority in the universe, and evil inverts it. Spirits are supposed to rule over the flesh, but in lost people, the flesh rules the spirit. Inversion of authority can happen on earth, but isn’t permitted to stain heaven.

Inversion of authority is a real problem. Ever know someone who is ruled by a pet dog she carries around in a purse, and who forces those around her to be inconvenienced by the dog’s desires? Know a man whose wife makes the rules? Know any parents whose kids call the shots? I’ve seen it over and over. I’ve experienced it in my own body and mind, unfortunately. My flesh has gotten me to obey countless orders. But I digress.

A fulfilled Christian, though burdened by a meat sack and subject to a certain amount of error, is primarily ruled by the Holy Spirit. He is in tune with God, just like the people and other spirits in heaven. Once the meat sack drops off, he is completely clean, and he is fit to enter heaven. He will not disrupt. He will think, feel, and act in harmony with his brothers.

Take a look at Psalm 133, as presented in the Complete Jewish Bible:

Oh, how good, how pleasant it is
for brothers to live together in harmony.

It is like fragrant oil on the head
that runs down over the beard,
over the beard of Aharon,
and flows down on the collar of his robes.

It is like the dew of Hermon
that settles on the mountains of Tziyon.
For it was there that Adonai ordained
the blessing of everlasting life.

That’s not about holding hands and singing Joni Mitchell songs (while eating tofurkey, spitting on combat veterans, and celebrating sodomy). It’s about beings who are united internally, through God’s power. It’s a description of the way beings live in heaven.

The psalm expressly mentions anointing, which means God’s authorization. Literally, “anointing” means “applying ointment,” or pouring oil on a person. Oil symbolizes the authorizing presence of the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit is with you, you will do his will and speak his ideas instead of wandering off on your own and telling people (to pick an example of bad doctrine) they can pray their relatives out of purgatory.

Authority comes from time spent in God’s presence, and so does harmony. God is not double-minded. He does not argue with himself, and people who are guided by him don’t argue. They want the same things.

Liberals and other people who don’t know God love to praise debate and argument. They say they’re healthy. Discord is not healthy at all. It’s sick. It proves something is wrong. When two people disagree, at least one of them (often both) is in disagreement with God. When both agree with God, they agree with each other. A Spirit-filled Christian argues as little as possible. It’s a last resort. Paul said he didn’t come to us with men’s wisdom, but with demonstration of the Holy Spirit and God’s power. Most of the time, in a religious context, argument doesn’t work. You can’t tear down supernatural walls with carnal tools.

One of the huge mistakes theologians make is to encourage hard study and debate. If study were the answer, a higher percentage of Jews would have accepted Jesus. They’re the best religious scholars there are, and they got it wrong. The most respected Christian scholars are long-dead Catholics whose obvious errors turned the church into a bastion of veiled paganism.

Jesus didn’t devote his life to long debates. He told people the truth, briefly, and then he moved on, making zero accommodation for their stupid opinions. The Bible lists short exchanges in which he corrected the misguided, but we have no record of him engaging in the kind of protracted disputes that have taken place since he left. “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like him.”

Bryan Melvin says we mistreat God’s integrity. That’s a funny way to say we sin in spite of our beliefs, but it’s right. God’s integrity is the most important thing there is. If he stops being completely righteous, the universe loses its compass, and the pattern of hell becomes universal. It’s completely natural that God separates himself from the earth. He has to be holy and perfect. How can he do that if he’s down here on the ceiling of hell, surrounded by vile morons guided by terrified spirits who would do anything to knock God off his throne and avoid the lake of fire?

I read a fascinating apocryphal book called The Ascension of Isaiah. Whether it’s true, I don’t know. The book describes an experience in which Isaiah is lifted up to God’s throne, through the levels of heaven. Every level is so much better than the next, the last one seems worthless.

We know the heavens have levels because it’s in the Bible. Paul says he was lifted into the third heaven. It makes sense, because ordinary human beings can see some of the levels of creation. Hell is inside the earth, which we can see. That makes two levels. We can see the first heaven, which is the air above the earth. We can see the second heaven, which is space. There is no reason to doubt Paul when he says there is a third heaven, and if Isaiah is said to have seen a seventh heaven, I have no reason to dispute it.

Anyway, the impression you get from reading the book is that God has put layers of insulation between the holy and the profane. I see the logic. If God’s integrity is as important as it seems, then you would expect to see a great effort made to insulate him from the presence of idiots. To me, when Bryan Melvin refers to God’s integrity, it makes sense.

Melvin says there are levels in hell, which is consistent with the notion of levels in heaven. There is tremendous symmetry in the supernatural.

I decided to buy his book. I want to see what else he knows.

I don’t know everything, but I can tell you this: if you don’t have a supernatural testimony, or if you do, but it stops updating and progressing, something is deeply wrong. Christianity is supernatural. It’s not just going to church and trying to obey rules. It’s not about making sure you eat as many crackers and drink as much wine as possible. You should be seeing God’s hand in action all the time, mostly in your heart and mind.

I’ll post the video I watched. Maybe you’ll get something out of it.