Shear Coincidence

Something weird happened in the wee hours of yesterday morning. I had a strange dream, followed by a strange event.

I always have strange dreams. Last night I dreamed I was acting in a film about an Italian family. I think I was playing an older male. Possibly an uncle. I don’t remember the details of the film, but I know it was your typical Hollywood non-Mafia Italian tripe. All the family members were eccentric and frantic. They talked with their hands and couldn’t shut up. It was a little like Moonstruck.

In the film, I was about 70, and I looked nothing like myself.

Night before last, I dreamed I had a cyst on my back, and it was a whopper. Imagine half a golf ball shoved under your skin. In the dream, I was lying in bed when I discovered the cyst. I reached behind myself and felt it. I started grabbing it and wrestling with it. I think I tried to squeeze the contents out. The cyst came loose from my body but stayed under my skin, and I pushed it down my side until it disappeared somewhere low in my abdominal cavity. I was concerned that it would come back, because it was still in me somewhere.

The strange part follows. After I woke up, I happened to touch my neck, and I couldn’t find a little cyst that had been with me since the age of 16. I wasn’t thinking about the dream. I didn’t remember the dream until I touched my neck. When I felt my neck, I thought God had healed me.

Then later on, I found the cyst again. It was very small, but it was there.

Does the dream have meaning? I do not know, but it’s strange that the thing with my neck happened the same day.

Coincidentally (or not), while I was looking at Christian material on Youtube later in the day, I saw that Tom Fischer had a video in which he healed someone of a cyst. A young woman had a cyst on her back. He said something peculiar: problems in the area of the back are often associated with worry about money.

I assume he must know something, because he has been traveling the world healing people free of charge for something like 8 years.

I do worry about money. I hate worry, and I fight it supernaturally and get free of it for long periods, but it comes back. I’ve been put in charge of everything my dad has, and I was already in charge of what I had. If there is ever a financial problem, it’s on me.

There is absolutely no reason to worry, because we have more than we need (and when you know God, there is never a reason to worry), but right now we have some real estate I want to get rid of, and that means cash is tied up and unavailable. In order to avoid lending my dad money or going into assets I want to leave alone, I have to watch his expenditures closely. Or maybe I don’t have to, but I do it anyway. I don’t want a giant unexpected bill to force me to break cash loose.

Are my groundless financial worries the reason I’ve had several cysts on my back? Search me. Interesting, though.

In other news, God showed me some more things. I will bore you with a digression about the way law works.

When a lawyer takes a case, he looks at laws, and he also looks at old cases in which judges have made decisions. Those decisions are like new laws. If a judge decides a law against littering means you can’t grow turnips in Nebraska, then that’s what it means, and lawyers are free to cite this rule to other judges to make them do what the lawyers want. The preexisting rulings are called “precedent.”

Often, a lawyer will have to create what a professor of mine called “an articulated rule” made up by combining various laws and bits of precedent. Let’s say one case says you can’t grow turnips in Nebraska, and another case says dairy cattle improved with turnip DNA are actually turnips. A lawyer whose client doesn’t want someone raising turnip-gene cattle in Nebraska will put the rules together.

God provides rules and principles that can be combined, just like terrestrial laws. Example: “He who finds a wife finds a good thing,” plus, “they that seek the Lord will not want any good thing,” means God will provide wives to men who seek the Lord. Presumably. If the Hebrew is consistent.

Actually, it is consistent. The word translated as “good thing” is the same in both cases.

Years ago, God told me this: “Authority comes from time spent in the presence of the Lord.” This is one of the reasons I try to pray in tongues as much as I can. When you pray in tongues, God prays through you, so you are always in his presence.

Yesterday, God told me this: “All peace comes from authority.”

I can’t believe I didn’t know that. It’s very obvious once you consider it.

Think about criminals. They live outside of authority. They may appear tough and intimidating, but they are afraid of everyone around them. If you’re a criminal, everyone you associate with is a potential witness. Each of them has his hand on the flush handle and can send you down the drain at will. Now think about law-abiding people. Generally, they have little to fear. A law-abiding person can insult the police and throw them off his property. Who has more peace? Obviously, it’s the law-abider.

The Bible says, “A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked.”

If you have authority behind you, you have someone more powerful than yourself, protecting and supplying you. You can’t fail unless the system you represent fails.

This reminds me of the story of David and Goliath. I recall a preacher saying words to the effect that David thought Goliath was doomed because he didn’t have God behind him. The Bible backs that up.

If you look at the story in 1 Samuel 17, you will see that David, a skinny kid with no training or armor, looks down on Goliath. He says, “For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?” He thought Goliath was a loser and an idiot.

When he says Goliath is uncircumcised, he means he has no authority from God. Circumcision was the sign of a contract between God and Abraham. It obligated God to help Abraham’s seed. Goliath didn’t have that, so he was on his own. Goliath looked big, but in reality, David was the giant.

When David approached Goliath, Goliath cursed him in the names of his false gods, trying to give himself authority and support. David said he was going to kill him so people would know there was a God in Israel. He was going to kill him to demonstrate that Israel, not the Philistines, had real authority.

David was anointed. Samuel had poured oil on him and anointed him king. Anointing equals authority. An anointed person has God’s full support.

If you have God’s full support and you know it, you should automatically have peace.

If you pray in tongues and do whatever else you should do in order to spend ample time in God’s presence, you should have authority and, therefore, peace, regardless of how things look. As I said recently, God told me this: “It doesn’t matter.” He meant that my circumstances weren’t important; no matter how bad things looked, prayer in tongues would fix everything.

I need to redouble my efforts. Every time I fail in my obligation to pray enough, I get tense, and things don’t go as well as they should. It’s as though I’m spraying weed killer and pesticide when I pray in tongues. When I quit, the bugs march in, and the weeds grow.

To switch topics, I got some more understanding about correction. I am very concerned about my character. Take a look at this passage from the Revelation:

But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

I don’t want to endanger my salvation. I know I have some doors that need to be shut. I can’t look at the above list and say I’m in the clear, so I’m keeping it in mind and praying about it. Apart from the salvation issue, I just don’t like what I am. It’s like living in a dirty house. I want relief.

I saw something comforting in Matthew. I was thinking about Christians who aren’t going to make it, and I remembered a certain passage, so I tried to look it up. Here it is.

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?

And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

Because I’m a bad Bible scholar, I didn’t find this passage at first. I came across this:

Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.

Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season?

Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.

Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods.

But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming;

And shall begin to smite his fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken;

The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of,

And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

That’s an interesting passage. It’s as if it were written with TV and megachurch preachers in mind, not to mention the popes. The world is full of clergymen who exalt themselves and treat people like fatted calves, and one day they will all have to account for themselves.

Look at the part about meat. That’s what made me feel better. The Lord will be pleased with those he finds giving his household meat.

What does meat symbolize in the Bible? Strong teaching. If you go to a megachurch, you get what the Bible calls “milk.” They tell you how to get saved, and then they go off on irrelevant tangents about money and positive thinking. They’re like people who adopt babies and give them milk for a while and then starve them instead of moving them on to meat.

Jesus said hard times would come before his return, and he said, “And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!” He didn’t just mean parents. He was referring to churches full of adult babies who have never been fed meat.

You need to eat meat in order to know how to fight Satan and his children, and if you follow Joel Osteen and T.D. Jakes, you wouldn’t know meat if you saw 30 tons of it in a packing plant. When the end comes, strong Christians will be praying, blessing, and cursing, with power. They’ll be receiving help and correction. The megachurch babies will be reciting feel-good mantras and donating even more money to churches, hoping they can buy God’s assistance.

Jesus said he would tell such people, “I never knew you.” That makes sense, because he was talking about people who don’t spend time in his presence.

I was comforted by what he said about meat, because whatever my failings may be, I am trying to provide meat to people, free of charge. I am trying to tell them things, based on my experience as a witness, that will get them past the foolishness and helplessness of the feel-good, Mammon-worship crowd. Maybe that will count for something when I have to answer for what I’ve said and done.

Final thing, and this is another swerve: I got a revelation about wool.

The Bible calls us sheep, and we should be looking at what it says about sheep to understand ourselves. The Bible also calls hair “glory.”

For a long time, I’ve had the notion that hair symbolizes the things that grow out of a person who is close to God. When you pray in tongues, it’s as though hair grows on you. Samson was not allowed to cut off his hair. When he did, God’s glory and presence left, and so did Samson’s protection and strength. When Jesus appeared in his transfigured form, his hair was like pure white wool.

I was thinking about that today, and I wondered: what happens when you don’t shear a sheep?

I looked it up, and I found the answer. A sheep in Australia dodged the shearers for several years. He was finally caught, and when they sheared him, he lost 89 pounds. Domestic sheep don’t shed their wool.

That interested me, because I think glory is something you have to give to God. When you walk with God, you can’t help having glory rub off on you, but it’s toxic in large amounts. It causes pride. Look what it did to Satan.

Absalom, the son of David, had a similar problem. He was close to David, and he became very proud, even though he wasn’t anointed. He tried to take David’s throne.

The psalms say a blessed man’s children will speak with the enemy in the gate. Absalom sat in the city gate and intercepted people who were friendly to David. They went to Israel to have David serve as a judge in their disputes. Absalom told them David hadn’t deputized anyone to hear their cases. He turned them against David by saying that as king, he would make sure people got justice.

He also slept with David’s wives and publicized it.

Absalom’s hair grew like crazy, and he only had it cut once a year. He was apparently very proud of it. When he was sheared, his hair weighed about 5 pounds.

When Absalom became a fugitive, he died because he got caught in an oak tree as he rode under it. His head, with all that hair, got stuck in it. Oaks are said to represent righteous men.

What happened to him is a little like the story of the ram that appeared when Abraham was excused from sacrificing Isaac. It got its horns (symbols of power) caught in a bush.

God showed me that pride has weight. Whenever you decide you can handle things on your own, and that you deserve credit, you’re picking up a weight. Credit comes with obligation. If you made something happen, you’re expected to keep it working. The more things you credit yourself for, the more weight you have to carry, and the less God does things for you.

A sheep that isn’t shorn is like a person who gathers glory to himself instead of giving it to God periodically. He ends up trying to carry a load he can’t deal with. All real success comes from God’s favor, not from our silly talents or our ridiculous hard work. Think about the story of Jacob and the striped sticks by the watering troughs.

The TV guys and the priests and popes with the $500 hats have a glory accumulation. It’s a problem. God didn’t intend for us to have ranks. He wanted every one of us to be a general, and he wanted us to give him all the credit for our deeds, so we would not be poisoned and weighted down by pride.

One more tidbit: sheep that aren’t sheared become wool-blind. Wool grows over their eyes. The world is full of Christians who can’t see past their own glory.

It’s wonderful how all of these things make sense when God explains them to you.