Not What I Expected

When I started writing music, I thought I’d be doing something bluesy, but I keep writing things that are sort of like classical. I just finished one tonight. “Finished” is not quite right. I got it up to an acceptable length, came up with a beginning and end, and stopped. I can fix it up later.

I was thinking it might be useful for my church’s dance team. With that in mind, I repeated the catchier parts instead of writing new ones. I figured that if people were dancing to it, they would want some repetition.

I remembered to pray for help before I worked on it. That makes me happy. I don’t like engaging in a task without praying first, but I always forget.

When I started, I tried to write it using the viola da gamba sound from Finale. I have loved the sound of this weird instrument ever since I saw Tous Les Matins du Monde, which is a really depressing French movie (I repeat myself) about musicians. It’s like a cello, but it has seven strings. It turns out the Finale version refuses to do anything other than pizzicato, so I used a cello sound instead.

Here it is. I’m thrilled with it. Looks like a good first draft to me. I can’t believe I wrote it. It doesn’t seem like my personality at all.

Viola da Gamba Am Noodling 10 28 12

Where the Cows Lick Pillars of Salt

Sorry I did not come by to weep with everyone on Tuesday night. On Monday, I had a 2-phone-battery conversation with somone who thinks going into drug rehab is somehow a service that benefits ME, and I decided to get up the next day and get out of Miami.

Ocala. That’s what it’s all about.

To recap, I went to Winter Haven to help launch a new church, and I felt like a runaway slave. Afterward, I started thinking about moving north. Then my buddy Mike started talking about Ocala. Either that, or I came up with the idea myself. Can’t remember. I started looking at Ocala real estate on the computer, with the intensity of an Obama campaign staffer researching Romney’s overdue library books. I found out that you can get a magnificent farm up there for the cost of a little-bitty house in Coral Gables. I’ve been making lists and looking at Google Earth a lot.

Originally, I thought I would go alone, because I didn’t think my father would ever leave this place. Then he started coming around. That was great, because I refuse to have a mortgage, and if we both go, we can have a much nicer property.

I checked out fourteen places, from two acres to forty, if I recall correctly. If I had to describe this area, I’d say it looks a great deal like the area outside Lexington, Kentucky, only without the backwardness and bigotry. I hope. Mike says everyone got along great at the racially mixed school he went to in Ocala.

I had read that the dirt up there was too sandy for growing things, but that’s not true. I saw all sorts of hay, and people were growing stuff in their yards. It may not be the finest dirt on earth, but clearly, it works. We don’t really have dirt in Miami. A lot of this area has a few inches of white sand over oolite (coral rock), and when they build houses, sometimes they add a little muck from the Everglades, so you end up with grey sand. To plant a tree in my yard, you have to use a mattock and cut a hole in the rock. I’ve pretty much had it with our dirt.

I was able to move between properties ten miles apart in about as many minutes. As a victim of Miami, I can’t even express my joy. The traffic here is nearly unbearable, and the worst part about it is that when you finally get out of the car, you’re still in Miami.

There are actual hills up there. At one point, while driving, I felt pressure in my ears. I didn’t think that was possible in Florida.

I also enjoyed hearing English. Diversity is swell, but I get very, very, very tired of playing charades to make myself understood in the United States of America, by individuals who have been here since Carter.

People get mad at me because I can’t understand their bad English. One of the biggest night school subjects here is ESOL, or English for Speakers of Other Languages. That’s great, but they haven’t gotten around to adding UESOL, or Understanding English for Speakers of Other Languages. Funny thing, I find it easier to talk to relatively new Haitians than Cubans who have been here 20 years. The Haitians learn English very quickly, and when their English isn’t good (very rare), I can talk to them in French.

Anyway, I do look forward to saying everything ONCE.

The Romney signs…they were everywhere. I saw a few Obamas, but not enough to matter. Mike says a politician who runs as a Democrat in Marion County has no shot. I love that.

I would say the Ocala area looks, well, not hectic. I suppose it could get dull. But I don’t do much anyway, in terms of going out on the town. I don’t like movies because my feet stick to the floor and people yap in Spanish. I don’t like restaurants because I cook better than they do. Clubs…don’t even joke. I can generally be found at home, at church, or running errands. My assumption is that if I join a good church up there, I’ll have a social circle within two to three months, and after that, life will be much as it is here, only without the unpleasant sensation of being in Miami.

I saw a lot of wonderful things. Barbecue restaurants, plural. All sorts of businesses related to farming. They would be helpful to a tool-oriented person hoping to get into things like canning food and maintaining a workshop. There’s a Krystal restaurant in town. They don’t have a Costco, and that will smart, but you can’t have everything. There’s a Gordon Food Service 60 miles away. I wanted to be remote, so I shouldn’t complain.

It may be hard to find a place that doesn’t have horse paraphernalia. I am not going to have much use for a barn. I know people will say I can put a workshop in it, but horse barns are cut up into little stalls. I think it would be pretty hard to convert one. Mike says we can rent stalls to people. Basically, they would be paying to give me handy manure.

I don’t know much about maintaining rural property, even though I’ve owned a ton of it in common with family. As far as I know, you don’t have to do much with barns and land. We did virtually nothing to the farms we sold, and they held their value. I don’t want to end up bush-hogging thirty or forty acres once a month, or mowing a giant yard.

I’m going to try to put together a plan and get this done. Things are probably going to get very bad now that we have chosen Obama a second time, and if a depression hits the cities, the entitlement flash mobs will be invading houses en masse, raping, killing, and stealing. Or “stealing BACK,” as they would say. Places like Ocala will be very dangerous for that crowd. Up there, a guy with scoped rifles (and friends with scoped rifles) might have a real advantage over liberal dentists and accountants in Coral Gables. I guess it sounds like I’m planning to move so I can shoot a bunch of people. No, but I don’t want to be an easy target when the anti-Christian, anti-conservative Kristallnacht comes.

I guess I should write about the election.

Many conservatives are questioning the legitimacy of Obama’s victory. Let me give you a bitter pill. It’s completely legitimate. Unless they turn up an extremely unlikely election-rigging scam which spans many states, no reasonable person will ever be able to deny that we chose this man. We know what he is, and we want it.

People are saying he won because the media didn’t go after him. I’m sure that helped him, but his screwups have been covered fairly well. Everyone who owns a PC or TV should be aware of his failures and negative traits. People claim he won because the public has drifted left. I very much doubt it. I don’t think the public is smart enough to know what left is.

Obama won because a big percentage of the electorate is ignorant and/or not very bright. Grab a typical college graduate and ask him if he has any idea why entitlements lead to unemployment and low productivity, and chances are, he won’t have a clue. The people who decided the election were not favoring leftism. They went for the guy they liked best. They saw the debates, and they thought about things like hair and suits, and at the end, they decided Obama made them feel better.

People who are obsessed with politics think everyone worries about things like the proper level of taxation and the size of our military. In reality, the average voter votes based on instinct, which is something that exists to help creatures who lack the ability or inclination to reason.

Ronald Reagan ran against Carter. He projected confidence and charm, so he won twice. Bush I ran against Dukakis, who looked short, dumpy, and timid, so he won once. Clinton charmed female voters, so he beat Bush I. Bush II seemed less crazy than Gore and less snotty than Kerry, so he got eight years.

I know it’s not really that simple. Policies matter a little. But it’s very obvious that we are as willing to vote for extreme leftists as right-of-center conservatives, so I don’t believe substance means much.

Anyway, Obama is the President, and he is the true choice of the people, so get over it.

As to why Obama won people’s hearts, I believe the answer is supernatural. We have killed tens of millions of unborn babies (and quite a few that were born), we have turned against Israel, a huge percentage of us support perversion, we think fornication is a God-given right, and we are becoming cruel and extremely proud. We pray less than ever, and church attendance is dropping. We are becoming God’s enemies. In my opinion, our reward is national decline. God has blinded us to Obama’s revolting shortcomings, so we did something no reasonable nation would do. We chose Obama not once, but twice.

I was highly disturbed when I saw the election results. I was in a hotel room, trying to sleep, and I stupidly forgot to turn off my phone. People woke me up more than once, calling to express their horror. At some point in the wee hours, I gave up and looked at Drudge. Arrgh.

Before the election, I spent a great deal of time in prayer. I felt great faith pushing through me. I thought a Romney victory was very likely. When I saw that I was wrong, the thing that disturbed me most was not the Obama victory, but the fact that I had believed he would lose. It’s very unusual for me to have strong faith for a result and then to see something different happen. It affects my relationship with God. I will never doubt him or criticize him, but a failure like this makes me reevaluate the things I do in my walk of faith. Am I praying correctly? Am I interpreting what I feel correctly? Is there something else I should be doing? If I’m wrong about this, what else am I wrong about?

I believe God sometimes sets his seal on things. By that, I mean he decrees that a thing will be done, with complete finality. He doesn’t say “if” or “maybe.” It’s done. Period. I believe he reveals this to some people during prayer. Sometimes the rush of faith that follows a request is so powerful, it’s overwhelming. There’s no way to deny it.

This happened to me back when an ex-girlfriend was filing nutty lawsuits against me. One day I was praying in my truck, and a wave of faith hit me, and I grabbed the console between the seats because I felt I would be pushed over if I didn’t have something to hold. After that, I knew I was going to win, and I was right. On top of that, I asked for very specific things in the last two hearings, and I got them.

I’ve also had it happen with regard to other things I’ve asked for. I asked God to do everything within his power to get my father and sister to accept Christ, be baptized with the Spirit, pray in tongues, be freed from their iniquities, and live in power and blessings, and my faith told me it would be done. God didn’t say they would change; he just said he would do everything possible. They still have free will.

I have found that usually, a strong rush of faith that doesn’t reach the threshold of a sealed answer will still get the job done. But sometimes–I think–a small amount of doubt is enough to sink the ship. I think that’s what happened with the election. I felt great faith, but I also felt something pushing back, and I wasn’t able to get to the point where doubt was completely destroyed. It may sound like I’m giving a lot of importance to my prayers, but my religion tells me the prayer of one man held the sun still in the sky, and I am not willing to limit God.

I think that in the future, I’ll have to be careful not to conclude that something is sealed when it isn’t. I also think that when I’m not sure a thing is sealed, and it’s an important matter, I should continue in prayer until I get resolution. That’s my take for now, anyway.

For a long time, I’ve prayed for God to bless and empower Christians, not America in general. I won’t pray for America’s success because America has been harmed by false prosperity. When things go well, we do what the ancient Jews did. We turn away from God, credit ourselves, and sink into sin. I see that happening around me, so I have prayed that God would bring down ungodly people who are in power and strengthen believers. I believe this will help people turn back to God, where they will work to achieve his ends. They will work as they were intended, with his authority, to increase his kingdom in the earth. I think the Obama disaster is God granting prayers like mine. Like the Hebrews who feasted on quail till they puked, we’re going to feast on our own conceit. God will give us the incompetent, dangerous leaders our egos tell us we need, and they will lead us over cliffs until we repent. That’s my best guess.

God is taking away the things we believe in. He is taking away every stable investment. Stocks are shaky, and Obama’s tax changes will kill them. Gold is volatile. Real estate could plummet again at any time. Even cash is sinking. Thanks to Bernanke’s backdoor socialism, if you sell your risky stocks and put the money in the bank, you still lose value. It looks as though a time is coming when everything we cling to will turn on us, and unless we have a good grip on God, we will sink.

This is why I like the rural-compound-with-no-mortgage idea. Little properties in places like Manhattan and Coral Gables are only valuable in good times. They have no real value. A Park Avenue condo, for example, is a tiny box with no soil, even if it costs ten million dollars. Right now it’s valuable because there are a lot of people who have money. When things go bad, people won’t want little boxes. They’ll want acreage, so they can grow things and defend themselves. Bernanke can wreck the dollar, but he can’t dry up your well or prevent potatoes from growing in your yard.

I keep meeting people who have Ocala connections. Mike was the first. I went to church and mentioned it, and I found out that one of the armorbearers already owns 20 acres there and wants to move, but his wife won’t let him. He has a carry permit, and he’s learning to can! One of my best friends, a former armorbearer, is married to a woman who has family in Marion County. She has wanted to move there for a while now. The other day, I mentioned the idea to a friend who used to be part of my prayer group at Trinity. He goes to New Dawn now. He says he went to high school in Ocala. To me, these things seem like confirmation.

I think God is probably going to protect Christians in the years ahead. I think we will do better than ever, while the country sinks. I think Israel will also prosper. America is abandoning Israel, and God never will, so he will find other ways to bless his nation. If Christians and Israel do well, it will serve to ground persecution. No surprise there. We’ve been told to expect it.

When I say “Christians,” I mean charismatics who really know God. I don’t think he’s going to do much for people who don’t have the Holy Spirit, because they don’t hear his guidance as well. They say 20 million confused people who claim to be evangelicals voted for Obama. I think that should tell you how lost a so-called Christian can be.

If I learn anything new, I’ll let you know.

Thanksgiving Holds the Channel Open

I am not very worried today. God has given me peace about the election, so I’m not glued to a TV or computer, looking for clues. I don’t think the election will affect me as much as it will other people, even if it goes the wrong way. God has told me the recession is not for me. I don’t have anything to worry about, although I do hope Obama loses.

I continue to see all sorts of supernatural manifestations around me and also around people I know. The Bible condemns people who require signs, but it also says signs and wonders follow God’s servants, so any Christian who scoffs at the supernatural is probably ignorant.

I’ve learned a lot about our intended function as servants of the kingdom. If you watch TBN, you will eventually start to think God’s purpose is to give us money and big houses, and that we can force him to do whatever we want by using the name of Jesus and sending cash to men in gaudy suits. Jesus made it clear that we are expected to put God’s kingdom and righteousness first.

That’s an important distinction. Historically, Christians have ignored the kingdom and put way too much emphasis on salvation. I guess the weighed the evil of spending eternity in hell against every other bad thing imaginable and decided that there was no price too high to pay for salvation. As a result, we ended up with idiotic policies such as conversion by torture or threat of death. In reality, salvation is not the most important thing in God’s plan. If it were, people would get it automatically. The most important thing is to advance God’s kingdom, and if you push salvation at the expense of God’s sovereignty, you end up with problems.

My former church was all about numbers. They craved money, and they also thought salvation was the main purpose for a church’s existence, so they watered down their teaching and produced hordes of so-called Christians who were nothing but hypocrites. These people went to church and danced around and claimed God was all over them, and then they went home and fornicated and did whatever else non-Christians do. Some went home, I should say. Some stayed at church and fornicated there. The Armorbearers used to catch them.

The pastor’s son said he would actually have paid people to go to church, had he been able to. That shows how little he knew about his job. He felt that as long as he got people to say the sinner’s prayer, he had done a wonderful thing for God. He did not understand that the church is supposed to be separate from the secular world. When we work too hard to bring the lost into the church, we end up with churches that imitate the lost instead of leading them, and eventually, the lost take over and end up leading us.

God is supposed to rule inside us. That means we belong to him 24/7, not just during services. It means we have to want to change and serve him. It means we have to be baptized with the Holy Spirit and grow through prayer in tongues and fasting. When God is in charge, we get power and help. When he’s not, we get the divine equivalent of trips to the woodshed. The people who run my former church don’t get that. They think God exists to make us rich and to approve of absolutely everything we do. That’s probably why the church has an eight-figure mortgage it will never be able to pay off. The church itself is poor. It’s a financial failure. They claim they can teach people how to succeed, but they can’t do it, themselves.

A church should not abandon God in order to get spiritually immature people to attend. People are like fruit. They should join the community of Christians when they get ripe. If they show up too soon, they cause all sorts of problems.

Since I’ve begun learning my real function as a servant, I’ve seen more power in my life. Prayers get answered with shocking speed. Revelation comes abundantly. God guides my steps. I wake up with no plan and then find my days filled with jobs God puts in my path.

I feel God’s confirmation coming through me when I pray for things, and when it happens, the prayers are granted. One example of many: a friend of mine has a lot of problems with his mother, who is an extremely difficult and irrational person. His brother is in the hospital with serious injuries, and he hasn’t been able to get any information from his mother. The other night he called me to complain. He had to put me on hold to talk to his mother for a minute, and while he did, I prayed for him to get the answers he wanted. I felt a gushing surge of faith push through me, and I sent him a text to let him know. He got back on the phone and told me his mother had just told him everything he wanted to know.

Jesus told us that if, while we prayed, we believed we would receive, our prayers would be granted. We teach that this means that if you believe really hard, God will give you what you want. Do we have it backward? In my experience, it works the other way around. If I find myself filled with faith, it means God has agreed to give me what I ask for. The faith, which comes from God (not my effort), is evidence of his consent. That agrees with the Bible, which tells us faith is the “evidence” of things not seen.

Traditional teaching says, “If faith, then prayer granted.” The Bible seems to say, “If prayer granted, then faith.” I think belief does have creative power, because the Bible does tell us to believe, but most people can’t expect to have belief without the help of the Holy Spirit.

Things also seem to go better when I ask God IF he will do a thing, instead of begging him to do it.

Every time I’ve asked God if he was going to put Romney in the White House in this election, I’ve felt overwhelming faith. I don’t promise you anything. I’m just telling you what has happened.

I hope it’s true. We deserve Obama, but we need Romney.

I keep asking God to let his chastisement fall on ungodly people and their areas, instead of hitting people and communities in areas where he is respected. I’ve been doing that for a long time. We know that God tends to whack the US when our leaders persecute Israel. If it has to happen, I’d rather see the punishment fall on Barack Obama’s career and the areas that voted for him than on Red State people who are trying to do the right thing.

My advice to any Christian reading this would be to pray for Obama to lose, and to spend a good, long time thanking God for making it happen. Go half an hour if you can. It seems that God moves most while you thank and glorify him. If you just ask him for stuff and then move on with your life, you may be writing a bad check.

The Reception is Better Than You Think

Something occurred to me last night, so I thought I’d share it. I’m sure it will conflict pretty badly with Jewish teaching, but then, they already think we’re crazy, so it won’t matter. As long as we do our best to bless them and avoid driving them nuts, I think we’re okay.

In Genesis 28, Jacob left Isaac after he had been blessed, and he ended up in “a certain place,” where he put a rock under his head for a pillow and went to sleep. He had a vision in which he saw a ladder or stairway stretching down to him from heaven, and on it, he saw angels traveling up and down. God appeared to him and reiterated the promises he had made to Abraham, more or less, saying his seed would be numerous and he would own the Promised Land.

The name of the place where Jacob stayed was Luz. In Hebrew, this means something like “twisted” or “turned aside.” This is remarkable, because the Holy Spirit has been sent to remove our iniquities, and in the Old Testament, the words translated as “iniquity” mean “crookedness.” Iniquities are counterproductive drives and inclinations, like addictions, homosexuality, laziness, fear, and so on. Sins are actions. Iniquities are the character problems that drive us to sin. They are “the strong man” we have to bind, using God’s supernatural power.

Apparently, Luz was named for iniquity, until Jacob had his vision. He changed the name to “Bethel,” which means “house of God.”

A house of God is a temple. We are supposed to be his ambulatory temples, under the New Covenant. The Holy Spirit is supposed to inhabit us, as he inhabited the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem. Spirit-filled Christians know that a man is like a house full of squatters. Our flesh and hostile, controlling spirits have to be overcome and driven out, so the Holy Spirit can become the dominant influence inside us.

After Jacob’s vision, he anointed the rock with oil (oil symbolizes the anointing of the Holy Spirit), and he gave Luz its new name. If you don’t see the parallel to a Christian receiving the baptism with the Holy Spirit, accompanied by a new purpose and identity, there is no point in trying to explain it.

I had no idea I was going to go in this direction, but I guess I should not be surprised. I’ll continue.

No one really knows where Bethel is, but many suspect it was the Temple Mount. This is what I originally intended to write about. There are people who believe that this location contains a special “portal” which allows easier, more effective communication with God, and that this explains the vision. I disagree. That may have been true under the Old Covenant, when there was only one temple, but now there are many temples. Each of us is a temple. The Bible says God is near to all who call on him.

As I’ve written previously, I’ve come to believe that there is a “stairway” connecting every Spirit-filled person to heaven. I don’t think it’s an actual structure; I think it represents a condition of mind and spirit which is conducive to prayer. I believe that when this stairway is open and functioning, what the Bible refers to as “the windows of heaven” are open. I do not believe the Judaizers (see Larry Huch and Steve Munsey) who make up stories about windows of heaven being tiny, holiday-centered times of opportunity, during which we can bribe God by sending him money. I believe faith, praise, and thanks hold the windows of heaven open, which is the main reason we are told to thank and praise God constantly.

Jacob seems to agree. He saw the stairway, but he also said the “gate” of heaven was at Bethel. Windows and gates are pretty much the same thing. They are doors that can be opened and closed. In ancient times, windows didn’t have glass panes. In the Middle East, windows were covered by nets or lattices that could be opened, so really, they were small doors or gates. When the gate is held open by faith and praise, prayers go up the stairway, and God’s answers come down and manifest themselves.

To some extent, Jacob represents the church. We are not Jews, and we do not replace them, but we are told that we are wild olives, grafted onto the original root. So the implied promise of access to the stairway should apply to us.

Incidentally, I got into it with a Judaizer who kept telling me we ARE Jews. He was upset because he found out Perry Stone was eating crabs. The New Testament contains all sorts of language saying we do not have to worry about what we eat, but when a person gets ahold of a kooky idea, there is no driving it out with reason. He pointed to the wild olive scripture. I had to explain something to him; a grafted branch doesn’t produce the same kind of fruit as the host tree.

When I was working on a kibbutz in Israel, I helped maintain an almond orchard. Almonds are actually fruit, related to cherries, peaches, apricots, and so on. The almond itself is just the seed. One day the kibbutzniks took the orchard volunteers to see a special. tree. They had grafted branches onto it, so one side produced almonds, another side produced apricots, and another side produced plums (I think). At the time, it didn’t make a big impression on me, but now I think God showed it to me to show me that a graft is not a replacement. A wild olive, whatever it may be, is not a cultivated olive like the ones you buy at the store.

The Judaizers are pretty disturbing. I think it’s only a matter of time until they declare the Jews obsolete and claim they own Israel. That’s how these things usually go. Fortunately, they’re a tiny fringe group.

Anyway, I believe that anyone who spends enough time in the Spirit (daily) will end up perceiving these things to be true.

The Big Bad Wolf Would Need a Plasma Cutter

Does anyone who reads this blog know anything about what it’s like to live in a metal house?

I ask because I was fooling around on the web, and I found a couple of insane properties in Texas. Around 25 acres. Metal buildings with living quarters (drywall, wood, etc.) built into one side. One of these places has a 2800-square-foot shop. I’m…I’m…it’s hard to breathe…losing consciousness…argghff…auugghfff…Rosebud…

This is north Texas. I don’t know much about it. Looks somewhat wetter than Dallas, which would be good.

If you don’t know what I mean by “metal building,” I am referring to the kind of building car dealerships use. Big steel arches hold it up, and the sides are steel. I’m wondering if there would be problems in the living area.

I’m not taking this too seriously, but man…all that for $117500. It’s like I dreamed it.

The Face of Earthly Evil

People I respect think the Antichrist is a Muslim, and some say he might somehow combine Islam and the Mary-worshiping part of Catholicism.

I have my doubts. I’m sure the spirit that drives the Antichrist movement uses religion, but for a while, now, I’ve suspected that this is the Antichrist’s real face.

It’s funny, if you think about it. The word “guy” comes from that man’s name. It means a random (“anonymous”) individual.

God has been showing me that mobs have a history of doing evil. Mobs committed Iphone-worthy mass crimes in Sodom and Gomorrah. A mob tried to rape the angels at Lot’s house. Mobs ridiculed Noah. A mob tried to throw Jesus from a cliff. A mob got Jesus crucified. A mob stoned Stephen.

What is a mob? It’s Satan’s imitation of the Body of Christ.

God and Satan want to rule flesh in the earth. God wants to rule by consent. Satan wants to rule by any means necessary, including things like force and addiction.

God has unlimited power, and he is omnipresent. He can choose individuals all over the globe, put his spirit in each one, and cause his kingdom to grow in each one. He can influence and maneuver all of these individuals simultaneously. Satan is weak, so he has to lump people together in crowds and rule them however he can. A mob is a mass of godless flesh Satan can rule efficiently.

This is why Jesus said his kingdom was not of this world. An earthly ruler can’t see people as individuals, because there are too many of us. He has to rule groups, clumsily, through laws and other means that don’t work all that well. Jesus does not round up big groups and force them to bend the knee. He grows inside each person he chooses, and he gives us individually tailored care, like a farmer with the supernatural ability to provide perfect care for every apple in his orchard.

The disciples didn’t get this at first. The Bible contains prophecies saying the Messiah will be a king who rules on earth, and the disciples thought Jesus would do that on his first visit, subduing the Romans and establishing a great earthly empire. They did not understand that he had to sacrifice himself in order to buy our freedom and send us the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit was intended to connect and empower Christians, like a nervous system that coordinates the parts of a body. Satan managed to evict the Holy Spirit from the early church, and now he works through people who mock the baptism with the Holy Spirit and call tongues “gibberish.” But the Holy Spirit is back for good. We were too stupid to hold onto him, and God allowed us to lose him, but God is bringing him back in spite of our failure, just as he is rebuilding Israel in spite of the failures of the Jews. God made promises in the distant past, and some were not conditioned on worthiness, so they will be honored no matter what we do.

A person who doesn’t have the Holy Spirit or who has him yet has not succeeded in breaking the flesh is ruled by the flesh. A mob is a group of people who let the flesh do their thinking. They are not much better than animals. They will do cruel, disgusting things they would never do on their own. Satan knows that, and he finds mobs useful in hindering God’s plan.

The Anonymous/Occupy crowd is a mob. These people hate God’s ways. They hate authority, except when it gives them trinkets in exchange for their dignity and freedom. They have no vision. They have no common sense.

Liberals are building up the mob. They buy votes by handing out money taken from people who work and invest. They don’t require personal growth or work or good behavior in exchange for things like EBT cards and welfare payments. All they want are votes. As a result, we have a growing class of people who will do absolutely anything for government money. They are losing their work ethic, their free will, and their decency. They are becoming creatures of nearly pure flesh. Threaten their government bribes, put them in the streets with cell phones and the Internet, and they will do just about anything they think will help them prevail.

The mobs will serve the Antichrist. They will serve him because just like a TBN prosperity preacher, he’ll tell them they don’t have to change. They’re victims. The people who earn and invest are oppressors. The world OWES the carnal. No vile crime against decent people will be unjustified in their eyes, and they will do whatever the Antichrist tells them.

We already see them stinking up public parks and squares with their idiotic Occupy rallies. We also see them thronging places of businesses, stealing whatever they like, and beating the employees. We are starting to see them mount computer attacks on innocent people. In the future, they’ll be stronger and more vicious. It was cute when they were singing and dancing in train stations, but it won’t be so cute when they’re launching raids on neighborhoods, in order to take what they want.

Mohammed was a servant of the Antichrist, and he used mob tools. When he first claimed he as a prophet, people thought he was a fool. Then he realized he could use the ancient Middle Eastern tradition of mob crime to boost his popularity. He made a rule. It was okay to ride into the cities of non-Muslims and commit rape, murder, and theft, but Muslim cities were out of bounds. It was a protection racket. Suddenly, people wanted to be Muslims.

The Antichrist will follow that pattern. We know he’ll establish persecution of people who don’t obey him. He’ll make it impossible for us to buy and sell. He will cause large numbers of ignorant people to portray us as evil. He’s already using “anti-bullying” rhetoric to convince the public that anyone who says homosexuality is a sin is full of hate.

The Bible seems to say that the Antichrist is a man; it speaks of him as though he were an individual. But it also seems to say he is “man.” It says he has a number, and some interpreters say it says number is the number of mankind. Maybe it’s more accurate to say it’s the number of the flesh.

I think there will be an individual who serves as a figurehead, but I think it’s also accurate to say the worldwide mob that serves this person is the Antichrist, just as we say we are “the body of Christ” or “in Christ.”

If this is correct, it shows why it’s crucial that we learn to use supernatural power to subdue the flesh. History shows that the flesh is hopeless. It’s incredibly stupid. It has no conscience and no empathy. It can put Jews in ovens. It can take money for murdering the unborn. It can derive intense sexual pleasure from serial torture and murder. There is no perversion too disgusting for it. If we don’t conquer it and develop authority, we will serve it and do as it says.

This must be why Christians are leaving cities. The farther a mob has to drive to get to you, the safer you are. The more food you can grow, the less you will suffer when you are excluded economically. And you’ll be among Christian people, so you will have more power.

I enjoy technology, but I know it will be used against us. God has infinite power, and Satan does not. In his last stand, Satan will need things like cell phones and drones. He’ll need a cashless society, so he can cancel people’s wealth instantly. He’ll need social media so we will surveill ourselves and report private facts publicly. We’re addicted to this junk, and it’s going to be used as a leash sooner or later. The process started with 9/11. That was the greatest victory for the Antichrist and his servant, Mohammed. It was a turning point.

We are giving so much power to the government and the enemy through technology, we may never be able to oppose them again, in our own strength. Supernatural power is the only answer. Satan loves building natural weapons and barriers and making them so big and so scary, we think we can never beat them. But God likes pushing them over, as he did in Babel.

The hurricane we’re facing now may have significance.

The name “Katrina” comes from a root meaning “to cleanse,” as in “catharsis.” Katrina hit a city known for sin, including witchcraft, and that city was quite literally washed. A person who lives there tells me that, although there was terrible suffering, the city was actually improved.

The name “Sandy” means “defender of men,” and it’s hitting an area known for political corruption and godlessness. It appears that the eye will pass just north of Washington, which would mean the winds would be blowing toward the sea, as if to drive things out. Obama’s people are afraid this will keep their lazy supporters home during the election. I certainly hope so.

I don’t ask God to destroy the storm. I am asking God to spare the godly people in the path of the storm. That’s about it. It looks like it’s going to be a disaster that rivals Katrina. It may make a horrible, historic mess. I’ve been through all sorts of hurricanes, and I don’t want to see anyone suffer, but I have to wonder if there is a purpose in it. It may be that the defender of men was sent to defend the godly voters and the relatively godly candidates, who have been slandered and abused during this campaign season. Or maybe it’s coming to defend Israel from a President who does not wish it well.

I sure hope Romney wins. We deserve Obama, but I am tired of seeing God’s people oppressed.

Truck Gun Progress

I don’t know what traditional Christians think of evangelicals and charismatics, with our backyard bunkers and gun collections. I assume they think we’re pathetic and insane. I guess when they come to this blog and see posts about prayer alternating with photos of rifles and reloading tools, they assume there is no possible way I could know anything about the real Jesus. The touchy-feely, Oprah-in-a-Jewish-man’s-body, probably-gay, warm, fuzzy, Jesus who never, ever criticized anyone and always wanted us to be nice.

Can’t do anything about that. Anyone who has ears to hear should already be aware that the Bible really says, “You shall not murder,” not, “You shall not kill.” Anyone who knows anything about God should be completely comfortable with Christians serving in the military and shooting our enemies. By now we should all realize that Jesus was not always nice, and that when he returns, he is going to kill a whole bunch of people (not for the first time).

I’m not saying a Christian should dedicate his life to becoming a killing machine, but increasingly, people who are close to God are getting close to guns. And criticism and rebuke have always been part of the Christian life.

With that, here is what’s happening with the truck gun. I found a foregrip on Amazon, with a 1″ hole for a laser or flashlight. It came with a light (no way to avoid that), but once the light was removed, I was ready to install the laser.

It’s all mounted and ready to shoot now. Photo below.

There is a tiny bit of flexibility in the laser mount, but that’s not a foregrip problem. It’s a Hogue handguard problem. Hogue makes its handguards out of the same flubber it uses to make pistol grips. That means the handguard can flex a little. Not a brilliant idea, when it’s used to mount stuff that needs to stay still. I may replace the handguard. I’ll be eating maybe thirty bucks, but you live and learn. Better to do it right than save a few pennies.

The flexibility isn’t bad enough to cause a problem. It just bugs me. I can’t really detect any dot motion related to the foregrip flexing.

I thought I’d have to use the laser’s pressure switch, which is on a wire with a springy, coily bit in the middle. I figured I’d cut a hole in the mount somewhere, run the wire through it, and mount a better switch on the end, attaching it to the handguard.

I found out this was not necessary. The laser came with a totally pointless (but solid) aluminum cap, and when you install it, the laser is always on. When you back it out a couple of turns, the laser operates when you press on the cap. I installed it this way. The laser is enclosed in the mount, so the cap can’t unscrew and cause a problem. The mount has a button on it, and when you push it, it presses a doodad against the back of the laser, turning it on. Perfect. Or nearly so. If I put the button part of the cap on the lathe and turn down the flange that goes against the ring part of the cap, I’ll be able to tighten the ring and still use the button.

I like this, because it will work better than the scary pressure switch, which sometimes fails to go on when I push it, and it will save battery life, because it will go off when I release the button.

The bad part is that I can’t change the battery without removing the laser. I’ll have to re-zero it a lot. But it only has to work for like twenty seconds in a gunfight, so I’m okay with that. The battery doesn’t have to have 90 minutes of charge in it every day.

Overall, this is a very cool and economical solution to the vehicle security issue. The rifle is $440. The laser is about $50. The other junk can probably be had for $100. It’s as cheap as a Glock, and it should be way more effective. I just need to put some earplugs in the truck.

The gun is a little heavier than the Vz2008 I considered, and I assume the shorter barrel will cost me some fps, but 2300 fps, 30 rounds, and good short-range accuracy should be a great combination.

I’ve been trying to come up with a good container for it, so it will pass the “securely encased” law. I’m thinking I might just find a cheap flat cardboard box. Believe it or not, that’s completely legal, and it will look really boring to gun thieves. Maybe I’ll find a box with lettering on it and repurpose it. “What kind of idiot keeps a Scrabble game under his back seat? And look at that crappy stereo. Forget this truck.”

I know the serious right-wing conspiracy nuts say you should never talk about your guns on the web. What can I tell you? If you have them, one way or another, Uncle Sam will be able to find out about most of them. I’ll cross the registration and confiscation bridge when I come to it.

Still thinking about Ocala. Yesterday I got stuck in traffic THREE TIMES, and I got so mad I nearly drove to Ocala last night. I wanted to look around. I may go in the near future. It’s funny, but suddenly I know several people who want to move up there. A friend from church says he owns 20 acres there, but his wife won’t let him move, because she hates the country. Meanwhile, he’s learning to can. Today another friend said his wife has family up there, and she wants to go, but he’s stuck here because of his job. And then there’s Mike, who used to live there.

I’m starting to feel like this is confirmation.

When Romney wins, the price of real estate may shoot up. Real estate is an investment, and under Obama, people are afraid to invest. It would be nice to avoid getting stung in a post-Obama bubble.

Anyway, life is neat. And to all the appalled gay-Jesus Christians, all I can say is “BOO!”

“Organized Religion,” at Last

Perry Stone just aired a couple of shows about supernatural warfare. I’ve gotten some useful information from him in the past. Sometimes he gets off on conspiracy stuff or similar legends that pretty much amount to folklore, but if you look at the things he says when he sticks to God’s revelation, he’s wonderful.

Tonight he repeated a story I once heard from his dad. His dad told it differently. His dad said he had a vision, in which he saw two demons. I believe he called them demons, but my guess is that they were actually angelic beings. Anyway, one was tall, and one was short. When his dad told the story, he said the big one was screaming at the little one because Perry Stone had released some information. Apparently, God revealed something, and Stone taught it, and the big spirit was irate, because the little spirit was supposed to put a stop to it. He told the little spirit that if Stone went much further, he would kill him personally.

In tonight’s version, Stone did not say he was the subject of the discussion. He said the big spirit said that if the little one couldn’t prevent information from getting out, he would do it himself. He said the big spirit reached into the belly of the little one, and the little one screamed, begging him not to take his authority.

It’s peculiar that authority could result from something being in a spirit’s belly. It may be that eating increases authority in the supernatural realm, just as it decreases authority here on earth. Some believe evil spirits grow in size and strength from feeding on sin, so maybe it makes sense that a spirit with a full belly would be stronger.

I don’t know if these stories come from two different visions or what, but in any case, I was praying as I watched, and I felt that God clarified a few things for me.

Over the course of the show, Stone was talking about the differences in authority between various spirits. Some can be driven off easily. With others, you have to fast and pray. He said that if you drive off a weak spirit, a big one may come to do its job. He said fasting increases one’s authority.

This got me thinking about Jesus and Satan, in the story of the temptation. Who is Satan? The most powerful evil spirit. He has the most authority of anyone on his team. When did he show up? After Jesus had fasted forty days…at the END of the fast. What did he offer Jesus? Everything he had, or at least the biggest gifts he had: the world, and authority over it. He fired his big guns. His desperation weapons. He offered the things he most wanted to hold onto.

I also thought about my experience with overeating. I beat it with two days of fasting. The compulsion went away. Then it started to return. I beat it again by fasting, increasing my authority, and using my authority to command my flesh.

Let’s synthesize all these things. I believe the Holy Spirit gave me this summation: life is structured like a tournament. When you beat the weak players on the other side, you advance to take on stronger players. If you don’t stop, you end up facing the very best opponent there is. This is what your life is going to be like, from now until the day you die, if you continue growing as a Christian. You will never reach a point where you can say you don’t have to fight any more. Every time you win, someone stronger is going to challenge you, and if you keep pushing, you could end up facing Satan himself. If you get complacent and settle after reaching a certain level, you will never reach your potential in the kingdom of heaven.

If you think about it, this is something common sense should have told us. We know we have to fight evil spirits. We know some are stronger than others. An intelligent person would realize that an enemy who suffers a defeat will always send better resources into battle, if he has them. And the more you win, the more important you will be as a target, so the enemy will never lose motivation to send more forces against you.

It bummed me out a little when I realized these things. George Patton supposedly said he hated paying for the same real estate twice. I feel the same way! I’m the real estate. The body is like the Promised Land. Our iniquities and the spirits that drive them are like the Canaanites. We’re supposed to run them out by faith. I don’t want to think Satan is going to keep sending me an unending succession of ever-larger gluttony spirits. But I suppose he might. Or, more likely, he’ll attack from another angle. I don’t think he wants to be completely predictable.

By the end of his fast, Jesus had probably crushed his flesh past the point where it would even consider rebelling. He had probably discouraged every spirit sent against him. His authority would have been nearly unlimited. This is why Satan showed up. There was no one bigger to send against him. And it looks like he returned from time to time. Jesus called Peter “Satan” when Peter tempted him to avoid crucifixion; maybe he spoke literally. Maybe Satan himself influenced Peter to speak.

You can take some very practical advice away from this.

1. If you’re not praying in the Spirit and fasting regularly, you’re probably not going to have much authority. You will continue to serve the flesh, you won’t be able to command your flesh or take authority over spirits, and many of your prayers will fall to the earth. You will be a private, basically, like the little spirit that couldn’t hurt Perry Stone. You will be a creampuff no one respects.

2. If you do pray and fast regularly, you will develop power and authority. You will be able to command spirits and your flesh (Jesus even commanded inanimate matter). You will be able to overcome iniquity. You will be able to serve God and hear his voice, instead of wasting all your prayers on requests for God to become a servant to your eyes and belly.

3. If you develop authority, you will get attention from Satan and God. Satan will focus more energy on destroying you, and presumably, God will devote resources to empowering, guiding, and protecting you.

4. When you succeed in overcoming an adversary or a problem, you should not be surprised if it returns. In fact, you should be surprised if it doesn’t. Prepare for it. Anticipate it. Keep working to grow in authority, self-control, faith, and revelation. Keep praying–specifically–for God to lead you to victory.

5. When you don’t know if you have authority, don’t go around rebuking and insulting powerful spirits. Ask God to rebuke them. Don’t make a fool of yourself quoting verses about the power and authority God has given you, when you’re not prepared and authorized (anointed). Satan’s power is real, and it has to be respected. Besides, he has rights, and God himself will back them up. Don’t let denial of your spiritual flabbiness put you and your loved ones in the path of a destructive force you can’t defend against.

6. Never take on a spirit unless you are confident that God told you to do it. When we were fighting the Nazis, soldiers didn’t stroll into Berlin by themselves and try to shoot Hitler. They would have had no backup and no guidance. They advanced as a group, as they were ordered. Don’t think you can jog behind enemy lines and do whatever you want, with God somehow obligated to follow you. Look what happened to the sons of Sceva. They were on God’s side, fighting wicked spirits God hated, and God allowed the spirits to strip them naked and beat them. You could be next.

I’ve taken things I learned from Perry Stone, as well as things God showed me directly, and I’ve tried to use them to create a simple list anyone can remember and apply.

This stuff seems obvious now that I’ve written it, but it wasn’t obvious to me before God revealed it. Over generations, we have thrown away knowledge of the supernatural, and I have been asking him to restore it. It’s pretty clear that he is granting that request. He’s not obligated to do it. Our predecessors were responsible for teaching us, and they blew it. Man is supposed to manage the earth, and there are supposed to be prices paid when we fail. God is returning things to us because he’s merciful. The former rain didn’t get us anywhere, so he’s bringing the latter rain. We’ve been trying to screw it up, too, but I don’t think he’ll permit it, with time so short.

I don’t look forward to fighting for the rest of my life, but my wishes don’t change the way things are, and I know God will make it easy for me, because he promised to do so in the gospels.

Hope this is helpful.

Plus Some Important Revelation

I guess I should tell my sad tale of AK-47 woe in order to help others.

I’ve been modifying my AMD-65 to hold a laser. I want the laser to be in the same plane as the magazine and grips, so the gun lies flatter. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to rig it up this way. Most foregrips that hold a laser are way too long. When installed, they interfere with the magazine.

A Mako potato grip will work, but it has a big lip hanging off the front, and the lip would interfere with the laser adjustment screws, so it would have to be ground off.

I picked a foregrip from Amazon. It has a 1″-diameter flashlight holder. It comes with a flashlight, which I don’t want, but I can take the light out.

I also discovered that my new laser has no on/off switch. It came with a pressure switch, but it doesn’t have an optional pushbutton rear cap. It has a rear cap, but when you install it, the laser goes on and stays that way until the battery dies. I can’t figure out why anyone would design something that stupid.

I don’t trust the pressure switch. It seems cheap. I was going to send the laser back, but then I realized I could cut the switch off the wire leads and run them to a better switch mounted somewhere on the gun. I think this is an ideal solution. Pushbutton switches tend to fail. I can get an industrial toggle or something. It might not be as water resistant as the rubber-covered pressure switch, but I don’t plan to shoot people underwater.

I think it’s safe to assume that most criminals, being lazy and stupid, will not attack in bad weather.

I put a Hogue handguard and pistol grip on the gun. The pistol grip isn’t made to go around the stock-release button at the rear of the gun, but a rotary tool with a sanding drum corrects that easily and cleanly. The upper handguard can’t be installed on this gun, because it’s not rigged up for an upper handguard. I suppose there are parts you could buy to fix that. Maybe the standard thing is to steal parts from the wooden handguard you replace, but this gun did not come with an upper handguard.

The lower handguard is disappointing for two reasons. First, the lower rail that comes with it is short. It could be an inch longer, which would make life easier. Second, there are no instructions for installing the rail, and I guessed at it, and I guessed wrong.

The handguard has a sheetmetal support inside it. I thought this was a permanent part of the handguard. It’s not. You’re supposed to remove it to drill holes to insall the rail. I ended up drilling a totally unnecessary hole in the support.

I mounted the new laser on the rail. It’s not satisfactory. It sits so far back, it makes it impossible to get a good grip on the gun. Looks nice, though. I’ll post a photo.

I was going to go to the range today, but with no laser, it’s a waste of time. Shooting for next week.

I guess I should put up some news of interest, for Christians.

A friend of mine has been having all sorts of problems. I wrote about him the other day. He got up during the night and saw a white spirit sitting on his living room couch, tapping its foot. The spirit remained after he turned on the light and stared at it. He got a good clear look at it. This was not his imagination.

On Monday, we both fasted, and I prayed for an end to the strife in his family. I prayed for God to give him a good living, a house, and a wife who would help him work in God’s kingdom. I felt explosive faith, all through the day.

Yesterday, he called me and asked me to pray. His younger brother had been in an accident. I’ll link to story from the local news. Six people were sitting on a bus bench, and a bad driver ran off the road and hit them. One woman lost a leg. Another lost an arm and a leg. Another was killed. My friend’s brother was pinned under the car, and people at the scene had to lift it off of him.

I didn’t understand how serious it was until later, when I Googled the accident during church. When I saw what had happened, a couple of us started trying to contact my friend so we could go to the hospital, where his brother was in surgery. We were hearing all kinds of rumors. The news people said four people were in critical condition, one was in serious condition, and one had minor injuries. I had no idea which category applied to my friend’s brother.

I know my friend from my old church, and he’s still in that social circle. It’s extremely hard to communicate with these people. Their cell numbers change constantly because they can’t pay their bills. Their providers turn the phones off. Even when the phones work, these people do not return texts and calls the way they should. It was impossible to get a clear idea where this kid had been taken. I got in the car with one of my friends, and we drove around, and we eventually gave up. Later I learned that we had gone to the right hospital, but we were told he wasn’t there.

This morning my friend called and said his brother had pelvic injuries and a broken leg, but that he would recover completely.

I didn’t know what to make of this mess. It happened one day after I prayed for my friend and his family. I admit, I focused mainly on my friend, not his brother, but still, I was surprised.

When my friend called this morning and gave me the news, I asked him if the spirit on the couch reminded him of a person waiting for a bus. He said it did. He hadn’t thought of it until I said it. It had been sitting on the couch tapping its foot, just like a person at a bus stop.

Here is the important lesson I took away from this. When God gives you a supernatural experience, YOU HAVE TO ASK HIM WHAT IT MEANS. It looks like God warned us about the accident, but we didn’t ask him to explain. At least not very persistently. I think I mentioned it briefly in prayer.

What if we had asked for explanation? Maybe God would have clarified, or he would have moved us to pray in a way that would have prevented the accident or prevented my friend’s brother from being there when it happened.

My friend is in surprisingly good spirits. His family problems have cleared up, out of necessity. Solutions are appearing. His mother and her landlord were threatening to evict him. Now he has a place to stay. He also has jobs lined up, and they’re going to pay up front.

He says he’s having problems praying in tongues. I hope people who read this will pray for him to be restored. He’s not going to make it without the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit.

I’m really sorry this kid got hurt, but it looks like it’s going to leave us more powerful and blessed.

One other thing. I’ve read a lot of things about the windows of heaven and Jacob’s ladder. There are Judaizers out there who claim “windows of heaven” refers to special times during the year, like NASA launch windows, during which God is able to bless us more than usual. They claim we have to give big cash offerings on certain Jewish holidays in order to get God to shovel the money out. A teacher who is less of an idiot–I’m sorry–has said that Jacob’s Ladder was a special thing that existed only on the Temple Mount. It was a portal through which spirits between God and earth, doing his will and carrying prayers. I think the Judaizers and this teacher are wrong.

Often when I’ve prayed, I’ve noticed disturbances around me, like ripples in the fabric of the physical universe. I once saw a spirit on the wall of a room, and it flew out through the ceiling. It had a peculiar look. It was clear and colorless, and although it was three-dimensional, it somehow seemed to be under the physical world, like a mouse in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, moving under a carpet. The little disturbances I’ve seen during prayer are like that. They form little darting streaks in the air around me, as if small spirits are leaving with my prayers, taking them to God.

I think this is the same thing Jacob saw, although it may have appeared differently to him. I think the windows of heaven are really tunnels held open by faith, and supernatural beings travel through them like cylinders through a pneumatic tube. These tunnels are like streaks of lightning, carrying power between heaven and earth, and faith is charge.

Our relationship with God has many parallels to sex between a man and wife. Since my faith has been increased, I’ve noticed that when faith rushes through me and carries a prayer to God, it’s very much like what happens at the end of sex. And why shouldn’t it be? In both cases, a seed is being transferred and planted. The body has spasms that send seed into a woman, and it appears that the mind and spirit undergo similar events when seeds of prayer are sown in heaven.

I hope this doesn’t offend people, but remember, we’re talking about the God who uses circumcision to record his promises. God is not afraid of sex.

I don’t want to go too far in the direction of sexual discussion, but if you know anything about sex, you may know that it’s possible to prolong and enhance the final event through concentration. It appears that increased faith allows people to do the same thing in prayer. If you concentrate on the faith that leaves you and holds the tunnel open, you can maintain a burst of faith for a very long time. The same thing may happen when you thank or praise God continuously. I believe that during those times, you are keeping God’s highway open and increasing the travel on it. During those times, God will be able to do more to answer your prayers. It’s also a very peaceful time, full of reassurance and comfort.

I think Jacob’s ladder and the windows of heaven are wherever you are, and if you have supernatural faith given by the Holy Spirit, you can benefit from them. But I don’t think it’s likely to happen if you’re not praying in tongues. You probably won’t have the revelation and understanding of how to do it, and you won’t have the faith to keep the doors open. You probably won’t have enough authority over your flesh to prevent it from interfering.

The windows of heaven are open in my life. I believe they will open for you, too. I believe it has absolutely nothing to do with me or any special characteristics I might have. I think God gave me revelation, showing what anyone can do. There are probably other people out there teaching the same thing.

God says the more we sow, the more we reap. For a long time, I’ve believed this was mainly about prayer. I believe prayer in tongues is sowing, and holding the windows of heaven open is reaping. We’ll see if I’m right.

I hope people will put this stuff to the test and compare it to scripture.

You Can HAVE This Place

I guess I’m on fire these days. I’m blogging AGAIN, even though I blogged once today.

I have a testimony. I always have a testimony, though. Back at my old church, when the volunteers met in the morning, there were always two people who had testimonies. I was one, and the other was a young guy who sang with the worship team. I guess people got tired of us.

I hate living in Miami. I always have, except for a brief period after law school, when I made a determined effort to fit in. People are incredibly rude here. It’s too hot for a person who likes shooting and working with tools. You can’t grow anything, because the lots are small and the topsoil is six inches deep. The traffic is like something out of a Terry Gilliam movie, if he made movies about traffic. This city is a known hub of homosexual activity. We have nude beaches. We have a yearly celebration where thousands of people go out in the bay and have sex in public. We even have voodoo, including santeria. This is no place for a decent person to live.

My new church opened a place in Winter Haven, and I went up there with a team of people who were helping the place get off the ground. I loved it. My blood pressure plummeted. I felt relaxed. The people were nice. There was lots of open country. There was no traffic. There were Romney signs everywhere. It was like heaven. I started Googling real estate in that area.

Since then, I’ve gotten interested in Ocala. You can get a nice five-acre property near Winter Haven for a very low price, but in the Ocala area, you can get ten acres, and the selection is better. The people are just as nice. There are lots of good churches. The soil is fantastic. The climate is even better than it is in Winter Haven.

My buddy Mike used to live up there. His dad had a thoroughbred farm, and Mike ended up buying in the area. I’ve been picking his brains. He says it’s paradise. Anything you throw in the dirt grows. You can shoot guns in your backyard.

Here’s the problem. My dad is 80, and he’s at the stage where he shouldn’t be alone in Miami. My sister lives here, but she’s in far worse shape than he is. He likes the idea of leaving Miami, but he prefers the Cocoa area. He has a huge boat, and he wants to live on the water. If he sold his Miami house, he could have a palace in Brevard County, with no mortgage.

I don’t want to live in Brevard County. I don’t feel God pulling me that way. Aside from that, the lots are smaller, the soil isn’t as good, and I think it’s gradually becoming polluted with the worldly crowd that has infected Orlando. They say Orlando is not much better than Miami now.

I’ve been praying about this a lot. When a potential disciple told Jesus he wanted to wait until his father was dead, Jesus told him to let the dead bury the dead. Often, you have to move forward alone, as Lot and Noah learned. But you shouldn’t give up too early.

I refuse to have a mortgage. I can do all right with my own resources, but if my father goes with me, we can have a place that would be out of this world. There are lots of properties near Ocala that have more than one house, or what are known as mother-in-law apartments. Many of them have detached workshops. Talk about bliss. I’d be able to look after my dad, I’d be away from Miami’s nasty people, both of us would have privacy, and I’d have a real workshop where I wouldn’t have to trip over things and move things around all the time.

It looked like there was no hope of getting my father to consider moving inland, but I’ve been praying a great deal (mostly in the Spirit), and the other day, he started talking like the Ocala area might be a good choice. Now I’m looking at bigger homes. I won’t even consider less than 20 acres. With the low land prices up there, there is no point in settling for less.

It’s going to happen. I know it. God has set me free from this miserable city. I richly deserved my sentence, but it’s coming to an end.

Prayer in tongues made it happen. I’ve been cranking it up lately. Things are falling into place. In nerdspeak, I feel like I’ve been held captive in a potential well, and now I’m over the hump and being propelled out.

One of the best things about prayer in tongues is that God uses it to order your life. He uses it to plan and build your future. We don’t know which way to turn, because we see so little. God knows everything. He knows exactly what we need and what will make us happy. He fully intends to give us blessed lives. If you pray in tongues enough, you’ll see it start to happen.

I’ve seen some really wild properties. One is a former airport. It’s a long lot; about 20 acres. Most of it is a grass airstrip. It has a house, a caretaker’s cottage, and TWO beautiful hangars. One has a magnificent shop area. The floor is concrete. I salivate when I look at the pictures. Another is some kind of horse-training facility. As it happens, Mike knew the owner. He knows the place. He says it’s gorgeous. It has a bunch of outbuildings and a big detached garage. I have no idea what we’d do with the barns, but that’s not a dealbreaker. And it’s 48 acres. It’s the Sofia Vergara of homes.

If we don’t get one of these places, there are dozens of others. Most of them have horse-related crap on them, but we can deal with that. I can’t imagine what life would be like, living among good Christian people who vote Republican. It would be a foretaste of my home in the hereafter.

I’ll blog more when I know more.

Supernatural Encouragement is Available

Yesterday was a fast day. It was very unusual, so I thought I’d write about it.

Fasting is very important. In the tug of war between your flesh and spirit, your flesh has the flashy, explosive tools. It’s like the dark side of the force. Your flesh responds to base temptations that work quickly and powerfully. In order for you to win, you have to break your flesh as though it were a horse or a mule. You need to make your flesh understand that it’s defeated. Fasting helps you do that. It punishes and subdues your flesh. It discourages it. This makes your flesh less inclined to resist you in the future.

I believe I’m gaining new understanding of scriptural passages about the human spirit. The Bible asks, “but a crushed spirit, who can bear?” I think I know what that means.

Most of us try to do the right thing, especially when we’re young. We try to spend time on work instead of play. We try to diet and work out. Generally, by the time we’re middle-aged, we’ve given up on many goals that involve self-control. Almost invariably, we quit dieting and exercising. We stop trying to change ourselves, because we believe we will always fail. We’re like horses that have been ridden to a standstill. We quit fighting the bit, and we do what the flesh tells us. This, I believe, is what “crushed spirit” refers to, when the Bible uses the term in a negative way.

The Bible sometimes says a crushed spirit is a good thing. I believe that refers to people who are fundamentally in rebellion. If you’re trying to please God, a crushed spirit is bad, because your spirit is on God’s side. If you’re in rebellion, it’s a good thing, because it means you’ve lost confidence in your ability to continue as a backslider.

Some people think crushing of the spirit refers to depression. I don’t think that’s quite right. That’s a modern idea which isn’t premised on the notion of the spirit as a supernatural entity separate from the mind. In the Bible, “spirit” means “spirit,” not your emotional state. The spirit and emotions are connected, but the spirit is not emotions. I think the spirit manifests itself in things like confidence and enthusiasm. When the spirit is defeated, it doesn’t necessarily mean you feel bad, although you may. It means your spirit no longer believes it can succeed, so it doesn’t try. It means you have acquired what psychologists call “learned helplessness.”

I found out about learned helplessness while taking a psychology course in college. A professor who was clearly a closet Republican said welfare was a bad thing, because it taught people they couldn’t make a difference in their lives.

He cited an experiment involving rats. You stick rats in a tub of water. If you let them find their way to safety on their own, they become good at saving themselves. If you rescue them from the water over and over, they reach a point where they’ll let themselves drown if you don’t take them out. They get the idea that their efforts don’t make any difference, so they quit trying. If you give poor people welfare checks so big they do as well on welfare as they would in low-paying jobs, they realize working doesn’t change their lives, so they lose the will to try. They learn to be helpless. That’s how I remember it, anyway.

When your spirit becomes sufficiently defeated, you can become completely depraved. You don’t try, and you don’t think about trying. Drug addicts get this way. An addict will reach a point where stealing a parent’s jewelry and selling it for ten cents on the dollar doesn’t even register in his mind as sinful. The flesh is in complete control, and the spirit might as well be dead.

The flesh is really, really stupid. The flesh has no problem pushing you to do something that will land you on death row. The flesh doesn’t think at all about the future. It’s a little bit like a Democrat President. Borrow and spend now; let someone else clean up the mess.

What the flesh needs are regular beatings. It’s like a child on the verge of delinquency. You have to put it in its place, early and forcefully. Otherwise, it gains strength, and the job gets harder. Fasting is a Biblical way of punishing your flesh.

When your flesh becomes discouraged, it stops pushing you. Ignorant people and hostile spirits will still talk to it, trying to get it to rise up against you, but it won’t listen as much. The voices of evil will be quieter, and you’ll be better able to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. You will have swept and cleaned the house and bound the strong man, so the Holy Spirit will be able to take over more space and exert greater authority. You will have confidence (in God), enthusiasm, peace, and joy, so you will be better able to achieve and succeed in God’s kingdom.

I have always hated fasting. I don’t lie about it. It gave me terrible headaches. I got almost nothing done on fasting days. I just waited for them to pass. I didn’t even do a good job of prayer, because I was dying to find ways to kill time and make the days end.

I also felt isolated from God during fasts. I couldn’t feel his presence. My faith was reduced. I felt that God’s presence came sweeping back over me right after I ended my fasts.

Yesterday was different. I felt good all day. I wasn’t vexed constantly by hunger. I didn’t feel depressed. I didn’t get a headache. I didn’t long for the second the fast would end, so I could get some decent food. I got things done. My mood was great. When I prayed, I felt tremendous faith and power. I actually felt strange pains, as though the Holy Spirit was doing things inside me.

The Bible asks us who can bear a crushed spirit. The other side of that coin is that you can’t do well without crushed flesh. This is why Jesus went into the desert and refused food for forty days. He was silencing the hostile, hindering voice of the flesh. Once the flesh was essentially comatose, Satan knew he had very little hope of using it to control Jesus, so he came to him in desperation and offered him the world, which was his to give. After Jesus refused, unlimited power and authority came into him, and he was able to embark on his ministry of miracles and perfect teaching.

When the Apostles talk about crucifying the flesh and so on, they don’t mean we should wear hair shirts and beat ourselves with cudgels, as some ascetics have done. They don’t mean we should be ascetics at all. They mean that we should utterly destroy the confidence and assertiveness of the flesh, so that our minds, guided by our submitted spirits, get to make all our decisions. We don’t have to give up the pleasures of the flesh. We have to put them in their proper place. Once you get control of your flesh, life’s earthly pleasures actually become more satisfying, because they don’t carry guilt, and you don’t become too sated to enjoy things.

If you’re going to fast, I’d recommend going entire days without food, on most occasions. You can do yourself some good by fasting one or two meals, but sometimes you really need to take away the flesh’s hope of receiving food during a day. It’s like refusing to set a withdrawal date in a war. If you set a date that’s too early, your enemy will grit his teeth and hold on until you leave. If your enemy knows you’ll be around until he loses, he’s more likely to quit.

I’d also recommend spending a great deal of time in prayer. Without prayer, fasting doesn’t do a whole lot of good.

I think “Daniel fasts” are fairly useless. A Daniel fast means a partial fast. People will say things like, “For the next 21 days, I’m giving up Three Musketeers bars between 10:00 a.m. and 10:15.” Or they’ll go all-liquid, so they’ll have ten milkshakes instead of three normal meals. Can you really call that fasting? It’s your flesh, telling you it’s okay to pretend to fast, as long as you let your flesh run the show. If you want to do it right, take no calories in, and do not use any sweeteners.

In summary, God uses your spirit to influence you, and Satan uses your flesh. You need to strengthen one and knock the wind out of the other. Fasting will help, and it will greatly increase the power, freedom, and success you experience in life.

Don’t Forget What You Are

Sometimes we forget that the stuff we believe is real. In fact, I’d say that most of the time, we behave as though the supernatural realm did not exist. It’s hard to keep it in mind from minute to minute when you can’t see it.

Today I got a phone call from a young friend of mine. He’s having some family issues. Lots of strife. We spoke last night, and I reminded him that he needs to spend time praying in tongues, and that he needs to crank up the intensity of his walk. When he called me today, he gave me disturbing news. During the night, he got up and walked from his bedroom to his living room, and on the couch, he saw a white being that looked like a person, tapping its foot. He said it scared him pretty badly. It didn’t leave when he turned the light on. It just sat there. He went back in his room and closed the door. Now he says he’s having trouble praying in tongues.

What do you do when you hear something like that? I have no reason to think he’s lying. I’ve seen spirits, too, although my experiences were not as spectacular as my friend’s.

These things are real. They’re all around us.

It’s frustrating to live in a universe where you can only see the least powerful beings, and by that, I mean the ones with physical bodies. I alway say it’s like swimming in a shark tank at midnight. These ancient creatures see us and hear us, and they know things we don’t know. Many of them hate us and use their power to destroy us. We can’t put on special glasses or use special microphones to detect them. Our only hope of defeating them is to receive the baptism with the Spirit and do what God tells us to do.

I wish I knew more about opposing spirits. People probably knew much more about them in the past, but human beings didn’t do their job. They failed to pass their knowledge on. Now we have to search the Bible and look for clues in other places. We have to ask God for enlightenment, which he doesn’t owe us, since we were expected to preserve what we knew. It’s slow going, trying to rebuild a squandered inheritance. Much better to hold onto it in the first place.

I’m not sure what the spirit was doing in my friend’s house. Foot-tapping generally expresses impatience. People do it to show other people they need to get a move on. Was this a hostile spirit, tapping its foot because the prayers I had prayed for my friend had delayed it, or was it sent from God, to tell my friend he needed to get with the program?

The white color doesn’t mean much. When I was a kid, my dreams were generally nightmares, and one of creatures that tormented me was completely white. My mother saw a black-robed spirit beside her bed once, and she knew it was evil. I saw a white-robed angel at the foot of my bed, and I knew it was good, but the Bible tells us Satan himself can appear as an angel of light.

The spirits that try to harm us must have limited power. All over the world, Christians are praying every day, and that restrains evil, to some extent. I believe the Tribulation will occur because those prayers will be cut off. The people who pray will be in heaven at the marriage feast, after the Rapture. When they stop praying, all hell will break loose. I believe life goes fairly well for most people in Christian countries, in spite of the presence of evil spirits, because there is so much prayer. The down side of this is that people think the spirits don’t exist. They think their fates are determined by their own efforts, and by chance.

I think evil spirits fall into two categories. There are demons, which are generally the spirits of angel-human hybrids killed in the the Flood and at other times, and there are fallen angels, which have more authority. I believe we’re entitled to give orders to demons, but that we probably have to ask God to fight fallen angels. Jude tells us about the dangers of taking them on directly, noting that even Michael would not try to handle Satan on his own, saying instead, “The Lord rebuke thee.”

It seems pretty clear that life works like this: a human being has flesh, a mind, and a spirit. The flesh and spirit fight for control of the mind. The flesh has a consciousness of its own, and like an unruly wife, it looks to control the being it’s supposed to obey. It uses things like greed, lust, and fear. It is subject to persuasion and even control from demons and fallen angels, and they use it as a handle to get a grip on the mind. The spirit listens to God and passes his influence on to the mind.

The beings that try to control the flesh will take away your free will, if they can. For example, they’ll get you addicted to things, so you can’t stop sinning even if you try. The Holy Spirit and God’s servant spirits won’t force you to do anything. They’ll urge and persuade, but they let you make your own decisions.

We are all born with iniquities. These are tendencies to do the wrong thing. Sometimes they’re inherited. If your father was an alcoholic, you’re more likely to have the same problem. An iniquity will provide an opening for spirits that will magnify and exacerbate it. The presence of the Holy Spirit and the authority of Jesus, on the other hand, will weaken and remove iniquity, giving the spirit more control. Fasting is necessary to make this work.

This is why the Bible says the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. The flesh is supposed to be like a submissive wife, but it seeks control, and it usually gets it. We see this pattern played out symbolically in the Bible in the stories of Adam and Lot. These were men whose wives were weak and rebellious, and the wives made decisions that were very costly.

That’s the way I see it. Life is a tug of war, and you’re the rope.

I told my friend that whether the things that were happening to him were good and bad depended on his response. An attack is a positive thing, if it leads to a powerful response that brings improvement. And seeing a spirit will definitely remind you that God is real. If evil spirits are real, so is the one who created them.

This serves to remind me that I need to ramp up my own fight. I need to be careful not to forget the true nature of the universe. It’s not enough to try hard. I have to remember that prayer and supernatural warfare are the most important things I do. The other things tend to be weak and misdirected, and their effects are temporary, unless they’re guided by God.

Prayer is 95% of a successful Christian life. The more you pray, the less you have to work. God told us we would reap as we sowed. The main thing you sow is prayer, and the best prayer is prayer in tongues. It’s always in line with God’s will, since God gives you the words, and the Bible tells us it increases faith, which is the source of all supernatural power.

I’d like to know more about dominating spirits. I know we can take authority over them and order them to get out of our lives.

I hope people will pray for my friend, and for that matter, for me. This is a big opportunity. I don’t want to see it turn into a loss.

Stupid Love is Bad Love

I keep hearing disappointing things about my old church. I often have moments when I wonder if I’ve misjudged the leaders or accepted malicious gossip as true, but over and over, I learn that things are actually worse than I thought.

As I’ve said before, it can be very hard to deal with depraved or jaded people, because it’s difficult to empathize with them. When I learn that someone has done something truly disgusting and brazen, it’s hard to believe, because I can’t identify with such people.

If I learn that someone has littered, I can accept the mental conviction that they don’t care about the littering laws, because I have littered, and I can understand that a person might do such a thing in a moment of irresponsibility. But I haven’t deliberately, systematically lied to people in order to get money. I haven’t hired people for low-wage jobs and then forced them to work off the clock as “volunteers” while refusing to pay for their unemployment coverage. I haven’t threatened employees with dismissal, for attending other churches. Things like that, I can’t relate to. I can’t imagine enduring the shame and guilt on an ongoing basis. I can’t see how a person who did such things could sleep at night. So my mind rejects the conclusion that such people are what they appear to be. Naturally, because I give people too much credit, I am proven wrong a lot.

It can be hard to think ill of people, but sometimes you have an obligation to do so. You shouldn’t pity people who are wicked in a premeditated, wilful, and heartless way. The Bible contains phrases like “thine eye shall not pity” with regard to such individuals. It does not come naturally to Christians, who have been taught to be merciful, loving, and forgiving. But you can’t let your perception be fogged. Mercy should triumph over judgment, as the Bible says, but it should not triumph over reason or duty.

I’ve been thinking about things like this a lot lately, and it may be that God is giving me some revelation.

Jesus prayed that his followers (I started to write “we,” but I changed it) would be united. We are also expected to love each other. For years or maybe centuries, preachers have told us this means we have to ignore denominational boundaries and overlook pastors who sin egregiously. I am starting to think that’s wrong. We’re expected to live in unity with our brothers and sisters, and we’re supposed to love them. But who are our brothers and sisters? Is every Christian my brother? Maybe not.

Look what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 5:11: “But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.”

Wow. I barely glanced at that before I copied and pasted it. I was thinking about the general message, not the precise wording. Then I saw that it expressly mentions brothers. Maybe the Holy Spirit is with me here.

Let’s talk about fornicators. I’ll toss out names for illustrative effect. I am not writing to condemn these people as fornicators, exactly, but they are useful as examples. Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard, Eddie Long, Benny Hinn, Paula White and various others have been accused of habitual fornication. All except Hinn, Long and White admitted they were guilty; I don’t know whether Hinn, Long and White actually did anything. In any case, when the stories came out, people supported these preachers in a somewhat mindless way, without knowing the facts. They talked about forgiveness and taking logs out of eyes, well before they knew what was going on. They also defended the guilty after their guilt was proven, but before there was any rehabilitation. Even now, many people get extremely upset when you mention these ministers.

Is that right? Should we insist on categorically refusing to acknowledge sin committed by Christians? Should we insist on preserving ministries after the people who run them demonstrate that they may not be called? Should we call such ministers “brother” before we know what’s happening?

If a man is your brother, you have the same father. The Bible tells us those who are led by the Holy Spirit (not the flesh) are the sons of God. What about those who run big ministries yet have no self-control? In the Bible, “sinner” doesn’t mean a person who sins occasionally. It means a person who sins habitually and without serious intent to change. I suppose it can also mean a person who is so discouraged, he thinks it’s impossible to change. If a minister is a sinner, can he, then, be your brother? Is God really his father?

Sexual sin is obvious. Maybe that’s why I mentioned it first. But look at the other things on the list: “covetous,” “idolater,” “railer,” “drunkard,” and “extortioner.” Clearly, there are a lot of habitual sins that disqualify you from calling yourself “brother.” Maybe things like gluttony and laziness count.

Look what I came across while researching this. It’s mind-blowing. This is 1 Corinthians 6:9-11:

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,

10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

11 And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

12 All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.

13 Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.

14 And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power.

If you’re in the kingdom, you must be a prince. That’s undeniable. You must be a son of God; the Bible mentions no other status for believers; God has no nephews. You must be submitted to the king, and you must be an instrument of his will. So these verses must be useful for determining who is or is not your brother. If you’re not in the kingdom, you’re not a prince, and you’re not my brother.

Look who solves the problem and makes you fit for adoption: “the Spirit of our God.” God does all the hard work, just as I’ve been learning and saying. “God hath both raised up the Lord [Jesus], and will also raise up us by his own power.”

I mentioned adoption. I didn’t see that as important, but think of this: the New Testament refers to the Holy Spirit as the “spirit of adoption.” See Romans 8:15: “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.”

I’m not planning this. It’s just coming out as I type. The NIV omits “adoption” and says “sonship”! The Greek word means “the placing of a son.”

What does this suggest to me? It suggests that many people who consider themselves Christians are not in the kingdom yet, and I am not required to think of them as brothers. It suggests that the unity Jesus wanted is not unity among denominations, but unity among chosen people within denominations, who are led by the Spirit. So many people from that denomination, so many from the other…they add up to the Body of Christ. It’s not necessary to approve of the denominations and their bad doctrine. It’s necessary to be in agreement with others who are led by the Holy Spirit.

Churches generally belong to Satan. I think that’s clear. Most deny the Holy Spirit, and even Spirit-filled churches tend to ignore the Spirit and obey the flesh. Satan has done a great job of infiltrating. But virtually all denominations contain folks who are in the kingdom. We are a sort of hidden diaspora.

If this is right, then Christ’s prayers have been answered. The denominations may war, and ministries may destroy each other, but the body is there, fundamentally ordered and united. The bones are scattered, as Psalm 40 says, but they are still of one body.

Last night after church, I noticed that we stood around and talked for at least half an hour. We do this all the time. We find that there are people we have to talk to. We don’t talk about trivial stuff. We talk in agreement, about the kingdom. We discuss things we need to do for God. We’re like people on a first date, discovering how much they have in common. If you’ve ever been in love, you know how that works. Dates like that lead to love. In my church, the commonality provided by the Holy Spirit is leading to love, and if we love each other, another of Christ’s requests has been granted.

If all this is right, then we should not feel bad about rejecting carnal ministers and believers. We should not feel bad about judiciously calling them out, or about drawing people out of their sick churches. The fact that a man at a pulpit calls himself my brother doesn’t make it so. He could just as easily call himself a rhinoceros. What he is determines what he is. What he says is just sales hype and branding.

I think mistreating your employees and congregants in order to control them qualifies as extortion, in the sense the Bible intends it. I think preaching filthy prosperity doctrine that twists scripture qualifies as covetousness and theft. I think preachers who berate people for disagreeing with them qualify as railers. There was a televangelist named Gene something or other who specialized in that kind of thing; every sermon was like a prolonged Youtube Hitler video, but he was completely serious.

If these people are extortionists and railers and so on, what should we do? “Love on them” and bless them and kiss their precious little ears, as so many Christians demand? Paul said we should not even BE IN THEIR COMPANY. If you shouldn’t be in a person’s company, even to have lunch, how can it be right for you to exalt that person as a teacher?

I am beginning to believe that it’s wrong to get close to people who deny the charismatic message. It’s clear that God gave us the Holy Spirit and intended us to let him clean us and change us. He intended us to allow the Holy Spirit to give us faith and do most of our work. If that’s true, then a person who insists on doing everything the hard way is actually an enemy of God, intentions notwithstanding. Such a person declares the crucifixion worthless and deprives the Body of Christ of its only source of power. Such people can do more damage than people who fight Christianity openly. They cause people to think they serve God when they actually oppose his law within their minds and bodies. They are “lawless” and “workers of iniquity.” The Holy Spirit’s commands are law, and the change he works in us rids us of iniquity, or bad traits that control us.

This means Spirit-filled people are going to have to do what Jesus did. We will have to spread division, to some degree. We will set people against each other, within the church itself, just as Jesus did. Antichrist works in people who live by the flesh, even if they think they serve God, and the Holy Spirit works in those who accept him. We can’t continue telling people it’s okay to deny the Spirit. We can’t put unity with the flesh above unity under God’s dominion.

When you look at it this way, much of the New Testament makes more sense. Jesus asks a lot of us, and we can’t do it on our own, but with the Holy Spirit, all things are possible, and Jesus (who never lied) even dared call his burden “light.” People who hate Christianity love to point to our sins and bad attitudes. They ask us how we can be right, if we’re just like unbelievers. They have a point. We’re not right. Not unless we accept the whole message Jesus taught. Without the Spirit, you’re buying a car with no battery and no engine.

This stuff is working for me. I believe it will work for you. I don’t think God created the world so the wonderful Steve could be the only person who got blessed. I believe that if you give it a good, legitimate try, you will see great positive change. If you become part of God, you become part of something invincible. You may lose battles, but the war has already been won.

Rachel is Out There Waiting

Until I left my old church, I did not know what a nightmare it was. Now that I’m out, I realize how it traumatized me.

I feel silly saying that. I don’t want to come across as a victim. I’m happy that God has revealed this to me; it’s very positive. It will help me understand my situation better so I can make more progress. I should also add that I didn’t deserve anything better at the time. Had I gone to a stronger church, I might have been a negative influence because of my undeveloped state.

While I was attending and serving, I was grateful for the church. For the first year or so, I thought it was a great place. The presence of God was clearly there, and they had special Wednesday services that were centered around prayer, worship, and the Holy Spirit. Over time, the church declined, and God improved me, and these things added up to dissatisfaction.

It’s my understanding that at earlier times in its long history, the church was much more devoted to God. It was small and poor, but God manifested himself there. People prophesied and so on. When I got there, the Holy Spirit was still relatively welcome. During my tenure, the leaders replaced the Holy Spirit’s moves with backward human ideas. It seemed that they were hellbent on building a megachurch and getting themselves on national TV. They started pushing the head pastor and one of his sons very hard. Neither of them had the kind of natural ability that makes a T.D. Jakes or a Joel Osteen. They didn’t have the personal charisma or the cunning, and God wasn’t with them, either, so it was a pointless exercise.

The services became highly scripted, so if the Holy Spirit attempted to interrupt or interfere, he didn’t get much respect. They started printing out schedules allotting time in very small increments, so there was no space in the program. They brought in utterly useless motivational speakers like Brian Klemmer, who used his appearances to sell worthless EST-style seminars that had nothing to do with God. They started preaching prophylactic anti-dissent propaganda, labeling anyone who was disturbed by the church’s path as “negative” and “unwilling to submit to authority.” In legal circles, this is known as “poisoning the well.”

There were anointed people in the church. God provided individuals who could teach and lead. He provided talented musicians and sharp managers. These people were suppressed, and insiders were promoted. The pastor’s oldest son was put in charge of the worship team, replacing a man who had gone to college on a singing scholarship. Two of the best musicians in the church ended up entertaining small children, while people who had a more easily marketed appearance worked in the main sanctuary. One of the top managers in the church was so ineffective, merely mentioning his name caused people to roll their eyes, but he was an insider, so though he failed consistently, he could only fail upward.

The head pastor developed a habit of inviting prosperous people to become Armorbearers, regardless of whether they had any real interest in God. I believe I was one of those people. I was asked to join the team very early. I was a white lawyer from a wealthy suburb, so there was hope I could bring others like me, and they would tithe. I was a pretty ineffective Armorbearer at first, and I think the leaders of the team had very low expectations, because unlike me, they knew why I had been chosen. It’s remarkable that I succeeded in becoming useful. I think I was the only “political” appointee that did.

I failed at everything else I did at the church, because I received no support. I was called on to write books for the pastor, but a strange lady was put in charge of the projects, and she never followed through. I was allowed to cook in the kitchen, but I was undermined in everything I did, and they eventually demanded that I show up to cook even though I was not allowed sufficient display space to earn the church more than a few dollars.

At first, I was oblivious to what was going on. I wasn’t receiving the level of revelation that I receive now. I didn’t realize I had been used and wasted. I assumed the leaders of the church were on fire for the Holy Spirit, just as so many of the members were. But I grew more discerning, and I wised up. I realized that the church was a sort of plantation. A healthy church is dedicated to helping people grow in the work God has planned for them. This church seemed to be dedicated to promoting one family, at the expense of everyone else. Nobody outside of the family went on to a bigger ministry within the church, except for one pastor who was allowed to run services at the church’s old campus, which was remote and very small. Even then, the original plan was to send video from the main church, featuring the head pastor, and he often commuted back and forth so he could teach at both churches. Last I heard, he was still doing that, so I would be surprised if the other pastor has any real authority.

The church failed financially, even though the leaders decided to serve a second master by turning unused space into an office rental complex. They got desperate for money, and they started teaching ridiculous doctrine based on the asinine heresy of Steve Munsey, a prosperity preacher and fundraiser. They started claiming people were obligated to donate large amounts of money on Jewish holidays, and that God would not bless them unless they did. I probably put a stop to that. I debunked the whole business publicly, and they’ve moved to a different set of offerings with different pitches. I probably cost them six figures a year. That doesn’t bother me. I didn’t want to see poor people cheated.

I started praying for God to find me a new church, and I wasn’t alone. Leaders who were serious Christians started leaving, even though they wouldn’t admit anything was wrong. There was a remarkable exodus. I think the church is still reeling from it. The insiders pointed fingers and lied about the folks who left, trying to stop the bleeding, but the move came from God, so it couldn’t be resisted by carnal means.

The man who was in charge of all 700+ volunteers left. He was also an Armorbearer. The head Armorbearer left. His successor left. When I heard how much the successor loved his new church, I started interrogating him. It sounded promising. I thought it was up near Coral Springs, which would have been too far to drive, but he told me it was actually south of the old church. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t told me sooner! Right away, I started visiting. Then I had a falling out with the head pastor of the old church, because I was discrediting the Munsey nonsense, and I decided to make the move permanent. I was at New Dawn Ministries to stay.

I tell that long, boring story to get to this: now that I’m at New Dawn, I can’t get used to it. I’m so accustomed to carnality, obstruction, abuse, corruption, and disappointment, it’s hard for me to get used to being in a healthy church.

When God gives me a revelation, and I mention it to the pastor, he doesn’t say, “That’s great, Steve,” and walk off while clearly hoping I won’t continue the conversation. He doesn’t say something weaselly, like, “That’s not the direction we’re headed in at the moment.” He usually agrees with me. Often, he has already had the same revelation. Sometimes he mentions these things in his sermons, naming me in the process. Last week, he had me preach for ten or fifteen minutes. He didn’t take a good idea and steal it, so he could present it and get the credit. He let me deliver it personally.

I’m not claiming I should be credited with discovering God’s secrets. I don’t come up with God’s ideas, but I suppose that if he chooses me to receive an idea, he expects me to present it. Generally, the prophets’ names are on the books they wrote, even though those books were filled with the word of God. There is no prophetic book labeled “The Book of Anonymous.”

When I talk to other church members, they don’t look at me like I’m from Mars, they way they sometimes did at the other church. They nod their heads and add their own revelations. We confirm each other’s God-given notions. We don’t struggle and bicker. We don’t always agree one hundred percent, but overall, we’re focused and united.

We act on God’s word. The other church didn’t do that. We evangelize and give things to the poor. At the old church, the charity wing did virtually nothing for people. Once in a while, they would receive a gift of turkeys or boots or something, and they’d pass stuff out in front of cameras, but it was all intended to generate publicity. The church had a paid PR director who was not a member, and she contacted news organizations to draw attention to things we did.

The Holy Spirit is all over New Dawn. Half the time, Pastor Albert can’t even preach. He’ll have a sermon worked up, but the Holy Spirit will put a stop to it, and we’ll end up hearing prophecy or praying or doing something else God has planned for us.

I don’t have to explain simple things to these people. They know prayer in tongues is key. Most of them understand that Obama is an enemy to Israel and the church. They understand that we have to support Israel. They know there’s a lot of poisonous crap on TBN. I don’t have to fight them all the time. At the old church, people are stuck in preschool. You can’t make progress there, because few people ever get past the fundamentals. They’ve been taught that all God wants to do is take their money and make them healthy and successful. They don’t understand that they have to let God change them. They think they’re doing everything right, because no one has the guts to tell them they need to grow.

Our church has a new affiliate in Winter Haven. We helped launch it. Yesterday, the pastor went on Facebook and put up a photo of himself standing with two people I don’t even know. He said they went to New Dawn to learn about the Holy Spirit, because they read my blog. I couldn’t believe it. I used to have a hard time recommending the old church. I got to the point where I recommended other churches. Now I have a church I can sell with confidence, and people are actually listening, and the pastors are with me.

I don’t know what to do. I feel like a dog that just climbed up on the couch. I literally feel as though someone should be scolding me, telling me it was all a mistake. I wait for the other shoe to drop, but there is no other shoe.

At my old church, I was treated with contempt. I had an inkling before today, but I’m just starting to understand how deep it ran and how much it damaged me. I feel like a refugee. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s always bad to find out you’ve been used, but it’s particularly painful when you learn you’ve been used while you were trying to serve God.

To explain this kind of sensation, I like to refer to a kibbutznik I knew. He sometimes worked in the dining hall on Kibbutz Geva. He had lived through the Holocaust, and he had known starvation. When he worked in the kitchen, people had to go behind him and search the cabinets. He used to hide food in them, compulsively. It was 1984, and poverty was forty years behind him, but in his heart, he could not believe it. That’s how I feel at New Dawn. I keep waiting for a slap that will never come.

Oppression is a hateful thing, and it can also be extremely insidious. If I had continued going to the old church, and I had not prayed in tongues and received revelation, I would still be there right now, blaming and condemning myself. I’d be a slave and a prisoner of my own mindset. Like a battered wife. Like the Hebrews who longed to abandon Moses and go back to the cruel mercies of the Egyptians.

The injury is bigger than I thought. And if I have it, so do many of my friends. It makes me want to consider other past injuries incurred in the same way. It makes me want to look for other ways in which I need to get free.

Like I’ve said before, no one is without sin, but not everyone is a jerk. There are plenty of people who don’t even know God, yet who will bless you and improve you instead of turning you into a slave. There is no reason to stay where you’re supposed to become part of the body of a selfish man instead of part of the body of Christ.

There is no shame in slavery, if the master is perfect. God is always right. He is always generous. He always leads you into the things that will bring you fulfillment and success. It’s right to be God’s slave. Submitting to a man is another story. It’s very dangerous. You will always have to put limits on your devotion, because no man is a perfect master.

I don’t write these things in anger or bitterness. I am writing out of amazement. I am amazed how strong my church is, and I am amazed at how much hidden harm the other church did. I have no interest in getting even. I’m contemplating and exploring the prospect of getting free.

If a pastor is handing you a line of BS, telling you you’re the problem, and you’re in touch with the Holy Spirit, and you know better, get out. You can do better. I never thought I’d say this, but sometimes staying home is better than going to church. If you have no other choice, stay home and pray. Don’t suffer under the hand of Laban.

If the yoke isn’t easy, someone other than God built it. I hope people will take that to heart and serve God instead of successors to Pharaoh.

Before You Help the Neighbors, Clean Your House

I’m learning more stuff about the concept of authority.

God and Satan are fighting for flesh in the earth. Jesus is assembling the Body of Christ, and Satan is assembling the body of the Antichrist. God is trying to exterminate the seed of the rebellious angels, and Satan is trying to exterminate God’s people.

If it sounds silly to say God is “trying” to do something, I would simply recommend taking a look at the Bible. Over and over, God started projects that didn’t pan out. He was relying on human beings to get the job done for him, and we failed him. Also, he is limited in what he can do, because he’s good. He can’t do anything that goes against his goodness.

Each of us is part of Christ’s body. Like the parts of a man’s body, we are supposed to obey the will of the head. Jesus told us that as many as were led by the Spirit were the sons of God. John said, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” He was not just talking about things God told us to do in the New Testament or the Torah. He was referring to the real-time commands Jesus issues through the Holy Spirit.

Every body has a nervous system. The Holy Spirit functions as the nervous system of the Body of Christ. He transmits information and power. We are expected to clear a pathway to him, so these things flow through us. We clear that pathway and allow the flow through prayer in tongues. It’s like physical therapy for a stroke victim. Over and over, you tell a body part to do things, and over time, it obeys more and more readily, and with more strength and certainty.

The body of Christ is God’s fetus. The earth is his uterus. We are growing stronger and more aware, as a fetus does. We are growing to resemble the father who conceived us, as a fetus does. Satan is working constantly to abort the fetus.

We see this described in a very literal way in the Revelation:

Now a great sign was seen in heaven — a woman clothed with the sun, under her feet the moon, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and about to give birth, and she screamed in the agony of labor.

Another sign was seen in heaven there was a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven royal crowns. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of heaven and threw them down to the earth. It stood in front of the woman about to give birth, so that it might devour the child the moment it was born.

She gave birth to a son, a male child, the one who will rule all the nations with a staff of iron. But her child was snatched up to God and his throne; and she fled into the desert, where she has a place prepared by God so that she can be taken care of for 1,260 days.

We ARE Jesus, just as the Antichrist’s followers are the Antichrist. We are supposed to be his limbs and eyes and so on. We are supposed to be unified in purpose, so we do the things he commands.

How do we give him control? First we have to take control of ourselves.

A human being is like a demolition derby driver who is tied up in the back seat of a car. Before he can get into the fight, he has to get free of the ropes. Until he can get loose and take the controls, other cars can ram him whenever they like and push him in any direction. Our flesh is like the car. It controls us and keeps us bound. Sometimes demons are involved. But we have to fight our own flesh before we can accomplish anything.

Look at the problems most people face. They come from a lack of self-control. The biggest killers are heart disease and cancer. Why is that? It’s because we smoke and overeat. Bad behavior kills us. Poverty usually comes from bad behavior. A lot of people suffer and die because of things they can’t control, but there are a lot of problems we bring on ourselves. We can’t control our flesh.

Jesus said that in order to spoil a strong man’s house, you have to bind the strong man. You have to bind the flesh, or it will run your life. It’s like being on a horse with no bridle. Your flesh is stupid and immoral. Do you really want it to have executive power?

We become enslaved by the flesh at an early age, and many of us also unwittingly invited demons to live in us, so we are not in charge. We may hear from Jesus, but we also hear a lot of other voices. We are tossed around, like boats in a storm. We have no course. And to have no course is to be on course for destruction. There is only one way and one gate.

To get free, we have to develop authority. As far as I can tell, it begins with faith, because faith is like a snaking tool we use to pull things from God. If you have faith, you can be baptized with the Spirit, and then you can pray in tongues. From tongues, you get more faith, guidance, power, and cleansing. Eventually, you will reach a point where you can overcome your flesh. Once that happens, you will begin to be able to exercise real authority over external things. Spirits and matter.

Jesus didn’t need tongues, to the best of our knowledge. He was worthy and sinless from birth, so he was not like us. He was baptized with the Spirit, and then he went into the desert to fast. During the fast, he defeated his flesh. He showed it he was willing to die before letting it control him, and it yielded. When Satan came to tempt him, he couldn’t find a handle. He couldn’t find an internal ally to help him. The flesh was submitted to the authority of Jesus, so Satan could not bring internal division and rule over him.

It was not until after the fast that Jesus began exercising real power. His first miracles came after the fast. His ministry of perfect teaching began after the fast.

When we fast, the purpose is to defeat the flesh so the Spirit can have more control. When we show the flesh we mean business, it backs down before us. We can command it, in the name of Jesus. We can command spirits. We can free ourselves from iniquity, which is the inclination to do evil. We can do away with Satanic habits like drug addiction, alcoholism, pornography, whoring, habitual anger, overeating, laziness, and so on. We can become like Jesus, inside ourselves.

What happens without authority? We may be defeated. The sons of Sceva (a priest) told a demon to leave a man, by the authority of Jesus. The demon told them it didn’t know them, and it stripped the men naked and chased them so they ran down the street. They were exposed as lacking authority; the nudity symbolized that. The fact that they were sons of a priest was also significant. It shows that authority comes from the Holy Spirit, not earthly prestige. Authority comes from a supernatural anointing, as well as submission and obedience.

The unfortunate consequence is that sometimes we have to fast. That’s just how it is. We can ride the horse, or it can ride us.

This confirms something I already believed. If you know a preacher who has no self-control, you know someone whose words have to be put to the test. For example, if a preacher is obese, how can he say the flesh doesn’t run him? Would he choose obesity deliberately? Of course not. It has to be the result of submission to the flesh. What if he smokes? What if he fornicates or suffers from greed? What if he’s addicted to approval and admiration? What if he loses his temper habitually? You have to keep your eye on him, because from time to time, when he speaks, the flesh may be in charge, and we know who rules the flesh when we don’t.

Right now, the Body of Christ is like a person with MS or cerebral palsy. Jesus sends the commands, and the Holy Spirit transmits them and gives us the power to accomplish our tasks, but we don’t hear. We don’t obey. We are like taxis with the radios removed. We are “lawless,” as the Bible calls it. We are “workers of iniquity.” We do what our habits tell us to do. Sometimes we obey Jesus, but not nearly often enough. So the Body of Christ is like a disabled person who can’t coordinate his limbs and get out of bed.

This is why our experience is not like the experience of the Apostles. This is why we don’t see more people raised from the dead. The telephone lines are down.

The other day I fasted, and I asked for more authority. This was before I understood all these things the way I do now. A few days later, I got the idea that it was okay to give commands directly to my flesh. To address it as though it were a dog. I started doing it, and my flesh obeyed. I usually have trouble falling asleep, but when I ordered my flesh to become drowsy and sleep, it did. I had trouble with sexual thoughts. I ordered my flesh to knock it off, and it did. I had lost some of the victory God had given me over gluttony. I ordered my flesh to stop craving food and drink, and it did.

After I started seeing these results, I understood that God had granted my request. I had more authority.

It’s not perfect. Sometimes I get resistance. But the flesh is now in retreat. It is losing the war. Things are getting better and better.

The Bible says whom the son sets free is free indeed. People think this is about hell. It’s not just about hell. It’s about living in authority, right here. As Adam did before the fall. It doesn’t mean your life will be perfect, but overall, you will be victorious.

Look at the people Jesus freed in the Bible. Lepers. Crippled people. The blind. He didn’t just promise them eternal life, fifty years down the road. He set them free here on earth. Authority is for this world.

Churches resist this, because Satan has a lot of control over churches. It’s a message he fears. But it’s true. This is why the “gospel” really is “good news.” If you’re suffering on earth, it’s very nice to hear that you’re going to paradise some day. But if Jesus delivers you right now, wow! That’s GOOD NEWS. That’s the kind of news that will make you jump up and down. No matter how great the promise of eternal life is, it really can’t compare, in immediate emotional impact.

This stuff continues to work for me. If you have inner problems you can’t control, give it a try. I think you’ll be amazed.