Fredo Fished in the Wrong Spot

I want to thank the enabler who mentioned the 200-lumen flashlights Home Depot is selling. On the way home from church, I bought one for me and one for my dad. I hope you’re pleased with yourself.

Church was really good. The pastor seemed completely lost at first. He was talking about the Beatles and celebrities and so on, and I figured, “He didn’t prepare this week, and he’s winging it.” But toward the end, he drew it together. The theme was people’s need to see Jesus, or at least be aware of his presence. That is something I strive for all the time, because, well, why wouldn’t you? Once you’ve had it, you want it again. That pretty much sums it up.

He ended up talking about Arthur Blessitt. This is a man who made himself a cross and spent his life carrying it around the world. I guess he’s still doing it. It’s an amazing story. He used to be on TBN all the time, back in the 80s. I don’t watch TBN any more, because so many of the people on the network seemed like liars and…I’m trying to think of a nice word for “pimps,” but it’s not coming. I thought they preached a very harmful brand of prosperity theology, and I believed it was intended to help them live obscene lifestyles, not to help people get closer to God.

I have seen a lot of people on TBN whom I would urge Christians to avoid following, but I have never heard anyone say a bad word about Arthur Blessitt.

Anyway, here is the story Arthur told Pastor Wilkerson. Arthur said that when he was about 20, he visited a church near Lake Tahoe, and while the pastor of that church was driving him some place, Jesus spoke to Arthur and told him to go down on the beach. The pastor didn’t want to go, so he got a subordinate to take him. So they went to the beach, and while they were walking, they looked out onto the water and saw Jesus standing on it. And they immediately turned away from him, because they were freaked out.

They turned back eventually, and they went into the freezing water and worshiped him. And after a time, they didn’t know what to do, so they started walking away. And Arthur went back once more, and Jesus was still standing there, and he had his back turned to Arthur. And Arthur called out to him, or something, and he turned back to Arthur, and Arthur asked for a blessing. And without speaking, Jesus communicated the following idea to Arthur: Arthur was never to be afraid of anything, because Jesus would always be beside him. And if I recall the story correctly, Jesus held his hands out toward Arthur, and somehow power went from Jesus to Arthur, through Jesus’s hands.

Now, I have heard a lot of nonsense on TBN. I have been told that I should send money to a preacher who drove a Rolls-Royce, for example. And I think Robert Tilton, who is a liar and also crazy as a tree full of coons, used to be on TBN. But maybe Arthur Blessitt really did see Jesus. Some people do. He’s real, after all.

I had a couple of experiences in which I was convinced that Jesus was with me. On one occasion, I felt an invisible beam of love, warmth, and power playing over my body as I tried to sleep, and I fell asleep and then awakened, and when I awakened, my hands were raised, and I felt energy pouring into the palms from up above. I never figured out what that meant, but it definitely happened, and Arthur’s story is similar, in that power moved through a pair of hands. In his case, it moved out of Jesus’s hands, and in my case, it moved into mine.

Don’t ask me what it means. If I were a televangelist in white shoes and an orange suit, I’m sure I’d be able to make something up and convince you to pay me for telling you. But I don’t lie nearly that well. I’m merely a lawyer. I guess I should say that ever since that day, I’ve been able to do something special with power from my hands. Healing the sick, or bending spoons, or taking really stubborn stains out of neckties. But that is not the case.

It was a great sermon, because it reminded me that we are to believe God is real, and that we can actually get away with doing the things he told us to, because he will help us. That’s extremely important. Like Pastor Wilkerson said tonight, it has nothing to do with your ticket to heaven. It has to do with what you achieve here.

After all the things I’ve seen, I should have faith like Arthur Blessitt’s, but I do not. I couldn’t be happy facing a firing squad, for example. He pulled that off. I do manage to come through once in a while, though.

My sister no longer goes to Trinity Church. She felt their message was a little basic. If you watch Perry Stone (one of her favorites), and then you go to Trinity, you will see that Perry Stone digs deeper into the mysteries of the Bible. No doubt about it. But every time I go to this church, I get something I need. It doesn’t seem to matter how simple the sermon is. So I’m still attending. Maybe I have a stronger interest in the fundamentals.

This blog entry made me think of the third psalm, so here it is.

1 Lord, how are they increased that trouble me! many are they that rise up against me.
2 Many there be which say of my soul, There is no help for him in God. Selah.
3 But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.
4 I cried unto the Lord with my voice, and he heard me out of his holy hill. Selah.
5 I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me.
6 I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people, that have set themselves against me round about.
7 Arise, O Lord; save me, O my God: for thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone; thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly.
8 Salvation belongeth unto the Lord: thy blessing is upon thy people. Selah.

I have managed to memorize 13 psalms so far, but I’m starting to lose some of them, so I guess I better start going back over them.

The Book of Jasher

Can’t write too much. My dad’s boat is in the yard, and I have to get up and go to the boatyard with him so we can run it back to the marina. It had oysters on the hull when we took it in. Oysters! I can’t convince him bottom paint isn’t permanent.

Mish Weiss is not enjoying radiation treatment, and some of her blood counts are not good. Keep her in your prayers.

Yesterday I read a big chunk of the book of Jasher. This is an old document which is supposedly a sort of companion to the Torah. Some people claim it’s a forgery, but I believe there are references to it in the Bible. After reading it, I have a very hard time believing it’s not genuine. It’s a long book, and it’s loaded with obscure details and “begots” and so on, and it seems very consistent with the style and message of the Bible. It’s not considered part of the canon, however, so I guess you have to be careful with it.

It’s full of fascinating stuff. For example, it describes the “images” Rachel stole from Laban. It says people used to kill firstborn males and preserve their heads, and they put metal tablets with “the name” inscribed on them under the tongues of the heads. Then they consulted the heads and asked them things, and the heads spoke. Creepy, to say the least. It says an image belonging to someone Laban knew (“Can I borrow your severed head for a minute?”) told Laban where Jacob went when he fled.

The Jews have a lot of stories about the power of “the name,” meaning the true name of God. Supposedly a person who knows it can work wonders, not all of them good. The Torah says something about testing an accused adulteress by making her a drink containing the dissolved name of God. If she’s innocent, no problem, but if not, she gets a disgusting disease reminiscent of the worst types of VD. Maybe Aaron will chime in on the subject.

I hate to say this, but it reminds me of the Coca-Cola formula. Supposedly only two people know it, and they’re not allowed to fly together.

Am I the only one who prefers the term “VD” to the more modern “STD”? It’s amazing how we’re rearranging the language to keep morality out of it. In the past, “whores” used to get “the pox” and “the clap.” Now “sex workers” get “STDs.” Calling it something clean-sounding doesn’t make it morally equivalent to an earache.

Prostitution isn’t “sex work.” It’s a degrading, sinful, disgusting, depraved lifestyle that leads to disease, drug addiction, self-hatred, social isolation, and early death. I guess those are “sexually transmitted adverse results.”

Some books that are not universally recognized as scripture seem silly when you read them, and it’s easy to dismiss them as bogus. For example, it’s hard to take the story of Bel and the Dragon seriously. The style doesn’t match the book of Daniel, and the story is a little cartoonish. But so far, the book of Jasher seems convincing.

I better go put my shoes on.

More

A book called Tree of Souls says the name mentioned in the story of the “images” was the name of a foul spirit, not God. In another place it says “spirits,” plural, and that incantations were also written on the object put in the head’s mouth.

Saturday Night, Redeemed

I’m not going to church today. I went last night. It’s much more convenient, and the services are smaller. The traffic is worse, probably because everyone in Miami rushes to South Beach to get drunk and stoned on the weekends. But it’s tolerable.

Back when I started keeping the sabbath, I truly looked forward to and enjoyed the day. When I started attending church regularly, that began to change. Not something I expected. The church has three services on Sunday, at 8:30, 10:30, and 12:30. My preference is to go at 8:30, but my sister insisted on 12:30, and we usually found ourselves leaving for that service between 12:45 and 1:00, which put us there at 1:00 or later. Then we usually ended up doing something after church, and I would often arrive home after 3 p.m. I always prepared to leave by 12:15, so if you add it all up, I was cutting at least four hours out of the middle of the day in order to go to church.

I found it hard to accomplish anything before going, and afterward, I was tired. So the sabbath was not what it had been.

On top of that, my early morning prayer sessions shrunk considerably. It wasn’t by choice. For one reason or another, I had trouble sleeping, and I’m worried about the effects of sleep deprivation, so I would add an hour or two to the alarm. And I was spending way too much time fooling with tools, so I was getting to bed an hour and a half later. Instead of getting up at 5:30, I’ve been getting up between 7:30 and 9:00.

I’m sorry to say that my sister and I have had considerable discord over family business, so she and I have not been to church together for two or three weeks. That’s bad. But when you’re a Christian, good always comes from bad. The good is that I can now get to church on time, and I can go to a service that doesn’t cut the sabbath in half.

“On time” is not completely right. I try to miss the first ten minutes, because that’s when the church concentrates its youth-oriented boombox worship music. I think it’s great that they’re reaching out with that stuff, but it makes my head hurt, and I would like to be able to hear when I’m 60.

I’m going to take Sunday back, starting today. You can’t expect a tree to grow if you don’t take care of the roots, and I have not been doing that. I want to continue to see our lives improve, and that will only happen if I get my routine back and start each day with God. It’s surprising how far off the path you can get in a few days or a week. Fortunately, I miss the sensation of being on track, so I am highly motivated to correct my course.

I haven’t written much lately about this part of my life–less than I wanted–because some mysterious person tried to come between me and my sister by sending her passages from my blog. Things that were intended to upset her. You have to wonder what motivates a person to do things like that. It didn’t benefit them at all, and it was intended to hurt two people who were trying to rebuild a family that was in ruins. And it caused me to deprive readers of material they found encouraging and uplifting. There was nothing positive about this person’s intentions. Whoever did it knew that harm would come of it, and they did it anyway, because that was the point. It was pure malice.

One of the bad things about blogging is that you develop enemies whose existence is completely concealed from you, and they never have the courage or integrity to identify themselves, explain why they tried to harm you, or offer you a chance to work things out with them. The Internet is a playground for the malicious people who are too weak to face their victims, and the rest of us pretty much have to depend on God to defend us. The alternative is to stoop to the level of those who abuse us. Who wants that? Who wants to be the kind of person who hides while distributing viruses, hacking into servers, committing identity theft, spreading inflammatory gossip, or trying to motivate people to harm others? A tick dangling from a dog has more dignity and justification. And a greater hope of success. What God puts in motion, you can’t successfully oppose. You can, however, bring condemnation and shame and misfortune on yourself.

This family has had so much unnecessary pain, and here we are, accepting God’s help and working our way into the light, and someone wants to put a stop to our recovery. Someone out there would draw pleasure from that. What kind of life can that person have? I can understand trying to fill an empty life by doing good for other people. But evil? Especially an ugly and cowardly type of evil? How can that make you happy? Obviously it can’t. Whoever did this has planted seeds of misery and self-loathing in their own field, and their abundant harvest is on the way. They need to repudiate what they did and learn to bless other people instead of attacking them without reason.

The one sure way to make good come of this is to forgive and pray for this person, so that’s what I’ll do. God didn’t bring us this far to be stopped by malevolent gossip.

I don’t care who it was. I don’t want an apology. Whoever you are, I hope you will take a moment and realize that when you make innocent people suffer just so you can draw pleasure from their pain, you do yourself more harm than you can ever hope to do them. As an enemy, you are weak, but the enemy you are making is not, and no one can protect you from him. You have already failed. You never had a chance. You might as well try to salvage something from the experience and protect yourself.

In the end, my sister and I will find blessings in this. You will not. Unless you change while there is time. If you want to make amends, don’t contact me. I don’t need to know your name. Find someone who needs a blessing and give it to them. Give something to the poor or the hungry or the sick. Pray for someone who needs help. Try to find pleasure in doing good, so you will stop bringing misery on yourself.

Load Dropped

I feel like I got my life back today.

My family has been sued. It has to do with a small lot sold by an LLC related to my family. The buyers sued the realtor, and now they’re suing the LLC and all the members. The plaintiffs attempted (unsuccessfully) to serve me this week. Really annoying. It seems fairly clear that the case will die a quick death, and even if we lose, no one will have a large loss, but it has to be tended to, and it has caused no end of strife and division. My dad offered to handle it for nothing, with me as his dashing sidekick, but the family turned that down. I thought I would still have to represent myself as an individual defendant, but yesterday I learned that the family had voted to hire someone, and I decided to cast my lot with the new guy.

Today I had to prepare a document and fax crap to the lawyer, and I’m finished, so I feel like I can relax. There is still some anger and dissatisfaction, to put it mildly, but the person experiencing that is not me. Finally, I can get back to studying machining, fixing up my woodworking stuff, and preparing for the lathe to arrive.

While Mike was here, he got all excited about a mahogany board I had made from scratch, and he wanted to check out the tools. We BSed our way through a mahogany mousepad for his desk. The piece of wood we used was really garbage; it was warped, and the sides were far from parallel. I had saved it, figuring I might be able to use a small piece of it. We put it on the planing sled and took it down from over an inch in thickness to about 0.33″. That’s how much wood had to be removed to get two flat, parallel sides. Mike sanded it with the Dynabrade, and then he used the table saw to bevel the upper edges. He did the sawing while I was in the house, with no safety training. Scary. He put both Danish oil and stain on it. Weird. I suggested he get five rubber feet for it, with adhesive backing. That will keep it from sliding around his desk.

We tried to use the router, but it became obvious that my lack of a real router fence was an impenetrable obstacle. So I am making a router fence. I figure I’ll make a long bottomless box about six inches wide and clamp it to the back side of the table saw fence. I’ll be able to use the table saw measuring scale (or a table saw DRO) for both the table saw and the router. I’ll put a hole in it for the shop-vac.

I’ll need about eight feet of wood, a little over an inch in thickness and five inches in width. I’m not sure what to use. Something stable. I’ll have to buy it. Scrap has its limits.

Day before yesterday I saw a gorgeous pile of logs, beckoning to me from the side of the road. If they still exist, I may get them tonight. Some of them. How am I supposed to resist? The local mahogany seems wonderful. It’s too bad the tree people cut it in such short pieces.

I have to get a few router bits. The collection I have is sad.

It’s wonderful, knowing I won’t have to do this litigation, and it’s great having the fighting over with, even if not everyone is happy. You can’t always please people. When you please everyone, it often means you’ve done something you’ll really regret. Sometimes you have to settle for the knowledge that if you trust God, you’ll get peace eventually.

More Prayer

Mish Weiss has this to say about Leah Friedman:

Leah needs prayer. ?? ?????? ???? ????? ??? ?? ???? Leah Meira bat Rina. She went in for tests and a minor procedure and there are some serious complications today. My hands are shaking so hard right now it’s all I can do to type this.

I apologize if the Hebrew (which may or may not display correctly here) contains profanity; with Mish, you never know.

Seriously, remember Leah today. If you go to her blog, you can find out just how delicate her situation is.

Mish also says:

Infected central line CVC. Not fun. Fever has an origin now. Their debating removing my CVC and placing this one in my internal jugular vein. Will know more later tonight. Antibiotics are on board. Fever is up and down, I have intense pain around the CVC line.

For what it’s worth, not all of Mish’s signs are bad; her hemoglobin is at 6, whatever that means, and for her, that suggests an arrested decline.

Forget Al Qaeda; Stop the Serial Worshipers!

Last night I had the strangest dream. For some reason, I was forced to move to South America. I had a little house there, and it was built in such a way that you could be inside it and still have a clear view of what was going on in the yard. As if some of the walls had been left out. The place was a mess; my junk was everywhere, because I hadn’t gotten the house together yet. And because I am a slob.

While I was in the living room, I saw some clown in the yard aiming a gun at me. I don’t mean he was dressed like a clown. I just mean he was a stupid person. I drew my Glock and shot him in the forehead. Then it turned out he had friends. They kept showing up, and I kept popping them. I thought, “Wow, this really works.” I was so glad I had put in time at the range.

I shot several of them, and I realized I still had enough ammunition in the Glock to take care of a few more, but I thought I ought to look around for other options. Due to my housekeeping style, which was fairly true to life in the dream, guns and bullets were not hard to find. The main problem was that I didn’t keep them together, so I found myself dumping .38 Super rounds into my pocket and then looking for the gun, and I located my .45 and then had to look for bullets.

I don’t know what these idiots wanted. Maybe they were mad at me for defacing an Obama poster. Turning the “H” in “HOPE” to a “D.”

It was very enjoyable. And it drove a comforting point home: this house is one of the most dangerous places in Miami! IF you’re a criminal. I feel great about that.

This dream clearly confirms the worst fears of Janet Napolitano and her left-leaning thoughtcrime squad. My terrorist inclinations are beyond question. I read the Bible, I go to church (like that other terrorist, Jean Assam), and I am willing to use force, in my home, to defend myself from violent criminals (terrorism of the worst kind!). I should be taken to Gitmo and gently interrogated by sensitive vegan operatives trained by the late Leo Buscaglia. We don’t waterboard now, supposedly. Maybe they could threaten to withhold Joni Mitchell music until I snapped. They could deprive me of bad leftist music, altogether. “IF YOU DON’T SPILL THE BEANS [SOY], IT WILL BE A LONG TIME BEFORE YOU HEAR MIDNIGHT OIL AGAIN!”

It has occurred to me that maybe the thoughtcrime squad has a point. Granted, almost all terrorists in the US are Muslims; they dropped the ball on that. But most of the rest are probably far-right nuts. And why is that? Because the left-wing nuts got what they wanted. They have nothing to terrorize for. Hey, maybe appeasement works. All you have to do is let the kooks choose your President. That means we can get rid of right-wing terror by electing Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter.

If we want to see left-wing terrorism rise again, all we have to do is pass laws making bathing mandatory and forcing the cops to take marijuana laws seriously. Cut off their dope and deprive them of their soothing layer of grime, and in no time, the hippies will be bombing Colgate-Palmolive factories.

In case the Ministress of Propaganda or whatever she is still has doubts, let me give her probable cause to haul me in. I’M GLAD I HAVE A SEPTIC TANK, BECAUSE IT SAYS EXACTLY HOW I FEEL ABOUT MOTHER GAIA! I SET MY THERMOSTAT TO 68 DEGREES…IN AUGUST! I BUY MEAT AND THEN THROW IT OUT, JUST TO INCREASE GLOBAL WARMING AND KEEP THE SLAUGHTERHOUSES IN BUSINESS! I FILLED MY BATHTUB WITH AMMUNITION, STRIPPED COMPLETELY NAKED EXCEPT FOR AN NRA CAP, AND TOOK A “BULLET BATH”!

Oh, I am bad. The Angel of Change passed over my house! I didn’t cook a lamb, but there are usually a lot of pig bones in the trash.

Incidentally, rural Southerners use the verb “change” as a euphemism for castrating livestock.

I can’t believe I postulated the existence of sensitive vegans. Have you ever known a vegetarian who wasn’t consumed with rage? They’re the angriest people on earth. They make the Taliban seem laid back. When are we right-wing terrorists going to start setting fire to SUV dealerships and throwing fake blood on people? I have not received my orders yet, and the vegans are getting way ahead of us.

Why are vegans so peeved all the time? Maybe it’s the gas and bloating. If we really want to protect the atmosphere, we should make hippies eat more meat and lay off the legumes.

I saw an interesting Perry Stone video last night. He seems to think God is going to deliver a beating to areas of the world that displease him. Isn’t that happening already? Miami is a fairly evil place, and we got mashed by a whole bunch of hurricanes. New Orleans has an economy based mostly on sin, and it’s the voodoo capital of the US, and look what happened. Remember the tsunami? Thailand is famous for child prostitution. Indonesia is the biggest Muslim nation, and they persecute the daylights out of everyone else. Burma has an official state policy of eradicating Christianity, and they ran off all of their Jews, and a typhoon wrecked the whole country.

And think of the most sinful places on earth, and consider their vulnerability to natural disasters. It’s interesting. San Francisco could disappear in about ten minutes, and Manhattan has two faults under it.

Stone thinks God is going to help Christians relocate, so we don’t end up like Lot’s wife. I find that fascinating, because this is something I pray about every day. I want out of this place. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a city where half of the population worships Santeria demons and another twenty percent practices other types of voodoo. They have “churches” where they sacrifice goats and chickens here! Seriously, look it up. Doctors and accountants and schoolteachers and all sorts of seemingly normal people are caught up in this filth. Oh, yeah. That will end well. For them and their kids.

I guess I’ll close. I have all sorts of potential-terrorist things to do. Grocery shopping. Straightening up the garage. No end of subversive activities. I may actually pray! They can’t stop me! I may get in the car so I can deliberately pray WITHIN A THOUSAND FEET OF A SCHOOL!

I’m not joking, here! I am totally capable of doing this. If my demands are not met.

That reminds me. I have no demands. I better write some up.

Pounds of Cheese, Discarded

Mike has taken off. Which is good, because I feel sure I gained 15 pounds during the time he was here. I just threw out what had to be six pounds of pizza cheese, because I could not face the danger of having it in the house. Tomorrow I’m going to buy a whole bunch of fresh vegetables to eat at lunchtime. I have to detox.

Here’s the great thing about Mike’s time here: we went to church together. At last. I can’t remember when I started praying for his family; it must have been a couple of years ago. Every time he came to Florida, we talked about religion, and I shared my experiences with him. Somehow I was still surprised when he said he was interested in going to church; as far as I know, he’s the only person I’ve ever convinced to attend a service. I can’t say it was a challenge. God has been on his mind for a long time, and he was already an occasional churchgoer.

Yesterday we decided to go to the 6:00 service at Trinity Church. During the afternoon, I checked their website, and although I was sure I had heard them mention 6:00 over and over, the site said 7:00 p.m. So we showed up a little bit after seven, and naturally, Pastor Wilkerson was nearly at the end of his sermon. The site was wrong. This has happened twice this month, but last time, I was able to get the right information in time to avoid missing the service.

When we arrived, he was teaching about signs of the Rapture. He was on the tenth of ten signs. That sign was the blossoming of the fig tree (somewhere in Matthew 24). He explained how the fig tree symbolized Israel, and he said the blossoming was the restoration of the Jewish homeland, which occurred in 1948.

He gave an altar call and blessed the crowd, and that was it. We started walking out. Mike said he wanted to talk, so we met up at a Dunkin’ Donuts a few blocks away (we were driving separate cars). I was frustrated. I was hoping he had gotten something of the feel of the church, but what can you get in fifteen minutes?

We got a couple of totally unneeded doughnuts and some coffee and sat down, and he told me he was glad he had heard about the fig tree, because it was something he had been wondering about! On Thursday, mother of one of his employees died suddenly, and Mike had to go to the funeral the next day. The deceased was Jewish, so the funeral had to be fast, as dictated by Jewish law. At the funeral, the rabbi said something about fig trees. I can’t recall. Maybe a Jewish reader can guess for me. Mike had wondered about that for two days.

Many established denominations think the Old Testament is nearly worthless. “Obsolete” would be a better term. It’s hard for me to relate to that, because when I first became serious about Christianity, it was in an Assemblies of God church, and they realized that the Old Testament was just as important as the rest of the Bible. I don’t think Mike came from that kind of background. I’m used to thinking of my religion as something that grew from Judaism, so I was able to talk to him a little bit about the validity and importance of the Torah and the prophets and the psalms.

He said he had always had an interest in prophecy. As it happened, I was very well prepared to talk about that with him. I’m much more concerned about things that are directly applicable to my daily life, but prophecy is very entertaining, and it contains all sorts of evidence proving the existence of God and the validity of Jesus, so I’ve learned a good deal about it. I was able to direct him to Perry Stone; I can’t imagine a more engrossing teacher.

So the small amount of preaching Mike heard (which didn’t seem exciting to me) turned out to be relevant to a recent experience of his, as well as an interest I didn’t know about. And the prophecy videos I had been watching (in spite of not being an eschatology buff) turned out to be the ideal thing to recommend to him.

Funny how those coincidences keep happening.

He said he wanted to go again, so we met for the 10:30 service today, and we heard the whole sermon. On the way out, we stopped near the entrance to try to decide where we should go to sit down and talk about the service, and while we were there, we caught Rich Wilkerson’s eye, and he yelled to us and shook our hands and started talking to us. I thought, “Hey, this would be a good time to ask him to recommend a church near Mike.” And before I could get it out, he had found out Mike lived near D.C., and he had recommended Mark Batterson’s church.

Okay, I guess you could say that worked out well.

Now Mike is up in Delray with some other friends, and tomorrow he’ll go back to D.C. I have to wonder what his situation will be a year or two from now. Mike is an extremely sincere and open person; my guess is that he’ll make progress in a hurry.

The strangest thing happened last night, as I was driving home. I felt the presence of God sweep over me. Not as powerfully as it did on the two occasions when I could actually pinpoint its location, but still, it was very strong. I felt almost as though the car were flying above the road; it almost seemed to drive itself. I don’t mean it literally steered itself, but I felt as though guiding it took almost no effort.

I thought of a story someone told me about ten years ago. This person claimed she was driving to her mother’s home, and she said a light filled her windshield so she couldn’t see the road, and she sat back while the car literally drove itself. I think that story was probably a ridiculous lie told in order to manipulate me, but last night I could not help thinking about it.

Are we really in the times the prophet Joel described? A lot of people think so. The things I’ve seen lately make it hard to dispute.

Church was nearly unbearable when I was a kid. The churches I was dragged to were lifeless and faithless. Churches are so different now. Some are, anyway. I wonder how many Christians realize that. I’m thrilled with the things I see happening, but sometimes I think the vast majority of Christians have no idea what God is up to.

Lie Down With Dogs…

Washington sources added that the Obama Administration would not be continuing the tradition that had developed during the Bush years of hosting Israeli prime ministers whenever they showed up in town, sometimes with just a phone call’s notice.

That’s a fun little quotation, isn’t it? It comes from a Drudgebart-linked story about Israeli anxiety over the Obama administration’s attitude toward Israel.

It seems like Jews are starting to realize they made a big mistake. I don’t know how the average Israeli viewed Obama before the election, but I know that American Jews in Israel do not like him; they were overwhelmingly against him. Jews in the US supported him by a wide margin, but a few are starting to think MAYBE a far-left nut who spent twenty years warming a pew in an anti-Semitic church MIGHT not be a great ally to Israel.

WHO’D HAVE THUNK IT?

Honestly, sometimes I think the best thing that could happen to the world’s Jews would be if Jews were not allowed to vote. They constitute the single biggest anti-Israel, anti-Jewish faction in the US. Black anti-Semitism is at an all-time high, and no one has the guts to say anything about it. Hispanic anti-Semitism has always been very bad. Plain old vanilla American anti-Semitism is nothing to sneeze at. But Jews themselves do more damage than their enemies. They were instrumental in putting this idiot over the top in the general election. How could they be so blind? It’s astounding!

THE LEFT OWNS ANTI-SEMITISM. How many times do we have to point it out? Sure, there are right-wing anti-Semites. But the best friends Jews have are conservative, and the left is almost uniformly anti-Semitic, and it’s getting to the point where they think it’s something to be proud of! Can you believe a dirtbag like Jeremiah Wright can show his face on the street, let alone on national television, without being driven out of the pulpit? Man, how this country has changed! So much for Jewish control of the media.

Obama thinks we have shown partiality to Israel. Of course we have! They’re our only real allies in the Middle East, and Israel is the only civilized nation in the region! Why wouldn’t we show them partiality? The Saudis finance Al Qaeda, and they just sentenced an old woman to be flogged because two young men brought her groceries! They’re utter savages! What possible reason could we have for according them the same respect we give Israel? And as partiality goes, ours has been pretty weak. Basically, it amounts to insisting that Israel be permitted to exist. Cutting parts out of it…that, we have no problem with. And we arm Israel’s enemies. Some friends, we are.

America’s support for Israel is finished. At least until 2012. I think it’s finished, period. Liberals are getting bolder and bolder in their attacks on Israel, and I think it’s likely to get worse, until people think it’s open season. Oddly, the large number of Jews on the left seems to exacerbate the problem. People feel free to attack their own kind, and Jewish liberals can be very hard on Israel, and that gives other liberals the idea that permission has been given to air out their own dark, twisted notions. I don’t think self-hating Jews realize this: criticizing Jews and Israel does not cause people to think favorably of them. It merely makes them feel justified in spewing hate. Now that I think about it, Obama’s sick, treacherous habit of apologizing for America is going to work the same way, fanning the flames of blind, moronic rage. If our President says America is evil, who can contradict Hamas and Hugo Chavez and Ahmadinejad?

I think our support for Israel is going to dry up, and I think anti-Semitism is going to get worse here, and I am positive that American Jews will handle it the wrong way, because that is their curse and their habit. They’ll apologize and curry favor, and to show how sorry they are, they’ll vote for leftists who hate the Jewish homeland. And that will be great news for leftists everywhere, because without America behind her, Israel–the world’s tumor–will wither and die, right? Wrong. That’s what her enemies are hoping, but that’s because they don’t believe in God. If our government abandons Israel, God will support her some other way. Probably through the financial help of Christians. Perhaps more directly. I don’t know how he’ll do it, but I know that America is not what keeps Israel going. It has been our privilege and blessing to be used for this purpose, but our participation has not been necessary. And once we stop helping as a nation, we will stop being blessed as a nation. We thought we were so smart and so powerful and so special. It was all a pathetic, bigoted, nationalist illusion. We are exactly like other human beings. When we give up on Israel, we’ll be like Samson without his hair. Ordinary and vulnerable.

Like a lot of Gentiles, I believe that many Jews blame themselves for the Holocaust. Somewhere deep inside, they think, “We were too proud and too successful in Europe, and look what happened. We’ll be safe in America if we vote for handouts and high taxes and we never miss a chance to criticize ourselves.” They’re wrong on both counts. The Holocaust was wholly irrational; Jewish behavior had nothing to do with it. The problem wasn’t how Jews lived their lives as Jews; it is that they were Jewish at all. And if the same spirit seizes America, no one will care what Jews have done for us or how much they’ve castigated themselves. No Jew or perceived Jew will be spared. The Germans and Austrians didn’t spare decorated Jewish veterans. They didn’t spare Jews who had become Catholics. Americans would behave the same way.

The more time passes, the surer I am that Obama is a punishment. We brought him on ourselves. How else can you explain the election of an obvious fool with no qualifications, no experience, and no political clout? We’re finding out how stupid we are. This is how we vote when God doesn’t save us from our own ignorance. The incredible photos of Obama bowing to the Saudi king and sharing a warm handshake with Hugo Chavez are like something you rub a puppy’s nose in. Our ineptitude is constantly shoved in our faces. I can’t wait to see him on TV, hugging Fidel Castro. Obama is just that dumb.

God is not looking out for America the way he used to. It used to be possible to gain protection by living within this protected nation. Now you have to get it on your own. Directly from the source. I am glad I’m going to church these days.

Notice his Hostility Toward Government Employees!

Today Mike and I got to help my dad run his boat up the Miami River to the yard. It was a pleasant ride, tarnished–as usual–by the people who open and close the bridges. The fine person who has the incredibly demanding job of raising and lowering the South Miami Avenue bridge–working a total of perhaps forty minutes per shift–refused to even answer our hail. While I wait for these characters to get it in gear, I often think of the old story about Ted Turner, climbing his own mast just to punch a bridgetender in the face. I don’t know if it’s true. But I would certainly understand.

When we got to the Brickell Avenue bridge, which had a prominent sign saying morning openings were only restricted before 9 a.m., we were told we had to wait until 11. And we had arrived at 10:45. The bridgetender seemed very nice on the radio; maybe the insane unannounced restrictions weren’t her idea.

Anyway, we made it to the yard without incident.

Tonight Mike and I made pizza. I mean we BOTH made pizza. I picked up cheese and sauce during our Gordon Food Service mission yesterday, and tonight we put on a tour de force. I made a pie, and Mike made a second pie plus garlic rolls swimming in Costco olive oil. The cheese was GFS mozzarella/provolone blend. It was excellent. The pizzas were slightly different, but each was sublime in its own way. I felt pretty good about it, because Mike had had to attend a funeral during the afternoon, so I had to make all the dough on my own.

I bought an interesting product this week. Sourdough starter from King Arthur Flour. I created a bigger batch of starter from it, and today I put it in the dough. I only had about three hours for the pizza dough and one hour for the roll dough. It made the pizza dough noticeably better. From now on, it will be standard. I have read that it makes dough’s texture better, and that seems to be true.

I was relieved, because the last two pizzas I made were a little off. I still got it. You can’t touch this stuff at any Miami pizzeria I’ve been to. They’re nowhere near as good. Now that I think about it, even though I lived in New York, the best pizzerias I’ve known were in the northern half of this city. Weird. But I lived near Columbia University, and there were only two pizzerias in my area. I’m sure there were better offerings all over town. And on average, New York wins, hands down.

Mike and I will be going to church either tomorrow or Sunday. I’m all excited. As much as I’ve gotten from my renewed relationship with God, I have been utterly unable to pass that success on to anyone else. Maybe to some extent through my blog, and maybe through prayer, but not directly. Now I have someone who is completely open to it and eager to take a closer look.

I have the funniest idea about my machine tools. Remember how I developed an interesting in machining because I wanted to make a device to crack stone crab claws? I’m thinking I may manufacture a bunch of different cracking devices. All sorts of different designs. They run through my head at night. Electric ones. Ones with gears. Some with cams. I may do it. Although putting them on the web might make it impossible to patent them. I might come up with something that was so much fun to use, it would have commercial value. Let’s face it. Virtually all nutcrackers are garbage. I’m sure it’s fun building weird one-cylinder engines, which seems to be what every home machinist does, but that doesn’t appeal to me.

What am I going to do with that gallon can of hot fudge sauce?

Great Day

Mike and I spent the day running around. The mother of one of his employees died, and she’s Jewish, so you know what that means. A very prompt funeral. We had to run up to Delray to get Mike’s suit. We visited the Fort Lauderdale Gordon Food Supply, which beats the daylights out of the one here on Flagler Street. I took photos of some interesting goodies, and I’ll upload them eventually. After that we hit Sonny’s barbecue.

We talked a lot about our dysfunctional families, and I told him something that occurred to me this morning in the shower. As far as I can tell, families do not work without God, period. You may have some pieces of the puzzle: wealth, fame, looks, or maybe brains. Your kids may be healthy, and they may be achievers. Your marriage may last. But it won’t really work as a whole. There will be significant failure somewhere in the picture. There will be important problems you absolutely have no chance of fixing. I think the reason for this is the same reason we have physical pain. When you have physical pain, it tells you something is wrong. It tells you that you need to fix something. It can prevent you from making a problem worse. Maybe you need to have a tumor removed or a bone set. Without pain, you might not do what you need to do. The failures we experience here on earth tell us we need to turn to God. They tell us our lives do not work properly without him. And as you turn to him, the pain abates or disappears entirely or, very often, turns to joy and peace.

What kind of God would let you and your spouse and your kids and your siblings have peaceful, prosperous lives without him? It would be a disservice. It would prove he didn’t care.

Mike had a lot of insights into my family’s troubles, and I was glad to have his input. He seemed to benefit from what I had to say, too. We’re going to try to attend the Saturday evening service at my church. I told him God has been fixing my family, and I’m hoping he can see the same kind of healing in his own life.

In other news, the guy who sold me my lathe emailed. He’s been looking it over and running and cleaning it and getting it ready for shipping. He says it appears it has “seen very little use.” That’s exciting. I was puzzled at first, because it had sat in a prison for over forty years. I had assumed it had been used a lot in vocational training. Then I realized it might be difficult to get backward, hardheaded criminals to take advantage of a great opportunity to learn a lucrative trade. So maybe their stubbornness will cause me to receive a substantial benefit intended for them. The Bible says “the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just.” The lathe sale would be a pretty blatant example of unteachable people ignoring a blessing, leaving it to pass into the hands of someone more open to God’s instruction. Not that I am calling myself just. I do think I’m trying harder than most convicts.

I bought a gallon can of hot fudge today, just because I could. Sometimes I think I have a very big screw loose.

Look Out

Mike is in town, so the overeating started last night. Someone please intervene.

Today we have a number of options. Costco. Gordon Food Supply. And he was so impressed with my trash pile mahogany boards, he wants to make one. Go figure. He also wants to bust out the motorcycles.

I’m trying to get him to hang out long enough to visit church.

With a reader’s help, I think I figured out what I need to do about my router fence. All I need is something that extends out from the back side of the Biesemeyer. The parallelism is outstanding, and the precision is hard to beat. I could add a DRO to the Biesemeyer system, too, or I could must mount a dial indicator and some sort of screw adjustment on the router part. Anyway, this should be very easy compared to the harder solutions I found, and it should be much cheaper than the expensive ones.

I also have 3,000 pistol primers on the way! Do you care? Probably not. But I’m ecstatic. These things have been hard to find. And these are Federals, which may solve the problems I’ve had with .357 ammunition failing to fire properly. Federals are soft, and the new spring in my 27-2 is weak, so this should be a good combination. I also broke down and got a chronograph. There is just no way to avoid it. I can’t keep putzing around, taking a face shield to the range and praying the first shot doesn’t blow my 1911 apart. That is not the right way to work up a load. And I would very much like to create loads for Wolf primers, because they’re dirt, DIRT cheap.

Mike wants to make a video teaching people how to make 10-minute pizza. We ought to do it. I’d pay ten bucks for something like that, wouldn’t you?

Life is sweet

Plus Uncle Ted, the Water Dog Whisperer

The mahogany I cut to size yesterday continues its mysterious dance. Sometimes it bows this way. Sometimes it bows that way. This morning when I got up, one piece was flat.

Here’s another interesting thing it does. This wood appears dry, but it still has some water in it, and it migrates to the lower side over time. Today I found discoloration on the bottom side of the wood. I turned it over, and in forty-five minutes or so, the discoloration was gone.

I don’t think any of this matters. The box I plan to make will be seven inches long, so the warping over the length of the box will amount to about a third of a millimeter. Close enough for government work.

Speaking of government work, are you as amused as I am by Obama’s stated intention to go easy on tax delinquents? Apparently, his plan is to find them and appoint them all to his cabinet. That’s what he’s done so far. Give this man credit; he may be presiding over the disintegration of the greatest nation on earth, but he is immensely entertaining.

Readers have pointed out that Obama’s dog–a Portuguese water dog–was a gift from Edward Kennedy. This is the kind of thing The Half Hour News Hour team would have made up, but for the fact that they had absolutely no talent. You can almost picture Ted, sitting on a dock with a Scotch in his hand (or both hands), trying to teach his special dog to retrieve a dummy from a submerged Oldsmobile.

Speaking of conservative disasters, I see that the GOP has shriveled to the point where Bob Shrum now feels entitled to make fun of it. Can you imagine anything worse? This man’s name has literally become a verb, synonymous with both “fail” and “cause to fail.” “My souffle looked good in the oven, but then it Shrummed.” “Ned Rice and Sandy Frank Shrummed the hopes of conservative humor.”

You know what this reminds me of? The Star Wars scene where Han Solo is about to be fed to the giant underground worm, and Jabba’s rat-like pet is talking smack to him. The rat is an incredibly pathetic creature in its own right, but it has Jabba backing it up, and Han Solo is such a mess, the rat can probably take him. So the rat feels entitled to ridicule. If Shrum is the rat, maybe Robert Gibbs is Jabba. I’m not sure.

Geez, what happened to us? Well, I know what happened. Big-tent, amoral secularism. We used to rout the enemy, and now they rout us. Man, I wish I could find a new country to move to. A place where religious conservatives are in charge. This is the difference between me and a liberal; they always want to stay where they are and ruin the countries they live in, instead of moving to leftist cesspools like France. Me, I’d rather just get out. I wish Texas would secede so I could apply for a homestead.

Yeah, that secular conservatism…that stuff is working out real good. Let’s keep it up! We’re on a roll! The last thing we want is to turn back to God and go back to the misery and failure of THE REAGAN YEARS.

The Bible says not to worry, because evil comes of it. Too bad the GOP never learned that. We got a little worried, and we decided the item we needed to get rid of was God. Now look at us.

Hey, you know that business about letting illegal aliens vote? It’s going to continue and expand. How do I know? One of the signs that a nation is cursed is that aliens within its borders will increase and gain power over it. Look it up.

Today at our weekly breakfast, I told my dad we should just send the welfare money directly to Mexico. Why make them move? It’s cheaper for everyone to just pay them where they are.

I need to join a new party. I cannot be part of an organization so degraded it can legitimately be ridiculed by the likes of Shrum.

More

When I wrote this, I didn’t know Rick Perry was flipping out and trying to declare Texas a sovereign nation. Where do I apply to join the militia? I can smoke pigs like nobody’s business, and I will bring a fine assortment of deadly firearms.

Buffett Orders Chinese

Stocks are diving today because GM is going to declare bankruptcy. But I think they should be diving for another reason. A Drudge-linked article just exposed the tip of the iceberg that will probably sink America’s auto industry. Warren Buffett just bought 10% (as much as he was allowed) of Chinese automaker BYD.

I have been harping on this for quite some time. Liberals are worried that union workers in the US might be reduced to a mere 200% or so of the daily wage they’re actually worth, as a result of our domestic woes. That’s silly. Our real problem is the huge, highly motivated, highly capable Asian labor market, which is going to make cushy American union jobs a fond memory. If Obama were competent, and if our Congress were not dominated by effete liberal kooks, we might have some chance of fixing our internal problems. But how are we supposed to stop the Chinese and the Indians? We can’t. They’re smart, they work harder than us, they work cheaper than us, and there are over two billion of them. And protectionism, our only remaining weapon against them, has proven ineffective and destructive.

Take a look at this quotation about BYD’s founder, largest stockholder, and CEO:

Wang entered the automobile business in 2003 by buying a Chinese state-owned car company that was all but defunct. He knew very little about making cars but proved to be a quick study. In October a BYD sedan called the F3 became the bestselling sedan in China, topping well-known brands like the Volkswagen Jetta and Toyota (TM) Corolla.

Not exciting? Look again. He didn’t beat the incompetents at the Big Three. He beat TOYOTA, and our homegrown companies are to Toyota as Chuck Wepner was to Muhammad Ali. And he did it in half a decade. He also stomped Sony and Sanyo; he produces batteries cheaper than they can. Not cheaper than they do. Cheaper than they can. And the secret is cheap Chinese labor. China is the Wal-Mart of human beings. The supply is high, and the cost is low.

BYD has an electric car. Here, let me save myself the effort of paraphrasing:

BYD has also begun selling a plug-in electric car with a backup gasoline engine, a move putting it ahead of GM, Nissan, and Toyota. BYD’s plug-in, called the F3DM (for “dual mode”), goes farther on a single charge – 62 miles – than other electric vehicles and sells for about $22,000, less than the plug-in Prius and much-hyped Chevy Volt are expected to cost when they hit the market in late 2010. Put simply, this little-known upstart has accelerated ahead of its much bigger rivals in the race to build an affordable electric car.

Isn’t that special? The Big Three take eons to get anything to market, and when they do, it’s often disappointing. But this Chinese nobody appears to be able to put competent innovative products on showroom floors, and he has only been making cars–not just electric cars, but cars, period–since 2003.

What’s the quality like? It doesn’t matter. Two reasons. First, the price is so low, the quality would have to be abysmal to affect sales, and it’s probably not abysmal. Second, the quality is getting better. I don’t know that because I checked. I know it because I’ve seen the trend in Chinese products AND I’m not a moron.

It looks like we may be headed in the sad direction of electric cars and other depressing little poverty jalopies. We are told that these machines are “progressive” and “green,” but that’s leftist lipstick on a very big and smelly pig. In reality, they reflect our decline as a nation. They are symptoms of failure.

The Chinese ride bicycles to work. It’s green as hell, but that’s not why they do it. They can’t afford cars. We’re headed in that direction, and they’re headed in ours. The Chinese will upgrade from bicycles, and we’ll downgrade from real cars that provide safety, comfort, and jobs. So there is probably a bright future in BYD’s silly little half-cars. And if there isn’t, they can make ordinary cars and still beat us like rag dolls. There is no law that says they can only make nutty little Urkel vehicles. The Japanese started with econoboxes, and now they sell big belching land yachts.

The sense that I get when I look at the world is that God doesn’t bless the US the way he used to, but he continues to bless individual believers very powerfully. I continue to believe that our rebellion–our disgusting behavior and attitudes–have cost us our role as the world’s leader, and that we’re never going to get it back. China and India aren’t going away. Neither is Russia, which sabotages us and assists our enemies whenever possible. When I read stories like the BYD article, it confirms what I have suspected. It’s time for individuals to put God first and work to get his blessings, because the rising tide that used to lift all boats has disappeared. In the past, anyone could make it in the US. In the future, you’ll have to make it on your own merit.

I read another article recently which bolstered this notion. Some guy who used to be a stockbroker was delivering pizzas for a living. He had a huge house, and his income had been as high as $750,000 per year, and he was working for a pizzeria to feed his family. That’s a great example of what I’m talking about. I know utterly ordinary people who have gotten rich simply because the US was a prosperous country where even the most unimpressive human being could get lucky. Some of these people credited themselves; that’s human nature. But the fertile, friendly environment in which they worked is what made them. God provided that.

I’ll tell you what qualifications you need to be a stockbroker. None. You do not have to be a financial expert. You do not need an IQ above 90. You do not need any talents. You don’t need to be able to predict what the market will do. All you have to do is persuade other people to buy and sell securities. Period. Bottom line. End of story. That’s it. If you can sell a TV at Best Buy, you can be a stockbroker. It’s a fantastic job for someone who isn’t bright and doesn’t have a postgraduate degree. A chicken can do it. And jobs like that used to be a lot easier to come by, because of America’s wealth. Now they’re drying up, and people who thought they were successful because of their innate superiority are finding out how lucky they really were.

If you don’t believe any of this, get in your car and go talk to three brokers. While you’re there, ask how they did on the SAT. Give them a crossword puzzle, and tell them if they can do it in an hour, you’ll give them your retirement money. Good luck.

The pizza job is not the anomaly, here. The anomaly is an ordinary person with pizza-delivery-grade skills, making $750,000 a year in commissions. It’s so easy to be greatly blessed and not realize it.

I say the Chinese will dominate the US auto market within ten years. And the Big Three will be gone or bought out. I’ve been told I’m wrong, because the Japanese used to be in this same situation, and their labor costs went up. Are labor costs going to go up in China, where they have almost a billion and a half people who need work? Compared to the US, Taiwan has low labor costs, and they pay about eight times what the Chinese do. EIGHT. I think there’s still a lot of headroom in the Chinese cost structure. I’m no expert, but I don’t think Chinese manufacturing expenses are going to increase fast enough to help the Big Three. It didn’t happen in Taiwan, and China is in a much better situation.

Get ready for your first Chinese car. It’s coming.

Short One

Someone I know appears to be having some sort of psychological crisis. I hope some of you will take the time to pray for her and her marriage. Thanks.

Hindsight Can’t Save God’s Enemies

I will never understand why my family didn’t make a bigger fuss on Easter when I was a kid. For some reason, my sister and I always received chocolate rabbits and baskets of candy, and that was nice, but I don’t recall Easter having the kind of religious significance Christmas had. Even now, it sort of slips by me.

That’s a shame, because Easter, or more accurately, Passover, is what made Christianity possible. The crucifixion and resurrection are the events that made it unnecessary for human beings to pay for their sins.

I think the second psalm is a great thing to read on Easter, because it reveals the true nature of the events that took place over that fateful Passover, two thousand years ago. I do not mean this in an irreverent way: the crucifixion was a trick. Were it not for the terrible suffering and ugliness, you might almost compare it to a practical joke. Religious people tend to think of spirits as brilliant beings who know all sorts of things about the future, but the truth is, God has a long, long history of making fools of them. He encodes his plans in prophecy, and his enemies can’t figure out what it means, and then he brings things to pass, and his enemies are caught flatfooted. That’s what the second psalm is all about. It was written about a thousand years before Jesus, but it clearly describes not only the crucifixion and resurrection, but the fact that the spirits who rule this world will not understand it and will be unable to prevent it from ruining them. Take a look.

1 Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying,

3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.

5 Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.

6 Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.

7 I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.

8 Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.

10 Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.

11 Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.

The Bible often has multiple meanings woven into its text. For exampe, “kings of the earth” might refer to some of David’s enemies, and “his anointed” might refer to David. But to a Christian, it’s pretty clear that they also refer to the spirits that rule this world, and Jesus, respectively.

This isn’t just about nations that are hostile to David. It’s about spirits that oppose God. They fought Jesus, and they believed that by putting him to death, they were destroying his power. Instead, they magnified it and spread it to humanity, even beyond the Jews. To “the heathen” and “the uttermost parts of the earth.” “Holy hill of Zion” refers to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Jesus referred to his own body as God’s temple. He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” His body is where the kingdom of God, on earth, inside men, began.

This psalm ridicules the non-human powers that have the foolish pride to fight with God. It shows God can take their most promising plans and use them to skewer them. He can delude them into destroying themselves with their own weapons. And he can reveal it all in advance, to human beings to whom he has given ears to hear. The second psalm is a perfect picture of what God intended to do, if you’re able to perceive it.

I wish we would give up our ridiculous traditions of moving Easter away from Passover and referring to it by a disgusting pagan name. The parallels between the first Passover and the one that included the crucifixion are overwhelming, but we have obscured the connections by turning Easter into a bizarre day that celebrates rabbits that lay eggs. And if you can’t see Passover in Easter, you probably can’t see Shavuot in Pentecost, either.

Anyway, happy misplaced Passover. Whatever you choose to call it.