Two Kinds of Things That Suffer Blights

I keep harping on the notion that my family is afflicted because of bad things our ancestors did, such as growing and selling cigarette tobacco. And I often cite the misfortunes we’ve suffered. On reflection, I have realized that we’ve had more problems than I thought.

I used to cite my mother, my aunt, and my uncle, who died from cancer. And I have said that my grandfather’s cardiac surgeon opined that the death of my aunt contributed to the heart attack that killed him a month later. But there’s more to it than that. We have had other atypical problems, some clearly caused by addiction or drug or alcohol abuse.

This week I realized none of my grandfather’s four daughters had been spared. I have two aunts left. Both are smokers. One has problems I would rather not go into. The other has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. So two are gone, one has terrible problems, and another has a terrible disease. And most of the grandchildren have failed to prosper as they should have.

That is four for four. Out of four families, not one has turned out as hoped. All families have troubles, but it’s not exactly rare for a man and wife to grow old and die together, with children who are healthy and happy, and who have fairly healthy families of their own. My grandfather had four daughters. Three divorced, and the fourth is a widow. Most of the kids have had serious setbacks. I’m sure many people who read this blog have families with statistics that are considerably brighter.

I am told that the Parkinson’s is getting worse. My aunt is complaining about the dementia that goes with it. She forgets things, for example. I’ve been looking around on the web for helpful information. They say coconut oil, vitamin D, and omega 3’s may be helpful.

I’d appreciate it if some of you would offer a prayer for her sake. I believe my family faces special challenges, but I also believe in deliverance by faith. Almost anything can be turned around and made into a blessing. I think I’m out of the woods, personally, and I hope I can help the others get out.

I asked Aaron what the Jewish position on curses was, and he said a subsequent generation can suffer for the sins of its predecessors, if they don’t disapprove of those sins. That is pretty consistent with what I believe. If you go on in blindness, not realizing wrong has been done, that’s nearly equivalent with approval. I think that describes our situation.

By the way, don’t forget Mish Weiss. She continues waiting for her bone marrow transplant to have the desired effects.

Thanks.

I Would Kill for an Attention Span

I am all bummed out today. I completely forgot about the Pacquiao-de la Hoya fight. Boxing is the only sport I have the attention span to watch, and Pacquiao is someone I wanted to keep track of. Last night he pounded de la Hoya to bits, and I found out about it by reading an Internet headline.

De la Hoya is an interesting figure, because last year, a stripper released doctored photos of him, in which he appeared to be a transvestite. Ever since then, he has had to deal with the nickname “Oscar de la Homo.”

According to TMZ, when de la Hoya pointed out that the photos were fake, the stripper sued him. Knowing they were fake. They should have a Nobel Prize for gall.

Incidentally, can someone tell me why stripping is called “exotic dance”? What’s exotic about disrobing? Another thing: if you have to disrobe to make money dancing, aren’t you admitting you don’t really dance well? I assume women put the “dance” in this business, because women generally like to fantasize about being dancers. When women go to the gym, what do they put on? Exercise clothes? No, they put on dance costumes. Weird. You don’t see men at the gym, dressed like ballet dancers or the cast of Breakin’. Not heterosexual men, anyway.

The truth is, men would still pay strippers, even if they just stood there.

It’s a pretty sad way to make a living, especially after your kids (or grandkids) get old enough to realize what you do.

Yesterday, I had lunch with my father and my sister. That’s pretty remarkable. Things continue to improve. Eventually, my sister and I went to a Christian bookstore.

I guess I am not as good a Christian as I thought, because I could not help chuckling at the “Happy Birthday Jesus” lollipops, which were shaped like little birthday cakes. I still have some work to do. I thought of Ned Flanders.

The store had a little aisle labeled “Charismatic Interest.” I told my sister you weren’t allowed in that section unless you brought your own snake. I guess charismatics still don’t get much respect. The movement has had too many kooks and crooks.

I just checked, and it turns out Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker are charismatics. Great. I didn’t know that. If you don’t actually see a minister pray in tongues, it can be hard to figure out whether he’s charismatic.

It can be tough figuring out where in the church you belong. The charismatics seem to have a lot going on; they seem to experience God’s power daily, in a very direct way. On the other hand…Jimmy Swaggart. I don’t want to make a list of charismatics who are really embarrassing, but it’s not a hard thing to do. There are too many of them focusing people’s attention on how God can satisfy our earthly desires, and ministers like that don’t give nearly enough time to our obligations to God. On the other hand, the non-charismatic Bible-believing churches appear to understand duty very well, but compared to the charismatics, they seem sort of comatose.

Then there are the assimilated churches, where they ordain gays and tell us Jesus was just a positive thinker. If I only wanted positive thinking, I’d buy self-help books instead of Bibles. You can think positively and still enjoy all the sin you want. That’s not for me. Those churches aren’t churches. I want a living God who helps me when I’m in trouble and improves me and helps me help others and gives me eternal life. I don’t want Tony Robbins.

Finally, there are the old churches with saints and lots of structure. I cannot pray to another human being. I just can’t. Saul did that, and look what happened to him.

My hope is that the denominations will grow closer. Surely the charismatics can let go of the private jets and ridiculous prosperity preaching and hold onto the power of the Holy Spirit. I know many people from more traditional churches are opening up to the notion that God is among us, and that through the Holy Spirit, he is active in the lives of individuals. Maybe their numbers will increase.

I saw an interesting book about breaking curses. I didn’t read it, but the cover listed things that will ruin your life. I remember a few. Gossip, racism, failing to honor your parents, profiting from the mistreatment of the innocent, withholding tithes and offerings, and witchcraft. I can’t recall the others. The ones I remember seem pretty sound. I think my own family is screwed up largely because our cigarette tobacco killed so many people. That is profiting from the mistreatment of the innocent. You may claim it’s not, because smokers know what they’re getting into, but that wasn’t true before 1963, and even afterward, cigarette companies made sure their products were available to minors. They deliberately addicted kids, before they became mature enough to make wise decisions. And anyway, a pusher is many times more culpable than a drug addict, just as a prostitute is more culpable than a john. One party to the transaction acts out of weakness, in response to powerful temptation; the other acts in cold blood, purely for profit. Cold-blooded misdeeds are worse than misdeeds committed as a result of compulsion or external influences. That’s why contract killers get the death penalty and people who stab other customers in bar fights get two years.

I get so tired of people claiming johns are as bad as prostitutes. They’re not. The levels of guilt go like this, in increasing order: john, prostitute, pimp. That ought to be obvious. The same people who equate buying sex with selling it would never agree that we should punish casual drug users as badly as we punish dealers. There’s some fine logic for you.

In the cigarette guilt hierarchy, my family was somewhere between prostitute and pimp.

I bought a book. Josephus. He wrote about history, from a Jewish perspective. The book contains his complete works. I look forward to digging into it, although I will probably limit myself to bits that seem relevant to my religion. The book is huge. It would take a month to read it.

Maybe I’ll go crack it open. Seems like good reading for a Sunday.

I Have no Faith in Lizards

I am kind of stuck, with regard to new writing projects. That is a rare situation for me. I have been blessed with an ability to generate ideas prolifically, and I manage to get up almost every day and write something I’m pleased with, but for a while now, I have been idling.

I would like to do something worthwhile with my time. Humor is fun, but I wouldn’t say I’m improving the universe with it. If I could come up with something useful to a Christian audience, I’d like to do it, but ideas like that don’t fall in your lap three times a day. And there are so many people doing Christian writing well; I don’t think I’m needed. Humor is different. Virtually nobody does it well. Maybe five people in the US. Oddly, humor is still very hard to sell to publishers. Maybe it would be easier to sell serious writing, in spite of the law of supply and demand.

I considered trying Christian humor. I foresee two problems. First of all, who would publish it? It’s very easy to get yourself in trouble when you’re a humorist, by writing things that turn out to offend people. Inadvertently crossing the line must be much easier when you write Christian humor, and I have to wonder if editors have the stomach for dealing with the problem. Second, it would be a harder thing to write, because I would have to go over and over it, looking for things like doctrinal and factual errors. I would have to write it with references sitting in front of me, and it would be best if everything were run by a minister before going to print. Sounds like a nightmare to me. I’d have to find someone willing to read this junk, and then I’d have to deal with him before publication.

Maybe it would work for books. A column would require weekly or monthly interaction, but books would work out to two or three times a year, which would be easier to manage. Imagine trying to write a weekly column another person has to review before publication. You’d kill four days every week, trying to get it ready, emailing back and forth.

Yesterday at church, the pastor mentioned Charles Templeton, a person I had never heard of. Templeton used to be one of America’s greatest evangelists. As an adult, he had “a religious experience,” and he became a Christian. I don’t know what kind of experience he had; I can’t find a description of it. He toured the country with Billy Graham, filling football stadiums with believers. Later on, he started to have doubts. At one point, he watched a newsreel of Holocaust victims and decided he could not believe a loving God existed. He ended up studying theology at Princeton, which is a bit like studying stripping at a yeshiva, and he eventually proclaimed himself an agnostic. He turned hostile toward Christianity and devoted a lot of energy to attacking it. Funny thing for an agnostic to do; maybe he was unclear on the definition of the term.

What a wretched story. How does a thing like that happen to a person? How does a person know God and then decide God doesn’t exist? My best guess: he never knew God to begin with, and instead of learning to use God’s power and guidance, he had a forced ministry based on his own desires and efforts.

The Holy Spirit is the biggest difference between effective believers and believers who fail. The Apostle Peter is the evidence many people cite. Before being baptized in the Spirit, Peter was a worldly disciple who sought glory for himself, he was not reliable enough to stay awake for an hour while Jesus prayed in Gethsemane, and he didn’t have the courage to stay with Jesus after he was taken captive. He was not impressive by any standard. After the Spirit entered him, he wrote wonderful inspired scripture about the way in which a Christian is supposed to grow and develop, and he accepted crucifixion instead of renouncing his faith. He became an amazing person. A marvel.

My guess is that Templeton never experienced the baptism, and that he did his best with his limited human abilities. When his little human brain told him God existed, he believed. When it could not generate the faith to overcome doubt, he ceased believing. A Christian who hasn’t been baptized with the Holy Spirit is like an electric toothbrush that never gets recharged. He has no external power source to sustain him.

Many people think every Christian is baptized with the Holy Spirit immediately upon believing or being baptized with water, but that didn’t happen to the disciples or to other believers in their time, and two millennia of history show no evidence that it happens, generally. On the contrary; the general rule is that Christians are not fundamentally changed by belief alone. They retain their old nature, although many fight to subdue it. They don’t understand scripture any better than nonbelievers; they get little insight from God. They don’t have a greater capacity for faith. They don’t become prophets. They don’t exhibit the character improvements known as the fruit of the spirit. They develop truly silly ideas about God.

Sincere Christians raped and pillaged during the Crusades. They turned Jews over to the Nazis. They exterminated the Indians. They participated in the slave trade. I find it hard to believe that these people had experienced anything resembling the infilling of the Holy Spirit. You can have the baptism and still sin, but you aren’t likely to live like a vicious, ignorant animal, as millions of Christians have. It seems pretty clear that while you can receive the baptism simultaneously with salvation, it is a separate thing, and you don’t get it automatically. And being baptized “in the name” of the spirit is not the same thing. It’s not even equivalent grammatically. If it were the same thing, then being baptized in the name of all three parts of the trinity would mean you have been “baptized with the Father” and “baptized with the Son” as well as with the Holy Spirit. And of course, that is not what happens. Those baptisms don’t exist; I just made them up.

I think people who deny that the baptism is a separate item are sometimes trying to excuse the poor spiritual condition of their denominations. “Not Invented Here” is the phrase. If it didn’t come to their church first, it must be wrong, because surely God would give all the good stuff to the best and only correct denomination. And admitting you’re not full of the spirit, and that lots of other people in the one perfect denomination are not…that’s just unthinkable!

Human effort is great, but if it were sufficient to make you an effective Christian, the baptism of the spirit would never have been provided. The Bible is full of references to God helping us to grow from within. Helping us to obey. Giving us faith. Illuminating the scriptures so we understand them correctly. We still have free will, but he helps us to want better things, and he gives us the strength to do what our better inclinations tell us to do. You can find it in both testaments.

Spirit-filled believers allowed the Romans to kill them and turn them into torches to light Nero’s gardens; that is how brave and full of faith they were. Charles Templeton couldn’t even withstand a newsreel. My best guess is, he was limited to his own strength, and he was doing his own will. He built his house on sand.

I have seen too much, not to believe. The obstacles to my faith are vastly outweighed. Templeton got all excited by the fossil record. That’s great, but when I put my reasons for believing on one side of the scale and the fossil record on the other, the fossils don’t amount to diddly. We live in a universe created in a series of miracles. I have seen supernatural phenomena with my own eyes, so I have ample reason to find the creation story plausible. If the supernatural exists, there is no reason not to believe that God can create space and matter and do what he wants with them. There is no reason to think other spirits can’t manipulate matter; they did it to the staffs of the magicians when Moses confronted Pharaoh. Who can say ancient physical evidence is irrefutible or even trustworthy, in a universe where physical laws are clearly trumped by supernatural forces? I can’t see giving up a dramatically improved life and the assurance of a better life to come, in exchange for a cold, unfulfilling life of depravity and the remarkable belief that God’s existence is disproven by the bones of a dead lizard.

The Templeton story made me very sad. It is frustrating to read about someone discarding something beautiful and precious and vital. And to learn that he spent the latter part of his life encouraging other people to do the same thing is even worse.

Don’t Forget the Founder of the Feast

Tell me you don’t love America. It’s Thanksgiving morning, and the kitchen smells like oranges. And it’s not because I’ve been making cranberry relish. It’s because I used Flush-Out to clean one of my rifles on the dining room table. Are there scenes like this in homes in Europe? Not many, I’ll bet.

I think things are going okay on this end. The turkey is odd-looking, but I think the brining will fix it up. I considered adding baking soda to the brine, because the dark meat of organic hippie turkeys is said to have a fishy flavor that needs to be killed. I changed my mind because I didn’t want to take the flavor out of the white meat.

Because our nation is a mess and we have just elected a socialist President, who will exacerbate things if he succeeds in implementing his policies, this is a very important Thanksgiving. People don’t think of Thanksgiving as a religious holiday, but it’s a day dedicated to thanking God. We have been very ungrateful, and we have insisted on doing our own thing, and my belief is that our current problems are caused by our foolishness and rebellion.

The purpose of this day is to thank God for the abundance and security with which we have been blessed. I hope everyone who reads this will join me in remembering who gave us families, homes, and all this glorious food.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Go Read the Paper

I wrote a big long post about the lack of Mexican food in England, and then I realized it wasn’t good Sunday material, so I had to save it as a draft.

Dang it.

Now I can’t think well enough to write a second long post, because Marv is behind me yelling, “Can I rub your snout?” over and over.

I paid for this bird. That’s the bizarre thing. I wasn’t forced to accept it as part of a plea bargain. I took perfectly good money and exchanged it for this creature.

Today, my sister and I will be going to Rich Wilkerson’s church. I hope it will be like last week’s visit. I physically felt the presence of God there. That’s a hard experience to turn down. I think any atheist or agnostic who claims to be open-minded should visit a church like this one. If you can experience this and continue to claim there is no god, you are beyond reach. I believe most people who claim there is no evidence of the existence of God are very determined not to look for it. You can find it if you try.

Who Needs Tanks When You Have Cheap Sedans?

What on earth is going on in China?

A while back I ordered a Chinese car charger for my cell phone. I don’t recall the price, but it was something like one cent. Seriously. And the shipping was very cheap. The product arrived, and it worked great. I can’t figure out how the seller managed to make the sale worth his time.

Earlier this week, I ordered a nice green laser sight from Hong Kong. Total cost, with rechargeable battery and mount: about $40. That’s less than half the cost of lasers American companies sell. Is the quality as high? People who have bought the laser seem to love it; that’s all I can tell you.

Today I remembered that I needed a charger for the laser battery. I found one. Cost? Two dollars. With FOUR batteries included. I’m not kidding. For a total of about ten bucks, they’re shipping it from Hong Kong.

I’ve used Chinese batteries in my cameras, with Chinese chargers. They work great. They’re probably made in the same factories where my Canon batteries were made.

Here’s something that makes Chinese bargains even more interesting. They’re going to sell cars here. I know that. I don’t have to check; it’s obvious. Common sense.

Okay, I’ll check.

Yes, it’s happening. As of 2007, a company called Chery was planning to open up shop here. I assume they’ve done it already.

Right now, Chinese cars are junk. On the other hand, they cost under ten grand. That covers a multitude of sins. Industry people say it will be five or ten years before they improve. Yeah, right. The same nation that has quickly improved its tools and other industrial products dramatically will need five years to do the same thing with cars. Do you believe that? Even if it’s true, five years isn’t a long time.

And here we are, seriously entertaining the notion of taking money away from responsible Americans and giving it to relatively unskilled auto workers who bring home about $72 per hour, working so slowly their effective rate is actually about $144. Brilliant. We are supposed to pump more money into three failed companies, with no expectation that they will stop paying their workers five times the market value of their labor. Please explain. Do you make $144 per hour? Some of you do, but many of you don’t. I’m sure many of you make about a tenth of that. How do you feel about paying taxes on your market-value wage, so someone else can earn several times as much, doing something of equal or lesser value? Would you lend money to your neighbor to keep his convenience store afloat, if he insisted on paying the clerk four hundred dollars a day?

The Japanese used to make bad cars. They improved. The Koreans make good cars. The Chinese are going to make good cars, too, and they’re going to be dirt cheap. And it’s going to happen right when our bloated car industry is supposed to start paying off on our giant welfare check. Am I the only person who sees a problem here? Would you invest in a failing Burger King, if you knew the Chinese were going to open a similar restaurant next door, charging half as much for the same food?

No.

The UAW needs to get a grip. Their wages are going to plummet, with or without a bailout. That is a certainty. They can’t compete with the Japanese, and when the Chinese show up in force, they’re going to be annihilated. They should be working with the carmakers to increase efficiency and get wages in line with revenues. The free punch and pie are things of the past. The fifty-year-long frat party is OVER.

I still tend to think America is washed up, as the world’s preeminent nation. We aborted our babies, we sanctioned every type of sexual sin, we took drugs, we turned VD into an honor, we accorded evil religions the same dignity as Judaism and Christianity, and we helped Israel commit suicide. We quit taking God seriously, and we forgot where all that lovely money came from. I think we’re all done. Get used to second-tier status.

We can’t seem to absorb the truth. Americans are not superior. We are not the master race. We are not invincible. Without God’s protection, poverty and socialism can happen here. Our enemies can win. We can be invaded and conquered. The UAW thinks it’s 1950, and we’re still in a postwar boom, with the highest standard of living in the world. In all likelihood, we are in a contraction that will not end until life here is about like it is in Italy. We are living under a self-inflicted curse, just like the Jews who were carried off to Babylon.

I am not an economist, but it sure seems like bad times are here to stay. A gigantic amount of American wealth–trillions of dollars–has ceased to exist. People are going to spend less. They’re going to have less to invest in a recovery. Even companies that are managed well are going to suffer, because consumers will have less money to pay for their products and services. Companies that sell to other companies will see lower demand, because their customers will go out of business or experience dramatic slowdowns. Someone tell me…doesn’t this guarantee deflation? It’s already happening to oil and other commodities.

In my mind, it spells “depression.” Demand for everything is down. Capital is gone. Most Americans have almost no savings; no one seems to be talking about this. Many Americans have negative net worths. When waves of layoffs start–and they will–the millions of people who have low net worths and heavy debt loads, and who rent their homes, will spill into the street in a flash. Am I wrong? If you live from hand to mouth, and you have a $15,000 Visa balance, and you have no equity in your home, where are you supposed to live the month after you get fired? Don’t buy a car now; it would be like buying a house in 2007. Six months from now, you may be able to take your pick, from hundreds of low-mileage repos.

Wow, a question just occurred to me. Tens of millions of Americans have no assets and too much debt. If layoffs start, won’t it cause a second credit crisis as bad as the one caused by our socialist mortgage mess? The same banks that are now eating bad mortgages will have to eat credit card balances. All I can say is, thank God for the FDIC.

Not everyone agrees with me. Supposedly, evangelist Perry Stone thinks we can turn it around. He knows more than I do. I hope he’s right. I trust him more than the “experts” on cable TV. Here’s a question I asked my dad the other day. How many of them are now saying, “This is exactly what I predicted!”? Very damn few. This crash cut their legs out from under them. And the eternal pessimists don’t count; they forecast disaster regardless of the circumstances. Very few of these geniuses saw this coming. They are utterly clueless. False prophets. If you watch the financial channels, you should know this already. When the market is strong for a week, they talk about the wonderful boom which is going to last for years. When it falls for a week, they talk about the bear market that has just begun. I’m not kidding. I’ve watched these people for years. Here’s something to remember. A lot of these characters are not great investors. Many of them handle other people’s money, which means they get paid whether or not their predictions come true.

I’m checking out my theories, and it looks like some gurus are already voicing these concerns.

I know this: it’s always the right time to turn back to God. We shut off the valve that supplied our prosperity. Every individual can reopen it with respect to himself.

Where is my Honorary Doctorate?

I keep inhaling psalms. I finally got past 37, which was a horror to memorize. Since then, luckily, I have been drawn to shorter psalms. This morning, I had to make a list so that when I went through my memorized psalms to firm them up, I would not forget any. I think this is complete: 1, 2, 3, 4, 23, 34, 37, 63, 101. Number 15 will be under control tomorrow.

This stuff works. Lessons from the psalms keep popping into my head during the day.

Psalm 15 is a tough one to swallow. Apparently, in order to be acceptable to God, you have to satisfy these conditions: “He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour.” Oh, man. What is there left for me to write about? I can’t backbite and reproach? There goes my hobby. I may sell my keyboard.

I came across this today, in Psalm 41:

“Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the LORD will deliver him in time of trouble.

The LORD will preserve him, and keep him alive; and he shall be blessed upon the earth: and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies.

The LORD will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.

Non-Christians talk a lot about karma. They say you suffer for your bad deeds, and that you are eventually rewarded for your good deeds. Some people say this proves Jesus and Buddha are interchangeable, because it sounds sort of like what Jesus said. They’re a hundred percent wrong. This is not the way Christianity works. We hope to be rewarded for our good deeds, but we beg–and expect–to be spared punishment for our bad deeds. In fact, Jesus bore a great deal of our punishment. But to a great extent, we do reap what we sow. More and more, I realize that you can’t expect good things to happen to you, unless you, yourself, do good things. And the good things you do should be similar in nature to the good things you want done for you. Many ministers say these things, and I think they’re right.

Jews apparently believe this, too. I was talking to Aaron about it. They believe you apply the principle in prayer. Instead of just asking for things, you search your heart and your memory, to see if you have anything of which to repent. You look to your own history and heart to see if you have brought misfortune on yourself. And if you want a certain type of blessing, you try to give it to others. For example, if you need healing, you might make a gift to a charity that provides medical services.

If you think about it, this must explain the Golden Rule. If you do unto others as you would have them do unto you, presumably, you are sowing good seed. You are laying the groundwork for God to treat you well. If you show mercy, you get it. If you show generosity, you will receive it. Generally, I mean. No Christian gets through life without some mistreatment.

Before Jesus, the Jews were already saying, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.” I believe some modern Jews say this is the same as the Golden Rule, which says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” But is it? Under the first rule, it’s wrong to harm people. The second obligates you to help people, proactively. It’s a greater requirement. In Luke 10, The priest who passed by on the other side (supposedly to avoid becoming ceremonially unclean) satisfied the first rule, but not the second, which the Good Samaritan obeyed.

According to Luke 10, the Jews didn’t stop at the first rule; they also said we were to love our neighbors as ourselves. This combines the two rules. Ordinarily, you don’t want to harm yourself, and you also want to help yourself.

The above lines from Psalm 41 are consistent with this principle. I would say they amount to a promise, and you can find the same promise expressed differently elsewhere in both testaments.

I am thinking about this a lot these days. I am getting pretty old, and I have not done much for humanity. And I have done stupid things, which I thought were just, which probably invited problems into my life.

I think we are supposed to be like tubes through which God pumps his blessings into the world. After all, the Bible calls him “the many-breasted God.” Maybe we all need to make a more conscious effort to be empathetic.

Last night, it occurred to me that the church was losing opportunities by failing to be empathetic. For example, we have terrible problems with PETA these days. These people have gone completely nuts, persecuting and even injuring human beings because of the way we treat animals. The Bible tells us to be kind to animals, yet we abuse them very badly on our farms, and the church doesn’t say a word about it. PETA, with its extremism and links to anti-Christian leftism, is probably our punishment. We opened the door, by ignoring the need. And we’re headed in the same direction, with the Nigerian “child witch” nonsense. The church caused the problem, the church is not fixing it, and the world is starting to notice the little abandoned children who wander around in the open, looking for food in ditches.

I don’t know how I ended up here; I only intended to say how happy I was that the memorization was going well.

Help

I must visit the range, but before I go, I present a request from reader R:

My niece’s grandson was born 5 weeks prematurely with breathing difficulties he is overcoming, but also a worse diagnosis of polycystic kidney disease. Please pray they can help him and for comfort to his parents and grandparents.

Hi-Tech for WWII Plinker

I am enjoying a tall glass of Red Rose tea, flavored with a magnificent Persian lime I grew myself. Don’t let anybody tell you store limes are as good as yard limes. Store limes are dry, and they’re not ripe.

I just checked Drudge. Apparently, the Obamas are starting a workout plan. Even though The Bums Won (to contradict the big Lebowski), they need to remember something. George Bush is a fitness nut who could mash pencil-necked B. Hussein like a pimple. Our President can beat up your President-Elect. I say that with all warmth and graciousfulness. And of course, hope.

This day is beginning well. For one thing, it was 53 degrees this morning. It’s funny how your attitude toward cool weather changes when you start working with tools and taking care of your yard. Sweat and the sun become your enemies. Perhaps the good Lord is preparing me emotionally for a move north, which I hope to make eventually. Yes, I will need help, adjusting to those frigid below-75 days I’ll have to endure in May, halfway up the state.

I think I’m going to go through with my M1 carbine plan. It’s an interesting experiment, and it may turn out to be a good home defense strategy, and it’s just plain fun. I’ll tell everyone how it works out. I’m also looking at M96 Mausers and M39 Finnish Mosins. Not sure why every gun name begins with “M.” I’d like to find an unissued Mosin, but I’m not sure where they come from or what the deal is. Are they really pre-WWII guns that somehow ended up in boxes, unopened, or are they just old guns with new stocks? I guess every M39 is old, in a way, because they’re remanufactured. But you know what I mean.

I’m going to slap a front grip on the M1, with a laser and light, just to see if it’s any good. I wonder how much the accuracy will suffer. I don’t think it will matter, because I plan to learn to shoot this thing without the sights.

A lot of people think you have to use sights to shoot, but that isn’t true. Sure, if you want pinpoint accuracy, sights matter. But when I was a kid, I used to shoot BB guns and air guns all the time without sights, and I had no problem hitting what I aimed at. And my grandfather once shot a rifled slug from the hip and took out a grouse in a distant tree; my dad saw it, and he still talks about it.

There is a famous video of a police officer being gunned down by a drunk veteran with an M1 carbine. If you watch it, you’ll notice the drunk did not use the sights. Yet he had no problem putting round after round exactly where he wanted. His shot placement was flawless. If he had used the sights, the officer might have had the time to kill him. To belabor the point, choosing not to use the sights made him more lethal, not less.

Navy SEALS practice shooting without sights. I don’t know what better recommendation you could want. Read Richard Marcinko’s book.

Besides…laser.

I don’t know anything about laser sights. I’m reading up. Evidently, you can get a very powerful green laser now for $43. I don’t understand much of the technical stuff, which is sad, because I took a semester of advanced optics in college, and I built temperature and current controllers for C02 lasers. I remember terms like “beam waist,” but that’s about it.

No Bells Ringing

Yesterday while I was at church, the pastor dealt with a very serious climate-related topic. I refer to the murderous cold snap South Florida is currently enduring. He said we were somehow managing to hold on, even though it was a couple of degrees below seventy.

I got up today at 5:30, and it was 58 degrees here. This was even colder than Sunday. It looks like we’re headed for a solid work week with lows under 60. What a relief. I can get some things done, without filling my shoes with sweat.

I’m all excited because I got to wear pants and shoes. I put on jeans and my Danner work boots before I checked on the fruit trees this morning, and I even got to wear my Carhartt chore coat.

I hate cold weather. I hate ugly cold weather, in particular. Clean, fluffy snow with sunshine is not so bad. Grey snow, brown mud, and clouds…you can have it. My mother always said Kentucky was brown for most of the year. She did not miss that. My father said his outlook improved as soon as he got to Florida, because the sun was brighter.

When I lived in New York (as part of the same Columbia class as the Astroturf Messiah), I did not think much of the weather. It was just as brown as Kentucky, but it was a little colder, and the wind was nasty. On top of this, it somehow managed to rain when the temperature was below 32 degrees. Nobody believes me when I say that, but I remember it, so leave me alone. I also remember feeling the wind coming at me directly from the sides of buildings. I can’t figure that out to this day.

I heard from my college friend Dave last week. He said his friends (mostly liberal and/or gay) could not believe he didn’t remember going to school with Obama. I can’t believe the insane expectations and impressions this unremarkable man generates in the minds of the herd. I guess Dave’s gay and female friends have the hots for B. Hussein, and the straight ones have man-crushes. We went to school with lots of other people who, like Obama, were very ordinary; why is it no one expects us to remember them? Obama was a cipher in college. He had to transfer in order to get in, even with heavy-handed Ivy League affirmative action. It’s not like he had a halo.

I remember Stephanopoulos because he lived across the hall and was very small. He was also at the top of our class; Dave told me that. Obama? No clue. He was invisible.

I told Dave the reason we didn’t remember Obama was probably his self-proclaimed aversion to white people. In his book, he talked about his hostility to Caucasians. He probably stayed in his room, muttering about how he wanted to punch all of us. I don’t know why a person who got so much help from Caucasians would be so angry at them. I wish I had had people of other races, scrambling to pay my bills and make me succeed.

Dave is a gay conservative. He must be real popular.

I am moving Sibelius to my main PC today. Yesterday, while leaving church, I heard a wonderful song in my head, and of course, I forgot it. This morning, it came back. That never happens. I am going to try to capture it.

I can write music via trial and error, but I still don’t understand what I’m doing. For one thing, I don’t know how you look at a piece of music and figure out which chords go with the measures. Maybe it will come to me.

I’m concerned that I may end up writing something somebody else has already written. You never know what is stuck in your unconscious mind.

The odd thing about writing music is that it’s easier for me to come up with tunes than lyrics. Go figure. I write all day; you would think the lyrics would be a cinch.

It would be pretty sweet, if I could get something published. Making money while doing something useful would be a dream come true.

Clarification

Earlier today I wrote about my visit to a local church. It was an astounding experience. I wrote about it because I was shocked at the intensity of God’s presence in this place. But readers seem to have missed the point, thinking I was rejecting the church for putting on a glitzy show, complete with a fog machine.

Here is the message I was trying to convey. This is a wonderful and exceptional church, regardless of the unnecessary bells and whistles. I think only Mike and Og got it. Maybe I was unclear.

I’ve had a couple of divine visitations in my life, and they were more intense than what I experienced today. But those were very special and rare events. They weren’t something I could repeat at will. But now I find that I can get a pretty big piece of the same thing, by doing something as easy as going to church. It looks like I can get a big, healthy dose of the spirit just by taking a drive and sitting in a pew. To me, that is tremendous news. If I have to put up with artificial fog along the way, who cares? There are so many important things a pastor can be wrong about. I can live with questionable fog.

Many Christians believe that God’s power is most accessible where large numbers of faith-filled believers gather. They cite the story of the town where people had no faith, and Jesus could do no great miracles. I had that in mind today, as I felt myself ambushed and surrounded by the Holy Spirit. I realized this might be an especially good time to get off a few prayers about important issues. I think this, all by itself, is a good reason to go back to this church. Praying alone is great, but why pass up an opportunity to pray in the midst of a palpable cloud of God’s presence?

I can’t tell you how affected I was. At first, I hoped to introduce myself after the service and maybe talk to whoever welcomes visitors. But the experience I had was so profound, I hit the road as soon as we were dismissed. I wanted to be alone, as soon as possible, so I could think about what had happened.

There are a lot of reasons for choosing a church. The presence of God is pretty high on the list. I’d go to Taco Bell every Sunday, if God started showing up there. This may not be the church for me, but they are definitely doing something right.

The church is maybe three-fourths black, but the music seemed pretty white. I wish I had some music to offer. On the way home in the car, I started hearing the most beautiful song in my head. I still can’t transcribe music by ear; I hoped I would remember it. And of course, I did not. I need to see if I can get Sibelius working. Maybe I could write something worth publishing.

By the way, here is a story Rich Wilkerson mentioned in his sermon today. A bunch of vicious lesbian activists barged into a Michigan church and emptied buckets of condoms and glitter on the congregation, while shouting obscenities about Jesus. A lesbian couple stormed the pulpit, where they put on a necking display. In Sodom, gangs of gays tried to rape the angels. You have to wonder; given the repressed homosexual hostility which is being vented publicly these days, are we headed for a day when a dangerously large percentage of homosexuals feel that anything they do to the rest of us is justified? As their numbers increase, will we see behavior more like the cruel Sodom kind and less like the cute Queer Eye for the Straight Guy kind?

If you think the abuse of gays is bad now, wait until they start scaring people. Right now, “homophobia” is an unfortunate, silly, melodramatic misnomer. It could conceivably become more accurate.

Two Churches in One Week

On Wednesday, I made my triumphant return to the community of churchgoers. While I was getting ready, I fell down the stairs, opened up my elbow, tore and got blood on a custom-made dress shirt, and nearly sprained a wrist. Today was to be the second visit. My sister’s dog stopped eating, so she refused to go.

If you try to do something to serve God, and nothing goes wrong, you are probably on the wrong track.

Today we were going to visit Rich Wilkerson’s Trinity Church, in Miami Gardens. My sister had been there before, and she said you could feel the presence of God there. When she told me she couldn’t go, I felt like that was the end of it. I hate going to a new church alone. I feel like everyone in the place is staring at me. And I never know what to do while the singing and hand-waving is going on.

I went to church on Wednesday. Missing a Sunday isn’t a big deal.

HOWEVER…

I could not keep myself from going. The more I thought about it, the more I felt like I had to go. I found myself getting ready, and then I was in the car, and even though I left late (so I could sneak in after everyone was seated), I arrived on time. I got gas and a car wash so I could weasel my way in, fifteen minutes later.

This place looked like a former nightclub. The ceiling was black, and there were all sorts of lights attached to it. I guess that’s standard in churches where they shoot video and play a lot of electric music. There was a big stage with a back drop that looked like the set of the old Sonny and Cher Show. There were people onstage playing electric instruments, and it was just a little too rock and roll for me, although I don’t think it was actually rock. The performers were excellent; I just didn’t find the music all that appealing. They had weird light-show displays, and there was even a fog machine.

A fog machine?

“Great,” I thought. A waste of time. I was about to be Reverend Iked.

I was wrong about that. After a few minutes, I felt something rise up inside me. It had nothing to do with the music or the light show or the fog. The music didn’t suit me very well, and the light show and fog were annoying. They didn’t cast a spell. If you’ve ever felt God’s presence, you know the sensation I felt. I couldn’t believe it. I was almost dizzy. I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t my own emotions. I wasn’t all that psyched up.

It was more intense than anything I’ve felt in church before. I think you can feel God’s presence in almost any church, to some degree. But this was insistent and powerful. It would not leave me alone.

Some people preach about the presence of God as an abstraction, and they say you’re supposed to experience it “by faith,” or some such thing. That’s probably just blather intended to excuse and explain away the fact that they and the people who follow them have never felt it. You can feel God’s presence physically, just like any other physical sensation. I don’t know the theory, and I don’t care to. I know the actual experience, and so do millions of other people. I wouldn’t want someone who had never tasted strawberries to give me a lecture on the flavor.

Pastor Wilkerson came out after the music ended, and he gave a sermon on things you have to believe in order to be a Christian. You have to believe Jesus led a sinless life. You have to believe Satan exists. I almost typed “Stan.” Yes, you also have to believe Stan exists. Get thee behind me, Stan.

In some ways, the sermon was disappointing. You always want some good scriptural references, but he didn’t give many. Fireworks didn’t go off in my head. I didn’t think, “Boy, this is brilliant stuff.” It was a good, solid sermon, however. He’s an excellent speaker.

It wasn’t the music. It wasn’t the force of the pastor’s personality. Maybe it was the faith of the people. This church is in an area of Miami full of island people. They’re used to the supernatural. Maybe their faith is stronger than ordinary white American faith. I don’t know the explanation, though. All I know is, the sensation of God’s power and presence was overwhelming. This must have been what people felt during the faith-filled gatherings at which the Apostles performed miracles. I wondered why someone didn’t get up, seize the moment, and start healing people.

At the end of the service, I got in the car, and I continued to feel it as I tried to get out of the parking lot. I didn’t stick around and do the visitor shtick. I was confused, and I wanted to think. I’m still somewhat confused.

I am inclined to go back next week. This church isn’t impressive in every respect, but if God is there in such a powerful way, how could you not want to go? I still can’t believe it.

I think they ought to knock off the fog and the light show. They really don’t need them.

I felt like I had to come home and write about this, so other people would know. Things like this don’t happen every day. I think this would be a great place to bring unbelievers. If you can feel this and not believe in God, there is something wrong with you.

They gave me a visitor card, and there was a space for a prayer request. I was in a hurry to fill it out for the ushers. I put in a request for my sister’s dog, Max. I’m thinking he must have gout. Henry the Eighth had gout, and his lifestyle was very similar to Max’s.

Put Fresh Straw in my Stall

Some readers seem to be getting the idea that I am promoting the King James Bible as the ultimate translation. I made it very clear that this is not the case, but a blogger is very lucky if ten percent of his readers read anything beyond the first two sentences of each post. I should bury a bag of cash in a public park and put the location at the bottom of a long blog entry. I’ll bet the cash would still be there a year later.

I don’t speak Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic. I am not a Bible scholar. I have to rely on other people’s judgment regarding translations. I don’t know which one is best.

It’s too bad I didn’t learn these languages when I was young. I was born with a freakish aptitude for foreign language. When I was in high school, I won a statewide French competition. A guy I thought was my friend copied my answers and came in second. The next year, I came in third. I never had the heart to tell my French teacher I didn’t do any homework. Now I’m old and my memory is shot. I might take a crack at Hebrew anyway.

I tried learning Spanish a few years back, and I picked it up in a hurry, but I forgot things just as quickly, so I quit. I don’t know if this was due to age, or if it was related to my sleep problems. I have improved my sleep a lot in the last few months. It looks like dust is the main problem. I found a spray that somehow keeps it out of the air. Clorox makes it. It makes life a lot easier. I was surprised. And I also use 12-hour nasal spray when I have to. I am in the process of getting all the dust out of my bedroom, so I don’t have to rely on weird products. It would be wonderful to have a memory again. This time, I would do something useful with it.

Most people lose the ability to learn languages easily at an early age. I did not. When I went to Israel at the age of 22, I took a bus across Greece, and by the time I made it from Patras to Athens, I was able to read most of the signs, Greek lettering and all. So I have some hope that my abilities will return if I can put a permanent end to my sleep problems. Other people like me have managed to learn languages in old age, so I don’t think I can say I’m washed up.

It amazes me that my parents did so little to develop my potential when I was a kid. They just didn’t know how to raise children. For example, I took my first music lesson at the age of 15, on my own initiative. If I hadn’t piped up without prompting, I would never have learned to play an instrument. I was good at a lot of things, but I had no guidance. I dribbled through life like a ball making its way down the surface of a pinball machine.

How can anyone raise kids with no musical training? It boggles the mind. Music is one of the fundamental pillars of a well-rounded personality. If you don’t take charge of your kids’ education, you might as well keep them in pens and throw slop over the fence once a day. Take the Kaspar Hauser approach.

I don’t blame my parents. My family was cursed, and that’s all there is to it. Without God in our corner, we had no hope of succeeding at anything. When I became an adult, I didn’t do much to fix the damage, so I can’t claim I’m any better than they were.

There is a reason Eastern Kentucky is what it is. Old refrigerators don’t just jump off people’s porches and fall into their yards. Old cars don’t drive themselves into creeks. Barns and fences don’t fall over when they’re maintained. Kids don’t grow up ignorant if their parents are responsible. Appalachia is to bad habits and unproductive values as Holland is to tulips. God fixes things like that, but you have to make yourself available. My family brought its Eastern Kentucky values and beliefs to Florida, just as slaves brought their African values and beliefs to Haiti. We had no right to expect things to go well.

I keep working on my silly trees and plants. In the past, I assumed stuff just grew in yards, without much help. Now I realize you have to be on guard every day and keep working to provide food and drive away pests and disease. Are kids any different? Surely not.

Thank God I have come to realize all this. Thank God my sister realizes it, too. Not everyone has to perish for lack of knowledge.

Today we are going to Rich Wilkerson’s church, up in Miami Gardens. It will be interesting to see what it’s like. I feel like my family is walking out of a dark tunnel and into the light. Sooner or later, I’ll find the right church. And as I continue in faith, I hope to find more peace and satifaction in life, as well as more meaning. I would like to accomplish some good before I leave this world. I am especially interested in turning enemies into allies. Fighting is tiresome, destructive, and wasteful.

I am still worried about the Nigerian “child witch” scandal, which threatens to bring the church to its knees. There are tiny children in Nigeria, walking along the sides of roads, eating grass and leaves to stay alive. And churches started by American missionaries helped put them there. My sister was thinking Rich Wilkerson might know someone with connections, who could do something. Anyway, I haven’t forgotten about it. I hope other people who read about it will look for ways to take action.

I hope people are checking in on Mish Weiss once in a while and offering prayers. Her immune system is gradually rebuilding, after the marrow transplant. On Friday, she had a fever of 105 (Fahrenheit, one assumes), but she is down to around 100 now. Here is her latest post.

It’s a beautiful Sunday. It’s dry and sunny, and the temperature is below 70. Good church weather.

Of course, any weather is good church weather. I hope you, too, will make your way to church before the day is over.

Thirty Days Hath Gynuary…

Reader Ed, a heavy-duty Christian, posted the following comment in response to my post on memorizing Psalm 37, from the King James Bible:

Congratulations! I’d be envious, but that would be sin :).
“but it has a serious purpose.”
I firmly believe that, as you indicate, the Word has power inherent in it.
People think that the more readable a translation, the better it is. Most modern translations are based on original texts that are not the same as the text used for the King James. These texts were assembled about a hundred years ago by two men who were not pious men, to put it mildly. These translations range from Literal to “well that’s what we think they meant”. They even relegate some verses to footnotes as if they shouldn’t be in there (“most ancient manuscripts do not include this verse”. How inspirational! ).
The King James (and Modern King James) are very literal translations of a text (the Majority Text or Textus Receptus) ) that stands the test of time. Over 95% of all scripture fragments are in agreement with it.
My point is that when I want to “nail” a varmint like a demon attacking me or someone else, I want the most accurate weapon I can get my hands on.
Something that maintains the power of the original Word to the best degree possible.
It’s the Word that draws men to God. It’s the Word that repels “harmful spiritual influences”.

I don’t know a whole lot about translations, although I know that some of the worthless and dangerous modern churches have allowed atrocities such as a rewrite performed by a far-left lesbian activist. This woman said something about the Bible being “open,” as if it were a wall anyone could walk up to and spray with graffitti. No, dear, the Bible is not “open.” It was written centuries ago, and that’s the end of it. Shakespeare is not “open.” The Constitution is not “open.” Emily Dickinson’s poems are not “open.” If you want to write your own disgraceful parody and call it a Bible, fine, but we already have a real Bible, and yours will be of no value unless someone needs a heavy object with which to press wrinkles out of a tie.

If I ever practice law again, I’ll tell the judge statutes and rules of procedure are open. “I know the Federal Rules used to say the deadline was 30 calendar days, your honor, but the Rules are ‘open,’ and I changed it to three months. Also, I have amended the calendar to include a new estrogen-centric month called Gynuary.” Oh yeah, that will fly. It is amazing, the things you can believe when you’re a leftist.

I had no idea the KJV was considered superior by people like Ed. The reason I chose it for memorization is that it is simply better English. The art of prose reached its peak hundreds of years ago; with a vocabulary of a few thousand words, our predecessors created works we lack the skill to equal. If you can understand the English of the KJV, you will have a better understanding of modern English, too. And you will use it more skillfully. And who wants to recite dry modern translations? Nobody wants to hear that. “Hey, dudes, let’s, like, not judge other dudes ’cause it’s uncool.” Please. Don’t grime up my ears with that mess.

Ed cites fundamental reasons why the KJV should be accorded more weight than modern translations. I have no reason to doubt what he says. If he’s right, good for me. I thought it had a bunch of errors in it (e.g., “Thou shalt not kill”), but I was willing to memorize it anyway, because of the quality of the language. I figured that if there were problems with things I memorized, I could always learn those while I was memorizing. Then I’d have the KJV on tap, and I would also know where the landmines lay.

I had no primary education. I went to public schools until I was in the seventh grade, so I got the liberalized, watered-down curriculum. Fortunately, I had some native ability, so I picked up English on the streets. That is literally true. Okay, not “on the streets,” but on my own. To this day, even though I knocked the top out of standardized tests and made it to the national spelling bee, I make errors an educated person should not make. Having a pile of beautifully wrought passages in my head at all times is already helping me improve my writing.

Most Americans are illiterate by the standards of a century ago. The things high school graduates wrote back then outshine typical writing produced by modern college graduates. That is no exaggeration. I’ve seen the garbage lawyers write these days, and I’ve seen letters uneducated people wrote long ago. The lawyers lose.

When I want to check up on King James, I go to The Complete Jewish Bible. It seems like a good choice. It was edited by a knowledgeable religious Jew, so it addresses errors introduced due to ignorance of Judaism.

Here’s another interesting thing about the KJV. My parents came from Eastern Kentucky; my dad was from the coal country near West Virginia, and my mother was from a county a little farther west. When I was a kid, my grandparents and most of their siblings were alive and vigorous, and I heard them use a lot of archaic language. Some of it passed down to me, from my parents. Sometimes I see familiar things in the KJV. It reminds me that some of the linguistic idiosyncrasies people outside Appalachia make fun of are actually correct.

I am now working on Psalm 3. It’s short. I need the rest.

Mark the Man Who Memorized Psalm 37, for the End of That Man is Peace

Marv and I have fantastic news. I finally got through Psalm 37. I more or less made it last night, and this morning I sharpened it up. I think by Monday I’ll have it in the bag. I guess it’s time to pick the next psalm. I can’t believe how long this one took. It just refused to be memorized.

The surprising thing about the Psalms is how useful they are. So much of the material is prophetic; I have to wonder if the psalmists even understood what they were saying. Simultaneously, they referred forward in time to the Crucifixion and backward to the first Passover: “He keepeth all his bones; not one of them is broken.” They wrote about the final judgment: “The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment.” “For the Lord loveth judgment and forsaketh not his saints; they are preserved forever, but the seed of the wicked shall be cut off.” “When the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it.” “The enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs; they shall consume. Into smoke shall they consume away.” They described the effects of the baptism in the Holy Spirit: “The law of his God is in his heart; none of his steps shall slide.”

A lot of the material spells out God’s promises to the righteous. “The Lord knoweth the way of the upright; their inheritance shall be forever. They shall not be ashamed in the evil time, and in the days of famine, they shall be satisfied.” “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.” “O fear the Lord, ye his saints, for there is no want to them that fear him.” “The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him and delivereth them.” One of my mother’s favorite verses: “I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.” Another good one, also from Psalm 34: “Commit thy way unto the Lord. Trust in him also, and he shall bring it to pass. And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light and thy judgment as the noonday.”

How about this: “The wicked watcheth the righteous and seeketh to slay him. The Lord will not leave him in his hand nor condemn him when he is judged.”

I may have the punctuation wrong; I haven’t memorized that. They did some funny things back in 1611. I think I got the words right. Thanks to memorization, I now have all this stuff ready when I need it.

Psalm 2 seems to describe the trick God played on his enemies during the Crucifixion. “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree; the Lord hath said unto me, thou art my son. This day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”

So far I have 1, 2, 4, 23, 34, 37, 63, and 101. That’s only 8, but there is a ton of useful stuff in there.

It’s notable that Jesus quoted the Psalms when he faced challenges. Truthfully, I think a lot of the material in the Psalms is encoded so it will be useless to God’s enemies, but believers will be able to understand and use it at the right time. It sounds like pleasant, flowery poetry, but it has a serious purpose. Reading this stuff, I feel like Indiana Jones. Except this is real, and Indiana Jones is pulp material.

I would like to find out what other Christians think about all this. I think I’m right, but I’ll be sure if I see that other Christians are getting the same ideas.