VIPs up Front, Holy Spirit in the Coat Closet

All sorts of fascinating stuff is going on.

I started bugging friends to pray in tongues, using timers. Some of them started doing it. Lives are changing. Unity is growing. Now some of them are going on without me.

I didn’t go to my weekly prayer group this weekend, because I thought they were going to talk about worldly things. It didn’t work out that way. One of my friends ended up running the group, and they did what I do. They worshiped and let the Holy Spirit work, and they had a great meeting. They didn’t need me. Thank God. This is what I was hoping for. I’m not the Holy Spirit. If I have to be there in order for things to work, the situation is hopeless. If I get mashed by a bus, the movement should go one as if nothing happened. I’m just one part in the machine.

I’m learning things about the church and what needs to be done inside it. The old churches, especially the Catholics, teach idolatry and apostasy. The new churches, like my own denomination (the Assemblies of God) are absolutely CONSUMED with greed and lust for power. They use the Holy Spirit as an excuse to glut their flesh and take advantage of God’s people. On the whole, the newer churches are better off, because the Holy Spirit still has a seat at the table. People still pray in tongues and admit God does miracles. They don’t pray to a mere woman or to so-called “saints.” So I think it’s possible to take people within the new denominations and break them loose.

I’m coming to some conclusions that I think are sound.

1. The idea that you have to give huge amounts of money to the church is just stupid.

According to Aaron, the Jews used to teach that 20% was a good maximum. I’m sure there are many times when the Holy Spirit calls on people to give more, but the most my church can count on from me from now on is 10%. If they were doing something remarkable with the money, it would be a different story, but they’re not.

We have been taught that God will make people prosperous if they give enormous, burdensome offerings. I can tell you for a fact: it’s not true. I believe God expects us to tithe, and that he rewards us for it. I am positive God rewards people here on earth for giving to the poor, because he promises it. But if your pastor comes begging you for $50,000 because he put your church in debt without counting the cost, he’s just wrong, and God is not going to give the money back to you, and there ain’t going to be no “hundredfold return.” If you hang around Christians long enough, you will meet lots of people who give to ministries but don’t do well, and that proves our doctrine is off. I can name names, and if money-crazy ministers challenged people like me, a flood of witnesses would come forward and bury them, bringing receipts.

No one ever teaches us to pay our debts to man before we offer money to God, but it should be obvious that this is required. Yet we are often encouraged to give money we don’t have, without asking ourselves what we owe. Why would God reward you for giving him stolen property? We teach people to max out their credit cards in order to buy ministers jets. That’s sinful, plan and simple. God hates debt. Jesus told us to avoid oaths (including the one you make when you agree to borrow money). How can any teacher tell us we should borrow in order to give? Seems to me that if you stiff Mastercard in order to give to Benny Hinn, if anyone should get the blessing, it’s Mastercard. They’re the ones who took the hit, right?

Rarely do we hear that God won’t give us money if we are greedy or irresponsible or covetous. If you have a lust problem, do you think God is going to make you the coach of a girls’ swimming team? If you have a gluttony problem, do you think God is going to give you an ice cream factory? Why would your father, who loves you, curse you with something that would destroy you? If he’s trying to bring you shalom, including prosperity and contentment, he’s not going to hand you a needle and tell you to shoot up.

Rarely do we hear that God likes it when we give to the poor. Over and over, we hear that God wants us to bless MINISTRIES. Coincidentally, ministries buy big houses and cars for ministers. The guys who tell us God wants us to bless ministries. No conflict of interest there. Perish the thought.

How often do we hear a minister quote God’s promises to help those who help the poor? Like once a month? Many ministers don’t want us helping the poor, because they see the poor as competition. Terrible thing to say, but true. Give Pastor X a hundred bucks, and he’ll take fifty for himself. Then his employees get thirty. Then the ministry gets fifteen. After that, the poor lick the dirty dishes.

Here’s what I believe. You give generously to your church, IF they use the money wisely. Otherwise, you give judiciously. You give generously to the poor, and you make very sure the charities you choose aren’t pocketing most of the cash. You take care of your family before the poor. Especially older relatives.

2. It’s not a numbers game.

Some ministers will do anything to get people to accept salvation. They will say homosexuality and fornication are fine. They will use worldly music that leads kids into sin. They will chicken out when it comes to politics, refusing to warn their flocks about the evils of voting the wrong way on abortion, Israel, the church, and sexual sin. They will welcome worldly teaching into their churches. They’ll do absolutely anything to appear cool and hip. They end up with churches full of people who think they’re in nightclubs. Their flocks stay ignorant about idolatry and other sins. In short, they turn their churches into extensions of the godless world, and they excuse it by saying souls are all that matter.

Souls are NOT all that matter. We are supposed to put people in touch with the Holy Spirit and teach them about sin. Jesus didn’t die to save the whole world. Some people are going to hell. We should be raising up real Christians. When you don’t do that, your church gets more and more worldly over time, and a generation or two down the road, it’s completely ruled by Satan. It’s better to have a good church with 200 members than a nightclub church with 50,000 members.

3. You should spend your time the way you spend your money.

If your church is doing foolish things, don’t volunteer. Stay home and pray. Sometimes you’ll want to be there so you can be a good influence, but you shouldn’t let them turn you into a doormat. People, especially kids, will think you approve of what’s going on. You can always find something good to do with your time; don’t let misguided people waste it and make you feel used.

4. A church that doesn’t promote from within is out of God’s will.

If your church seems to do a whole lot for the pastor and his family and friends, while ignoring gifted or helpful people who are not in the inner circle, something is wrong, and you need to pray for change. God doesn’t send talented people to churches so they can be milked like cattle, while connected but clueless people get endless support. That’s how the godless world operates. People cheat the gifted and keep them down. They take their achievements. They take their creations and the money they generate. A church that works that way is an extension of the world. It’s the church of Satan. If your church doesn’t reward you and work with you after a reasonable amount of time, cut it off. God prunes unfruitful branches, and you’re not expected to be nicer than he is.

5. A church should have open books.

If you pay the bills, you have the right to look at the books. A pastor who won’t publish an annual report, with details, is slapping the face of the people who feed him. There should be no such thing as blessing without accountability. Did your pastor fly to China and take his family with him? Maybe you paid for it. You have a right to know.

6. A church that takes “wisdom” from the ungodly world is serving Satan.

Remember how it worked in the Bible? The Holy Spirit filled people, and they did miracles. They took away people’s pain. They gave people peace. Naturally, people wanted to learn from them, so their lives would be improved.

Now we don’t do that. We look to see what wordly people are doing, and we say pathetic things like, “God doesn’t want the WORLD to get all the benefit of this stuff.” So we find ourselves doing yoga and using visualization techniques. We steal positive thinking doctrine from Dale Carnegie and the Scientologists.

WHO WANTS THAT CRAP? It won’t heal cancer! It won’t give you a personal relationship with God! What does it have to do with Christianity? NOTHING. If anything, it puts distance between you and God. He wants you to be blessed through faith, not gimmicks and idolatry.

The history of the church is a story of revolution. God comes and puts things right, and man corrupts it. God comes and throws out the men who usurped his power, and he puts things right again, and he puts better people in charge. Man corrupts it. The cycle repeats, over and over. Right now, the Spirit-filled churches are swimming in their own filth. We love wealth. We love seeming hip. We love cameras and stadiums. Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit might as well be hogtied. And believers are being swindled. Eventually, they will rise up and demand accountability. What will our money-stuffed evangelists say? They can’t preserve capital; they destroy it. They can’t repay, because they waste what we give them. They don’t build anything profitable with it.

A capitalist who takes your money may build factories that take raw goods and add value to them by turning them into manufactured items. A ministry doesn’t build factories or other wealth-generating apparatus. They take from givers, spend, and then take more. They sink money. They can’t repay what they take, because they don’t create anything.

7. A church that takes from the poor and gives to the rich is sick.

If your church feeds donated money to wealthy singers and speakers, paying them handsomely for showing up and drawing crowds, there is a problem. In fact, I take a dim view of any event you have to pay to attend. Perry Stone doesn’t charge people to go to his conferences. If you show up, you’re allowed in. Why would I charge to introduce people to the Holy Spirit? God didn’t charge me. Why would I bar the door with a toll, when God held it open for me?

Also, if your church asks volunteers to inconvenience themselves and spend money in order to help rich friends of the ministry who aren’t involved in events at your church, look out. If you volunteer to help your church, it doesn’t mean they can ask you to trim the pastor’s hedges or deliver his pals’ luggage from the airport. Volunteers should only be asked to do things that benefit the church. Anything else is corruption. How would you feel if you found out Barack Obama was sending the Secret Service to wash Barbra Streisand’s car?

8. A church that doesn’t welcome criticism is in Satan’s control.

If you read the Bible, you will see that generally, God’s servants were critical. They didn’t show up to tell people they were doing great. They told them to repent. But these days, some churches tell their flocks that anyone who points out an obvious and shameful problem is a Judas. Clearly, you can’t run a church when everyone criticizes without letup. But a church that bans criticism is doing the same thing the Nazis, Communists, and Islamists have done. Satan likes to protect his lies, so when he gets control of an organization, the first thing he does is ban free speech. If you can’t speak up in your church, it’s not because God wants unity. It’s because Satan doesn’t want to be exposed. Cockroaches instinctively fear light.

9. A church that kisses up to the rich is in error.

If a rich person shows up at your church, and the pastor automatically puts him in the front row, look out. He’s blessing someone Satan has already blessed. He’s saying wealth is proof of God’s approval, and that people who are not rich are inferior. The perversity of this mindset should be obvious to a small child, yet pastors don’t see it. If your pastor brags because a celebrity showed up in church, it’s not a good sign.

I think there is going to be a tongues movement. God doesn’t wait around forever while man runs the church and fills his pockets. God is going to reach down and create a church within a church and a nation within a nation. We will be persecuted by the church the same way early Christians were persecuted by Jews. We’ll communicate through whispers and glances. And slowly, we’ll cut out a big portion of the people and churches that are currently held captive. I see it happening around me. It’s not going to stop. God ordained it, so man can’t oppose it.

Like Samson, Spirit-filled people will shake themselves and use the strength of the Holy Spirit to snap the cords that bind them. Believers who refuse to listen will be like Samson after Delilah shaved him. They’ll be defeated by the world, blinded spiritually, and put to work grinding the world’s grain. God’s strength will not be in them. That’s what I believe or at least expect.

I feel like I know where I stand now, with regard to the church. I am at peace. I am not going to strive with my earthly tools and fight incompetent and corrupted people. God will clear a path for me, if I listen to him, and he will clear paths for my friends. His sleeper cells will be preceded by powerful spirits that serve God.

It’s a wonderful thing to witness. I’m so glad I didn’t have to spend my whole life being defeated by people who claim to serve God yet oppress his servants.

He Does Such Swell Stuff for People

Remember the chapter in Luke where Jesus sat the disciples down and had them do yoga? He said, “I know it comes from a Satanic religion, but it really makes you flexible, and it’s okay, as long as you don’t pray to demons.”

Wait…he didn’t do that? Are you sure?

I had a Facebook discussion this week about yoga. A friend asked if it was okay for a Christian to do it, and of course, I said it was not. And I pointed out that it was very strange, seeing Christians argue over HOW MUCH of a Satanic religion it was okay to adopt.

Yoga is a religious practice. It’s part of Hinduism. Look it up. The postures were created as offerings to demon “gods” worshiped by Hindus. And if you get beyond the stretching and sitting, they’ll teach you Satanic mysticism, including things like meditation.

Christians will try to tell you that Hindu meditation is okay, because the Bible tells us to meditate. Unfortunately, they have not looked up “meditate” in a concordance. Two Old Testament terms translated as “meditate” mean to murmur or to concentrate, presumably on God’s word.

Here; take a look at a yoga expert’s explanation of meditation:

In the yogic context, meditation, or dhyana, is defined more specifically as a state of pure consciousness. It is the seventh stage, or limb, of the yogic path and follows dharana, the art of concentration. Dhyana in turn precedes samadhi, the state of final liberation or enlightenment, the last step in Patanjali’s eight-limbed system. These three limbs—dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation), and samadhi (ecstasy)—are inextricably linked and collectively referred to as samyama, the inner practice, or subtle discipline, of the yogic path.

Right, right. Totally harmless. Nothing there to alarm a Christian. We all recall Jesus telling us how we needed to stretch our way to final liberation and achieve the last step in Patanjali’s eight-limbed system.

Are we dense, or what? HELLO? This is idolatry and mysticism. How could it be any more clear? What will it take? Do they have to give you an “I Heart Satan” T-shirt when you sign up, in order to get the message through your skull?

I am really fed up with wordly and/or Satanic (same thing) practices worming their way into the church. I am sick of “life coaches,” large group awareness training (i.e. cults), positive thinking, yoga, motivational speakers, positive visualization, and self-help gurus.

None of this stuff has anything to do with Jesus.

Here is one of the fundamental truths of Christianity. People try to fix their own lives without God, and they fail. They suffer, so they turn to Jesus. That’s how it works. You don’t turn to Jesus and then fix your life without God’s help.

People need to stop making excuses for God. That’s one of the problems here. People become Christians, and God doesn’t make their lives perfect overnight, and they hear bad teachings which don’t pan out (thousand-dollar seed gift, commanding the angels, etc.), and they try to come up with explanations, in order to preserve what little faith they have. One of the explanations is this, even if it’s never spoken expressly: “You have to work and find solutions to your problems and make things happen, and then you give God credit because he allowed you to succeed.”

People give up on God’s help, so they try yoga, self-esteem building, Dale Carnegie, and other worldly, ineffective nonsense. It works in the short term, so they run around telling people God blessed them. Worst of all, they tell people it proves God helps those who helps themselves, which is a huge lie not found in the Bible. God helps those who admit they can’t help themselves.

Here’s another truth: Christianity isn’t about making life perfect. The poor will always be with us, according to Jesus. Disease will always be with us. We will not get everything we want in life. People will die in accidents. Good people will not do well in business. Babies will be born deformed. The purpose of becoming a Christian isn’t to make your life perfect, although it may get very, very, VERY good.

Why do I point this out? Because many Christians think that any type of success pleases God. If yoga makes you healthier, it must be okay with God. If LGAT (large group awareness training, like EST and the Landmark Forum) cults help people succeed in business, they must please God. If you give money to poor people and help them temporarily, it must please God.

That’s crazy. God’s kingdom is not of this world. Suffering is part of his plan. Very often, “fixing” a problem by worldly means is the worst thing you can do. It’s not okay to practice demonic Hindu methods just because it makes your back feel good. It’s not okay to achieve success through cult training; in all likelihood, you’re just dodging something God wants you to go through. It’s not okay to let self-help gurus train you to be aggressive and conceited; God says to be humble and rely on him.

When you help yourself by means God never wanted for you, God takes his hands off and stops blessing you until you face-plant.

When the king of Israel turned to the Egyptians to fight his enemies, instead of turning to God, he was cursed and rebuked for it. He trusted man instead of God, and he got slapped down. Somehow, we think we’re different. We think we can get exactly what WE choose, through any means we want, instead of waiting to find out what God wants for us. We get earthly success through carnal means, and then we claim we’re blessed. Then God’s fire comes and burns it up, and we’re back at square one.

Why not take the straight path? If you’re a knowledgeable Christian, what excuse do you have for wasting time on this nonsense? Isn’t it better to lack for a while and then get a real blessing than to take what you want by force and then pretend God gave it to you?

I am reminded of the story about the little boy who prayed for a new bike and didn’t receive it. Finally, he stole a bike and prayed for forgiveness.

This is why liberalism is such a problem in the church. We aren’t content with God’s time-consuming ways. It’s not enough to have him work inside us individually and improve us one at a time. We think God’s kingdom is of this world. We have to have peace, love, unity, prosperity, and free puppies and kitties for everyone, NOW! NOW! NOW! So we don’t wait for God’s way. We say homosexuality is wonderful. We say socialism is God’s way, even though it isn’t mentioned once in the Bible. We support gun control, even though the Bible calls Jehovah “the God of armies” and Jesus ordered his disciples to carry swords. We say Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and other Satanic diversions are “other valid paths” to God. We adopt any worldly or occult practice that seems to work, and we call it good, because GOD WOULDN’T WANT TO DEPRIVE HIS PEOPLE OF ANYTHING.

What a load. Shame on us.

When Job’s children died and his wealth disappeared and he was covered with pus-oozing boils, did he join a yoga class? Did he start watching Oprah? Did he join a cult and take part in a humiliating seminar in a hotel ballroom? No. He said, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” He thought he could defend himself before God, and he was wrong, but he didn’t turn to a swami to solve his problems.

God blesses people here on earth, especially if they give alms (Psalm 41), but that’s not his primary purpose. You may not get everything you want. That doesn’t mean it’s okay to try to get your stuff from the devil or from man. Remember Abraham? He had the opportunity to become rich by accepting goods from the King of Sodom, and he said, “I have lift up mine hand unto the LORD, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, That I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet, and that I will not take any thing that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abram rich.”

Christians need to learn this: you don’t judge the righteousness of an act by its positive earthly result. You judge it by the Holy Spirit and scripture. That which seems to bless you is not necessarily good, and it may be a great evil.

Satan shoves this filth into the church in order to take away people’s longing for God. He says, “See? You don’t need to wait for supernatural help. Get what you want on your own. This is what God really wants. Surely you didn’t think he was going to give you things for nothing! You don’t deserve it! God wants you to earn things!” Meanwhile, the Bible tells us over and over that God gives us what we don’t deserve, and that he paid virtually the entire price. It tells us that trying to save yourself is proud and rebellious.

When I first resumed going to church, I put up with a lot. I reminded myself that I was under the authority of other people, and that God had put them over me. I told myself I had to be patient, and that when they seemed to screw up, there would be blessings in going along with it. I felt it was rebellious and divisive to speak up.

Now I’ve modified that a little. I believe you give people reasonable slack, and then you stand up for God and open the mouth God gave you. I was not reborn to serve clergymen. I was reborn to serve the one who made them from sand and salt and water.

Some people claim the church is divided because rebellious people split off in order to get their own way. That’s a distortion straight from hell. The church is divided because churches become corrupt, and sometimes good people have to leave in order to serve God. Sure, some people are rebellious and divisive. But that’s not the whole story. How long do you serve a church that mixes paganism with Christianity? How long do you stay in a church which teaches that the Holy Spirit’s manifestations are demonic? How long do you serve a church that has a gay pastor who teaches with his husband in the first row? Do you seriously think God expects us to eat filth forever? Of course not.

You should try not to offend people, but you also have a duty to let people know when they’re in trouble, and that is more important than getting along with others. Through Ezekiel, God told us we would be guilty of the blood of sinners we did not warn.

Every prophet offended the church. A whole slew of them were martyred. If you haven’t made anyone in the church angry, you’re doing something wrong. Jeremiah, Isaiah, John the Baptist, and Stephen were better servants of God than our modern Pastor Feelgoods. I know I’ll annoy people eventually, but when they pit themselves against God, what choice do I have?

I will wait on the Holy Spirit, and I will open my mouth when I have to. If some people don’t like me, so be it. They are not my judges.

Jeremiah 29:11

Drudge links to a remarkable story today. Some guy got involved with a woman who had student loans she wasn’t paying off, and a SWAT team broke into his house in the middle of the night to search the place. They put him in a patrol car and left him there for six hours. The part where they attacked him and not her makes perfect sense. This is the government we’re talking about. The people liberals trust to solve their problems.

I had no idea Uncle Sam got this crabby about getting his money! I know some people who might want to start wearing expensive underwear, so they look their best when the cops drag them outside at 4 a.m.

Student loans are bad news. You can’t get out of them by declaring bankruptcy or crying poverty. You pretty much have to be dead or dying in order to get forgiveness. If you don’t pay, the interest just keeps building, and then Sallie Mae gives up and adds it to the principal. Then they have the right to charge you interest on the interest you didn’t pay. So you can turn a $100,000 debt into $200,000, if you really try. And the IRS can come in and collect by force, so even if you turn your life around, you may find yourself taking home a tiny piece of a big paycheck. Welcome to sharecropping.

I know someone who has a 16-year-old debt which amounts to at least $190,000. I don’t think it could have been more than $100,000 to start with. And this is someone who had the money to pay. Go figure. Obama might as well hogtie and brand this individual, because until that money rolls in, this person is a slave.

The only good thing about the SWAT story is that the victim may have a lawsuit which will turn his six hours of captivity into a nice retirement account. Meanwhile, his ex may be in for some interesting times.

It’s encouraging to see the government making a serious effort to get our money back. That much, I will give them. I didn’t think they were trying very hard.

I no longer believe in borrowing. I’ve done some dumb things. I bought $1500 speakers with loan money. But I now believe that borrowing is a good way to curse yourself. Even mortgages and car loans. We have gotten so used to buying things we can’t afford, we think it’s normal. I disagree. Like the Bible says, “A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked.” It also says the borrower is the servant of the lender. If you owe money on your house and car, they’re not yours, no matter how you spin it. Someone else has the power to take them away if you falter. Then where are you?

It’s a lot harder to take what you have when you own it outright. And you won’t find yourself forced to do things you don’t believe in, just to keep the payments up. A man who has a stack of loans is a target for temptation and coercion, just like a politician with dirt in his past. If you’re not in that situation, you are truly blessed.

I always wonder what our streets and parking lots would look like if all the cars that weren’t paid for disappeared.

Christianity is largely about short-term pain in exchange for long-term gain. Debt works the other way around. In Christianity, you give this life to God, and after seventy or a hundred years you get a magnificent, lasting reward. When you borrow, you usually get a car or a crappy stereo or some other trinket that loses value, and you pay much more than it’s worth. You get something better than you deserve, and you get it fast, but it doesn’t last, and you end up worse off in the end.

Christianity is amazing. It frees you from scratching to make this life as good as it can be. If you don’t believe, what is life? Childhood and adolescence are somewhat unpleasant, and during these years, you probably won’t have freedom, success, or wealth. Then you hit your twenties, which are supposed to be the best time of your life. You’re healthy. You look good. You feel good. But you don’t have much by middle-aged standards, and older people boss you around. If you’re really lucky, you have money and other trappings of success by the time you hit 30. If you’re a woman, that gives you about five years to enjoy them before you fall out of the first tier of physical beauty, and you have to get very busy burdening yourself with kids. If you’re a man, you don’t have to worry about that stuff, but you’re still aging.

By 45, you’re over the hill, especially if you’re female. Now it’s time to worry about retirement. But you probably won’t save enough. At this point, you feel like you’re a success on the downhill slope to grey hair and wrinkles, or you feel like you’re a failure who no longer has a chance to make it. If you’re on top, you want to stay there, but time will not leave you alone. Even Madonna, with all her money, can turn into an old woman kids don’t admire any more. Botox, fetal stem cells, collagen, and plastic surgery can’t keep you young.

When old age hits you, it’s time to look at what you have and what you’ve done and decide whether it meant anything. Maybe you have money, but you’re going to die, and your money is going to stay here. Maybe you’ve accomplished a lot in your career, but your career can’t follow you to the grave.

The other day I was flipping channels, and I saw a listing for Teen Wolf. And I couldn’t help thinking how absurd it was, to see yourself as a success because you’ve been in movies. We admire and worship movie stars. But…Teen Wolf? Come on. Is that a legacy? When you think about it, all movies are stupid. Actors stand around playing make-believe, just like kids in a playground. Try it sometime, if you’ve never acted. Read a scene with your friends. You feel silly, right? This is what John Wayne did every day, and we think he’s wonderful. Could anything be more ridiculous? Is that any way to spend a life? And I emphasize the word “spend.”

If you live by the world’s rules, age is your enemy. It takes the things you value. It robs you of looks, health, and social relevance. It takes away your career. It takes away the things you enjoy.

What if you’re a Christian who walks by faith? Different story. Suddenly age is wealth. Your life is measured in eons, not years, so no matter how you see yourself, you are extremely young and full of potential. You’re just getting started. And the things you do have lasting value. God will guide you and help you do things that have lasting impact. You’ll even be able to help people enter paradise, where they’ll be your friends for eternity.

Instead of seeing earthly success as important and having great respect for earthly institutions, you’ll start to see the earth as what it is: a silly, corrupt place where things don’t work the way they should. A planet in a disease state. Not a good place to spend a long time. Not a place you’d want to retire to. The older you get, the closer you are to getting off this wretched rock. If a Muslim beheads you, great. Your sentence is finally over. No more wrinkles. No more joint pains. No more reading glasses. You’ll never get a cold again. You’ll never crack your toe on a piece of furniture. You’ll never worry about where the rent is coming from. Really, you should thank the person who martyrs you.

Christians are basically God’s Peace Corps volunteers, except for one big difference: God’s Peace Corps works, while the world’s Peace Corps tends to send idealistic kids to foreign countries where they find that everyone thinks they’re CIA (because a lot of them are), and the locals expect you do do all the work. Which kind of explains why they need the Peace Corps. You get seven different kinds of bleeding diarrhea, and if you’re lucky, you dig a couple of wells that get filled in by Marxist guerillas the day after you leave. Hooray.

Anyway, God suffers us to remain in this awful place so we can rescue others and bedevil the ruler of this world. God makes things more pleasant and rewarding for us while we’re here, if we really know him and submit to him, but this isn’t what he wants for us in the long term. He can’t wait to bring us home, like soldiers returning from a filthy, bloody war. After all, this IS a war. It’s THE war; all others are imitations.

We return home in boxes, and that’s unfortunate, but it beats staying here.

The older you get, the closer you are to parole, and you’re racking up credits in heaven. You’re filling your retirement account. The Bible makes it clear that what we get in heaven depends on what we do here; we’re not all going to have the same rewards.

You’re also growing to be more like Christ. Your supernatural power–the gifts of the Spirit–is increasing. Your good character–the fruit of the Spirit–is improving. By earth’s standards, you stop growing and start dying when you’re about 20. In God’s kingdom, you haven’t even hit puberty yet. You’re going to get better and better and better.

My life keeps getting better. People jab me about my age, and I don’t care at all. You can have this world. I don’t want it. Get yourself botoxed up and let the good times roll while they may. You’ll still end up in a nursing home, and everyone will think you’re irrelevant, annoying, and superfluous. I have a better destination, and I’ll have a better time during the trip.

No wonder so many martyrs were happy to die. The more they became like God, the more disgusted they must have become with this place. I enjoy life tremendously, but I don’t want to spend the rest of it HERE. Please. When the time comes, please airlift me out of this dump.

You’re not going to see me do any heavy borrowing any time soon. I want my rewards in front of me and my work behind me, not the other way around.

Priorities of San Franciscans as Revealing as Their Protest Attire

A long time ago, Aaron used to tell me Israel and the Jews got a bad deal from the press. I thought he was nuts, but gradually I started to notice the press’s increasing hostility, and eventually, the crescendo became impossible to ignore. And since the press is the mouth of liberalism, I realized that the left, generally, is against the Jews.

Most Jews have not figured this out yet, which is amazing. I will never forget the sand-aspirating ostrich who told a reporter he voted for Kerry because he thought he would be better for Israel. If you can believe a thing like that, you are beyond hope. Whatever your objections to Bush may have been, he was on the pro-Israel side of the American political spectrum, and Kerry would have been much worse.

Today, via Sondra, I heard about the new Jew-hating comic, Foreskin Man. No, you are not dreaming. Regrettably.

Many people in San Francisco worship the principle male organ of reproduction, so it is not surprising that they are trying to ban circumcision. To them, circumcision amounts to defacing an idol. Foreskin Man is a cartoon hero who goes around battling–see for yourself–evil Jews.

You’re not supposed to circumcise it, but it’s okay to split it down the middle and put rings and chains in it, or to cut it off entirely and turn yourself into a grotesque, farcical, pitiable imitation of a woman. I’m not sure what the logic is, but that’s how it works out.

I emailed Aaron about this, and he made a reference to Julius Streicher. I had to Google. Streicher was a newspaper publisher in Germany. He published many of the famous Nazi-era photos and cartoons disparaging Jews. You have probably seen the big-nosed, sweaty, leering caricatures. If you look at Foreskin Man artwork, you will see that Streicher’s work is being continued.

In America. In 2011. In a major city. Among people who consider themselves socially enlightened. Openly.

The hero himself is an Aryan paragon. Tall, lean, heavily muscled, blond, and blue-eyed. He looks like Dolph Lundgren’s kid brother. He’s basically a gay hearththrob. So what we have is a perverse merger of Nazi propaganda and homoerotic art. If we can just work the green movement, unlimited abortion rights, and gun control in there, the picture will be nearly complete.

The obvious question here is why it’s okay to sever a baby’s spine with scissors and then suck his brain out, when it’s a crime to remove a piece of skin from his penis in observance of your Constitutionally protected right to freedom of religion.

In other news, an eco-nut in Australia is seriously suggesting forcing global-warming skeptics to accept arm tattoos labeling them as unbelievers. That kind of makes sense. Heidi Cullen of The Weather Channel had her own Krystallnacht moment a few years back, when she suggested rescinding the accreditations of climate professionals who questioned the scientific conclusions of divinity school failure and law school dropout Al Gore. We are talking about “progressives” here, and progressives progress. First we go after your livelihood. Then we put tattoos on you. Next thing you know, your skin is a lampshade in Bill Maher’s study.

The gloves are coming off. In a few years, anti-Semitism is going to be fashionable. It’s already fashionable on the left, especially among self-hating Jews, but it will eventually spread to the rest of us as cowardly anti-Semites look around and see that it’s safe to emerge. And because Spirit-filled conservative Christians support the Jews, we will be in the same boat. And like the St. Louis, it’s not going to find a safe port.

Christians who believe in the Rapture generally think it’s going to be a magical event where we just disappear. Not me. I think we’ll be massacred along with a lot of Jews. Our heads will lie in the gutters next to each other while naked and pierced progressives hoot with satisfaction and engage in various creative and unimaginable types of celebratory fornication. Tell me I’m a kook; then go look at photos of what’s already happening in San Francisco. Naked protesters lining the streets and sodomizing each other on the sidewalks? They call that “Thursday.”

In God’s temple, animals were slaughtered and bled, and the priests read from scrolls made from their skins. In Nazi camps, Jews and other enemies of the Reich were slaughtered, and their skins were tattooed with filthy cartoons. Satan loves parody, since he’s not orignal enough to come up with anything new. We’ll be seeing these things again in the future. The birth pangs of the Antichrist are well underway.

God’s Voltage Will Find a Path Around Man’s Resistance

All sorts of stuff is going on.

For like two years, I’ve been trying to get friends and my sister to pray in tongues. Back in the Eighties, I started to feel sure that this was the key to spiritual growth, and my experience since then has confirmed it. I believe the Holy Spirit is the nervous system (the “Force”) of the Body of Christ, and without it, we will always be ineffectual and self-defeating, so I try to get people to build the Holy Spirit’s influence inside them by praying in tongues.

People I know are starting to listen. They get timers, and they make sure they pray in tongues every day. They come back to me changed. I feel like I have help now. I don’t have to be the lonely voice of tongues. If I drop dead, they’ll keep going and multiplying and growing.

It’s like The Matrix, in reverse. We’re the agents, and we’re the good guys. That little surveillance kit an agent wears, with the plug in the ear? That represents the Holy Spirit, connecting us to our guiding power. We submit. We listen. We are in agreement. We act as one. Neo? That’s the guy who thinks he’s special. He thinks he can do it without God. He believes he knows better. Basically, he’s the Antichrist.

Remember how Agent Smith touched people and turned them into clones of himself? That’s what Jesus bought us on the cross. On Pentecost, he came down and sent the Holy Spirit through the Upper Room, turning 120 people into his younger brothers and sisters and enabling them to grow to be like him. Now we can lay hands on people, quite literally the same way Agent Smith did, and we can give them this gift. This is what being “born again” really means.

People love their pride. They love to feel like they have special abilities no one else has. They love their narcissism. That’s why the image of Neo is so appealing. You put on a cool black coat and nifty black shades, and you load up with all sorts of sexy weapons, and you wade through the sheep who oppose you in ignorance. You slaughter them without remorse, because they’re part of the problem. If they were as hip as you, you wouldn’t have to shoot them, but they’re just not cool, so down they go.

That’s pretty much how Satan works. He didn’t like God’s plan. He figured he could do better. He was beautiful and smart and strong. He was persuasive. He was aggressive and self-confident. Today we would call him “empowered” and “centered.” He didn’t care about the little foolish people who weren’t very bright or very strong and who therefore had to depend on God. He was all about the special ones. The elite. He was Morpheus.

God is not like that. He isn’t a modern model of self-aggrandizing cockiness. He is humble. The Bible says, “Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly, but the proud he knoweth afar off.” God doesn’t look for cool people who have it together, so he can let them do him the favor of applying their amazing gifts in his service. He looks for the weak and the grateful, so he can build them up to fight with HIS gifts. He uses foolish things to confound the wise. His strength is made perfect–“perfect” means “complete”–in our weakness.

So now my prayer group is spreading the infection. And I know there are other carriers all over the place, doing the same thing, even if they don’t talk much about it in church.

Pastors and teachers tend to underestimate the importance of tongues. Most flat-out deny the power of tongues. Many slander the Holy Spirit, saying tongues are demonic. That’s fine. The Holy Spirit doesn’t have to speak from the pulpit. He can speak in the parking lot or the men’s room. That’s what he does in my church. He’s like electricity. He finds a path of low resistance, and he takes it.

Why didn’t God make this happen 2000 years ago? The simple answer: he did. But the church listened to Satan, as it always does. Satan told our leaders hard work was what mattered. It was WRONG to expect God to change people simply because they prayed words they did not understand. It was SELFISH. You should EARN your favor with God!

Never mind the obvious hypocrisy. You can obtain salvation, which includes eternal life in health, joy, and wealth, by uttering a few words. But if you expect God to change you just because you pray in tongues every day for years, well…that’s just too easy! Does that make sense to you? I hope not. You would have to be stupid.

God does not force the world to work properly. He gives us the tools, and then he steps back. And we fail him, over and over. Adam failed him. The entire world failed him before the flood. The Jews failed him in Egypt and in the wilderness. Christians failed him, even after he gave them easy salvation and the gift of tongues. God let these things happen. He did that because making the world work is our responsibility, not his. His kingdom is not of this world. This world is supposed to be our kingdom.

Every once in a while, God returns and gives us what amounts to a bath. He cleans us up and puts us back on the path. He gives us knowledge our ancestors should have held onto and passed on to us (“A good [man] leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children). Then he steps back again. Over the last century or so, he has been pouring the Holy Spirit into us like a French farmer force-feeding a pate goose. The Holy Spirit is back. We have another chance. And we’ll eventually blow it. Meanwhile, we can do a lot of damage to Satan’s kingdom.

This weekend, our pastor taught about the prayer of victory. I was afraid he was going to pass on something Steve Munsey came up with. I was afraid we would hear that we were supposed to give a huge monetary offering in exchange for a super Pentecost dose of the Holy Spirit. That didn’t happen. Instead, at the altar call, he said he wanted people to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit…en masse! It was wonderful. It was beautiful. This is exactly what my little group prays for! This is what changes lives. God armed a bunch of new recruits. We don’t have to feel so outnumbered now. I hope we see more and more of this. I don’t want to see my pastor do things that aren’t going to bring him a fit reward for a lifetime of service.

We have a conference coming up, on South Beach. I wasn’t too enthusiastic about it. Sometimes we do things that make me very uncomfortable, in order to attract kids. But we got this big Holy Ghost blast this weekend, and the conference is taking place on Pentecost. Now I’m a little excited. Maybe God is in this after all.

I feel like there is more hope for my church than I realized.

I’ve learned some discouraging things since I’ve been there. We have a pattern of taking qualified people out of positions of power and putting them to work as beasts of burden. I’m a cook, a writer, a lawyer, and a physicist, but I can’t cook, write, or practice law for the church. I wander around doing security jobs. We have one of the best guitar players I’ve ever seen, but his service consists mostly of cooking in the cafe and playing for kids. We have a guy who went to college on a vocal scholarship, and he was removed from the worship team and required to teach small children. I could go on and on. We put less-qualified people in charge, and we waste the talented people God sent us. It’s like the Body of Christ is walking on its hands, eating through its ears, writing with its feet, and so on. It’s so bad, I quit giving things to the church, because I know they’ll be wasted. I give to other organizations that do a better job. But now I have hope that the Holy Spirit will be allowed to put things back in order. This is the power that puts flesh on the “dry bones” and puts them back together in an organized body.

We listen to Australian music in my church. This stuff is really…it’s not good. The musicians are not overjoyed about it. If you gave me all of it in CD form, it would be in the trash in ten minutes, because there is no way I’d ever listen to it. Think of every bad thing the word “white” means when you apply it to music, and that’s Australian worship music. And the lyrics are, well, I’m not going to use the word that came to mind, but they’re…if I wrote lyrics like this, I would seriously wonder if I had any business writing lyrics at all.

Meanwhile, the church is about 80% black. It’s an American church. America has the best popular music in the entire world. We created gospel. We created the blues. We created jazz. We invented soul. Isn’t this obvious? Do I even have to mention Mahalia Jackson, Rosetta Tharpe, Ray Charles, the Stanley Brothers, Kari Jobe…even Hank Williams wrote church music. Importing music from Australia is like importing chefs from England or comedians from Germany. It’s almost an insult to American culture. Would you export watches to Switzerland?

We had a guy come in and sing a couple of bluesy numbers a while back, and people went nuts. It was like they were starving.

We have unbelievable musicians. They’re dying to write and perform real music. But they don’t get the chance. I’m encouraging them to come to my house to work on their own stuff. My church won’t accept the blessing, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do what they were born to do. I told one of them they should get together and start playing at other churches. Do what God does. If one person rejects a blessing, give it to someone else. You can’t ruin your life by wasting time doing things God did not create you to do. Consider Psalm 37, verse 4. Your natural gifts and desires are not what make you a good Christian, but God does provide them for a reason, and they are not to be ignored.

I quit giving extra money to my church. I found other organizations that made better use of what I had to offer. I quit working in the church kitchen. Now I’m building amplifiers, and I hope to be able to help Christian musicians get good equipment. I was rejected as a writer, which is really beyond belief, considering what I can do and how limited the church’s other writing resources are. We have no other writers of any consequence. Now I either write here, or I do something more productive with my time. If you are bearing God’s fruit in your life, YOU HAVE TO DROP IT SOMEWHERE. You can’t wait around while the people you want to bless give you the straightarm and treat you like a burglar. I just can’t do anything for this church except pray and help with security. So be it. Until they come around, I’ll do for someone else.

Honest to God, I feel like renting a warehouse for these kids. I want to say, “Just go in there and PLAY, and don’t come out until you have ten good songs, and if anyone who even looks Australian shows up, bar the door.”

This has to be how God feels. He has so much good stuff waiting for us, but we choose our own hog wallows. We die in the desert instead of crossing over into the Promised Land. I remember how sad Jesus was when he talked about the things he wanted to do for Jerusalem.

If the revival continues, we should be able to get things in order. If not, I will continue to bless and be blessed, and the good things that come through me will go somewhere else. A current has to find ground. It will not be stopped. I am not going to let human beings thwart God himself. Jesus had to go to the Gentiles in order to bless people; I’m no better than he is.

The amp-building goes well. My only problem is that I’m learning so fast, I can’t finish my latest amp. Every time I think I’m ready to put it together, I learn something that makes me want to change it. But I may be able to get started soldering this afternoon.

I am going to have to go back over some mathematical foundations. Monkey-see, monkey-do is not going to make me an amp expert. I need to know how to calculate impedances and so on. I don’t think any of the math will be challenging at all, but the material will be fairly dry, so it will take effort to swallow it.

Life is beautiful. I hope I can help other people get on the same train. It looks like God is giving me success. In the meantime, I do not intend to let God’s work in my own life go to waste, regardless of who gets in the way. I am too old to put up with nonsense.

My Loss is Heaven’s “Gain”

I guess I should post an update on my amplifier.

I decided to make a Fender Bassman clone. I got all the parts except for the chassis. A new Chinese chassis which doesn’t look too good runs something like $50 plus shipping, and I thought that was stupid. If I’m going to shell out that kind of cash for a piece of bent metal, the quality should be good.

Naturally, I decided to do things the hard way.

Here are the pieces of surplus structural aluminum I bought. Two are 4″ square tubing with 1/8″ walls. The third–this is really cool–is 6″ Aluminum Association channel. “Aluminum Association” means the walls are not tapered. The inner surfaces are parallel to the outer surfaces. This makes it easier to mount stuff in the channel.

The tubing is thin and easy to work with. The channel is very thick, and it poses a lot of problems.

Naturally, I decided to do things the hard way.

I’ll put that on my tombstone.

I am using the channel, with the long side up. The transformers and choke will be mounted above it. Actually, the power transformer is sunk into it, because that’s how you mount them. But most of it is up top.

Here is the tube layout I’m considering. The rectifier is hidden away from the other tubes, and the 12AY7 (the most sensitive preamp tube) is way down there by itself, far from the noise. I hope. Someone pointed out that using a triangular layout may make it difficult to wire the circuit board, but it’s so cute, I think I’m willing to put up with that.

The eyelet board, which I have not made, will be under it. The knobs and stuff will go through the front wall. The whole thing will sit in a wooden cabinet which I have not built yet.

This thing is monstrously rigid. If I mount it in 3/4″ plywood, it will be like a Sherman tank with input jacks. It weighs around 6.5 pounds, contrasted with roughly 3.5 for the tubing.

I don’t care about the weight. This is a head, not a combo. It won’t have a ton of speaker attached to it. If it weighs 15 pounds instead of 12, who cares?

I was able to trim it to an accurate size using the table saw. You have to love that.

I have to figure out how to polish the aluminum on the front and top. I considered using a fly cutter on the top, but my vise is like 6″ wide, and this thing is 20″ long. I don’t know if the vise will hold it firmly enough for fly-cutting. I may end up using an orbital sander.

You may be asking yourself (if you’re still here) why I’m making a head. Simple. I want to make one amp every month. If I put speakers in all of them, it will cost $900,000 a year, and they won’t be all that portable. If I use a couple of interchangeable cabinets, I’ll save a lot of cash and work, and I’ll be able to take my heads around and play them through my 1 x 12 cabinet.

By the way, here it is, all finished. Or at least it WILL be here, as soon as my camera’s battery charges. I might add a few more touches, but this is basically it. I chose not to cover the cheesy sign paint. I thought that added an extra layer of testosterone or something. The edges are all radiused, and it has big rubber feet. It’s very stiff. You can sit on it all day. By using variable-output power transformers, I’ll be making heads that can be played through this high impedance with no problems. This sure beats carrying a 4 x 10 combo every time I want to use the amp.

The channel is causing new problems every day. Last night I realized I may have problems with the potentiometers, because the metal is so thick. The shafts have to go through it. I may have to order new pots. The other answer is to mill down the front face. I would have to do this from inside the channel in order to avoid it looking like an abortion. Another option: Forstner bits and an angled drill, to make small cavities for the pots to sit in. And of course, I have no angled drill. Yet.

I think I can mill the front down using a straight end mill and holding the channel on its back in my vise. I only need about 1.5″ of thin area. It might work. Depends on how much the aluminum likes being milled that way. It may flex around and drive me crazy.

I’m going to need legend plates. I don’t want to make a nice amp and then use a P-Touch for the labels. I need to find a local place that makes the plates cheap. Prices on the web are completely mental.

I got some neat videos to help me along. A guy named Gerald Weber has a video on understanding tube amps, and he also has one on servicing and maintaining them. I’m still burrowing through the first one. It’s helping me understand what I’m working on. Some of the things he says about electronics are a little dubious, but maybe that means he learned by doing instead of learning by watching someone scrawl on a chalkboard.

In case you doubt his wisdom, here is a video that proves he’s a real pro:

My buddy from church initially wanted me to help him with a Super Reverb clone, but now he’s talking about a Dumble Steel String Singer. Unfortunately, Mr. Dumble pours epoxy into his amps to hide the circuitry and prevent people from determining exactly how much unicorn poop he puts in there, so there aren’t a whole lot of schematics out there.

He has also been talking about building a Bassman AND a Super Reverb and using them together, like this Youtube guy. I can’t argue. They sound great.

I’m also fantasizing about building a Herzog. This is the effect used in the original “American Woman.” Turns a guitar into an organ. Pedals make this sound now, but I don’t know whether they do it well. In case you care, it turns out a Herzog is just a Fender Champ rigged up so it won’t blow up your main amp when you use it as an effect.

I can’t believe I’m getting to do all this stuff. Finally the torture I inflicted on myself by getting a physics degree is paying off. Sort of. Anyway, Psalms 37:4.

The guitar playing is going well, but the amps are taking time away from it. That’s why I want to get this thing DONE. I love my cheap Epiphone Riviera P93 more every day; I still can’t believe it turned out to be so great. On the day when I bought it, I seriously felt as though the Holy Spirit told me to go to Guitar Center and pick it up, so I made a left turn and did it. When I bought it, it had shortcomings. The pickups were pretty lame, and the tone capacitor was not right. Now it’s a monster. Great tone and super-low buzz-free action. And the size and weight make it stable for fast picking.

I play mostly through my homemade Firefly amp now. The sound level is perfect. I adjusted the tone using a new capacitor, and it worked out very well. I still have oscillation when I use the gain circuit. I have to fix that.

I picked up a Blues Driver. Very nice pedal. I gravitate toward the Blues Driver, Plimsoul, and Fat Sandwich more than my other two pedals.

That’s how things stand at the moment. Updates will be posted when I feel like it.

Zechariah 4:6

First off, Heather’s mom still needs prayer. Her kidney function is improving, but she will need dialysis anyway. Apparently she has edema, and they believe dialysis will get rid of it:

Mom’s doctor and I have discussed dialysis since her kidney function numbers aren’t getting any better(they are a lot better but still not where they need to be). This is mom’s primary physician so he knows the score as to all of her health issues. He really feels like giving her dialysis will be the best chance to help her body get rid of this edema and recover. So at three pm today they will be surgically implanting a dialysis catheter.
Please pray that this is successful and she’s able to recover.
God Bless,
Heather Page

That being said, here is some Holy Ghost weirdness.

Years ago, although I had failed algebra in high school, I decided to get a physics degree. I was over 30, and I had gone back to college so I could find something productive to do with my life. Through a series of strange twists, I found myself studying physics. I learned algebra and calculus at the same time, I got my degree, and I went to grad school at one of the nation’s finest departments. Then I got burned out, quit, and went to law school. I was glad I had learned about math and physics, but I felt that I had failed.

A couple of years back, I started going to church. A guitarist introduced himself to me, and we started talking. I took up the guitar again. I made cheesecakes for the church’s cafe. Another guitarist ate the cheesecake and became one of my fans. We got to know each other, and he started helping me with the guitar. He started asking me if I could build tube guitar amps.

It sounded pretty crazy. But I took two semesters of electronics courses while I was studying physics. And in my garage, I had–this sounds like something I’m making up–a powered breadboard, a Weller soldering station, woodworking tools for cabinets, tons of components, a lab power supply, and a beautiful old Hitachi oscilloscope I bought on Ebay. Plus machine tools, a drill press, a welder, and a plasma cutter. Whatever has to be done, I can do. I felt like I was going nuts when I bought this stuff, and suddenly it was turning out to be just what I needed.

Of course, I started building amps. I built an amp with less than two watts of output. I thought it was too loud. I built an amp with a much lower output. Both amps worked well. All this time, the guy who liked the cheesecake was bugging me about building a Fender Super Reverb clone for him to gig with. I decided to look at bigger circuits, as preparation.

I decided a Deluxe Reverb was the way to go. Then I listened to a Hot Rod Deluxe, and I decided it was even better. I asked questions on an Internet forum, and someone told me that what I really wanted was a Fender Bassman 5f6a. I looked it up. Sure enough, they sound fantastic. Exactly the sound I like. I decided to build one.

Over the last few days I’ve been choosing parts. Yesterday I ordered them. The amp should be complete in about ten days.

This morning I went to breakfast with my dad. At the cash register, I felt something in my pocket. I took it out. It was an audio tube. I had forgotten it was in there. For some reason, it made me think of a friend of mine; an audiophile I’ve been trying to get to go to church. I realized I now had the ability to build tube amps for stereos. I thought it would be funny to send him a photo of the tube and let him know what I was up to. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my phone with me. But I texted him when I got home. Now he’s all excited. He wants to see the Bassman clone when I finish it.

When I got done texting him, a friend of mine called me. His name is Leo. This is one of my armorbearer friends from church. He works with the VA. You won’t believe what he told me, but here goes.

They help people learn new skills, both as hobbies and for vocational purposes. He knows a guy who just received…a tube amp kit. This guy is not highly skilled, and he’s freaking out at the complexity. I told Leo I’d be happy to help. I’d need a schematic, et cetera et cetera. Leo said the amp was a clone of a Marshall JTM 45, and he sent me a link to the assembly manual.

How many amp models has Fender produced? Two hundred, maybe? What about Marshall? Same story. Why does that matter? Here’s why: the JTM 45 is a Fender Bassman 5f6a with a Marshall label. It’s a direct copy. So I’m building a Bassman for myself, and then a week or two later, I’ll be building the same circuit for someone else. And the online manual Leo provided will be a big help to me, not just with the JTM 45, but also with the Bassman.

So this is a testimony.

Where does this all come from? What is the source of all these “coincidences”? They come from praying in tongues. I recently learned that one of the benefits of praying in tongues for long periods is that you prophesy over your own life. You speak blessings into existence. You declare how God will tie up the loose ends and put you on rails headed for success. A guy named Glenn Arekion teaches about this; you can find audio at Sid Roth’s site.

The vast majority of Christians have lives that only work a little better than ungodly lives. They pray for things they don’t get. They divorce. They can’t quit smoking. They can’t lose weight. Their enemies beat them. They don’t have peace or joy, to any great extent. Why is this? It’s because they’re not plugged in. They’re like appliances with the cords cut off. Prayer in tongues makes the difference. It’s the power supply.

You need to quit saying it can’t be that easy. If you’re a Christian, you already accept easy success. At some point in the past, someone told you that you could get eternal life in a mansion in heaven, just by saying and believing one sentence. If you can believe that, why can’t you believe praying in tongues will give you the power and the character you need to live a victorious life here on earth? Do you understand how ridiculous that is? Effort required to receive eternity in paradise: speaking one sentence. Effort required to be blessed for the few years you have here on earth: copious daily prayer in tongues. Which is easier? Isn’t it obvious? If you can believe you received eternal salvation in ten seconds, surely you can believe God will give you a few decades of help in exchange for hours of prayer.

This works. I have zero interest in your scholarly arguments and your time-honored doctrine. I have seen this working, over and over. It works, it works, it works. You can argue with someone who reads about God, or who studied God in a university. You can’t argue with a witness.

God is sending people to me, to receive this message. It’s happening in my weekly prayer group. People notice that there is something different about me, and about the things I say, and they are trying to get ahold of it. Some of them took my advice and didn’t even tell me. I have five people now, using timers to make sure they spend time praying in tongues every day. They are changing. I see it. They don’t need me any more. They’re going to go on whether or not I continue.

This is why the gospel was called “good news.” It’s not just about salvation. The Jews had salvation before Christianity existed. What they didn’t have was the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. God’s spirit rested ON some of them, but he did not become part of them, the way he does now. This is why Jesus said he who was least in the kingdom of heaven was greater than John the Baptist, who was greatest among men “born of women.” Today, you can be born of the Spirit. It’s not the same thing. It’s what “born again” really means.

Watch this space. Things are breaking loose.

1 = Loony; 3 = Cult

The weekly prayer meetings at my church are impressing me a lot more than the sermons these days. The sermons are generally good, but they are aimed at a fairly weak group of Christians, many of whom will pack up and go home if they don’t hear what they want to hear. The prayer meetings tend to attract people who really want to advance in their relationships with God.

Even the prayer meetings suffer from a Gideon effect. If someone who is highly placed in the church shows up, attendance is higher than it is the rest of the time. On the weekends when a less-prominent person leads the meeting, attendance falls steeply. Someone let me know that this happens because people show up to score political points. I didn’t realize it because I don’t think in terms of butt-kissing. By the time I realize there is a butt-kissing opportunity, the butt has usually left the building with its entourage.

I call it the Gideon effect because it pares the group down to a small but effective group of people, the way God pared Gideon’s army down. I don’t know if the purpose is the same; God sent most of Gideon’s soldiers home because he wanted everyone to know that Gideon and his men were not numerous enough to win without divine help. I don’t think that’s what God is doing with my group. Still, it works out the same. Nine people one week, three the next.

This week we ended up with the only three people in the whole church (that I know of) who pay any attention to me when I say prayer in tongues is extremely powerful and that it is the most important activity in a Christian’s life. I’m one of those people, so you can see how my ministry is growing. Next year there might be five of us! Pardon my foolish pride. I dream big.

One of these guys is an unemployed construction worker who boxes professionally. He’s a wonderful guy, but he does not get a lot of respect at church. He’s eccentric, and he gets excited easily, even by charismatic standards. Quite frankly, some people think he’s nuts. They are not completely without justification, but I think his extraordinary zeal, which is an asset, makes weaker Christians think he’s a little off. It’s funny, we tell each other to BELIEVE, BELIEVE, BELIEVE, but when we run into a guy who takes us seriously, we tell each other, “Keep an eye on that nut.”

I’ve talked to him a lot, and my take is that he is one hundred percent sold out to God. I think he’s the real thing. And it’s wrong to sell him short. He’s not a highly educated person, but sometimes he’ll show up at just the right time and tell you exactly what you need to hear. That quality comes from God. People do not appreciate him. I get a lot more good out of him than I do from a lot of people I know who are successful and stable.

In our prayer meetings, he has caused a certain amount of disruption. Sometimes he would come in and talk more than he should. He has a lot of problems, and earlier this year, he was very discouraged. He would come in and tell us how hard Christianity is, and how you have to struggle and fight. I kept trying to get him to try tongues, to build himself up and change his outlook and his character, and to get God’s power moving in his life.

A few weeks back, he came to the meeting in a bad state, and we tried to help him, and at the end, I told him not to bother me any more unless he had been praying in tongues. At the next meeting, I gave him a kitchen timer I didn’t like. I bought it a long time ago, for things like prayer, music practice, and cooking, and it was aggravating to use. One day it occurred to me that it would work very well for my friend, and I would be rid of it, so I turned it over to him and told him to do what I did: set it to three minutes and pray in tongues. Every day. I told him his life would change.

After that, when I saw him at church, he would tell me it was working. He felt peace. Things were getting better. He was increasing the prayer time.

Yesterday, he got up and spoke at the meeting, and it was one of the weirdest things I had ever seen. We used to teach him. Yesterday, he taught us. We used to try to get him to shut up. Now I wanted to listen. He had been getting revelation from the Holy Spirit. He spoke so wisely, it was almost creepy. And he looked different! You would have to know him to understand. There is a strange radiance and look of well-being you get from praying in tongues a lot. They say my great grandmother’s face used to shine from it. I’ve seen it in the mirror. It makes you look younger.

I know it sounds crazy, but it was as if God had made my friend smarter. And I suppose that’s possible. I’ve always felt that in the Bible, the word “wisdom” usually does not refer to intelligence. But sometimes it does. And the word of wisdom is one of the gifts you get from prayer in tongues. James said God would give us wisdom if we asked for it. Maybe God makes people brighter, not just better informed.

It gets even stranger. I didn’t realize how much impact I had had on the third member of the party, my friend Alonzo. He said he had been hitting the tongues hard, too. This explains all the wise things he has been coming up with. He has been freaking me out for quite some time now.

The three of us started talking about carnality in our church. There are things holding the church back. It amazed me to see how we agreed. In the past, I would sit at prayer meetings and do my best to get a few words in on behalf of the Holy Spirit, while other people talked about hard work and self-improvement, which are relatively worthless things compared to the power of the Holy Spirit. Yesterday, I didn’t really need to talk at all! Both of my friends were saying things I already knew. And we kept confirming each other. We were in “one accord”! Sound familiar?

The Holy Spirit is the nervous system of the body of Christ. I say that all the time. Jesus is the brain. When we are not in harmony with each other, it’s because we’re not praying in tongues and increasing the Holy Spirit’s power in us. Yesterday I got a taste of what it was like to be part of a body in which the nervous system worked properly.

The Holy Spirit is what makes life work. Haven’t you noticed that human effort doesn’t work? Diets don’t work. Exercise plans don’t work. New Year’s resolutions don’t work. Self-help books don’t work. Therapy doesn’t work. Marriage counseling doesn’t work. Christian teaching that doesn’t involve using the power of the Holy Spirit doesn’t work. MOST Christian teaching doesn’t work (because it’s stuff we made up). God designed us to be plugged into his power outlet. Without it, your efforts have about as much impact as an air ratchet that isn’t hooked up to a compressor.

I know people will retort that the things I criticized DO work. Sure, they work. SOMETIMES. With LIMITATIONS. With COSTS. TEMPORARILY. The general rule is that the things we do to change our lingering problems don’t get us very far in the long run. The Holy Spirit works, works, WORKS. No hidden costs. No strings attached. No unforeseen consequences, except for good ones.

I get so tired of soulish “teachers” telling me and my friends how to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Have you ever thought about that expression? It’s intended to be witty; it’s not supposed to be taken seriously. The whole point of the expression is to show us that we can’t lift ourselves up without help. Try pulling your bootstraps and see what happens. It’s a joke, yet people say “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” in complete seriousness. God never intended us to pull ourselves up. He intended us to allow him to pull us up.

If one more preacher tries to sell me a stupid book, DVD, or seminar full of brilliant self-help tips that don’t involve God’s power, I think I may do something that will give me a great chance to start a prison ministry. From inside.

What if Jesus had stood around handing out pamphlets entitled “How to Think Your Way Out of Paralysis and Blindness”? He would have died rich (from running seminars), nobody anywhere would have been healed, and we’d all be going to hell. Yet we pay good money to preachers who tell us that positive thinking and hard work will get us where we want to be. Blind guides. They never got there themselves, but they make money selling other people maps!

I’m not saying that everyone who prays in tongues will have a perfect life. You can always overcome the Holy Spirit’s guidance if you want to. You can remain unimproved. Perry Stone knew a Klansman who prayed in tongues. But it seems pretty clear that if you DON’T pray in tongues, you are not going to develop the way you should.

We’re talking about forming our own prayer group now, so we can focus more on the Holy Spirit.

I have the feeling that I should buy 5 timers and put out a challenge to the people I know: take a timer and pray in the Spirit every day for three minutes, and get back to me after one week. Give me and the rest of us your testimony. I think I’m going to get some timers this week.

Obviously, you don’t need a timer, but it’s a helpful tool.

I think there are certain people who can be reached, and I should be content with them. If that is correct, I would be in the same boat as people like Jesus and Moses, who never succeeded in getting the whole flock to go through the gate.

Fascinating stuff. It amazes me more and more all the time.

Geez, I wanted to write about the guitar. I guess I can cram it in at the end.

Today I took my homemade amp to church and let my young musician friends check it out. What a blast. We have some extraordinary talents in my church, and I am trying to help them in any way I can. I don’t want to see them end up working in grocery stores. My interests in music and electronics are really helping.

My young friend Zach is an incredible blues guitarist and singer. He fired my amp up on the church stage and tried it out, and it sounded wonderful. We’re going to build a Super Reverb clone. The church’s rhythm guitarist is named Joe; he’s also a very talented singer. I tried to get him to try it out, but it can be hard to get a rhythm guitarist to play after a soloist! He says he wants to build an amp, too. Another guy is rebuilding a Strat, so we may end up collaborating.

Yesterday I finished my second amp, a “Powerman.” It doesn’t work yet. I put it together in a blur of flying tools and wires and components. I really amazed myself. And of course, I did something wrong, and now I have to find it.

The guitar is going extremely well. I’m learning to slow the music down in my head and really get my heart behind my fingers. That brings smoothness and speed.

I’ve been trying to play the intro to “I Know a Little” as well as Steve Gaines played it. Actually, that’s wrong. I’ve been trying to play it better than he did. I didn’t realize it until today. I listened to him playing, and I realized that the sound I have in my head–the sound I’m aiming for–is better than what he achieved in the studio. There are some parts he doesn’t play perfectly. That’s amazing, given that I’m so close to conquering them. He had endless takes in a studio, and presumably, he used the best one, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to beat it.

I’ve got a modified pick design that gives me unbelievable speed, control, and tone. I’m getting my amps to do what I want. The Chinese Epiphone has an action that beats any other guitar I’ve tried, and the new pickups and heavy strings make it sound fantastic. I’m going to win. It’s not that far off.

I don’t know where I’m going, but someone else does, and he speaks it through me every day. All of this stuff is going to turn out to be worthwhile and rewarding. You can’t get that from Anthony Robbins in sheep’s clothing. You can’t get that from Tom Cruise.

That’s all I got for now. I hope it will be useful to someone.

I am an Electronics Expert & Tool Ninja

Today I installed the new Shark Guard on my table saw, fired it up, cut a chunk out of some grade XX phenolic sheet, drilled a few holes in a Hammond aluminum chassis, grabbed some hex standoffs and screws, and made…THIS:

That’s going to be a 6021-powered guitar amp. A 6021 is a subminiature tube about an inch and a quarter long.

The Shark Guard is wonderful. It even has a dust port on it, so I can attach a shop vac.

I cut that panel out, taped it to the chassis, and drilled the mounting holes through both items. The holes are perfectly round; I guess the board held the bit nice and steady. So far, it’s beautiful.

I love my tools so much. This was a breeze!

Ps. 37:4; Zech 4:10

Help Appreciated

My family on my mother’s side grew tons and tons of cigarette tobacco. My mother’s sister died from lung cancer in 1994. My grandfather died a month later, and his cardiologist suspected the stress of his daughter’s death was one of the causes. My uncle (who smoked and chewed) died of stomach cancer in 1995. My mother died from lung cancer in 1997. My sister was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer last year, but it appears God has healed her.

Yesterday one of my two remaining aunts told my father there were two spots on her x-rays. She smoked for forty years or so. She quit a few years back, but a lot of damage was already done. Please pray that she will be healed, and that God will help her draw closer to him, be filled with the Holy Spirit, and serve him better. Pray that he will glorify himself in healing her. Thanks.

Now this, from Heather:

Please keep praying for my mom, Penny. Since she hasn’t been able to speak, her nephrologist thinks she may have had a mild stroke. However the cat scan did not show this. She was alert tonight and knew me, but ignored the doctor when he was talking to her. Her kidney numbers are getting better, so I know that your prayers are working. Please ask the Lord to restore her ability to speak. Thank you & God Bless!

Finally Grounded

I had another remarkable day.

I’m trying to build a “Powerman” amp. Some tinkerer on the web came up with this. He took the case from an old PC power supply, and he crammed a bunch of amp parts into it, hence the name. I listened to some sound samples online, and I thought they were tremendous. Clear, hot, and sort of shimmery. Just what I want.

Today while I waited for the parts to arrive, I tried to get going on a PCB, or printed circuit board. If you don’t know what this is, it’s a slab of plastic coated with copper. Instead of using wires to connect things like resistors and tubes, you cut away the copper on the board until you have separate electrical paths separated by plastic, and they become the “wiring.” You solder your components to the board in the appropriate places, and you have a circuit that works.

The “printed” part comes from the fact that you can literally print these things. You create some sort of template and print it onto the board, and then you apply a solution that eats copper. The printed stuff protects the copper you want to keep. What’s left is the pattern that becomes your circuit. I don’t know if they do it much differently in factories, but this is the basic idea. I am too lazy to look up industrial PCB manufacturing.

When you do this at home, you have to create a black and white pattern and print it on photo paper. Then you use an iron to melt the toner (I guess) onto the copper plate. You remove the paper, and you’re ready to add the solution (“etchant”). You can also use a battery and a salt solution and remove the copper through electrolysis.

Feel free to correct the details, because there is no way I’m going to do it.

Here’s the hard part: making the diagram. I guess if you really wanted to, you could draw it on a piece of paper, scan it, and print that. But that’s no fun, plus it would be ugly, and it would be tedious. So what do you do? You use circuit design software, and then you use special software that turns your circuits into PCB images.

I spent like 4 hours today trying to understand a free program called PCB Artist. I never did get anywhere with it. I can understand calculus. I can understand physics. Sometimes I almost think I can understand my car insurance policy. But software written for engineers? It tends to be pretty hideous. Engineers have their own culture, so when they come up with new stuff, they kind of assume you already have all the old stuff memorized, because all you do is sit in your room smoking dope and doing nerd stuff. And sometimes they get angry when they have to accommodate normal people who know what the sun looks like. There are probably still engineers who think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs will burn in hell for giving up on command-prompt computing.

PCB Artist has a help file. HAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh, man. Engineers…WRITING. Never a good thing. It has flow charts where it ought to have paragraphs. Even Dilbert would vomit.

So I gave up. But then I made an amazing discovery. I already had free versions of two expensive programs: Multisim and Ultiboard. Don’t ask me how I got free versions. I downloaded them a long time ago. I don’t think they support them now. But they work fine. On top of that, everything is pretty intuitive.

I managed to create my own schematic symbol for the 6021 twin triode vacuum tube. I felt like I had climbed Mt. Everest on roller skates. I haven’t figured out how to get it totally integrated into the software, but I don’t really have to do that. The tubes are going to fit into op amp sockets, so as long as I can come up with a circuit with two sockets in it, I’m fine. The software already knows about sockets.

Very cool.

A bunch of the parts arrived. I have a Hammond aluminum chassis, lots of resistors, numerous capacitors, et cetera. I felt like dumping them in a pile and letting them pour through my fingers. I love this stuff.

Over the weekend, I located an amazing book on vacuum tubes. It was written in 1952, for the military. The great thing about that is that the military EXPECTS you to be stupid. It’s not like university math and science texts, which always have incomprehensible, agony-inducing passages preceded by the word “obviously.” Now I know how vacuum tubes work! Fantastic! I should be done with the book next week. I looked at an awful book on tube guitar amps, and it was as useless as a Honey-Baked Ham store in Pakistan. Totally worthless. But the military book was a breeze. Why aren’t there more books like that?

I’m actually going to be able to do this. Not just this circuit, but circuits in general. Simple ones. And it’s coming together just as the guitar is starting to work. It is now easy for me to do things that were impossible a month ago. My hands are doing things which, I’m pretty sure, aren’t even physically possible. I’ll be brave and say I expect to be able to play “I Know a Little” very well, at 90% speed, without fear of screwing up, in a month.

The nuttiest things are happening. When you pick a guitar, you have to be accurate to within a couple of millimeters on every stroke. The natural impulse is to crab up your hand and move the pick with cramped movements of your fingers. I’m swinging my hand from the elbow, not looking where I’m going, and I’m whacking the strings I need to hit, reliably and smoothly. It’s like sinking a basketball over and over from 50 feet. When you play this way, you can play much faster and more rhythmically than you can by moving the pick with your fingers. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. A person with no fingers at all should be able to flatpick as well as anyone, as long as he can find a way to hang onto the pick.

As I get more accurate, I spend less energy on mechanics, and I have more brain capacity to apply to making the music sound good. I can listen to it and enjoy it. And my left hand feels like it’s swimming in the fretboard. Sometimes I feel like I’m singing with my hands.

I don’t know what’s going on, but a month or two back, I got the definite impression that my life was going to start working much better toward the end of April. I saw it as a pivotal week. I think from now on I’m going to succeed in areas where I used to fail.

This morning, I started feeling that God was blessing me. I felt that he was putting things in motion for me; bringing me wonderful things. It’s hard to explain, but I couldn’t help bending my knees at one point, as if someone were showering me with heavy gifts. I thought I’d blog it. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll be just another crazy, and no one will care. If it does, I will have given God his glory, and unlike most people, I will have done it in advance.

God works. And the ideas I’ve had about him are all panning out. Especially tongues. I’ve only managed to get two people at church on board with it. One of them is using a timer to pray in tongues every day, as I suggested.

I’m going to go on ahead. I’m going to be like Joshua and Caleb. I don’t know how to bring people along with me; I wish I did. Jesus himself had limited success at that. But I have learned that when you get ahold of something good, and you decide to embark on a course of action that will dramatically improve your life, nearly everyone you know will find an excuse to stay behind and rot. The slavery they know looks better than the milk and honey they’ve been promised.

Maybe this is why a good marriage is such a treasure. Maybe the best thing that can happen to a man is to find a woman he doesn’t have to outgrow and leave behind.

I know there are disappointments in this way of life, but they are always disappointments in human beings, not God. I don’t care about those things. Human beings were created to be disappointing. We are told most of them go to hell. If they manage to achieve salvation, it’s a big deal. Asking for any improvement beyond that is wildly optimistic. Most Christians remain babies until they die, just like unsaved people.

I pray sincerely for people to change, and I go on with my progress. There is hope for anyone who will submit. I don’t know who will change and who will not. I hope some of the folks who disappoint me will come around.

If I manage to make a PCB amp, I’ll put up photos. This will be so cool, I may not be able to stand it.

Give me Your Tithes, You Fat Moron

I had an interesting experience last night.

A guy came to our church and preached. He has his own church in another state. He sang some bluesy tunes and got a great response, which makes me wonder why we never have music like that. But the really interesting thing was the sermon.

He spent the majority of the time badmouthing the people at his church, even making fun of them for having big behinds (though he probably weighs 300 pounds). Our congregation went nuts. I don’t think they were thinking clearly. He was funny, and we didn’t show up to worry about his church’s problems, so it’s understandable that people responded to him favorably. But think about it: this man traveled over a thousand miles to go to another church and insult the people who pay his bills! That’s incredible.

He wasn’t reaming out his entire flock. He singled out people who criticized or left the church. Still, they feed his kids, and look at the gratitude he shows them.

He said a lady came up to him and said, “You know what’s wrong with this church?” And he supposedly replied, “You’re IN it.” Am I crazy for thinking that’s not a great story for a pastor to tell? Jesus was generally critical of people in authority but kind to his followers. Did he have it all wrong?

The preacher talked about the Good Samaritan, and he completely misunderstood the story. Here’s how it works. A traveler is robbed and beaten on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. A priest and a Levite pass by, on the way to Jerusalem. A Samaritan stops and helps him. You know about this. The significance of this is that people often do evil by neglecting human need while pretending to serve God.

The Levite and the priest could not touch dead bodies without becoming ritually unclean. They were on their way to Jerusalem, which was the location of the Temple. They wanted to please God, and they knew that if they became impure, it would interfere with their work at the Temple. Therefore they chose to avoid touching a man who, for all they knew, was dead. That’s what Perry Stone says, anyhow.

The Samaritan did not worship at Jerusalem; that’s one of the things the Jews hated about Samaritans. He was free to help. And by showing his love for his fellow man, he pleased God more than the others.

That’s not what I heard yesterday. I’m not totally sure what the lesson about the Samaritan’s good deed was, but we were told that the dying man got beaten up because he left Jerusalem. And we were told that our “Jerusalem” was our church. And if we left it for another church, we would be open to attack.

The obvious question is: what if I decide to quit my church and go to yours? I guess it’s an evil place, right?

Another question: assuming my church and your church are both good, are you saying all other churches are evil? Sure sounded like it.

Finally, how can you promote the idea that there is only one good place to worship, when the hero of the parable belonged to a group who refused to worship at the Temple? Is that irony or what?

I just read the parable of the Good Samaritan. Guess what? Nowhere does it condemn the victim for having the nerve to travel. In fact, as any Jew or Christian should know, one of the worst crimes in the ancient Middle East was maltreatment of travelers. Traveling, itself, was not wrong. How else could people do business? Paul traveled. Jesus traveled. Come on.

Sometimes it amazes me how we miss the obvious. This guy came to us and proved he was immature and disloyal, and we didn’t even notice.

This reminds me of the old saw: a dog that will bring a bone will carry one. A person who badmouths other people to you will badmouth you to other people. I wonder what this guy is going to say about my church when he goes to other churches. I don’t think my pastor travels across the country and tells other congregations we’re a bunch of idiots. I can’t see him turning on us like that.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to align yourself with someone who mistreats others. You may think you’re special, and that you’ll get the benefit of that person’s bad behavior, with none of the curses. Wait till the tide shifts! Some day you’ll be on the dirty end of the stick. Ask a woman who dates bad boys, or a man who has dated nasty women who make a living on their backs.

I know a woman who likes to verbally abuse waiters and cashiers and so on. People who can’t fight back. Meanwhile, her favorite way to say goodbye to people is, “Have a blessed day.” This is a vicious individual, but if you listened to her talk about how much she loves God, you might take her for a saint. You can’t listen to the things people say about themselves; people are their own press agents. If you want to know them, you have to consider what they do, especially when they think they’re safe from punishment. Like when they’re a thousand miles away from the people they’re insulting.

Christianity has always been screwed up, just like every other religion. These days it seems like one of our worst faults is our tendency to assume that anyone who has a big church is favored by God. I wonder how the megachurch proponents would explain the success of Scientology or the Mormons. God isn’t the only one who helps people succeed, and what we think is success is often a curse in disguise.

He also lambasted people who start small churches “in hotels.” That borders on despicable. What an offensive thing to say about anointed ministers who are giving up their secular lives and stepping out in faith, starting their careers as well as they can. Not everyone has a church handed to him on a platter, as he did. He said he was given a facility. It was a former funeral parlor. He was complaining about it, but I’m sure there are a dozen ministers in Miami who would cry tears of gratitude if someone gave them a funeral parlor or even a warehouse.

I think this guy means well, but if you’re so loud and self-assured you can’t hear the Holy Spirit, you are bound to say foolish things. I’ve certainly done it.

I get tired of having blind guides paraded in front of me. There are a lot of wonderful people at my church, and they want to do the right thing, but what chance do they have when we give a platform to folks who are just plain wrong? Some of them go home and try to put this craziness into practice! How awful is that? They’re worse off than if they had stayed home smoking weed.

No one from my church reads my blog, and I don’t mention names. I guess some day someone will find out that I’m not totally on board with everything that happens there, and then maybe I’ll get a lecture, or I’ll be told to quit working as a volunteer. What can I do? Right is right. When the enemy misleads people and puts them to work with time-wasting nonsense, someone with a little bit of the Holy Spirit’s clarity needs to say something about it. The story of the Good Samaritan shows that you have to be good to men in order to please God, but it does not say you have to PLEASE men.

I try not to be proud. I try not to be self-righteous. I should think about love at least as much as I think about pleasing God. Maybe I go off the reservation sometimes. It’s hard to say.

I believe modern pentecostal churches are developing a phobia of healthy criticism. We keep bringing in people who slander and deride helpful critics. Critics are the tools of Satan! They’re going to be left behind while we go on to victory! Thing is, I’m going on to victory, and most people in the church are not. God does great things for me all the time, and my biggest frustration is that I am leaving people behind, when I want them to go forward with me. What we’re hearing is the opposite of the truth.

A hatred of criticism is one of the tools Satan uses to build impregnable fortresses of evil. Think of the Communists and the Nazis. What happened under those regimes, if you opened your mouth? You were imprisoned, or you got a bullet in the head. So criticism was very rarely heard, and sick, Satanic regimes flourished. Islam is the same way. The church can go the same route.

Look what happened to the prophets and Jesus. Did Al Qaeda get them? Did Charles Manson get them? No, of course not. Their greatest enemies were people who were totally devoted to serving God. Jesus and the prophets didn’t stand around hugging the high priests and calling them “great man of God.” They were extremely critical. Think about this: they were killed for criticizing! It’s the God’s honest truth.

Think about the things they said. Repent, or God will strip you naked and expose your genitals, and you’ll eat your own babies. Your sons will be castrated and forced to serve other kings. Whitewashed tombs. Prisoners of hell. Generation of vipers. One of the reasons the gospels are hard to read is that they are jam-packed with criticism and correction. Positive thinking? Get real. It’s not in the Bible. Faith is in the Bible, but that’s not the same thing. Faith means believing God. Positive thinking means believing in man.

Obviously, you can’t have an effective church when every malcontent feels like he can stand up during services and offer pointless whining and excessive fault-finding. But that’s not the only thing the positive thinkers want to prevent. They want to cut off helpful, vital criticism, and they try to portray it as grumbling and whining, because if you silence a critic, you can go on doing what you want.

In my own church, I’ve seen many, many problems that could be fixed very easily, but I’ve found that I sometimes get scolded for pointing them out and offering simple, workable solutions. That’s not unity. That’s a crippling disability.

Why does this happen? Bureaucracy. That’s a big word that means “looking out for Number One.” When you point out problems, you’re threatening jobs and reputations and wildly distorted self-images. Each person cares about holding onto his territory and his prestige, even if he isn’t a paid staffer, and if you point out failures, you put those territories at risk.

Yesterday I realized that churches are God’s civil service. What happens in the civil service? People get hired, and then they work out a system that protects them, no matter what they do wrong. Churches are the same way. If you want to see how churches run, go look at the Post Office or the DMV. Merit means nothing. Connections and seniority mean everything. So if you’ve been going to a church for five years, and you wonder why the doors don’t work or the hedges are dead or the worst singers always get to solo, there’s your answer. Man’s craving for power and security outweighs God’s desire for us to improve and excel.

Like government employees, people at churches have no one to answer to. As long as they can get people to donate money, they don’t have to do a good job. They don’t have to sell a good product. They don’t have to offer good services. They can show up late, leave early, overpay themselves, deliver bad (or plagiarized) sermons, and ignore the Holy Spirit, as long as they know how to raise cash. This is how people like Robert Tilton survive. In the real world, they’d last ten minutes. Many of them would be in jail. Now that I think about it, some of them have gone to jail.

I know a guy who is utterly, abysmally incompetent. He holds a high position with a church. When people talk about obstacles to progress at that church, his name comes up over and over. He probably thinks he’s doing great, and that anyone who criticizes him is from the enemy. If he ever gets a real job, he’s in for a rude awakening. He’ll be fired in two days. He’ll be flipping burgers, at best. Jesus told us we could think very highly of ourselves though we were actually blind and naked and poor. This guy is a prime example. Because he is shielded from correction, he is never going to grow up or develop into a capable man.

I live for the times when I’m with other Christians and the Holy Spirit shows up and guides us. Those are the events that really bring me to church. That’s what it’s supposed to be about. Generally, this happens at prayer meetings more than services. I wish that atmosphere and that power would take over the sanctuary. I feel God’s presence much more often when I’m alone than I do in services.

Here’s a strange thing I’ve noticed. Although criticism is strongly discouraged in my church, there is no shortage of people who are willing to criticize me. They’ve done it many times. Am I complaining? No way. I’m very grateful. It’s a blessing. I’ve grown because of it. Sometimes people criticize me out of ignorance or arrogance, or because I inadvertently make them look bad. Who cares? Dogs will bark. But often people who point out my mistakes are right, and their criticism helps me. This stuff is gold. Check Psalm 141. The sad thing is that our bad attitude toward criticism is robbing many other people of the benefits I’ve received. Again, I find myself being blessed, and I find myself moving forward, but I can’t seem to drag many people along with me.

Oddly, sometimes the people who criticize me are the same people who preach the anti-criticism gospel.

I was born an idiot, and it took me a disgracefully long time to get on God’s path. He had to beat me pretty hard to get me there. I would never have found it on my own. I think he needs to give churches a good beating, too. He needs to do us an undeserved favor, reaching in and pulling out the folks who are blocking his will. They’re like placques in the brain of an Alzheimer’s victim, preventing the signals from getting through. Man is supposed to fix the world, and that means that when we screw up, we end up with churches that don’t work. It’s our obligation to correct and strengthen churches, and to pass on godly ways. We haven’t done that, so things are a mess. The only solution is for God to step in like the Salvation Army or a social worker and change our diapers for us. Again. If he does, there will probably be a wave of firings, deaths, and prosecutions. Maybe we should be praying for the problem children to wake up and change, before God does the changing for them.

I wish atheists understood that man is responsible for making the world work. Maybe they’d quit moaning about how suffering and evil prove God doesn’t exist.

From here on out, I will take special notice when a preacher insults the people who feed him. That’s a good lesson.

Fat Strings Make for Fast Picking

Well this is weird.

I’ve been working on the intro to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “I Know a Little” for weeks, and I was having a miserable time with some of the flatpicking. There’s a place where you play the first string at the twelfth fret, then the second string at the tenth fret, then the third string at the eighth fret, and then you move everything down a fret and play it again. You do this at 150% of the song’s normal 220 beat per second speed. It is not easy. I’ve been screwing it up over and over.

The other day I took my Strat out of the case. I hadn’t played it in a while. It has elevens on it. My other guitars generally have tens on them (or tens with heavy bottom strings). When I played the Strat, the flatpicking was easier. This was what I had hoped for when I took it out. It’s not surprising, since it’s generally easier to flatpick heavy strings. I decided to consider putting elevens on my other guitars.

The Strat is great, but I can’t cope with the volume knob that sits where my picking hand should be. It forces me to play near the neck, where the strings are wobbly and hard to find. I figured I should try elevens on another guitar and get used to picking fast near the bridge, where it’s easiest. Eventually, I would be able to go back to the Strat and play fast, regardless of the position. I’d get used to picking fast, so the knob would no longer matter. This was the plan.

Today I got a set of D’Addario jazz/blues strings (couldn’t find the normal ones at Best Buy) and put them on my amazing Chinese Epiphone. Suddenly I was able to play that difficult lick! The clouds had parted! You can’t imagine how hard I’ve worked on this, and how little progress I made until I tried the new strings. Suddenly I was able to feel the strings properly with my left hand, and they didn’t run away from my right hand any more. The thinner strings didn’t give my left hand much feedback, and they were hard to find with the pick.

Since then I’ve played “I Know a Little” until I’m wiped out. It’s so satisfying, hearing it work. Now I just have to fix one piece of fretting, and I’m in business. I’ll be able to play the song well at 90% speed and adequately at 100%. That’s a big deal. I’ve never seen anyone else do it. If I can do this, I know I’ll be able to play blues guitar well.

Most people like to use little strings to play fast. It doesn’t work well for me. They bend much easier, and that’s nice, but when you’re really flying, they seem to let you slide around the guitar neck too much, making your fretting inaccurate. When you fret guitar strings, sometimes you actually use one string for support while you reach for another, and that doesn’t work well with nines or tens. And because they’re hard to feel, you don’t always know what’s going on.

Maybe it’s because I learned on thirteens, playing bluegrass. Those things are fantastic for fast picking. You can forget about bending them to any useful degree, and stretches and playing up the neck are really rough, but your right hand will cook, and your left hand will always know exactly what’s happening.

I wonder if this is why Stevie Ray Vaughan liked thick strings. Perhaps when your hands get strong, playing on thin strings gets harder. He played very, very fast, so I can see how thin strings would confuse his picking hand. I’m sure someone will point out that he tuned down half a step, making the strings easier to bend. I think that would make the need for stiffer strings even greater.

This is fantastic. I’m so relieved. When you’re a musician, every time you hit a technical problem you can’t solve, you wonder if you’ve hit the limit of your talent. Now I know I can flatpick the electric guitar as fast as anyone needs to. I may not be the fastest, but almost no material will be off limits to me because of speed issues. That’s good enough for me. It’s the best result I could have hoped for.

It’s also comforting to know my age is not limiting me. I remember watching Roy Clark complain about losing speed, and he was probably five or more years younger than I am. I think he had arthritis. Anyway, when you’re old and you try to develop a skill, you always have to worry that it’s something your body or mind can’t do.

Finally, I’m going to have music in my life, and I’m going to do it well. The problems I had with the piano were extremely disappointing, so I feel like I have a new lease on life. I also have friends who are interested in amps, guitars, music, and serving God, so I won’t be alone in this.

I can’t wait until next week. With this new development, I should be playing this song correctly by then.

On top of that, I found a new tube amp design that I like, so I’m getting ready to order the parts and get to work. I now have two guys at church who want me to build amps for them.

Psalm 37:4!

We Could Get a Few Things DONE

Today I’m thinking about signs that show that a church is successful.

It’s an interesting subject. Sometimes God does things that are impressive from an earthly perspective, and it demonstrates that he’s on the scene, so if your church is big and rich, it could mean God is with you. On the other hand, what if a pastor sees a big, healthy church and decides to make his church big, too, even if he has to cut spiritual corners to get there? It’s like an anorexia victim puffing up her cheeks with air to look fat.

I’m concerned about the trend toward building megachurches. I don’t see the point. How does that please God? What does he care how big your church is? When we say “the church,” we’re not referring to one building. We’re referring to over a billion people, wherever they may be. It doesn’t matter if A church is big, as long as THE church is big.

I can understand wanting to reach as many people as possible, if you have a good message, but what if you’re corrupting the message to reach more people? That’s stupid. You’re defeating your fundamental purpose. You’re like a woman who uses sex as a lure to get a loving, supportive, faithful husband. You’re using catfish bait, but you expect to catch a marlin. That’s nutty.

Here’s the bottom line: the size of a church proves nothing. If you run a big church, you need to realize you may be a much worse pastor than the guy down the street, so think twice before you tell someone else how to make it. You may be leading him straight to hell. TV cameras don’t make you a great man of God. You may be a total zero, headed for a major fall.

How many megachurch TV pastors have we seen, who turned out to be utter failures as Christians? That proves my case. Unfortunately, we can’t see the great pastors who have unknown churches. But they’re out there.

When the Christian church really got started, there were 120 people involved. This was after Jesus had worked for at least three years. That was the net, for the greatest pastor of all time.

It wasn’t a megasynagogue or a megashul. You could put the whole core of the church in two buses. But the Bible says they were all “in one accord.” That doesn’t mean they were muzzled, or that they mindlessly agreed with every mistake their leaders made; it means they were serious. The Holy Spirit rewarded them by blowing into the room and filling them with supernatural tongues. They went out and conquered the world for Christ. Meanwhile, the big religious organization of the day, which was Judaism, went on to stagnate for two thousand years.

Jesus only had 120 people to work with. Would anyone say God didn’t approve of his ministry? Would anyone say that it would have been bigger, if he had been doing things right? Actually, some of the guys on TBN might.

Last year, I was in DC for the National Day of Prayer. Mike and I visited a great Assemblies of God Church. There was no light show when the band played. The music wasn’t deafening. There was no rap. There were no TV cameras. The service was organized, but they were flexible enough to let the Holy Spirit interrupt. While the pastor’s wife was talking, she changed course and started talking about a different topic the Holy Spirit had put on her mind, and it was extraordinary, because what she said was tailored to Mike’s specific need.

The church wasn’t huge. I would guess it held a thousand people when packed. But it was clean and nicely decorated, and the people looked good. It seemed like a very healthy church. The Holy Spirit definitely moved while we were there.

I wish I knew of a church like that near me. I’ll be honest. I love the people at my church, but we are working so hard to attract people, and at putting on a slick show, the place seems to be getting somewhat sterile. We have lasers and smoke machines, but I can’t remember the last time I saw a spontaneous Holy Spirit move on the stage. I don’t think there’s room for it in the schedule. And sometimes we use music by people like Eminem, who wrote about raping his mother. That can’t be good for the kids. I can’t see Jesus coming back and snapping his fingers to an Eminem number while they introduce him.

I don’t recognize crappy rap music when I hear it, but many people in the church do, and they have come to me and commented negatively on it. It has offended people. I was oblivious, because fortunately, I have great taste in music. If they played Lionel Hampton, I’d notice.

Churches imitate the secular world in order to attact members. But that which you imitate, you become. These days, mainstream churches deny the virgin birth, the second coming, the existence of sin and hell, and even the deity of Jesus. They got that way by trying to attract members! Spirit-filled churches are headed the same way. Whether they admit it or not, it proves they don’t trust God to attract crowds. We think we’re better than the mainstream churches, but we are no different. We just found a different way to fail.

What would happen if the church closest to you started experiencing miracles? What would happen if a prophet arose there, and that prophet started saying things only God could know? What would happen if the people who attended the church started changing dramatically, due to the power of the Holy Spirit? What if people started feeling God’s addictive presence powerfully? Wouldn’t crowds show up? Am I crazy? Isn’t this what the world is thirsting for?

You can’t get those things by using the world’s tricks. God isn’t going to show up because you print snazzy flyers and do phone marketing, or because you talk about love all the time and never mention sin, or because you promise people God will give them money. Linus said the Great Pumpkin looked for the sincerest pumpkin patch when choosing the place for his manifestations. Surely God is as smart as the Great Pumpkin.

The prosperity gospel is a problem, because it’s exaggerated way beyond anything God ever promised, and it does not work. Churches promise people more money than they know what to do with, and they give to the church, and the money doesn’t show up. So instead of real miracles, which would raise attendance, some churches deliver promises of financial miracles that never occur. Then what happens when you try to get people to go to church? “My aunt gave away half of her retirement money, and we had to pay for her funeral. Why would I associate with those thieves?” “But God will change your life and fix your problems and heal your family!” “Right, like he fixed my aunt’s problems?”

My church has little prayer cells called GAP groups (“God Answers Prayer”). I belong to one. Every so often, I have to lead it. On those occasions, I refuse to prepare. I used to try to put things together, but then I remembered what Jesus told us about appearing in public. He said that if we were called before the authorities, the Holy Spirit would tell us what to say. He commanded us not to prepare. Was he a liar? Was he stupid? I don’t think so. Therefore I choose to take him seriously; that’s what walking by faith is all about. If he will help us talk to the cops, he will also help us talk to each other. So far, it has been working like you would not believe. I show up with nothing, and we end up with so much to talk about, we can’t finish it.

We also pray in the Spirit, as a group, using a timer to make sure we don’t skimp. And we put on gentle Christian music, because God inhabits the praises of his people, and because the Bible says the Holy Spirit is grieved by clamor. This stuff is working. It changes the atmosphere in the room, and it makes things happen.

We don’t see this kind of thing much in the main area of the church, except during prayer meetings. Maybe the services aren’t always as powerful as they should be. The GAP group makes up for it, to a great extent.

On the one hand, you don’t want to be so supernaturally kooky and obsessed with correction that you drive people away. On the other, you have to acknowledge that what people really want is God, not you or your big giant church. Paul said he hooked people with God’s power, not man’s fancy words.

Maybe we need smaller churches where people are in one accord. A good seed is better than a rotten plant that bears no fruit. The problem with seeker-friendliness is that you end up attracting people who aren’t seekers, and in order to keep them, you have to put their whiny demands above God’s plan. Suddenly you don’t say much about sin or hell. You talk all the time about love, as if God were Oprah. You decide “Thou shalt not judge” is a commandment, even when people are dying for lack of correction. Sin brings curses on people; a pastor has to tell his flock about it. Otherwise, he can’t say he loves them.

It seems to me that if you have to resort to secular methods in order to succeed, your ministry didn’t come from God. It proves he doesn’t want you to make it, so you should quit and try to find out what he really wants you to do. Maybe you were supposed to be a dentist. Who knows? To find out God’s plan, you should start relying on his power. Hey, maybe he can do a better job than you.

Walking by faith works like this: God tells you to do certain things, and you trust him, and you do those things, counting on God to make them work. You don’t cheat. Moses didn’t go down to the shore of the Red Sea and try to push the water back with his foot while no one was looking, and when Elijah burned people alive with God’s fire, he didn’t bring lighter fluid, just in case. In fact, God punishes people who try to “help” him in ways that deny faith. He destroyed Saul’s kingdom because Saul tried to fill in for some priests who were late. He judged Moses for whacking a rock twice to make water pour out of it, instead of hitting it once, as ordered by God.

Either this stuff works, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, God is a liar or a fantasy, and we should all quit and go to a nice strip club and get drunk. If it does, let’s quit adding our worthless, hypocritical nonsense to God’s perfect way.

I’m getting wonderful results. If God ever starts letting me down, I’ll see you at the strip club. Don’t bet the rent on that.

More

Aaron popped up and corrected me. The big mistake Moses made at Meribah was not hitting the rock twice, but hitting it, period. That was what I originally intended to write, but I didn’t trust my memory, and when I Googled it, I got it wrong somehow. Moses was supposed to speak to the rock, not hit it.

The interesting thing is that this makes the citation even more appropriate. Look what Moses was called on to do. He had to walk by faith. Sure, he had to use his natural strength to walk up to a rock and talk to it, but he did not have to use natural means directly related to the goal. In other words, the things he was asked to do were easy things in the natural; he was not called on to work, in any meaningful sense. God didn’t say, “Start digging a well, and I’ll make sure it pays off.” The most important thing was to do precisely what he was told, even though it was not something that ordinarily solves irrigation problems. The intended result was a purely supernatural event: a rock opening up and giving water. It wasn’t an ordinary spring which God simply chose to make productive.

Now, what would have happened, had God given the same order to one of our modern, carnal prosperity preachers? First, he would have begged a local businessman to lend him a bulldozer. Then he would have made his drama team find him a big hardhat. He would have had his band prepare some dramatic music. He would have sent out twenty thousand flyers, inviting people to see him BRING FORTH WATER FROM THE BARREN ROCK! And he would have called the local TV stations. He would have jumped on the bulldozer, made a speech about how your financial problems were “like this ROCK,” and shoved the rock out of the way while the band played behind him.

If water had come out, people would have said, “That idiot broke a spring open, and he’s trying to tell us God did it so we’ll give him money. He probably wiped out a water main.”

This is why you don’t do things for God. At least, you don’t force his promises to come true. God can’t get his glory if you bust your rear end and stay up nights working to make things happen. Any idiot can get things through hard work. Only a man of God can get things by walking by faith.

Think about Jesus. Is there even one example of him giving people medicine? No, but he healed a whole lot of people. Think about Elisha, who purified a well by throwing salt in it. Think about Naaman, who got healed of leprosy by going swimming. How about Joshua, who destroyed the walls of Jericho by walking around them in a circle?

Either it’s about God’s power, or it’s not. If your walk with God is about hard work and your wonderful talents and gifts and social connections, you might as well be a Buddhist.

He Sleeps With the Fishes

Osama (I keep typing “Obama” by mistake) is dead. Hooray, hooray. It’s good news. No doubt about it. But here’s my question: what has he done to us lately?

As I understand it, under President Bush, America and her allies neutered Obama…I mean “Osama”…years ago. Al Qaeda has been on the run for quite some time, and they don’t get a lot done. So I’m not all that excited about Osama’s death. He wasn’t running the show.

There are some good things about it. It shows that there is a price to pay for killing US civilians. We didn’t quit. It shows that even a dainty, pampered, self-adoring amateur like Obama will support this kind of action. I’m also glad they dumped Osama’s body in the ocean, because now there is no hope of building a mosque over it. It will probably lead to Osama Elvis sightings, but that’s better than having them put him in a nitrogen-filled glass case at the Ground Zero Mosque.

Still, Osama was not our biggest problem. Right now, the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to assemble a coalition of Islamist nations, and they’re probably going to succeed. And we’re helping them. Our tireless terrorist-busting President is pulling yet another Carter tribute. Carter gave Iran to the thugs, and Obama is handing them a big chunk of the rest of the Muslim world. It’s funny how our two least Jew-friendly Presidents of the last twenty-five years have both ended up handing giant tracts of real estate to Israel’s sworn enemies.

Bush made the mistake of supporting land for peace, and so did Clinton, but they were nothing like Carter or Obama. There is no longer much room to doubt that Carter is an anti-Semite, and Obama has been extremely bold in changing our policy toward Israel. He has made it clear that he thinks we have been too good to Israel, and he has established a pattern of humiliating the Israeli Prime Minister. Say what you want about Bush and Clinton. Neither of them would have criticized the US for favoring Israel to the point where more “even-handedness” was needed. Obama did that.

The Muslim Brotherhood concerns me. It seems that their aims are the same as Al Qaeda’s, but they are much more effective, and they are using common sense. It’s much smarter to take over a Muslim nation and use it than to slaughter American civilians and invite a crushing response.

In the past, the US and Israel have generally benefited when Muslims didn’t get along. When they fought among themselves, they didn’t have much energy to fight us. Now we may be looking at a multi-nation alliance that is cohesive enough to deal us severe blows, possibly of a biological or nuclear nature.

Perry Stone thinks the Antichrist will be a Muslim. He believes the Antichrist will be the Twelfth Imam, AKA the Mahdi. Many Muslims hoped Osama would turn out to be the Mahdi. The Bible also tells us the Antichrist will rule ten nations, or at least that’s how people interpret it. Right now, the Muslim brotherhood is putting nations together. Are they building the Antichrist’s confederacy?

God and Satan have a way of rotating their employees. Elijah arose, and then his anointing–his supernatural “commission”–fell on Elisha. I suspect that Satan got everything he wanted out of Osama, so he gave him up to die and go on to get what he deserves. Now someone else is on the rise, and we don’t know who it is. Osama was Madonna; the new person will be Lady Gaga. Maybe.

God is going to severely squash the nations that divide Israel, and the United States is currently one of those nations. We need to get Obama out of the White House and replace him with someone who will support God’s nation. We need to quit voting for legislators who don’t believe in prophecy. America needs to repent. People need to turn back to God, start walking by faith, quit killing their unborn children, stop glorifying themselves, and get into the flow of God’s blessings.

I think people who walk by faith will come through the upcoming economic and political upheavals unscathed. In the Revelation, Jesus told the destroyers not to touch the oil or the wine. Oil represents the anointing and the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Believers who are full of the Spirit are like vessels filled with new wine (this is what the miracle at the wedding of Cana means). Maybe Jesus was telling the destroyers to shake the world but pass by his faithful, as the destroyer passed over the homes of the Hebrews in Egypt. I think we’ll be fine, and people will hate us for it. But the rest of the US, well, that depends on how we treat the Jews, the poor, the unborn, and so on. And socialism is not charity, so voting for liberals is not the way to be good to the poor.

Wow, read Psalm 105 and see how it lines up with our current situation. It’s all about God’s people, being enriched and delivered during hard times, and it’s about the plagues that hit Egypt but missed the Jews. I found it accidentally by Googling the bit about the oil and the wine, and it says something very similar: “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.”

It turns out Revelation 6:6 is the relevant verse. I’m not enough of a prophecy scholar to tell you whether it has to do with the Tribulation or the current shaking, but I think the principle is eternal. God’s people are often delivered from the mess around them. “A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten thousand and thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.” Noah, Joseph, Jesus at the cliff in Nazareth, Lot and his family…even Peter, standing on the Sea of Galilee.

I know I sound like a kook, but there is so much I’m not telling people, they really can’t judge. Last night one of the young people from my church called me about bin Laden, and we started talking about evidence that God is real and that Jesus is the Messiah, and even I was amazed at the words that came out of me. God has show me a ton of stuff. He’s up there, believe me. More importantly, he’s down here.

There are worse things than sounding like a kook. I probably have forty years left, if I get to live my entire span. That time is going to pass in a flash. I still remember watching new episodes of Batman and Mission Impossible. I don’t perceive the passed time as very great, but I know these things happened over 40 years ago. In what will seem like a minute, in the same way, I’ll be looking back at today. I’m going to die. It’s as good as done. Why should I sweat about what people think of me here? They’re as good as dead, too. None of this is permanent. And when it’s over, we’ll all know who was right.