Yenta 9000

I had a funny experience yesterday.

Actually, it started last week. My music teacher was all bummed out because he and his girlfriend had broken up. I started telling him he should get out there and see what’s available. Check out the Christian dating sites. No point in sitting around moping.

A few days later, I realized I was telling him to do something I will not do for myself. Arrgh.

Just to see what was out there, I signed up for a couple of sites. I’ve tried this before, but the results were pretty scary. I guess I never learn. Something about the “scientific” approach appeals to me.

Last time I tried this, the first person they sent me was a beautician with no education. Now, before you get started, I realize there are smart people out there who haven’t been to college. I don’t write people off that quickly. But a computerized service should! If you show up with a physics degree and a law degree, and the FIRST person they send you barely made it through high school, it does not inspire confidence. Out of the five zillion women out there, surely the computer could have found one who was less risky.

Anyway, yesterday, I checked my “matches.” There were very few, and a whole bunch were OLDER than I am. OLDER! Not “nearly as old.” Not “same age.” OLDER. OLDER. OLDER. And this was after I told the machine not to do it! MOST of the women were my age or older.

You know what? It’s normal for men to date women somewhat younger. It’s unusual for men to be attracted to women who are older. That’s a fact of life. God wired it into us. If you don’t like it, send him an email. God gave us Ruth and Boaz, not Ruth and David.

I also specified just about every body type except for huge, including women from 4’8″ to 6’1″, and they sent me several obese women. OBESE! AND OLDER!

You know, I don’t care who calls me shallow. I will never date an obese woman. I don’t care if she has the fourth-greatest personality in history, next to the Holy Trinity. Call me whatever you want. I’m not doing it! A couple of extra pounds, on a woman who can carry it…not a problem. But food addicts are a real pain to be around. They ruin furniture. It seems like they’re always standing in doorways and hallways so you can’t get past. They’re awful to sit beside on planes and in theaters. There are things they can’t do with you, because they get tired or they can’t bend over or climb hills. You can’t have any decent food in the house, because they get up and eat all of it in the middle of the night. Then a lot of them get diabetes and fall apart. Not interested!

The third problem I had was that almost all of the women were Latin. I guess it sounds awful, but I’m kind of tired of the Latin atmosphere. Everyone around me speaks Spanish, everywhere I go. I do not want to hear it at home. I would like to feel like I’m going to bed in the United States. And I’m not all that thrilled about Cuban culture. The materialism and aggression wear me down; Cuban women can be very hard and brassy. And the sites don’t have a line where you can type things like, “Venezuelans and Colombians fine, but go easy on the Cubans.”

I knew better! The women you meet on these sites are worse than the ones you already know!

I’m not desperate. If I were, I’d be married already. Probably to a real prize. I’m one of those people who prefers nothing to something bad. When I’m really thirsty, I’d rather stay thirsty than suffer through a Budweiser. I am content to wait, and if I die, at least I won’t die with some awful wife who makes me wish I were single.

I’m starting to think the real purpose of these sites is to show you how hopeless things are. You’re supposed to look at the terrifying women they pick and say, “Man, my expectations are too high.” Then once your spirit is crushed, you settle, and they put you in a commercial.

Actually, they only put the winners in commercials. “We’re both astrophysicist fashion model billionaires, and Eharmony put us together!”

Then the men turn out to be gay.

Okay, maybe not.

Here’s something horrifying. There are men cruising Christian dating sites. For men. The sites discourage them, but they still take their money. THERE’S a package you don’t want to find under your Christmas tree. Yeah, I came to a Christian dating site so I can commit abominations and hang out in bathhouses! How did you guess? Thanks for making EVERY area of society disgusting. For a second I was afraid I might have a refuge here and there.

The upshot is this: I quit. I will meet someone normally or die alone surrounded by machine tools. I will get to drive however I want, eat whatever I want, buy whatever I want, and never, ever have to smell another cat, unless I’m in someone else’s house. Could be worse.

I can leave a motorcycle engine on the dining room table for a month. That’s pretty cool.

In real life, I am not drawing or even meeting any prospects. On rare occasions I get a really unpleasant series of advances from someone I could never, ever date, and sometimes they are actually rude and persistent, as if that will score them points instead of making me want to buy a taser. That’s about it.

In other news, something really weird is happening. I keep seeing greenish specks of light on my pillows. I can’t figure this out. I’ll be lying in bed, in a dark room, and I’ll roll over and move the pillow, and for a second or so, I’ll see these little specks on it. Then they disappear.

I Googled it. I figured I could not be the only one. But I can’t find any other examples, nor can I find an explanation. I Googled “bioluminescence” and “piezoelectric,” but I got nowhwere. It happens with down. It happens with foam.

Naturally, I’m wondering if there is a supernatural explanation. I have very powerful prayer sessions while lying on these pillows. Maybe something is going on.

Last night I lifted a pillow just to see if the specks were there, and sure enough, there was one right in front of me.

The first time it happened, I thought little shafts of light had to be filtering through the blinds and hitting the pillows, but I was wrong.

Totally weird.

I don’t think it means I’m going crazy. I think insanity is more complicated than green specks of light on a pillow.

Hell is an F; Earth is a D

I have continued reading The Name of the Rose, and it keeps disturbing me.

The book is fiction, and the author is no longer a believer. I realize those things. But he’s a medievalist, and he was a Catholic in his youth. Unlike Dan Brown’s clumsy claptrap, Eco’s book has a good historical basis. I think its depiction of the church is not too far off.

In the book, the monks walk on eggs around each other. They talk about inquisitors and heretics. They criticize this one and praise that one. But they continually insert disclaimers to avert disaster. They know that one slip of the tongue could mean prison, torture, and even a visit to the stake.

I got two messages from this. 1) Satan has always owned the church, apart from little periods when the sun popped through the clouds, and 2) there have been many periods during which Christians lived in utter terror…of each other.

Imagine yourself living in the Dark Ages in Europe. You could do business. You could get an education. You could marry and raise kids. You could write fiction. You could write secular nonfiction. You could carry on most of the normal functions of life in relative security. The one thing that could land you on a heap of burning faggots was speaking your mind about God. And what more-important thing is there, about which a person can talk?

It’s appalling to see these imaginary, but realistic, characters scurrying in conversational shadows, like frightened rats. The liars speak loudly and publicly. They don’t threaten the status quo, so they have nothing to fear. The honest men use code words. They use gestures where words are too dangerous. They stifle each other in order to protect each other from suspicion.

It’s like working at MSNBC.

We are living in the Dark Ages. The earth is much more like hell than heaven. Satan does, in fact, rule the earth, even though he lost the title at the crucifixion. On the cross, Jesus wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights, but we have not enforced it. We have not chosen to be citizens, and we haven’t claimed our rights and done what is necessary to enjoy them.

The darkness of the age is more obvious when you look to medieval times (or when you look outside of Christendom), but it’s there.

Look how screwed up the world is. Animals eat each other. Weeds grow more easily and abundantly than crops. Diseases not only exist, but adapt to defeat medicine. Most marriages are not good. Most governments are very corrupt. Prisons are full of innocent people. Natural disasters kill us and rob us. This is not a blessed planet. The Adamic curse is alive and well. This is not what blessed life looks like. We’re used to it, so we think of it as normal and acceptable. But it’s not. Things could be better, if we were doing our job.

The church is a complete mess. The other day on Facebook and Twitter, I used the word “whorehouses” to describe the money-obsessed charismatic churches. As for the mainstream churches, their hopelessness is to obvious to even discuss. At least the charismatics know the Holy Spirit. They ignore him, much as Catholics ignore the Pope, but they know him.

We were supposed to maintain this place, using God’s power and teaching. It’s not working. Every time God chooses a people, they drop the ball. This is why God now works through individuals. He made his point about institutions and nations in earlier ages. Now he’s showing us we can still screw up when he comes and lives inside of us.

Last night I took another look at Mary K. Baxter’s book about hell. I’m still not convinced she’s for real, but in the book, Jesus tells her something that makes complete sense to me. He says MOST people go to hell. They are kept there in suffering, and at the appointed time, hell will be thrown in the lake of fire, presumably putting an end to everyone who lives there.

MOST people. That’s astounding. But who can doubt it?

I believe God arranged the body to teach us about his nature. I believe that, to God, people are like sperm cells or ova. A typical man creates something like 300 million sperm cells every day. Over a lifetime, he’s doing good if he manages to make use of ten of them. The rest die and vanish, as do unfertilized eggs. Human beings who reject God end up the same way. They die unfertilized.

I do not believe life on earth will be perfect, even in the Messianic Age. Human idiocy has no limits, so no matter what God does, as long as he doesn’t free us from the inclination to do evil, we will have some problems. But I believe God can bless the lives of individuals, and it’s possible for him to have great power in certain limited geographical areas. A house may be blessed. A city. A nation. And I think the upcoming generation of Spirit-empowered believers may prove this in Israel and possibly the US. Their success may bring about the final wave of authoritarianism and violent persecution that precedes the Tribulation and the arrival of Jesus. They will scare Satan into making a final push.

If I had to make a recommendation, it would be: “Don’t settle.” Keep pushing, in prayer and good works. Don’t assume things are as good as they can be. Don’t settle for a B- world when an A may be within reach. You don’t know what God is willing to do. You have never seen a blessed world, so you have no frame of reference. Make things as good as they can be, within you and around you, and don’t be overly unhappy about the way things go for people who won’t listen. Like the poor, they will always be with you. In fact, when Jesus said the poor would always be with us, he was probably referring to the spiritually poor, more than the financially poor. In this age, we will always be surrounded by people who are going to hell and who will not be with us in eternity.

Honest criticism is the beginning of recovery. If we insist on saying we’re doing fine, and that the world is not so bad, we can expect to stagnate and to continue to fail and lose.

Let me know what you think.

Catch as Much Light as You Can

I got a wonderful email a few days back, and I have been given permission to share it.

Steve,
I’ve been reading your blog (in all its permutations) for years and have always enjoyed your narrative style and content. I don’t drop in on your site as often as perhaps I should, but it is always a pleasure when I do.

I wanted you to know that you have had a positive impact on me. Your admonitions to pray in tongues encouraged me to try it – and the Holy Spirit has never been stronger in my life. Bear in mind that I’m from a straight-laced Methodist background (where even raising one’s hand in praise makes some congregants uncomfortable) and, at 58 years of age, the old dog / new tricks effect is in full play.

All that said, I recently had a failed business, lost a lot of what I’d materially accumulated, was looking at foreclosure, had college bills to pay for my two kids, etc. Dire times. In that state of despair, I prayed – for the first time – in tongues. I came so naturally to me that I was amazed (which detracted, at first, from my focus). Now it is a morning routine. The Holy Spirit moves in me for perhaps the first time in my life. It has been a great gift, Steve, and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. The Lord clearly steered me your direction and had me accept your admonitions.

I just started a consulting engagement on a one year contract and am looking forward to this new career. I’ve still got a hard row to hoe in order to get out of debt, but I now have hope. And that, my friend, is something that lifted a crushing burden. At my age, getting hired (and particularly in this economy) wasn’t likely to happen. And as we age (particularly men who have taken the responsibility of supporting their family), that fear can be all-consuming. Absolutely crushing. It is now gone. I can function with some sense of confidence. The Lord has lifted me and prayer in tongue has given me the conduit to reach out and accept the lifting.

Thank you, Steve. It has been a blessing.

Can you believe that?

It amazes me that God is actually using me. Much of the time I feel like I’m accomplishing absolutely nothing, and I know I don’t do all the things I should, but occasionally God does something in a way that involves me, even though my activity is so slight, I’m practically a spectator.

Sometimes I’ll find myself in a group of people, and I’ll see an opportunity to pass on something I’ve learned about God. While I’m praying and trying to get it out, someone else will pipe up and say (or do) something. On these occasions, I don’t have to do much of anything. In fact, I tend to feel as if I’m being restrained. Often it will seem as people are talking over me and ignoring me, as though God is stimulating them to keep me quiet while he moves. It’s very strange.

On the one hand, it can be frustrating to be unable to speak when I feel sure God has told me what to say. On the other, it’s really neat to sit back and watch God work. It’s also nice to know I don’t have to worry about getting the glory. I think glory is like vitamin A. You need a little in order to get by, but too much is a poison.

Sometimes I’ll show up somewhere thinking I’m going to get something done for God, or I’ll be asked to do some chore or other for the church, and people will show up and start doing things around me. Sometimes they’re borderline rude. It’s as if they don’t see me. For example, someone may ask me to help move chairs, and I’ll try to get in there and work, and people will barge in and make it impossible for me to do much.

I wish something like that had happened yesterday. A toilet got clogged up at church, and God seemed content to let me handle the plunger.

The wonderful thing about teaching people about tongues and the Holy Spirit is that it’s a perfect act of charity. When you give a bum five dollars, you get him drunk for half a day, and then he’s back where he started. When you get somebody started with tongues, they get everything they need to lead a successful life for God. If they keep it up, they won’t need you to teach them much. God will teach them directly, and the first thing you know, they’re spiritually independent (of other people), and they may come back and teach YOU. That has happened to me.

One of the reasons I like the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is that you can get together with people and send a donation, and they’ll move a Jew to Israel, permanently. It’s not a fleeting blessing. You can rescue someone from anti-Semitic neighbors in the former USSR and put them where God wants Jews to be. Salvation and the baptism with the Spirit have the same quality of permanence (assuming those who receive them don’t screw things up). It’s like conceiving a child; using you, God creates the potential for a new life. In comparison, other acts of charity are a little bit like feeding a mule for a day.

SEGUE!

Slick, huh?

The other night, The Name of the Rose popped up in my cable box’s free movies list. I always have to have something to watch when the birds are out, so I turned it on. I totally forgot about the ridiculously long sex scene, which I had to blast through with fast-forward, but other than that, it was a worthwhile experience. It’s based on a novel by Umberto Eco. It’s about a Franciscan monk who visits an Italian abbey in 1327 and solves a murder mystery.

I don’t really care about the story. It was great, but that’s not what stood out to me. The thing that impressed me was the way things have changed.

I looked up the terms “Middle Ages” and “Dark Ages,” thinking they were not quite synonymous, but it turns out you can use them interchangeably. More or less, these were the years between 400 and 1400 A.D. The Holy Roman Empire collapsed, and after that, nothing good happened until the Renaissance. If you believe what you see in The Name of the Rose and various Monty Python movies, people wallowed around in the mud in filthy grey robes, eating dirt and excrement, and that was about all there was to life. There were nobles, kings, monks, and far-off heathens who were better off, but in the Christian world, life was rough.

I think the movies exaggerate. Don’t misunderstand. I’ve read books on the Middle Ages, and they were actually pleasant, prosperous times for many Europeans. The word “house” really meant something we would now call a compound (which automatically appeals to my far-right, gun-and-Bible-clinging personality). A person Obama would call “rich” would own the house, and it would be home to his family, as well as a number of servants. The bottom floor would likely be devoted to business, so you might see a workshop (see previous parenthetical), and everyone worked to keep the place prosperous (Ibid.).

People had things like soap and combs, and servants were expected to tidy up, so it probably wasn’t as bad as Dennis the Peasant and his filth-based anarcho-syndicalist collective.

Still, people had a lot of problems, and the movies emphasize that. The Name of the Rose served to remind me how rare knowledge was in the Middle Ages, and how far people were from God.

I don’t think the Middle Ages began because the empire fell. I think they started because carnal people succeeded in exterminating charismatics.

In the early church, tongues and the other gifts of the Spirit were not considered extreme. They were staples of the faith. Everyone was expected to partake in them. As a result, God worked great wonders through people, and the church actually threatened the supremacy of human government, as God intended it to. The human race made its choice, as it has so many times, murdering those who came to deliver it. The gifts and fruit of the Spirit disappeared, and backward, hopelessly ignorant Catholic and Orthodox clergymen took over, misinterpreting the scriptures and ensuring that generations would die powerless and captive.

In The Name of the Rose, a sub-plot centers on a huge debate in the Catholic Church. The Franciscans thought poverty was a huge virtue, and the Pope–a billionaire warlord in a mitre–disagreed. The events in the movie took place during a sort of convention, in which clergymen from various factions met at a remote abbey to debate the issue. The Pope’s big advantage was that one of his representatives was an inquisitor who could burn people instead of responding to their arguments. I guess you could say this guy was the Chris Matthews of his day.

The fictional debate centered around this issue, on which the welfare of the universe pivoted: did Jesus own his own clothing?

I’m no historian, but I don’t think that’s unrealistic at all. Christians fight bitterly about all sorts of stupid things. You might think the thing that disturbs me is that we get angry over trifles. That’s not really it. The thing that bothers me is that we have been so lacking in Spirit-given enlightenment, even if we argued about big issues, they would be the wrong ones! When the light of the Spirit goes out, the darkness of human tradition spreads across the land, and the first thing you know, the kosher laws have been augmented to the point where chicken parmigiana is forbidden.

The abbey held the biggest library in the Christian world. The books were piled up in a tower, and the top floor was a labyrinth only two people were allowed to access. The justification for locking the books up was that many of them disagreed with scripture and/or tradition, and the monks didn’t want to see the populace seduced by ideas on which the Pope had not signed off. As it has in real life, the Catholic Church actively suppressed knowledge.

I don’t really care if the church hides erotic fiction written in Latin. But over the centuries, traditional churches have hidden God himself. At times, possession of the Bible has been illegal, not under secular law, but church-made law. That’s insane.

I had the misfortune of visiting an Episcopal church for a funeral a couple of years back. I was stunned by what I saw. I had forgotten what traditional churches were like. People sat in pews fidgeting while womanish old white men in fancy robes muttered and gestured behind a heavy altar, yards away. The priests handled all the God stuff. The people watched, like miserable spectators. It’s funny; when God makes me a spectator, it’s a great gift. These people…not so much.

It reminded me how I had hated church as a kid. Back then, I fought when my mother tried to take me to church, and once I got there, I suffered and squirmed and lived for the moment it would end. It was only natural. I felt no connection with God. The dry lectures I received were dull and not very useful. I was offended and repulsed. I felt that I had an obligation to be there, but the experience was awful.

At my church, I literally feel God moving inside me. I get revelation upon revelation. The speakers prophesy. The Holy Spirit shapes the sermons so that, simultaneously, they meet the unique needs of dozens of people. Church is alive because God is alive, and because he is welcome. The traditional churches dispense God’s presence and power with an eye dropper. Satan owns them, and he controls the tap.

What I’m trying to say is that we still live in the Dark Ages. The real Dark Ages started when the baptism with the Spirit died out and Satan’s blind, carnal servants took over. We spent over 1500 years in defeat and helplessness.

Since the Azusa Street revival and similar outpourings, things have been improving. A new dawn is transpiring. God could have let is continue to grovel and meander in blindness, because he is under no obligation to fix our problems, but he has chosen, once again, to give us a new light. Like the monks who kept knowledge to themselves and denied the laiety the right to approach God without proxies, the traditional churches have been a barrier between God and man, but now that the baptism with the Spirit is back, God drops behind enemy lines, without having to battle his way across the front. God comes to live inside us, and there is no carnal weapon that can get him out.

This is why carnal people like to kill us. There is no way to “fix” us. They can either exterminate us or put up with us and wait to be overrun. They came after us in the “Holy” Roman Empire, and they’re going to do it again, because Satan can’t deal with us any other way. Most human beings, including Christians, serve him. In the flesh, he is vastly superior. The closer we come to fulfilling God’s mission, the more violent and numerous our enemies will be.

We are so privileged. We can know God, in a way only a small percentage of human beings have been able to do. And we have an incredible wealth of human knowledge, too. A disciplined person with an Internet connection quite literally has no need of a high school or university. I’m so glad I don’t live in 14th-century Italy, relying on homosexuals, politicians in cassocks, and the rejected sons of nobles to tell me who God is and how to serve him.

The Inquisition is still with us, unfortunately. It has been dormant for a long time, because there hasn’t been any need for it to act, but now that Spirit-filled believers are increasing, the voices are rising against us. Suddenly, sincere Christians are “bigots” and “haters.” We are the problem. The Jews are just as bad. Something has to be done about us! And it will.

But the Spirit is always stronger than the flesh. By the time they get around to boiling us alive again, we may have so much supernatural strength, it won’t bother us at all. That was the situation with many of the ancient martyrs. They joked while they were roasted or flayed. They were glad to get out of this place.

God is pouring grace out on us, and I am really grateful for it. For a believer, this is a wonderful time to be alive. It’s easier to get God’s help than it has been in centuries. They may round us up and gas us, but until they get us, we’ll live in a state of victory our grandparents could not have imagined. We will be untouchable, until the harvest. That’s what I expect. Some will go sooner, and some will go later, but many of us will not go until we are warned by God and we are ready to lay down our lives.

I believe the Dark Ages are coming to an end. War is going to heat up, but at least we’ll be serving our purpose.

How Can he Give Advice on Success?

I’ve said a lot of critical things about Steve Munsey, the prosperity preacher who influenced my former church so heavily. He teaches doctrine he made up from thin air. He claims the ancient Jews did well because they gave huge money offerings to the Temple three times a year. This nonsense is not mentioned in the Bible. Munsey tries to string together unrelated scriptures to support it, but Jews will tell you it’s a fantasy.

Munsey is a very close friend of the pastor at my former church.

I don’t want God to chastise and humiliate me the way he has chosen to chastise and humiliate Munsey, so I prayed before deciding to mention this publicly. It’s not like I’m revealing a secret; it’s a news story several months old. But I don’t want to promote stories like this without asking God carefully, in advance, if it’s his will.

Here it is: Steve Munsey’s church in foreclosure.

The foreclosure action was filed in 2011. The church has paid $8,000,000 in interest. It has accumulated less than $200,000 in equity. The principal has been increased, so Munsey is actually farther in debt than he was the day he signed the papers.

This is not prosperity.

The big problem with hardheaded prosperity preachers is that they believe that when they are faced with financial failure, the answer is to beg, not to reform. This is why prosperity preachers tend to fail upward. They blow tons of money. They go to their flocks and say the devil took it. They say the flocks have to give more. The drain is endless. It’s like giving an ATM card to a meth addict. These ministers are cursed, so it’s impossible for their churches to succeed. The more you give them, the more will be lost.

This is the nature of the universe. Some people are under blessings, so if you give them things, they profit by them. Some are under curses, so whatever you give them disappears and ends up hurting them. Until you get out from under your curses, the things you do to create success will pan out pretty badly. And if you convince other people to finance your efforts, you end up attaching the curse to them.

This is what happens with addicts. Say you’re a compulsive gambler. You lose money. First thing you know, someone is threatening to break your arms. You go to your parents, who have saved for retirement. You tell them about the threat. They pay off. Now you know that whenever you get behind, they’ll save you. So you go on gambling. You lose and lose and lose. Your parents try to bless you, but instead, your curse becomes their curse. You get your arms broken in spite of your efforts, and your parents lose their house. Instead of one person suffering that which he deserves, three people suffer.

What matters in life is not where you are, but which way you’re headed. A person who will not repent will end up defeated and desperate, even if he has a billion dollars today. A person who listens to God and prays and reforms will eventually be blessed, even if he’s in the gutter outside a homeless shelter at the moment. Once you repent, you should consider yourself blessed, even if you don’t have all the things you need. You should realize they’re on the way. If you won’t repent, as Jesus said, you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, even if you can’t see it. God sees you in terms of your destination, not your location.

I don’t know what Munsey has done since his problems were revealed, but it would not be a big surprise if he had gone to his flock and begged for more cash. I know he blamed Satan, as I suggested above. That’s in the news story to which I linked. He said, “The devil wanted to take us out.” A cynical person might say the worst thing the devil did was putting Munsey in charge. But I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe he has a genuine calling, and he’s just way off course.

I’m tired of Munsey, and of the cabal that runs my old church. I keep asking God to get them out. Just get them out. Help them change, sure, but get them out. They know what they’re doing wrong. They abuse those who point it out. They need to go. They are hurting too many people, and time is too short.

Last night, to kill time while I was hanging out with Marv, I was flipping channels, and I ended up watching a little bit of Interview With the Vampire. Probably not the greatest choice for a Christian, but I don’t think I’m in any danger of coming to admire people who drink blood. Anyway, I kept noticing that the commercials were disgusting. They were all about homosexuality. One promoted a show hosted by a notorious pervert named Rupaul. Another promoted a gay resort in Key West. I also saw promotions for a series of shows with a sin theme. They actually used the word “sin,” and they said the first show was about greed. I wondered what was going on. Finally, I realized I was watching a gay channel. I’m not sure why they show vampire movies, but there it is.

It reminded me how insane America has become. We’re not just under attack. We’ve lost. We’re in supernatural foreclosure. Society has ruled in favor of pride and perversion. We are now seen as vicious bigots, not upholders of the faith. You can sit in your own home now and mind your own business, and the cable box will bring you homosexual programming and shows proudly and expressly promoting sin.

I don’t think we have time to let kooky, greedy preachers work out their issues. They need to be expelled and replaced before they destroy the rest of us. They can get secular jobs while they figure things out. If you’re draining 5,000 people financially and preventing them from getting to know the Holy Spirit, it’s not a bad thing if God forces you out so you have to become a car salesman.

We need to become strong in the Spirit and pray as a body. Otherwise, we can kiss America goodbye. There is no place left to run, so once Satan receives the title to America, we will have to hide in the crevices until Jesus returns.

The pastors at my church never said a word when Steve Munsey’s church failed. They went right on teaching his garbage. Amazing. How can they explain that?

Pray in tongues. Read the word and try to live it. Fast occasionally. Try to hear the Spirit and obey him. Examine yourself and repent of sin and iniquity. These things will bring you power. The other stuff is worse than dung.

You Know Things are Getting Weird When Kim Kardashian Visits Your Old Church, and YOU’RE the Scandal

I feel like I ought to say a few things, in view of what I wrote about my former church the other day.

I was mad. No doubt about it. I think of the good people over there who could get so close to God, so fast, if they were being told the right things. I think of their poverty. I think of the way they try to improve their lives and fail, because they don’t know how to deal with their supernatural enemies. I realize they could be in touch with the Holy Spirit, and that he would help them and give them victory and peace. I think about those things, and then I think about the utterly useless things they’re being taught–and the ways in which they’re being used–and of course, it gets under my skin.

It also makes me angry when I try to say something helpful, and the response is a false accusation. I’m a divider! I’m “touching God’s anointed.” I’m “judging.” This is what I hear. From people who know four Bible verses.

If people said, “Thanks for the input, but I disagree,” it would be one thing. But these transparent attempts to put me on the defensive, in order to avoid discussing the truth…they are not easy to deal with. I do not like being demonized. Contradict me if you want, but don’t level a false accusation in order to avoid examining yourself.

So what I’m saying, with all that, is that I was very irritated. I hope I didn’t go too far. I didn’t go as far as John the Baptist did. I didn’t call people “a litter of vipers.” I didn’t call anyone a son of Satan or child of hell, which is something the Bible would permit me to do, if it was appropriate. But I was pretty harsh.

It turns out people have been reading my blog. I don’t know what to think about that. Is it bad, because they’re spying on me, or is it good, because they might try to understand me and, in the process, learn something that would help them?

Here’s something they need to know. I spend a tremendous amount of time in prayer these days. Much of it is prayer in tongues. My relationship with the Holy Spirit is getting very intense. Some people go to church to feel God’s presence. For me, it’s a routine thing that happens wherever I am. Very often, I’ll feel the Holy Spirit descend on me with great force. It’s not because I’m a great person. It’s because I’ve become addicted to prayer. It has nothing to do with anything good about me.

I have reached the point where I physically feel the Holy Spirit pouring through me, in the form of faith and power. I believe I can ask questions and get the answers. I don’t think this is an illusion. If you look at the things I’ve written about God, if you have any discernment at all, you should be able to see that I didn’t come up with them myself. I’m getting revelation. If I’m getting revelation to that degree, people shouldn’t doubt that when I feel the Holy Spirit communicating with me, it’s real.

I mention these things so people will understand me when I say this: I ask God what I should say and what I should not. I don’t want to write things that will work against God’s plan. From time to time, I’ll put time in, writing something, and I’ll ask God whether I should publish it, and I’ll get a strong sense that the answer is “no.” When that happens, I delete it. I don’t care if it took half a day to write it. So if you see something I’ve written, and it seems too severe or too negative, you should be aware that unless I forgot, I consulted God before I posted it.

It may surprise people to read it, but the truth is that I feel that God has told me over and over that I’m not bold ENOUGH. I’ve worried about offending people, but it seems like God thinks I’m too restrained.

That’s where all this comes from. So decide for yourself whether you want to judge me. Maybe you’re the one who is touching God’s anointed. And while you’re at it, think about all the solid people who agree with me. Think of all the people who got up and left the church. Don’t you wonder why that happened? A whole bunch of them talk to me and tell me they agree with me.

I should also add that I didn’t get mad just because the church entertained one woman famous for posing nude and performing in a sex tape. I got mad because it was part of a lasting, consistent pattern of strange behavior. They don’t treat employees or volunteers right. They teach doctrine even a child should be able to debunk. They run a failing business, yet they take money from poor people, claiming to know how to make them prosperous. They honor people like R. Kelly and Luther Campbell. They are not good to the poor. They invite useless people to preach. It’s how things go over there. The Kardashian thing was just the latest failure.

Imagine what would have happened if Kim Kardashian had shown up at any God-fearing church in 1950. They might have encouraged her to attend. They might have welcomed her. They would not have bragged about her presence. They would have tried to change her. They would have kept her away from services until she had repented in private. They would have used some common sense. My old church treats lost people (who are famous and/or rich) as though they were honorable ministers of God. That’s wrong. It’s not “love.” It’s not “longsuffering.” It’s not “meekness.” It’s self-promotion. “We know R. Kelly! We know Kim Kardashian! We’re important! We’re going to be just like Keith Craft and Steve Munsey!!!”

It’s amazing that this has to be explained. The people who run the church work so hard to convince people that church is cool, their consciences must have become seared. They don’t seem to perceive things the way healthy Christians do. They don’t seem to see the obvious impropriety of appearing to endorse celebrities whose behavior is extraordinarily trashy.

Here’s a principle from the Bible. If you’re doing something stupid, and people of comparable knowledge are not, they can judge you. Example: Jesus said, “The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here.”

If the best churches on earth are blowing it the way my old church is, then who can criticize? But that’s not the case. The church I go to know is a thousand times healthier. The pastor talks about the Holy Spirit. He promotes other people, at his own expense. Prophets come in and denounce homosexuality and false religion. The services start with at least 45 minutes of prayer and worship. We get all sorts of help and manifestations from God.

If my little church can do it, then it’s okay to criticize other churches that don’t even appear to be trying. It’s not just okay; it’s vital. Someone has to warn the people who are being dragged down.

No church has to be perfect. But it’s not all right for a church to be stupid. There is a wide gulf between “perfect” and “stupid.” You shouldn’t use human imperfection as an excuse to settle for extremely poor performance.

If you came here to spy, maybe you’ll read this and think about it. I urge you to compare your church’s actions to scripture. The WHOLE Bible, not just Matthew 7:1. That verse is really getting worn out.

I don’t always say nice things, but then God is not nice. God is loving. God is just. When being nice and being righteous happen to be compatible, THEN he’s nice. The rest of the time, it’s not important to him. Who do you think he is? Remember what he has done. He has killed more people than Adolf Hitler; some of them with burning sulfur. He is going to kill again, in the future. He created hell, and people you know are burning there. No, I’m not always nice. I take after my father, as well as his grace permits.

If you want to know the Holy Spirit, pray in tongues every day, a lot. Try to get up to two half-hour sessions. When you pray with your understanding, don’t just ask for money. Ask God what he wants. Try to hear from him. Try to remember that his purpose isn’t to bless you. He is the king of the universe, and your purpose is to serve him. He will supply you best when you do his will; a man will love his own flesh, and so will God. If you have chronic sins, fast repeatedly and pray for God to remove them. Dancing in a nightclub that pretends to be a church isn’t going to get you where you need to be.

I hope someone will get some benefit from this.

Ride, Don’t Walk

For a long time, I’ve believed that the story of Samson was given to us to show what happens when the Spirit-filled church gives up the Holy Spirit and does what seems right in its own eyes. I thought I’d write about it today.

A lot of weird things happened in the Old Testament. Improbable things. I have learned that when very odd things happen, it often means there is a supernatural reason. Many things that happened in the Old Testament, among physical beings, were intended to teach future believers about warfare in the supernatural realm. Abraham tried to sacrifice Isaac, and God sacrificed himself through Jesus. Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt, through a body of water; Jesus leads believers out of the kingdom of Satan. And so on and so on. The story of Samson has symbolic value.

Samson was given to us to symbolize a believer (or body of believers) filled with the Holy Spirit.

An angel appeared to Samson’s mother and told her he would be born, and that he was to be a Nazirite, set apart for God (as we are set apart – Psalm 4). He was not to drink wine or let a razor touch his head.

The Bible doesn’t mention the mother’s name. Why? Because a mother is the source of one’s flesh. Women symbolize flesh, which is supposed to be subject to authority. God provides the seed which transforms flesh. When you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit, God’s supernatural “DNA” takes over, and you grow to be like him. It doesn’t matter who your mother is. You may be a Gentile, or you may be a Jew. The source of your flesh doesn’t make any difference. It’s your past. It’s the dirt you grew from. God is about the future.

This is why it’s wrong for Catholics to worship Mary. Jesus himself discouraged this. Mary was probably a wonderful woman, but she did not earn the right to carry Jesus, and she was not the reason Jesus was good. Jesus was good because half of his genetic material came directly from his father, God, and that contribution dominated his development. He was also good because God guided him through life.

When the Holy Spirit was on Samson, he could do anything. As a result, his enemies could not touch him. They were like worms before him. Powerless. The only way they could ever get to him was to use ungodly women, who symbolize the iniquities of our flesh. A woman, like our flesh, is supposed to be in submission. When a husband lets an ungodly wife rule him, the result is shame and defeat. Look at Solomon and Ahab. The same thing happens when you let your flesh–which is like a wife–tell you what to do. It’s supposed to be a helper, not a boss.

On one occasion, Samson went to Gaza and pulled up the gates of the city. He carried them away and stuck them on a hill. What does that mean? In his time, gates served two purposes. They let things in and out, and they were the locations of courts. Our minds are gates. Things go in and out of us through our minds, and we are judges who decide when to open the doors.

When Samson picked up the gates, he was picking up the authority of the city, as well as its ability to keep enemies out. It was an extremely destructive act. He was showing the Gazans that they had no sovereignty and no protection. He was the head, and they were the tail. God was with him, so his enemies were helpless.

Jesus said the gates of hell would not prevail against his kingdom. Although he was standing in a place that may have been referred to as the gates of hell (Caesarea Philippi), he was referring to the authority of hell, as well as the physical temptations that assail our flesh. By paying for our sins, Jesus destroyed Satan’s standing as a supernatural litigant. He no longer has the right to rule us. We don’t have to be judged in Satan’s courts any more. And by sending the Holy Spirit, Jesus gave us the power to overcome our iniquities and close the door to sin, which gives power and ingress to our enemies.

On another occasion, a lion attacked Samson. Lions symbolize hostile spirits, as well as people who serve them. The Bible says Satan prowls around like a lion. Of people who serve Satan, it says, “The young lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.”

In the natural world, lions are a whole lot stronger than men, but Samson picked the lion up and tore it apart effortlessly. It wasn’t just a defeat. It was a crushing, complete, pure defeat. The lion didn’t even register as a problem. And later, when Samson saw the carcass lying in the road, he found a beehive in it, full of honey, which he ate.

When the Holy Spirit is with you, God will defeat your enemies for you, decisively and easily. Beyond that, he will use their attacks to bless you with things that are pleasing. Like honey. In this way, he takes attacks that are intended to harm you, and he turns then into great blessings, which compounds the humiliation of your enemies.

Samson is remembered for taking the jawbone of an ass and killing a thousand Palestinians (Philistines) with it. An ass is a stubborn beast of burden which is wise in its own eyes. It’s supposed to serve, but it wants to rule. It symbolizes the flesh. This is why the Bible calls Esau a wild ass of a man. He was a slave to the flesh. He preferred a bowl of soup to his inheritance.

A jawbone symbolizes speech, and teeth symbolize natural weapons. In the psalms, one author asks God to smite his enemies on the cheekbone and break the teeth of the wicked. He is asking God to destroy the power of the evil words his enemies say, and to destroy their earthly weapons.

When the jawbone was in Samson’s hand, and Samson was guided by the Spirit, the jawbone was a powerful weapon. When the jaw of a flesh-and-blood servant of God is controlled by the Spirit, that servant will be able to use his words to inflict terrible defeat on God’s enemies. Every time you see a preacher speak by the Spirit, you’re watching Samson swing the jawbone of an ass. When the Spirit leaves, only the ass is left.

Later, Samson was thirsty. He was so thirsty, he thought he would die. He begged God for water. God removed a tooth from the jawbone, and water poured from the socket. Samson drank it, and the Bible says his SPIRIT was revived.

The loss of the tooth symbolizes the way we have to give up reliance on our earthly weapons in order to be empowered and delivered by the Spirit. It symbolizes humility and submission.

Spirit-filled believers are supposed to be rivers of living water. We are supposed to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and we are supposed to pray in tongues to build our spirits up. Paul said this repeatedly. He said prayer in tongues builds faith. The Bible says those who hunger and THIRST for righteousness will be filled, and it says God calls faith righteousness. When you pray in tongues, you will find that it builds your faith. When you get good at it, you’ll actually sense it. You will feel God reviving your spirit, as Samson did.

Samson liked trashy women, so he slept with Delilah. He ended up telling her how to take away his strength. His strength came from the Holy Spirit, so what he was really telling her was how to disconnect him from God. He told her that if his hair was shorn, he would be like any other man.

Delilah got him to sleep on her lap. This is what the world does to Spirit-filled Christians, when it can’t beat them any other way. It puts us to sleep. The attacks stop. Things seem to go well. We get excited about our blessings. Like manic-depressives who stop taking their lithium when things go well, we stop praying and relying on the Spirit. This is what happened to the early church. They got the support of the political system. They got fat. They quit teaching about tongues, and they lost their power.

The Holy Spirit has seven parts. This is reflected in the seven-armed structure of the lampstand in the Holy of Holies, and Jesus himself (in the Revelation) stated that there were seven spirits of God. As the lampstand illuminated the Holy of Holies, the Holy Spirit is supposed to illuminate a Christian from within. Seven is the number of completeness (also called perfection). The Holy Spirit completes us.

Samson’s hair had seven locks. Delilah removed them from him. When that was done, he had no strength, and the Palestinians put out his eyes. They took away his light. He carried off the gate of Gaza, and the Palestinians entered through the gate of his flesh and returned the favor, destroying his authority.

They made him a slave, just as Christians have served Satan’s world since the church gave up the Spirit. Samson ground grain to make their bread. He used his natural strength to do a menial task, when he should have been using supernatural power to do lasting works for God.

When his strength returned to him, he was able to kill many Palestinians. But he would have been better off listening to God in the first place.

You can be like Samson. You can be baptized with the Holy Spirit, and you can pray in tongues every day. You can be built up supernaturally, and you will grow stronger than your enemies. God will do amazing things through you, and you will live in victory. If you reject the baptism, expect to live in defeat. You have rights, but you can’t exercise them unless you do it God’s way.

This is working for me, and I’m sure it will work for you. Life isn’t perfect, but remember: Muhammad Ali never won a fight without taking a few punches to the face. You may be blessed with effortless victory, like Samson’s victory over the lion, or you may be like Paul, who got a number of beatings. But overall, you will win.

Our abandonment of the Holy Spirit is the reason Christians do not live in power. It’s why we claim the promises of the Bible and don’t receive them. The Bible is true, but you can’t have it your way. You have to go through the gate God prepared, and that means Holy Spirit baptism and prayer in tongues.

I hope this is useful.

They had it Coming

My former church has finally gone completely insane.

Today they welcomed Kim Kardashian. Yes, the Kim Kardashian who poses nude. The sex-tape Kim Kardashian. I don’t know if they took her into the green room so she could bless the pastors with her wisdom, but she tweeted about her presence at church, and they proudly re-tweeted it.

People are saying it’s wonderful that she went to church. Uh…no, it’s NOT wonderful. Not unless she repented. Churches are supposed to welcome REPENTANT sinners. The other kind screw churches up.

Think of it as an immigration problem. Say you live in a Christian nation, and Muslims start showing up. When there are 50 of them, it’s no big deal. When they’re 50% of the population…big deal. You’re going to have Sharia law, honor killings, an end to the pork industry, lots of terrorism…it will be bad. When sinners come to a church and don’t change their ways, and their numbers get too high, they convert the church. Not that this would be a big change for Trinity. It’s barely a church as it is.

I was furious when I heard about this. It’s bad enough that the pastor sucked up to R. Kelly, who narrowly avoided conviction on a statutory rape beef with video evidence. Do they really need to use Kim Kardashian to prove they’ve made it?

The name “Kardashian” used to be associated with top-notch legal representation. Those days are gone. Now it connotes promiscuity, nudity, stupidity, and shallowness. As the good book would put it, it has “become a proverb.” Why would any pastor be proud this person came to his church? Only a desperate self-promotor or a feckless infant could think this was a good thing.

It would be wonderful if Miss Kardashian went to a church and told everyone she regretted all the dumb things she had done. I’d be the first to welcome her. Well, actually, I think a woman should do that, just to be safe. But I would be all for it. But for her to roll in and out with no evidence of change…how is that a victory for anyone?

I really blew up about this on Facebook. The gloves are off. I said the leaders of the church clearly did not know the Bible, and I posted a long series of verses about respecting persons. The pastors are like children. It’s as though they had never heard of the Bible. This stuff is obvious to teenagers who read the word, but these adults don’t have a clue. Or they just don’t care, which is looking pretty likely.

Some lady tried to “correct” me, saying I should not “touch” God’s “anointed.” That’s sad. Preachers have succeeded in brainwashing many Christians, so they will cover up their pastors’ backslidden behinds. They say all sorts of curses fall on those who speak up. But God didn’t curse Jesus, Paul, Isaiah, Micaiah, Malachi, Peter, Jude, Jeremiah, Samuel, Nathan, or any of the other Biblical figures (or if you’re Catholic, figurines) who spoke up. If you took the negative remarks out of the Bible, the remaining text would be a pamphlet.

She said I should only correct people privately. But she said that publicly, which is a little hard to explain.

As Perry Stone teaches, there is a difference between “anointing” and “gift.” A person who is anointed has God’s authority to do some job or other. He has God’s approval. Anointing is not always permanent. God anointed Saul, and he took the anointing away. A gift is a natural or supernatural ability. It may persist when the anointing leaves. This is why truly foul preachers sometimes continue to function in their gifts. It helps explain why some very bad churches stay very big for quite some time.

Anyway, a preacher who teaches false tradition and serves his belly is not acting under an anointing. Not in my book. And because they commit their sins publicly, it only makes sense to correct them publicly. Besides, the leaders of Trinity Church know exactly what they’re doing wrong. People have spoken up. They just don’t care.

God is not going to stand up and give me leprosy for criticizing people who milk the poor and lie to them. If he did things like that, John the Baptist would have exploded. Repeatedly.

Quite honestly, I think these people are idiots. I have tried to show restraint. I’ve said I disagreed with them. I’ve said they were off the path. But after a time, you have to start using terms like “idiot.” Even Jesus did it. After a certain point, mildly critical language just doesn’t do the job. If you speak about foolish people too respectfully, there is a danger that other people will not understand just how foolish they are. “I’m going to try Trinity Church.” “DON’T!” “Why not?” “They’re…missing the mark.” “Well, I’ll just check it out.” “THEY’RE IDIOTS! THEY’RE IDIOTS! DANGER! DANGER!”

I think God takes a similar approach. He starts by sending you little hints. Then he sends people to correct you. Then he might let you get a physical illness. He might let you suffer defeat. Eventually, if you keep pushing it, he buries you in burning sulfur and pitch. Or he sends you to hell.

I wish I had never heard about this. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life reflecting on the stupid behavior of a group of carnal ministers. But there it is. And I don’t investigate this stuff. People bring it to me.

How about some positive news? Today Apostle Michael Tomasulo visited my church. My denomination, or whatever it is, is big on apostles. They seem like the real thing. They have shown up and said some very solid, very impressive things. Mr. Tomasulo is one of them.

I met him on his last visit. He’s an EE (electrical engineer). I was building guitar amps at the time, so I was really glad to meet him. I have a lot of weird interests, so it’s always comforting to meet someone who can relate. When I meet a person who shares one of my interests, it’s like meeting someone from home. Which is odd. And I can’t combine all, or even most, of my interests in one friend. I have to have an assortment. The gun friend. The cooking friend. The physics friend. The law friend. And so on.

Today he lit into TBN (he can’t stand watching it) and megachurches that teach self-help and motivational gibberish. LIKE TRINITY. He said exactly what I was saying to my prayer group three years ago. I said we didn’t need Dr. Phil and Oprah. I said motivational speakers were not what God wanted for us. He said these things today, even referring to Dr. Phil and his mothership. I saw a preacher on TBN say the same things last year (no word on whether his body has been found). God tells all of his people the same things. The church is unified, as Jesus prayed it would be. It’s just scattered. Like golden tickets in a pile of worldly Wonka bars.

Before he spoke, and before I knew what he would talk about, I put this on Facebook: “At my old church we had great motivational speakers who promised God would make us rich if we gave them money. Here at New Dawn Ministries, we have to settle for prophecy.”

Lately I’ve been getting back into tools, and I’ve started watching engineering lectures. Engineers don’t know where formulas come from. Physicists do, but they don’t know what to do with them, so I’m hoping to bridge the gap a little. I’ve been watching EE and ME stuff from NPTEL (Indian universities) and other sources. Today I decided to ask Mr. Tomasulo a few things, to see if he could steer me in the right direction. So far I’ve learned how much a truss can hold when the beams have been tempered in a tandoor.

Lo and behold, it turned out he wanted to talk to me. He remembered that I had been building tube amps. We started talking. I kept trying to tell him how much I admired engineers for knowing how to do USEFUL things, and he kept trying to tell me how much he admired physicists for knowing the root causes of stuff. Anyway, it turned out he was considering supplementing his income with EE work, and we started talking about amps. I told him it might be possible to generate some money building amps, and now he wants to come check out what I’m doing. Even if it goes nowhere, now I’ll have a friend who is almost a physicist. An EE is really not that far off. They are not the dumb engineers. What they do takes brains. They don’t seem to realize that, though.

An EE is actually more useful to me than a physicist, because a physicist wouldn’t know anything new.

We talked for quite a while, and unfortunately, his wife was standing right next to him, and she was bored so severely she required medical attention.

So here is what happened today. As a former physicist and amp builder who was recently told he had the anointing of a prophet and teacher, I met a guitar-playing EE apostle who wants to build tube amps. Tell me that’s not a weird day.

I want to introduce this guy to my dad as “Apostle Mike,” and I’ll insist he call him that. Come on. That’s irresistible. “Glad to know you, Mike.” “APOSTLE Mike, Dad.” “Uh…”

“Dad, I’m going to Five Guys with Apostle Mike. Do you want anything?”

I guess I’m stupid. That cracks me up.

But hey, it’s what he is.

I think if I could pick a job, it would be prophet. Apostles have to travel. Prophets can hang out in their garages and mess with tools most of the time, and every so often, they pop out, go to the local church, and say something that scares the living daylights out of everyone. Then they go home, and people leave them alone. It’s like Punxsutawney Phil, only holy.

“An earthquake is going to destroy the city next week, and afterward, an omer of organic dove’s dung from Whole Foods will cost as much as an Ipad 2. Plus God is going to give Deacon Fred a withered foot for playing Powerball. See you later, and stay off my lawn!”

I’m not positive my expectations are totally realistic. But it’s my understanding that a prophet can command a she-bear to eat punks that get on his nerves. That could be really handy.

Inherit the Earth; Don’t Earn the Wind

People have offered prayer and kind words concerning my sister’s situation. I don’t want to turn the blog into a reality show about someone’s bad decisions, but I felt I should write a little more.

During the week of Thanksgiving, it was my misfortune to speak with her, and she claimed she had broken her collarbone. Such things do happen, but–to be realistic–going to the hospital and complaining about a sore shoulder is a good way to get drugs. In any case, according to the courts, she has been given a continuance based on a shoulder injury. My best guess is that the injury is nonexistent or self-inflicted, and that she has managed to parlay a lie into a two-month reprieve. But you never know.

Anyway, thanks.

Last night I got a text about the pastor of my former church. Apparently, he was having back problems so severe, he was crying and screaming. The person who texted me used the phrase “falling apart.”

He has other problems. He’s diabetic, he has one artificial knee, and he has a blood disorder which would be fatal but for regular treatments. He also had kidney stones that had to be blasted out, during the same time period in which God healed two of my kidney stones miraculously. The person who texted me attributed the ailments to the exodus of the older armorbearers, who used to pray for the pastor.

I am hesitant to point to people’s problems and claim God has cursed them. Some people try pretty hard and still have hard lives, and many, many evil people have it easy. Also, I don’t want to invite judgment by suggesting I’m better than other people. I have plenty of stuff to work on. Nonetheless, I think it’s safe to say that when your body deteriorates consistently over a period of decades, it means something is wrong with your relationship with God. Especially when you’re a minister. A person in a holy office should be able to get good results from prayer.

That church is a plantation. They might as well hang a sign over the front that says, “Arbeit macht frei.” They cheat employees and con the poor out of offerings they can’t afford, and they brainwash people so they won’t speak out, leave, or even acknowledge the truth.

They tell people positive thinking and hard work will save them, except when it comes to money. If you want money, you have to give the pastors exorbitant offerings out of your lack, even when it means ignoring your just debts. If you do that, well, sure, God’s supernatural power will kick in, to make you rich! Otherwise, it’s all self-help.

Moses learned about self-help at the spring of Meribah. Eve learned about self-help when she performed the first act of drug abuse, in an attempt to gain supernatural wisdom. Nebuchadnezzar learned about self-help when God drove him mad and let him live like an animal for seven years. Self-help does not exist. You can do little things for yourself, with effects that are limited in power and duration. But you can’t give yourself a blessed life.

The Nazis put signs reading “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work makes you free”) at the entrances of camps like Auschwitz. That’s interesting, because the death camps were Satanic parodies of the temple in Jerusalem. At the temple, animals were sacrificed and burned to make God forget men’s sins. In the camps, God’s people were sacrificed and burned, in the hope that man would forget the Jews.

This is why God doesn’t like cremation. He knows that when the bodies of his people are destroyed, men will rise up later and deny they existed. God would not permit Joseph’s bones to remain in Egypt, where they could be lost. Even after Joseph’s death, the bones served a purpose.

The Nazis claimed their slaves would gain freedom through work, but no matter what the slaves did, they lived in servitude, lack, and defeat, and their ultimate destinations were fire and pits. I don’t know how the parallels could be more clear.

Satan works hard. Is he going to end up free?

The work we do outside of God’s will is vanity. It is futile. It is waste. It accomplishes nothing, except to bring us closer to hell. Like prosperity preachers, the Nazis kept the Jews busy with promises of good things that would never come. They worked, like hamsters on wire wheels, and they never advanced, except toward destruction.

The temple was not a place that celebrated work. It was a place that celebrated the fact that God had done the work for us. It celebrated grace, which is unearned divine help. It’s only natural (on more levels than one) that the Nazis praised the power of human effort in their diabolical slaughterhouses. Their teaching was the opposite of the truth.

Any church that glorifies human effort is screwed up, and any pastor that teaches that nonsense, while milking the poor like cattle, is likely to find that there are serious gaps in his divine protection.

I don’t think the folks who run that church believe in God. Maybe they do, but my impression is that they don’t. I don’t see how anyone can believe in God while cheating employees and teaching get-rich-quick doctrine which has been proven to be false. If these awful teachings appeared to work, I could understand how believers could teach them, but they don’t produce results. The people at the church were poor when they showed up, and they’re still poor. The church itself is poor. How long do you have to stand in the rain before you realize it’s time to go in the house?

I don’t pray for this man to be healed, except through repentance and faith. If God healed him miraculously today, he would surely take it as a sign that everything he’s doing is okay. He needs a change of heart, not a physical healing that doesn’t affect his beliefs.

I keep praying God will drive the leadership out of that church and replace it, and my faith says it will happen. There is no clique or family whose comfort justifies oppressing and misleading thousands of people. They know what they’re doing wrong. It’s not rocket science. If they were blameless, I’d feel differently, but I can’t see any way to excuse what they do.

The church–the body of believers all across America–is extremely sick. We are declining rapidly. God gives us teaching after teaching, and sign after sign, and we keep throwing it away. In a sane world, the charismatic movement would have put an end to Satan’s rule. So much power fell on us. But we’re using it to buy jets for Kenneth Copeland and Paula White instead of transforming people’s hearts. There is no gift so powerful we can’t corrupt it.

We are truly amazing. God dealt with Adam face to face, and Adam fell. God gave the Jews prophets and priests and blatant signs, and they fell. God gave Christians the Holy Spirit, living inside us, and we fell. There is probably nothing God can do to protect us from our own stupidity, short of abolishing free will.

The news for the human race is bad, but the news for you is very good. The Titanic is sinking, but you can get into a lifeboat whenever you want. Many people you know are going to die and burn, and you can’t save many. That’s terrible. But you don’t have to join them.

Hooray

Today I saw another article rehashing the election. The polls were pretty solidly on Romney’s side, yet he lost. People can’t figure out why. Some say the voting machines were rigged. Maybe it’s true. But ultimately, the reason is that God wanted us to have an idiot for a President.

We are getting so far away from God, we’re actually somewhat gross. We dress and groom ourselves like convicts, with creepy chin beards and bad tattoos and piercings. We love abortion. We’ve decided God has to accept sexual perversion and exalt it in his churches. Many of us think Israel is the source of most of the world’s problems. We’re stupid. We don’t listen. We don’t learn from history. We have no respect. We think “government built that,” or we “Believe in America” (not God) to crib from the candidates in the Presidential race.

Look at Isaiah 3 to see what happens to nations that behave the way we do.

The election was decided by the worst voters in our society: the young, the poor, women, and the least-successful minorities. If white Christian men and Asian men had been the only ones who voted, Sarah Palin would probably be President. We’d be behind Israel a hundred percent. Entitlements would be slashed. We’d be cutting waste. We’d have wonderful federal judges who would get the government off the church’s back. Taxes would be low. The GDP would skyrocket. Our enemies would fear us. Those things aren’t going to happen. Instead, we’re going to get crippling taxes, insane spending, a weak military, a tiny dollar, a straitjacket of regulations complete with ball gag, the loss of our civil rights, poverty, and riots.

God is going to wipe out our wages, and he’s going to use Obama and Bernanke to destroy our savings. Where do we turn then?

What happens to a nation that abandons God and brings curses on itself? According to Isaiah, God puts women and children in charge. Hello? What just happened? Women and the young put a fool in the White House. No amount of campaigning or pandering could have prevented that.

What else does Isaiah say? He says he will take away the capable men who might otherwise guide us out of our mess. This is why General Petraeus fell. He was very good at his job. It’s why we couldn’t put Romney in the White House. He wasn’t ideal, but he’s a sharp guy who could have been very helpful to us. God wasn’t having that. He wanted a pampered semi-professional golfer who thinks wealth is something that exists because we declare it to be so. We’re going to see other leaders fall, emigrate, or retire, and pinheads will replace them.

We’ve seen this kind of thing in the Bible. Look at the story of Solomon. We revere Solomon way too much; he was an idol worshiper and a failed king. His son took the throne, and he got advice from two quarters. Wise older men told him to go easy on his subjects and win their love by being reasonable. Young morons told him to make his subjects miserable and to insult them. Rehoboam listened to the punks, and his kingdom fell. After that, Israel was never the same. Three thousand years ago, Israel was a jewel. It was wealthy and secure. One king ruined that, and for thirty centuries, Israel has been an obscure, unsuccessful nation (when it has been a nation at all). We’re headed the same way, unless we turn back to God. Our President is a relatively young man with no common sense and little ability, and his advisors are fools. God is preventing better people from getting elected. We are not going to make it unless we change.

Here’s an interesting parallel. My law school used to have student body elections. I was amazed when I saw them taking place; I could not believe an adult would run for student body president. Anyway, we ended up with a disproportionate number of black presidents. Why? Because the black students, though small in number, voted like sheep. They had a great deal of power.

I thought about this after Obama got reelected. We now live in a country where white and Asian males can’t choose our leaders. There are a lot of us, and we tend to vote pretty wisely, but women, blacks, Latins, and Jews outnumber us, and they are the worst voters imaginable. Blacks just put Jesse Jackson’s son back in the House, while he was in the nuthouse and on his way to prison. Jews have been voting badly since before they left Egypt. Women vote for socialism whenever they can, because they want the government to be their husband. Latins–even conservative Cubans–don’t care what happens to the US, as long as we let their relatives come here.

When you look at the demographics, you realize that numerically, we’ve been at the mercy of inept voting blocs for a long time. It’s amazing that we haven’t done worse. Whenever someone competent has been elected, it has been because God got involved. God has helped us put people like George Bush in the White House, and we’ve rewarded him with increased filth and rebellion.

When God pours judgment out on a nation or city, sometimes he pulls out the people who love him, or he gives them special protection. The stories of Lot and Noah are examples. I believe God is going to help out a lot of Spirit-led believers. Not chickenheads who jump up and down in church and then do their own thing the rest of the time; people who are really trying. In the Christian community, we are already hearing about people who are being led to rural areas and given property, weapons, and tools. This has been going on for several years, but the rest of the country only noticed it recently. It’s a move of God, and it’s a sign that in the future, you really won’t want to be in places like New York, L.A., San Francisco, and Miami.

The people who are leaving are being ridiculed. I guess Noah’s neighbors ridiculed him when he built the Ark. We know that Lot’s relatives thought he was an idiot for leaving Sodom. We won’t look so ridiculous when the bread lines form and we’re too far away for our tattooed neighbors to rob.

I don’t know what’s going to happen to observant Jews. They’re stuck in cities. They won’t leave their butchers and shuls. They would be smart to start their own towns, but I don’t think it will happen. When things get bad, the Jews who know the least about God will probably be the safest, because they’ll be free to take off and get help from rural Christians.

Anyway, God chose Obama, so get over it. He didn’t win because Romney wouldn’t lean left. He won because we deserve misery and failure, and we’re going to get it, unless we repent.

Can an Ungrateful Pinhead Reform?

I had an interesting experience this week.

We have a Messianic Jew in our church. His name is Mike. Great guy. He’s into end-time preparation and firearms. The other day, out of the blue, he started talking to me about trading securities.

I have no idea why he brought it up. He doesn’t know my past. I used to trade, back when the tech bubble was still in effect. It was easy back then. I paid a big percentage of my law school tuition trading, and I got great results. One year I placed many trades, and I only had one loss. I ate $600 on Microsoft, which was no big deal.

No one believes that, including other people who traded during those pleasant times, but it’s true.

I got out of trading right before the bubble popped. I think it was 1998. I saw trouble coming, and I sold out. I never went back. I wanted to make money practicing law, and after 9/11 hit, I thought it was only a matter of time until the Muslim extremists blew up the stock exchange. I didn’t want my money sitting there when it happened. Banks looked much better. If your stock goes to zero after a bomb goes off, you’re dead. If your money is sitting in a bank, nothing happens, OR insurance covers it. And I thought we might be looking at deflation. That was before I fully comprehended the foolishness of Ben Bernanke.

Funny thing; a whole lot of people really ate it right after I got out. People who thought it would never end. People who had no business trading (actually, they thought they were investing). They lost their retirement money. It was awful. I got out at the peak. Again, no one believes that, but it happened.

Anyway, I looked at trading a year or two ago, and it didn’t look good to me. In the old days, stocks were very volatile, and I followed their stories, so I usually had a good idea which ones were going to go up or down in the near term. Also, stocks moved in big increments; this was before decimalization. When I took a new look, for some reason, it seemed to me that the new decimal prices made it harder to make money on day trades. I can’t recall exactly why I believed this. And it seemed like it was hard to find stocks with nice daily swings. I decided to drop it.

Mike started talking to me about trading, and I was very surprised. He said he was making money. Okay, fine. He’s up this month, right? Over the long run, he’ll get wiped out. The Gambler’s Ruin and so on. I asked him the appropriate questions. He has made money consistently, over a period of years. Not weeks or days. He made so much, the IRS tried to annihilate him. Clearly, he is not gambling.

He said he helped someone else get started. Someone at church. This person made a killing…and took it straight to the mall. He didn’t tell me who it was. He didn’t really say “straight to the mall,” but he made it clear the money had been spent, instead of going back into the business. This is not what trading is for. Trading is for accumulating money. You don’t do three trades and run to the store to buy multicolored Dolce & Gabbana crocodile-and-ostrich shoes. It’s a waste of time to show people how to make money, if they don’t manage it once they have it.

For some reason, he wanted to show me what he knew. He doesn’t want to invest for me. He doesn’t want a fee or a commission. He just likes showing people how to trade.

I asked him how much money I would need to play with, in order to make it worth it. I was hoping for a figure below the cost of a house. When he told me it would have to be at least $5,000, I practically wet myself. Who cares if I lose $5,000? For God’s sake; I’d consider that tuition. Nobody who isn’t in a bind should be afraid to risk a sum that small.

Today I downloaded my broker’s newest trading software. It’s very nice. It’s about as nice as the software real traders used fifteen years ago. In some ways, it’s better. Mike is telling me there are superior options, though.

I may get back in the game. If I can do well enough with relatively small sums to keep the bulk of my capital off the table, it’s safe, and it’s a very painless way to make money. If you take $25,000, make $25,000, and then stick the original $25,000 back in your mattress, you’re not betting the farm. Eventually, you should reach a point where you have a nice nest egg which is beyond the reach of market crashes. If an anthrax bomb destroys your trading capital, you’ll still have money to buy food.

This whole business got me thinking about my grandfather. He was a lawyer, and he did very well. He was also a stock market whiz, and he bought a tremendous amount of real estate. He didn’t borrow, and he still ended up with a very nice net worth. His daughters criticized him constantly, calling him cheap and greedy, and when I was a kid, I bought into it. But today I thought about it, and I realized they were very unfair.

My grandfather didn’t blow tons of cash on stupid things, but he never did without. If Granny went to him and said the TV wasn’t working, he told her to go to Lexington and get a new one, and he didn’t give her a price limit. When she wanted to go on vacation, he took her to places like Brazil and Hawaii. He drove a Cadillac, until he got stuck with a car dealership and got Buicks at cost. He had a gold Rolex. He spent a hundred thousand dollars on a bracelet for my grandmother. She had a $25,000 wedding ring. He had a very nice house, which he kept up. He had farms he played with, complete with tractors, hay bailers, cattle, and all the other trappings. When his daughters went to college, he let them use his checking account, and they loaded up on expensive clothes, even selling them to each other when they got bored. He bought three of them new cars when they got married. One married a hopeless alcoholic who could not run a business, and he invested repeatedly in the alcoholic’s car dealership until it went bust and he had to take it over.

That’s not how selfish parents act. I have seen selfish parents at work. A selfish parent will raise hell over private school tuition, while spending freely on hobbies. A selfish parent won’t spend money helping kids explore their talents. A selfish parent won’t pay for broadening family vacations.

Until today, I never realized what a healthy attitude my grandfather had. He liked making money; no doubt about it. But he picked up checks. He gave his grandkids fifty bucks each for Christmas, when fifty bucks was a lot of money. He paid my sister’s high school tuition. He was a generous guy, and we never gave him credit. I don’t want to speak disrespectfully about my mother and my aunts, but honestly, their attitude was a little bit like the Occupy ethos. I shouldn’t have paid any attention. I accepted this stuff when I was young; his selfishness was a settled fact, as far as everyone was concerned. But he was very good to us, and I still benefit from his foresight.

He was conservative, and at least two of his daughters turned out liberal. How about that?

As far as I know, only two of his grandchildren got his knack for trading. I may be the only one, but I believe one of my cousins has done very well. Anyway, I can do it. Maybe I shouldn’t be sitting on my ability. It seems like a silly thing for a Christian to get involved in, but plenty of Christians have been very blessed in various types of business. I can’t help thinking about the parable of the talents. I know the story is symbolic, and it’s not just about money, but it probably applies to money in many cases.

We have to do SOMETHING in order to put food on the table.

I really wonder why Mike started talking to me about this. I believe God has told me a couple of things about my financial future, and I’m wondering if this is part of it. I’m not interested in getting rich, but anything that helps me avoid devoting my life to chasing dollars is a help.

I was very unfair to my grandfather. I was influenced by the disinformation I got from others, but that doesn’t excuse me. As far as I know, I was his favorite grandchild. He could barely stand some of the others, but he used to put me in the truck and drive me all over the place. He used to put me on the fender of his tractor while he mowed his hay. He took me out to shoot rabbits. We used to go for long hikes on his properties. He even bought a pony for the grandkids and said he it would be worth it, as long as I got to ride it once.

I wish he was still here, so I could apologize.

http://youtu.be/eCVw8Qjeg84

Heathens, Prairie Dogs…What’s the Difference?

I had a good range session today.

In 2005 (I think), I bought a PSL (Romak III, FPK, whatever). This is a medium-range rifle made in Romania. It’s based on the AK74. I don’t really know what an AK74 is, but I would guess that it’s the 7.62x54R version of the AK47, since that’s what this gun is. Some people call the PSL a sniper rifle, but the general consensus is that sub-MOA performance is not a realistic goal, so some say it’s a DSM rifle. I don’t know what DSM stands for. “Designated Something Marksman,” maybe. I think it’s a guy in a platoon who carries a scoped rifle for shooting people too far away for unscoped AK47s. Look it up. I can’t do everything for you.

When I fired the PSL, I had horrible problems with trigger slap. This means the trigger was propelled forward when the gun went off. It happens so fast you can’t detect it, but after a while you realize your trigger finger is numb and shaking. This is bad.

I stuck a Red Star fire control group (trigger) in the gun, and it quit working. It wouldn’t cycle. My solution to this problem was to put the gun in the closet and lose some of the parts.

Recently I dug it out and worked on the trigger. I also got myself some cheap spam-can Russian ammo (147-grain light ball). Today I decided to see whether it worked.

The gun shoots very well now. The trigger is very, very nice, now that I’ve ground off all the parts that bothered me. When I pull the trigger, I can’t really tell when the gun is going to go off, and for slow shooting, this is what I like.

I shot at 50 yards, and I’m going to say I shot about 3 MOA, although I don’t have a photo of the target in front of me. I am not much of a rifle shot, but my impression is that I shot better than the ammunition. Maybe I’m wrong. I was pretty happy, considering what I paid for it. I moved the target back to 100 yards, and the groups opened up by a factor of two. It’s not really satisfying shooting a gun that inaccurate, but it proves I would have no problem blasting zombies at that range, since they’re more than six inches wide. On that basis, I feel that the ammo was a good deal. I’m considering splurging on a new scope. The gun came with a used Kalinka with dead tritium, and you can’t fix it.

I really regret not buying more 7N1 ammo when it was selling for $200/880 rounds. I shot most of mine before I got the gun working, so I never found out whether the gun could shoot well with it.

I should really get off my behind and buy more K31 ammunition. It’s still cheap, and the quality is wonderful.

I believe I need to put a bipod mount on the PSL, and my impression is that it should be near the center of mass. This is not where the bipods fit on my other guns, and I am starting to think that’s unfortunate, because it seems to be the steadiest location. In order to put one on the PSL, I’ll have to install a swivel myself.

I can’t help wondering if this gun is capable of better performance, but since match-grade ammo is outrageously expensive, I may never find out.

After I put the PSL away, I got out my new AMD65. This is a short (12.5″ barrel) AK47 folder. I’ve put a foregrip and green laser on it, and I got some Tapco magazines, even though people hate them. The goal was to have a nice truck gun that wasn’t so expensive losing it would give me an ulcer. I figured the laser would be a lifesaver (literally) in short-range defensive situations, and the compact size of the gun would make it handy.

The gun has exceeded expectations. The Tapco trigger is like glass lubricated with snot. It’s just plain wonderful. I had no cycling issues. The recoil was a joke. People said it would be loud because of the barrel length, but it didn’t bother me.

The sun was bright today, and my local range has stupidly set things up so you can’t shoot a rifle at under 75 feet, so finding the green laser dot was a challenge. I had to fiddle with the zero a lot, since the 50-foot zero I set up at home was no longer anywhere near right. When I finally got the gun working, the bullets appeared to be going into an area about 4″ in diameter. I was holding the gun away from my shoulder (the range doesn’t permit firing from the hip), to simulate the way it might be used in a confrontation, and it worked just fine.

I can’t recommend this thing highly enough. It’s a better caliber than 5.56mm, the gun is inexpensive, and it’s a pleasure to fire. Tulammo hollow points are supposed to be pretty lethal, and they’re cheap. I’m sure you can build something better if you spend enough money, but for five hundred bucks, this is very impressive.

Things are starting to shape up, firearms-wise. When Obama drives us into a depression and the filthy transgendered socialist hippies show up on my lawn to steal my homegrown right-wing Christian end-time turnips, I’ll be able to slay them like ants. I got a lot of my guns for fun, and that’s why I have so many, but a number are actually useful.

I really hope the good Lord is kind enough to prevent the pinheads from gutting the Second Amendment. My feeling is that as far as God is concerned, the Second Amendment is a Constitutional firewall. He’ll let them spy on us and force us to buy things and molest us at airports, but we get to keep our Mausers and AR15s and Norincos. I hope so, anyway. I joke, but persecution is already starting, and if socialism ruins the economy, it will get worse. Everyone will want a piece of the 1% or the Man or whatever it is they’ll be calling us at the time.

Now if someone would just invent a gun that cleans itself.

I Must be a MIDIanite

Crazy stuff is happening. A few years back, I got myself a grand piano and learned to play it, but I gave up because I couldn’t remember things I learned. Recently, I’ve started playing again.

I started taking guitar lessons a few months ago, and gradually, the emphasis switched from learning guitar to learning composition. First thing I knew, I was using Finale every day, and I found I preferred composing for the keyboard. Once that happened, I needed a MIDI keyboard to help me, so I bought a little-bitty one, and for reasons too dull to go into, I also set up a cheesy Casio keyboard beside my chair.

Now I have a couple of pieces written, and I find that to really understand and sharpen them, I need to play them. So in fits and starts, I’ve started sitting down at the grand piano.

It’s really something, playing a piece I wrote. One of my character quirks is that it’s harder for me to get interested in other people’s creative ideas (even Chopin’s) than my own, so now that I’m studying my own compositions, I feel much more connected to what I’m doing.

I got rid of my digital piano several years ago. It’s pretty clear that was a mistake. I’m going to need another one eventually. I may even have to get rid of my beer fridge so I’ll have room. Today I looked at prices, hoping they had gone down. They have, if you take inflation into account. But not enough to matter. ARRGH.

I guess it’s okay, though. I’m sure the piano I got rid of is inferior to the ones they sell now.

It makes me nervous to consider the possibility that I might be able to do really well at something new. I don’t want to put up a lot of crap theorizing about my potential and then find out I’m wrong. But I keep comparing my musical ideas to those of successful composers, and I am pleasantly surprised. I have a lot to learn, and in some ways, I’m restricted to pretty simple ideas, but I think I have the main thing I need, which is an inner voice that gives me good original music.

I don’t know what to think about this. If things keep going this well, there’s no reason why I won’t find myself generating a sizable body of useful music.

God guides and restores. The more you give yourself to him and get to know him, the more he repairs you and squeezes the most out of your remaining potential. You can’t expect it to happen if you live for yourself and have no prayer life, but if you persist in pressing into his kingdom, remarkable things will happen. I believe God has set his seal on certain promises he has made me, and based on the progress I’ve seen, it looks like I’m right. It’s a little scary, but I can’t deny it.

I don’t understand why the music I write is so different from what I expected to write. I thought I’d be coming up with religious music with a lot of soul, but so far, it’s all classical-influenced pop. I don’t mean it can’t be used for religious purposes, but it seems to be in the same broad class of music as things like Classical Gas.

I suppose one reason things are going this way is that it’s very hard to get a computer to swing or shuffle. Maybe I drifted toward whiter music because I’m not ready to cope with beating soul out of a CPU.

I’ll keep posting stuff as I write it.

Nice Priorities

People are writing about the dope legalization efforts in Washington and Colorado. I’ve thought about it, and although I am disgusted, I really don’t care. I used to feel differently, but it’s 2012, and our drug laws have proven to be about as effective as the Cuba embargo.

I get tired of hearing people say the government shouldn’t “legislate morality.” We have all sorts of laws intended to promote good morals, and some of those laws seem to have no other purpose. We ban incest, for example, even when it’s homosexual incest, which can’t produce deformed children. It can be very hard to separate morality from public policy, which ought to tell people something. Anyway, it doesn’t bother me that the government tries to reinforce our morals, as long as they don’t get too intrusive. But it does seem silly that a government official can punish me for putting things in my mouth. They can’t prosecute me for poking my eyes out or amputating my own feet, but if I smoke meth once at a party, they can arrest me. Seems odd.

Do people smoke meth at parties? I guess that shows how little I know about it. Meth seems more like a sleazy drug you enjoy in private, while huddled behind a dumpster in a pair of jeans caked with dried urine.

Drug abuse is a horrendous, gigantic sin. But it’s an extremely personal sin. Unlike abortion and gay marriage, drug abuse is something you can do all by yourself, and most of the harm will fall on you, not others. It’s not the same as killing a baby or forcing a society to create and enforce a new and abominable right. It’s also becoming impossible to police. To ban a drug, you have to know it exists, and you have to name it. Thanks to improvements in chemistry, we come up with new, legal drugs all the time. I don’t think we’ll ever catch up with science. It seems like the worst drugs of all are legal now. Say what you want about cocaine. It doesn’t make people eat each other’s faces.

Right now, all across the country, people of very low intelligence are making great incomes selling drugs. Without drug laws, they would be forced to go on welfare or take the menial jobs their abilities justify. If drugs were legal, selling drugs would be a real job. You would have to work 40 hours a week, the price of your product would be low due to competition, and if you were stupid or lazy (most dealers are both), you would go out of business. It would be wonderful to see hordes of trashy people deprived of an illicit livelihood. I don’t think other types of crime could absorb them. Only so many people can be pimps and burglars. I think they’d be in real trouble. They would dry up. They wouldn’t be able to subsidize gangs and illegal firearms. Our streets would be safer.

Would legalization lead to a drug craze that would destroy society? I guess it’s possible, but I don’t think so. Drugs are easy to get right now; they’re just overpriced. I think just about everyone who wants to do drugs is doing them. If I felt like debasing myself, I could have crack in half an hour, but I don’t want it, so I’m not going to get it. I doubt that a significant percentage of the population would start using drugs simply because they could.

In the past, drugs were legal in the United States. You could buy heroin if you felt like it. Back in those days, drugs were a small problem. Now they’re a big problem. You could say, “Wow, think how bad it would be if our laws weren’t suppressing drug abuse,” but the most likely thing is that our laws aren’t making a big difference, apart from financing violence and other crimes.

We complain about Democrats expecting the government to solve our problems, and we’re right, but it may be that conservatives, or at least people who favor conventional morality, are also too dependent on the government. Maybe when we look at a law, we should ask ourselves whether it makes any sense to expect the government to be able to bring about the result the law promotes. By now, it’s indisputable: laws do not prevent the widespread sale or use of mind-altering drugs.

I suppose people will say I should be in favor of gay marriage. I disagree. The regulation of drugs is a proactive step, taken by a society with a long history of avoiding the drug issue. The legalization of drugs is merely the undoing of a proactive step. The legalization of gay marriage is also proactive. We would be creating a set of rights that has never existed in any Christian nation, and like other pro-homosexuality measures, it contributes to an atmosphere in which moral people are persecuted with the government’s blessing and assistance. If we legalize drugs, we will not be forced to hire addicts or refrain from speaking ill of them, but as the homosexual agenda moves forward, we are beginning to see laws requiring us to accept homosexuality and assist in its promotion.

Laws sanctioning gay marriage are an affirmative expression of society’s approval and support. The repeal of laws banning drugs carries no such message. It simply means we’ve decided to quit knocking ourselves out trying (unsuccessfully) to protect individuals from themselves. It wouldn’t mean we could be fired or sued for criticizing addicts, or that we would be characterized as “haters” for opposing drug use.

I’m not a libertarian. I think it’s insane for intelligent people to base their votes on a juvenile desire to smoke weed, and I think weed makes people trashy and silly. I just think there are some things laws can’t fix.

The Bible mentions drugs. It is clearly against drug abuse, but there is only one drug transaction in the Bible (Rachel and Leah haggling over mandrakes), and it doesn’t mention civil penalties. And the Bible permits the use of alcohol, even when mild intoxication is the goal. My take on the Bible’s teaching on drugs is that all recreational drug use is abominable, drunkenness is sin, and we are permitted to have one or two drinks on occasion. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how it looks.

The suicidal election we just endured has served to remind me that good things don’t come from government. If enough people in a nation submit to God and have strong prayer lives, God will fix the government and bless the whole country, and he will give disproportionate power to his people. If not, all the conservative policies in the world will not save the nation.

In the last election, we had a completely godless candidate promoting himself as a socialist messiah, and that’s bad, but we also had a Republican heretic whose slogan was not, “Believe in God,” but, “Believe in America.” I was disturbed when I saw the slogan, because I knew it was offensive, but I don’t run the world, so there wasn’t anything I could do. I voted for the least-ungodly choice, and he lost.

The government can’t make everyone rich with EBT cards and free cell phones, and it can’t keep our kids off drugs. It can’t keep us out of war. It can’t give us prosperity or internal peace. All those things come from prayer and submission. I only know of one nation that can screw up its relationship with God and still come out okay, and that’s Israel (if you call losing six million people in one decade “okay”). America can be abased and subjugated permanently. We have no unconditional promises to match the ones God gave Israel.

If we want things to go well, we need to fast, and we need to pray for God to help us add to our numbers inside the US. The other things we do won’t amount to much. Conservatives are right, and we should win elections, but the voters are extremely ignorant and unprincipled, so while we’re waving our arms and yelling about the Laffer Curve and the debilitating effects of entitlements, many of the people who hear us are thinking about things like Dancing With the Stars or which candidate they’re rather sleep with. We’re drilling in the wrong places.

He Also Supported Leprosy

Last night, I asked God to tell me why Mitt Romney–the non-Christian MORMON–lost. Soon afterward, I found myself reading Isaiah, and I remembered what I had asked for.

When I turned on my tablet Bible app, I found the following text highlighted: “I will turn My hand against you,
And thoroughly purge away your dross And take away all your alloy.” That’s Isaiah 1:25.

The KJV says “tin,” not “alloy.” I didn’t know the NJKV said “alloy” until just now. Makes me think about all the “mixed multitude” complaints my friend Aaron has made. “Alloy” would certainly make more sense than “tin.” Why would God want to get rid of a pure metal which is useful? An alloy sounds much more likely. Believers who are alloyed with the dross of the world cause a lot of our problems. Many evangelicals think Obama is wonderful, because they have an adulterous spirit. They think they can go to church on Sunday and still be cool the rest of the week. They went into voting booths last week and sold Jesus for 30 pieces of government silver.

Anyway, here is what really caught my attention. It’s from Isaiah 3:

For behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts,
Takes away from Jerusalem and from Judah
The stock and the store,
The whole supply of bread and the whole supply of water;
The mighty man and the man of war,
The judge and the prophet,
And the diviner and the elder;
The captain of fifty and the honorable man,
The counselor and the skillful artisan,
And the expert enchanter.
“I will give children to be their princes,
And babes shall rule over them.
The people will be oppressed,
Every one by another and every one by his neighbor;
The child will be insolent toward the elder,
And the base toward the honorable.”

When a man takes hold of his brother
In the house of his father, saying,
“You have clothing;
You be our ruler,
And let these ruins be under your power,”[a]
In that day he will protest, saying,
“I cannot cure your ills,
For in my house is neither food nor clothing;
Do not make me a ruler of the people.”

For Jerusalem stumbled,
And Judah is fallen,
Because their tongue and their doings
Are against the Lord,
To provoke the eyes of His glory.
The look on their countenance witnesses against them,
And they declare their sin as Sodom;
They do not hide it.
Woe to their soul!
For they have brought evil upon themselves.

“Say to the righteous that it shall be well with them,
For they shall eat the fruit of their doings.
Woe to the wicked! It shall be ill with him,
For the reward of his hands shall be given him.
As for My people, children are their oppressors,
And women rule over them.
O My people! Those who lead you cause you to err,
And destroy the way of your paths.”

I realize this was not addressed to the US at the time it was written, but God works in patterns that repeat throughout history, and he puts them in the Bible so we will not have to repeat the punishments of those who came before us. If he did this to the Jews, he will do similar things to us.

He says he will take away food and water. That means lean times. It would not surprise me. Look what he did to Washington in the recent past. Two hurricanes and one earthquake. For a long time, I’ve prayed for God’s retribution to fall on the ungodly places instead of hitting areas like central Florida. Maybe he is listening to people like me. Anyway, this passage points to problems with the food supply.

God then says he will take away the counselor and the honorable man and so on. That means he will take away the people we should be listening to. The Romneys. He doesn’t say he’ll take away the righteous. Just the wise who might otherwise help us find our way.

Next God says, ““I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.”

Do I even have to explain? In droves, young people waddled to the polls in sagging pants so they could vote for Obama. They know virtually nothing about him (or anything else), but he won their votes by a large margin. Their values, if you can call them that, are represented heavily in Obama’s policies. Obama appoints people who think like college freshmen clutching their first credit cards. Some are young. Many merely think (or, more accurately, fail to think) like the young. Obama himself was young when he was elected, and he has the naivete and gullibility of a preteen. The old are supposed to run the world, because they know how it works (remember the famous debate line uttered by George W. Bush). When the young are in charge, and their “ideas” shape policy, things go very, very badly.

Later, God says, “As for My people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them.” How true. Women invariably vote for oppression. They think Uncle Sam is the best husband a girl could have. If men didn’t vote, we would already be Communists.

Next: “The people will be oppressed, every one by another and every one by his neighbor;” This is what happens when society turns upside-down. It has happened in Nazi Germany and Cuba, to name two examples. The government pits people against each other, rewarding people for informing. In countries where this has happened, adults have become afraid of their own children, because the kids are encouraged to rat them out at school. Our government is now telling us, “If you see something, say something.” During his campaign, Obama asked people to squeal on people who wrote doubleplusungood things about him on the web. Obama even tried to form his own version of the Hitler Youth, and he got a Christian jailed for making an anti-Islamic video (the pretext is irrelevant; he was investigated because of the video, not the misconduct for which he was imprisoned).

The government is also turning our neighbors into overweening government goons. Unsuccessful, uneducated people have been hired as TSA officers, to molest us when we travel.Oppression is here, and it will get worse.

“The child will be insolent toward the elder, and the base toward the honorable.” Did you see the way Obama spoke to McCain and Romney during the debates? Have you seen the filthy things Obama supporters have said before and since the election? Ignorant, unaccomplished people now presume to “school” the rest of us before the public. We have George Will and Robert Bork. The left has Beyonce and Madonna. It reminds me of what Bill Clinton said about Obama duing the 2008 campaign: “A few years ago, this guy would have been carrying our bags.” Some interpreted it as racism, but Clinton was actually making a reference to his own past, when he drove a Senator’s car in order to gain his patronage. Clinton worked his way up through the ranks. Obama had everything handed to him, and now he lectures people of superior intellect and greater experience.

God goes on to tell us that people will not want to be rulers. We’ve already seen that happen. Sarah Palin got a stomachful of the abuse and slander trashy individuals heaped on her and on her family. We are so abusive to good conservative people who volunteer to serve, surely we discourage many of them. I think it even happens in the church. My exhaustion with people from my old church was a major reason I deleted my Facebook account and started a new one. Talking to people who refuse to think is like trying to carve stone with a plastic knife.

Here’s an obvious parallel: “And they declare their sin as Sodom; they do not hide it. Woe to their soul! For they have brought evil upon themselves.” We decided homosexuality was not a disorder. Then we decided it was something we should tolerate. Then we decided it was something we should celebrate and promote. Now we’re actively punishing righteous people who disagree. You can lose your job for saying something negative about sexual sin.

Sodom had lots of sins, but homosexuality was probably the worst. In Sodom, male gangs committed homosexual rape in the streets. Some claim the main problem with Sodom was its harshness to the poor, but I think it’s safe to say that forced penetration by groups of strangers offends God more than refusing to give alms.

Socialism, embraced by the Obama crowd, is actually morally equivalent to one of the main crimes of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. As I’ve noted in the past, these doomed peoples used to raid businesses in groups. Each person would steal an amount so small, he or she could not be arrested. It was a form of looting, grounded in covetousness. Socialism, or “social justice,” as the left calls it, is fundamentally similar. A large group of people votes for the looting of numerous individuals and businesses. Each pro-looting voter gets only a small amount of wealth from each looted entity, but the result is the destruction of businesses and inheritances (which are strongly favored in the Bible).

It used to be that people who took government money were ashamed, but now they call the loot “entitlements,” and they say the rest of us owe it to them! Incredible. “They declare their sin as Sodom; they do not hide it.”

There is one positive verse in this chapter:

Say to the righteous that it shall be well with them,
For they shall eat the fruit of their doings.
Woe to the wicked! It shall be ill with him,
For the reward of his hands shall be given him.

It looks like God will protect certain Americans. Several years ago, I heard God tell me, “This recession is not for you.” All across the US, zealous Christians have been leaving cities and moving to rural areas. It’s not an organized top-down movement. The Holy Spirit has moved individuals, separately, to get out. This verse explains it.

God is leading many of us to higher ground. When things get bad, there will be rioting and looting, and as always, the mobs will do most of the damage near their own homes. They will rob, rape, and murder the people next door, before they’ll get in cars and pillage the countryside. Rural areas will be a lot safer, until the government itself gets involved in violent persecution and confiscation.

I do not believe most Christians will be safe. Most Christians reject the Holy Spirit and live however they want. But I think those who live in communion with God–the people who will qualify for the Rapture–are protected. From time to time, as persecution increases, we will be martyred in large numbers. But I believe that will happen to two types of people: those who don’t know God well enough to hear a warning, and those whom he warns, yet who choose to lay down their lives and leave this earth.

We should look at the story of Lot for guidance. When God decided to wipe out Sodom, he pulled Lot into his house (through two angels) and struck his enemies with blindness. The predatory gays outside groped for the door and couldn’t find it, which is actually a good metaphor for people who can’t enter the kingdom of God. Similar things must have happened in Noah’s time. Christians don’t have much information about Noah’s dealings with his neighbors, but God must have protected him from them, because common sense says they would have stormed the ark after the waters rose a certain amount. God allowed Jesus to walk through a crowd of angry Nazarenes who wanted to murder him. If you’re spending time in the Spirit and dedicating your life to God, you probably will be fine, until and unless a time comes when God chooses to allow you to be sacrificed. By that time, you’ll be ready to go, as Paul and Peter were.

In the movie Defending Your Life, Albert Brooks played a dead soul who was on trial, and the lawyers bragged that they used higher percentages of their brains than we do. One was “clocked” at 51%. When Brooks asked questions about their big brains, one of them said something like, “When you use more than 5% of your brain, you don’t want to be on Earth.” That’s how it will be for people who are living by the Spirit. Increasingly, when we are granted reprieves, they will seem like extensions of our sentences.

I don’t understand why God allowed me to feel that Romney would win, but it may be that God did not choose Obama until election day. It may be that if enough of us had prayed, God would have spared us Obama, and the faith I felt was just my inadequate contribution. I can’t say. But I’m confident that God will explain it to me sooner or later. He has proven himself to exist, without a shadow of a doubt, so I can’t be too discouraged by bumps in the road.

Isaiah says God will purify and restore the Jews to whom his prophecy applies. I would hesitate to apply that to us. Israel is important. America is peripheral and ephemeral. We are relatively insignificant. We do not have the same promises Israel has. God can’t let Israel suffer final defeat, because it would violate his covenant with Abraham. If he chastises Israel, he has to relent and rebuild. If he chastises America, he can allow us to be slaughtered to the last man. Our survival is conditional, unlike that of Israel. It may be that we will change, but our record of stupidity suggests otherwise.

I feel better about the election now. I thought it was man thwarting God’s will, but now I think it was God, thwarting man’s will. Most of us wanted Romney (the cult member) to save us, but God chose to punish us with Obama (the false Christian). God wrecked Romney’s ground game, which was expected to be powerful. He blessed the Democrats’ ground game, which was supposed to be a shambles. He sent a hurricane that somehow helped Obama, even though Obama’s response caused terrible suffering. Now we have the President God wants us to have, and Americans are going to suffer because of that President’s incompetence, vanity, and bitterness.

I don’t know whether God gave us a non-Christian candidate to punish us, or he punished us for choosing a non-Christian candidate. Either way, we did ourselves in.

A small number of Americans turned to God. The Tea Party people, for example. But many Republicans decided the Christian right was too scary. They decided to be man-pleasers. Romney was our reward, just as McCain was our reward in 2008.

There is nowhere to run, if America has truly turned the corner. If socialism prevails here, Satan has the entire world, pretty much. People used to come here to escape, but those days may be over. The only lifeboat country of any significance will be Israel, and it will only be open to Jews.

By the way, Isaiah predicted wars for people who turn from God, and Isaiah 4:1 says a time will come when seven women will try to wed a single man. That doesn’t bode very well for our future. A shortage of men usually comes from war, and if it gets to the Isaiah 4:1 stage, it means war on one’s own soil. No country would send 6/7 of its men abroad to fight. It may refer to civil war. It would be counterproductive, expensive, and irrational for an enemy to kill off 6/7 of the male workforce of a conquered nation. It could happen, though, in a civil war, where the violence is more personal and passionate.

The natural approach has failed, so my advice is to build an ark the supernatural way. Get baptized with the Spirit. Pray in tongues. Submit. Give to the poor. Study. Fast. Get to know God, and see if you can get him to deliver you. Beyond that, I have no advice. We’ve tried the other stuff, and it hasn’t worked.

Lesson Learned? Doubtful.

I looked at the news today and saw that people are still wondering why Romney lost. It’s funny; Republicans criticize other people for being PC, but now we’re guiltier than anyone. No one will say it: Americans will not turn out to vote for a Mormon. Mormonism is a non-Christian cult, and many Christians have had negative experiences with it. I voted for Romney because I believed that a Mormon who shares our goals was better than a hostile atheist pretending to be a Christian, but it looks like many Christians felt differently.

People are talking about the Tea Party as though it were dead, and as though it was a weakening influence. That’s ridiculous. The Tea Party had it right. They wanted a Christian. Unfortunately, the people who control the primaries are not very conservative, and they don’t care about principle. They are carnal people who only think about numbers. They do not understand the minds of the base.

If we had run a Christian with a little personal pizzazz, we would probably have won. Millions of people who decided not to vote would probably have gotten in their cars and stood in line.

It’s sad. Herman Cain had it all, but it turned out he had a sex problem that made Bill Clinton look like a monk. He did us tremendous harm by lying about his past. We decided Bachmann and Santorum wouldn’t appeal to the mindless middle. We didn’t have the guts to draft Palin. We did exactly what we did in 2008. We picked the person we thought would please the center and left. I wonder if anyone in the nomination machine will learn from this.

You don’t have to be a liberal to win. You have to be an inspiration. The public can’t tell liberal from conservative. If you sound like you know what you’re doing–and you don’t belong to a weird cult–you can win. The same people who elected Bush twice elected Obama twice. If political complexion meant anything, that could not happen.

Romney won in Massachusetts when he ran for governor. That’s wonderful, but Massachusetts is not the entire United States. People there are not very interested in God. Romney had to win in places like Florida and Virginia, where people actually go to church.

I wonder who the GOP will nominate next time. Maybe a homosexual. Unlike rats in a behavioral experiments, we run toward negative stimuli. We went left and got zapped twice, so we’ll probably go left again.

You can’t out-left the left. They’re better at it than we are. It only makes sense that voters picked a real liberal over a lukewarm conservative with a liberal veneer.

We’ll probably nominate Christie next time. He’s against gun rights, and he doesn’t seem to have much understanding of loyalty, but he’s a brilliant speaker, and he won a gubernatorial race in a liberal state, so like McCain and Romney, he must be a conservative liberals will vote for, right? Yeah! Slam dunk!

For four years, I’ve been saying the US was about to sink to the level of Italy or Greece. I still see that happening. If you’re worried, get close to God. He concerns himself with individuals more than nations.