Rodents Win the Day

In case anyone is wondering, smoked squirrel is pretty good.

I went out today for another day of rodent eradication. I didn’t want to deal with open sights, so I took my Savage A22 with a Nikon Prostaff II Rimfire.

I also decided to take my squirrel call. It’s from a company calle Primos. It’s a rubber bulb and a tube with a reed. You squeeze it, and it makes noises that are supposed to sound like squirrels.

The folding backpack chair has turned out to be a good tool, so I took it with me and set it in a likely place. After maybe 15 minutes, I decided to try the call. I made a number of noises that I intended to sound like the examples I had heard on the web. I got no response at all, Truthfully, I think the call is a joke. It’s supposed to say, “I’m a squirrel! I’m a squirrel! I’m eating tasty nuts!” I think it really says, “I’m a gullible hunter! I like fried squirrel brains!”

I didn’t see a single squirrel in that area. I did hear an owl, however. It set up behind me and hooted like crazy. Then some other type of bird of prey swooped in with a critter dangling from its beak and perched between me and the trees I was watching. I couldn’t see it well enough to identify it. The bird, I mean.

Here is my genius guess: squirrels aren’t anxious to come out and play while owls are screaming nearby and other birds are tearing up freshly killed mice or rats.

I moved farther in, and in my next spot, I saw a couple of squirrels and watched them for a very long time. If I had had a shotgun, they would be in the fridge right now, but they didn’t present safe .22 shots. I came home with nothing, except some old Nehi and Heinz ketchup bottles I found.

The day was not a total loss. I got to hunt, I learned more about what not to do, and I smoked the squirrel I shot yesterday. I brined it all night with baking soda, and today I put a little rub on it and threw it in the smoker with some St. Louis ribs. The ribs are still going, but I ate the squirrel.

The verdict? Lots of potential. The flavor was really excellent. It was dry, though, so I think it needs to be greased at least twice while it smokes, and it should be sealed in foil after an hour or so to keep the steam in. It also seems to need a lot more salt than pork.

Smoking will work, and it’s less aggravation than frying. I have a new go-to squirrel method.

I like hunting from a chair, but I think it would be worth it to get one that swivels. Squirrels can’t be counted on to pop up in front of you, and if one appears to the rear or far to one side, a stationary chair is a problem. I would need to find one that swivels quietly, though. And it would have to be light.

A wheelchair would be perfect. The big wheels would work in my woods, and I could turn it in place.

I live in an area where used wheelchairs probably sell for 10 bucks.

I plan to get in as many hunting days as possible while the season is open. I may put one of my squirrel feeders in the woods. There is no point in playing fair.

In other news, I have a big infrared illuminator on the way. This is an infrared flashlight you can attach to a scope or rifle. The purpose is to allow me to use my night vision scope. It came with an illuminator, but everyone says the stock illuminator is useless.

If I can get the scope and illuminator to work reasonably well, it may be time to bite the bullet and get a very expensive thermal monocular. This would allow me to sit outside at night, scan for coons and coyotes, and blow them to varmint perdition. The thermal monocular would also be good for security, assuming I’m still here on earth when angry statists start prancing into the well-armed meat grinder that is rural America. It’s a bizarre yet highly likely future scenario. If it happens, they will show up armed with laser pointers, pink hats, loud music, and bottles of their own drug-test-failing urine. A few may have cheap AR-15’s they don’t really know how to use. They would be met with $7000 thermal scopes and .338 Lapua. Then, of course, there would be the dogs.

Out west, they would be in really serious trouble. Because of the geography, a lot of westerners who don’t think of themselves as snipers, militia nuts, or precision shooters routinely take game from hundreds of yards away. This is normal out there, so hitting a fat elementary school teacher armed with a Kel-Tec full of .380 FMJ, while he’s 200 yards away, at your gate, still getting out of his mom’s Prius, would not be challenging.

I hate coons and coyotes, for obvious reasons. I don’t hate bobcats, but I probably should. I should also hate armadillos, because they dig dangerous holes. My farm isn’t the ideal location for a deer or turkey hunter, but there are still lots of things you can pop at night with specialized equipment, and in doing so, you would prepare yourself well for the day when Soros-sponsored buses full of goons show up to pick on what they think are soft targets.

Here’s to the day when all of God’s children have been removed to a place where everyone bathes in love and lives in harmony. Hope I get there before the entitlement posses start patrolling.

Moving on From my Recent Laundry Triumph

I have a surprising and atypical story to tell today. It’s about love and romance. I realize no one wants to hear about romance from old men, so you may want to skip this post. An old man who talks about romance comes off like an old man trying to get girls to dance with him at a rave.

Anyway…

From time to time, God does little things for me that change the way I think or feel, permanently. Last night he gave me a dream. I was reunited with the first girl who ever kissed me.

The story of the kiss may sound seedy in some aspects. When I was 16, I went to Europe with a group of other kids. We headquartered in Lucerne and traveled to other cities. I met a girl I will call Louanne. For most of the trip, she was involved with my roommate and high school friend, John.

We finished the trip with several days in Paris. One day, a girl named Pleasance–a cheerleader–came to my room and shocked me by asking me to go to dinner with her. At some point in the preparation, John was invited, and Pleas invited her roommate, Kathy. John started pushing his way to Pleas on the way to the restaurant, and suddenly, Kathy was left out in the cold while I tried to assert my right to escort Pleas. I didn’t succeed. Later I learned that John had a personal first that night with Pleas. Maybe this was her plan. Maybe she wanted to be initiated in Europe. I call John a friend, but he was never a real friend.

By this time, John and Louanne had been on the outs for weeks, perhaps because she did not want an initiation or an abortion.

On the last night of the trip, the organizers took the entire group to what I now believe was a gay bar. This was the Seventies, and the world was wilder in some ways. For example, the kids came from different schools, each group had a teacher as a chaperone, and one of the chaperones was romantically involved with a 17-year-old beauty from Jamaica. Our chaperone was my former algebra teacher. She was about 24 and very attractive. She was a wonderful lady; a Messianic Jew. I remember her rowing me around Lake Lucerne in a boat, wearing a bikini top and cutoffs and urging me to take my shirt off.

She died a few years back, so it doesn’t matter if I tell.

I had a lot to drink at the bar, and there was dancing. Louanne asked me to have a slow dance with her, and while we were dancing, she really planted one on me. I shouldn’t say “one.” It was more like a session. I was very pleased. I had hoped to start something with her, but after John, she moved on to a guy named Brad, and I figured that was that.

At some point down the road, back in the US, I finally realized Louanne wanted more than a kiss. She wanted a relationship. But I was too dysfunctional to catch on. We corresponded from time to time over the next few years, and I saw her a couple of times, but we didn’t become a couple.

Sometimes I feel like she’s the one who got away, but then I think about what a mess I was. She didn’t get away. She escaped. When I didn’t come through for her, it was a blessing. I wasn’t fit for anyone to marry.

It looks like she never married. I Googled her out of curiosity a few months back. I was not interested in contact. Just wondered what had become of her. She’s a very successful lawyer, still using her maiden name. Very sad. A waste. I don’t know what happened. She was a very attractive girl with a pleasant personality.

Last night, I dreamed that Louanne and I were together. Of course, she was young. I don’t have romantic dreams about middle-aged or elderly women. We walked around on my farm. I showed her some kind of tractor implement I had made. At one point, we found ourselves sitting together, and she leaned over and sort of draped herself over me. There was not a lot of activity. We just pressed ourselves together so there would be as much contact as possible, and we held that position.

It reminded me of something God told me a long time ago: he created the universe for love. We tend to think of God as the commander of a military organization, or as an unapproachable, ultra-holy, perpetually annoyed being who disapproves of everything we do. We turn Christianity into a game show, with God as the host. Score as many points as possible, avoid disqualification, and you win. In reality, Christianity is about deep, burning love among members of an eternal family. It’s also about perfect trust; the kind of trust you and your wife have before the first one of you commits adultery.

I know all these things, but I am not able to keep them in mind all the time. The world draws us away from God. We have to think about food, shelter, money, and so on, so we are not able to stay in constant touch with God. We get distracted, and we have to have prayer sessions to recover.

God gave us the Song of Solomon. It’s a book that can make you uncomfortable, because it’s clearly about a bride and groom who are about to have sex for the first time. It’s not about friendship or platonic love. I have an audio version of it, and it’s a little disturbing to hear. The actress who reads the part of the Shunammite sounds highly aroused. It’s not the kind of experience you typically get from an audio Bible.

We all want love, intimacy, and perfect trust, but we live in a world where many people are single or divorced, and we treat sex as though it’s all about lust and physical pleasure. We die of thirst, surrounded by water.

Jesus visited me twice, and when he was in my presence, I didn’t feel that I was with a game show host, a football coach, a prison warden, an executioner, or a judge. I felt warm, intense love radiating toward me and through me. I felt it physically. I felt perfect peace and trust. I knew nothing bad could happen while he was there. Ever since then, I’ve wanted to feel those things again, and I also wanted to feel them coming from me. I’ve been more interested in basking in his presence than in getting trivial prayers answered. It’s funny; I always wanted marriage, not sexual flings, but I wasn’t able to find a wife. I’ve always wanted intimacy with God, but I have only had two really intense encounters with him that included a sensation of being wrapped in love.

Meanwhile, the men who get the most women to love them dread relationships. They say the right words and do the right things, they get what they want, and then they move on to new conquests. They’re like people who eat the best doughnuts out of a box and leave the worst for everyone else. They take the best women have to offer, and they leave them bitter and defiled. And when they take off, the women wonder what happened, and they want them back.

My history with women is a lot like God’s history with humanity.

You can tell me I passed up women I should have married, but that’s not true. The options I had were not acceptable, for very sound reasons. Atheists, leftists, older women, needy women, women who wanted to be my mother, women who just were not and could not be attractive, married women, women involved in other religions…there was just no way.

I don’t fully understand the relationship between God and the Bride of Christ. It’s strange for a man to be part of a bride. I do know that we were created so we could be part of a family bound by intense love and perfect trust. The earth is a corrupt place. Not much of the original sparkle shines through the crust of filth. It’s hard to hold onto the understanding of what God intended us to be. It’s very helpful to have him remind us. The dream was helpful.

America is full of hate right now. Statists are drunk with it. The things they say and do to their betters are astounding. They’re like fatherless ghetto children who hit their mothers and mug the elderly. They want a world of hate and lawlessness. BLM and Antifa are showing us the future of America. When God calls his people home, America will be like a prison yard with no guards. Everyone will be out to hurt and take. The people who hate God will get exactly what they’ve been pushing for, and it will humiliate them and make them suffer more than they can imagine now.

The Revelation says God himself is the light of heaven. There is no shadow or darkness there. His light shines through everything. That light must be his love, because I know his love shines like light. During the tribulation, there will be very little light down here.

We are told that his enemies end up in outer darkness.

I hope this blog post is helpful to people who are distracted by rules and traditions that make them forget God’s love.

Clean Clothes, Clean Heart

Yesterday when I got my new eco-hostile, non-moldy, fast-working washing machine, I nearly lost my mind. I was so happy, I texted friends about it. I sent pictures. I sent two of them a video. I blogged and vlogged. I did several loads of laundry just for the pleasure of seeing how much better the new machine was. I went into the laundry room and inhaled so I could enjoy the way the machine smelled.

Is that normal? Doesn’t seem like it. The pleasure I get from that machine amazes me because it’s so extreme.

What have I learned about strange events? God has shown me that when things don’t seem to make sense, there is a supernatural explanation.

Something must be going on.

In my blog post, I said I had been “raptured” out of the body of people who are stuck with smelly, moldy laundry (i.e. the majority of Americans). I thought it was a funny parallel, but at the same time, I really felt raptured. I felt I had been spared a great evil.

People are saying things like this to me:

This was another thing Trump was pushing for. Appliances that actually worked including shower heads.

yeah , President Trump talked about that at one of his rallies last year. He talked about showers and how because of regulations -people could only get a stream of water, he said he was putting an end to all these regulations

Why do I post these remarks? Because they show there is a bigger pattern. It’s not just about washing machines. It’s about state-worshipers–the Beast’s children–trying to extend the Beast’s power into every area of our lives. The Beast knows we’re going to retreat. We move to the country. We move away from minorities because they’re so caught up in the Beast’s propaganda. We find jobs where we’re less likely to be forced to take “sensitivity” training and proactively endorse homosexuality. We keep low profiles. The Beast knows what we’re doing, so he is coming after us in our homes.

Earth-worship is a very old part of Satan’s plan. It existed in ancient Greece. It existed in ancient Israel. The Nazis were big environmentalists. Now modern American statists are using it to control Christians.

The moldy smell of your clothes and the degrading necessity of wasting 90 minutes of your time waiting for a mechanical slave to do a 30-minute job are little messages. “You’re of the earth, not heaven.” “You’re part of the herd.” “We control you.” “Wear the yoke; there is nothing you can do about it.”

Satan loves to teach people that they’re helpless so they won’t fight back. This is why he loves welfare. People who get too much help from Uncle Sam start to realize their lives won’t improve if they get jobs, so they develop a condition known as “learned helplessness.” They quit trying. This is what Satan wants you to feel. “Stop resisting the state. It’s your family now, everyone else is going along, and besides, you’re too small and isolated to win.” Abusive environmentalism is just one of Satan’s attitude-adjustment tools.

They’re talking about issuing “passports” to people who take the covid vaccine, giving them rights the rest of us won’t have. Barring a real plague, you should have the right to decide whether or not you want a shot. Covid is not a real plague. Severe effects will always be limited to a very small, easily identified and separated segment of the population. The vaccine is not needed. It’s just a tool to teach you obedience.

Terry Gilliam Correctly Identifies the Left’s God

Donald Trump is no apostle, but God gave him to us to help us, and he does God’s will whether he knows it or not. He is a wall between the Beast and the Beast’s desires. He provides better support for Israel than previous presidents. He helps the church. He helps the unborn. He fights the religion of statism.

Trump’s attitude toward the earth-exalters reflects God’s attitude. You may be willing to accept showers that don’t get you clean and washers that put mold in your clothes, but God doesn’t want to see his children set below the earth in the universal hierarchy. It’s an inversion of authority. The earth was created for us. We’re supposed to shape it and exploit it to help ourselves. When things that benefit the earth in trivial ways become more important than cleanliness, it shows that we have lost our status as Earth’s royalty.

One of the plagues of the Revelation is attacks by wild animals. Look it up and see. In Genesis, God put the fear of man into animals. He did it because we’re better than they are. We are more important, as Jesus said in his remark about sparrows. The plague of animal attacks will reflect humanity’s degradation and loss of status. Moldy clothes reflect the same problems.

Mold is a wild creature. So is the covid virus. They, and other new assailants like the insect that spreads citrus greening and the mosquitoes that spread Zika, may be small, but they’re wild creatures. The Revelation says bigger ones–“beasts”–will eventually follow suit.

We’ve already seen bigger creatures increase in power over us.

Our predecessors had the good sense to kill bears, wolves, and lions. Americans love lions. Africans hate them because they kill people and livestock. We used to have the same attitude toward big predators, before we became fruity, cringing, self-pampered snowflakes with waxed moustaches and tattoos. Right now, wild animal attacks are increasing in our country because predator hunts are limited and people with zero common sense are reintroducing predators in populated areas.

Florida is full of bears, and the wildlife commission says science shows hunts are appropriate, but the commission refuses to sanction hunts because of pressure from blue-county statists. Bears have attacked people, pets, and livestock here, they have killed Floridians (contrary to what certain websites say), and they have driven many people to run for shelter, so it’s not like they’re harmless.

I’ll tell you what. If a bear or any other dangerous animal menaces me on my property, I’ll kill it without a second’s hesitation and leave it for the turkey buzzards. Or I’ll put it in bags and take it to the dump. And no one will know. The state works for Satan, so why contact law enforcement and trust the devil with my future? The investigation which is least likely to result in a fine or arrest is the one that never happens.

If non-Christian scientists are to be believed, coyotes have had millions of years to make it to the Eastern US. Why didn’t they show up until late in the last century? Scientists tell us it happened because the Mississippi froze, allowing coyotes to run across. That’s completely asinine. Obviously, the Mississippi has frozen many times in the past, and coyotes are more than smart enough to cross bridges. They can also swim. Why are they here now, killing calves, poultry, and pets? The Revelation seems to have the answer.

Florida is full of pythons now, and they’re big enough to kill women and kids. They eat pets. They eat deer. Livestock are surely being eaten. They even eat alligators. People have had pet pythons for decades, and they have gotten loose many times. Why didn’t they gain a foothold until recently? Why didn’t their population explode until a short time ago?

The python problem will get worse. They can live in fairly cold places, so they’re moving north. Their projected range includes North Carolina and most of California. If you think it’s just a Florida problem, wait and see how wrong you are. Once they hit Georgia, they’ll be free to move west.

People who are used to being on top are now headed for the bottom. Christianity put their ancestors on top, the ancestors had godless, entitled, ungrateful progeny, and now the corrupt descendants of the godly think they have the same status their forebears had. They feel entitled, for no good reason. It doesn’t work. They run from animals and types of people who used to be subordinate. Modern Americans are like Samson after his head was shorn. They think they’re still strong, but they’re defeated.

Samson got up, glowered at the Philistines, and probably told them they were in for it. Then one or two men grabbed him and held his arms fast, easily, while somebody shoved a knife in his eyes.

I love my washing machine because it reminds me of a principle of Christianity. We are supposed to be washed with a great deal of water. The Holy Spirit is supposed to flow in us like a wide, deep river. We should wash ourselves internally by praying in tongues abundantly every day. The reason moldy washing machines stink is that they use so little water. They have special parts that hold onto old water that never gets rinsed out. It stagnates. The things God gives us rot and cause problems if we hold onto them and stop looking for new things. Remember what happened to manna when people tried to save it for an extra day.

My clothes are mold-free because my machine doesn’t use water sparingly. It uses gallons and gallons. If I want to be clean inside, I have to let God’s water pour through me every day, in great abundance. When it comes to laundry, I have to go back to the ways of the past, because the modern way of making a washing machine brings rot and disease. Mold provokes allergies, and allergies are diseases. Black mold, which is the kind washing machines make, can be lethal in some cases. If I want to do well as a Christian, I have to go back to the old practice of prayer in tongues.

It’s odd that environmentally conscious people have started a crusade against mold in homes, but they’re silent about mold in our clothing.

Mold and other types of rot can represent carnality. We’re supposed to be filled with doctrine and other types of information by the Holy Spirit, continuously, every day. Denomination bigwigs don’t receive daily impartations. They don’t know the Holy Spirit. They rely on long-dead individuals who may or may not have heard from the Holy Spirit, and they add their carnal guesswork, which increases the rot. Denominations may have started with God’s help, but they continue with man’s error.

God isn’t an environmentalist. His word says the earth will wax old like a piece of clothing. He’s not fretting over the thought that you might throw a deposit bottle in the trash. He doesn’t care. The earth will be physically devastated during the tribulation no matter how many ridiculous carbon credits you have. Make reasonable use of the earth and focus on pleasing God, not seals and whales which were put here for our benefit.

My New Washer isn’t Green, and Neither are my Clothes

This is easily the greatest day of my life. I just installed a non-green top-loading commercial washer.

I took a picture of her. I have to share.

I can’t believe she got here so fast. My horrible old LG washer pooped out two days ago, and I’m already back in business.

I already wrote about my hatred of modern front-loading mold-growing washers. They don’t get anything clean. They take forever to run. You have to do half loads because otherwise the clothes don’t get wet. They’re perfect examples of leftist hypocrisy. Tell people you want to save water and energy, then make washers that have to run twice to do the same work. And of course they break down sooner, so the energy and material costs of manufacturing, selling, and installation are at least doubled.

I threw two queen-sized blankets in it to try it out. I have a habit of using my bed as a gunsmithing bench, so they had grease on them. I’m timing the machine to see how long it takes. It’s so beautiful It must have used 10 gorgeous gallons of warm water to fill itself.

When it started spinning, I ran into the laundry room and rested my head on the lid. Ecstasy.

This machine is wonderful. It only has 6 settings. It has knobs. No LED display. No video. No phone app.

I’ve already done my first load and started my second! I timed it. It did a whole load in under 30 minutes! In your FACE, greenies!

I love that green start button. Someone at Maytag must have done that as a personal chin-flick to Al Gore.

I can’t remember what it was like to have clothing that didn’t smell like mold. I guess it’s been over 10 years. I’ve been a prisoner, leaving washer doors open so they were always in the way. I had to plan my laundry in advance because I knew I would have to be awake 90 minutes after the machine started, to move things to the dryer. This is incredible.

Guess how much energy the new moldy washers save? Guess! Actually, I don’t know the answer, but it can’t be much, because the little sticker on my new machine said the yearly power cost would be $18. If $18 is bad, what’s good? Did running my old machine cost $17.50? It was certainly worth it to smell like a homeless person. I really saved the planet.

Best case scenario, if the old machine used no power at all: $18 in savings. Come on. Who seriously thinks that’s a bargain? If I offered you to pay you $18 to stink for the next 12 months, would you take it?

I’m going to be buried next to this washing machine. That’s how much I love it. I’m going to have the funeral home director fill it with plastic grocery bags and plastic straws. Thank God I live in a place where plastic is still king. Back in Coral Gables, grown people who should know better are lugging their groceries around in ludicrous paper bags that split.

I came up with a great idea for people who hate paper bags. You’ll thank me. You know how groceries give you a choice between paper bags and bringing your own? Here’s what you do: go on Ebay and buy a thousand plastic grocery bags for $13.99 (actual price). Then bring them to the store and make the bag people use them! Hey, you brought your own! It’s legal!

When you’re done putting your grocery bags away, throw them out! They cost a penny each! Who cares?

This is so great. This is better than the time I bought old-fashioned eco-hostile nozzles for my plastic gas cans. It feels better than throwing all my old curly fluorescent bulbs into the trash, to be carted off to pollute the landfill with mercury. I thought that felt good, but it pales next to the joy of knowing my clothes won’t smell.

I think I’ll change my tractor’s oil and pour the old oil out in the yard. I’m on a roll.

Factory veal! Where can I get factory veal?! I…I want to paint my house with lead paint! I must have it!

I SUPPORT WHALING! GET ME A WHALE BURGER!

I’m going to cook my whale burgers on a fire made from burning coronavirus face diapers!

I can’t tell you how great it is to have a real washing machine. I was so tired of bending over to get stuff out of the old one. I was tired of the lying LED display that told me my clothes would be done in 3 minutes, only to make me wait 15. I hated knowing that leftist goofballs who were completely wrong were able to make me a slave to a stupidly designed machine I could not live without.

It’s the laundry rapture! I’ve been called out of the mildew-smelling masses!

This is actually what the Messianic Age after the rapture and tribulation will be like. Imagine a world free of idiocy.

My second load is done! Twenty-seven minutes! What else can I wash?

It may take me three days to wind down. Buy one of these machines. You will love it.

Keep Your Genes Clean

I have fantastic news. My washing machine is going to have to be replaced.

As we move toward the Antichrist’s colonial-organism, totalitarian model of civilization, we are facing increasing governmental intrusions on our private affairs.

I know. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Appliances and other products are filling up with “features” that make us miserable. Leftists have a sick fantasy of a future in which everybody is green, smitten with homosexuality, vegan, and virtuously poor, and they are reaching into our lives in unexpected ways in order to force their perverted, pathological vision on sane people.

Case in point: washing machines. They don’t work any more. Washing machines were targeted because they use a lot of water and power. Leftists think the world is going to run out of water and energy, and they aren’t as interested in cleanliness as the rest of us, so they went after our washing machines and ruined them.

If you have a washing machine made in the last few years, you probably smell like Roquefort cheese when you sweat or rain hits your clothes. Modern washing machines use very little water, and for some reason, the technology that reduces water consumption causes mold to grow in them. You can’t get rid of it. You can leave the machine door open all the time so it gets as dry as possible. You can buy ridiculous fans that sit in washing machines and speed up drying. You can run bleach through your machine. You can clean the rubber gaskets with bleach. It doesn’t work. You may get some improvement, but wait for the next rainy, humid day, and you will still smell like dirty gym socks.

Statists aren’t interested in practicality. They’re interested in the messages products send. It’s okay if you smell. If it bothers you, it proves you’re bourgeois. The French don’t bathe much, and they’re better than us. They’re chic.

Statists love shoving half-baked technology down our throats to solve problems we don’t really have. They can never wait for the good technology. You have to have curly fluorescent bulbs that don’t work, NOW (rhymes with “Mao”). You have to have hybrid cars that only work because of subsidies NOW. You have to smell like a slice of green, furry bread NOW.

If modern washing machines are so bad, why is it good news that my machine is dying? Won’t I just have to replace it with another cheese-smelling mold farm? No! There are still a couple of machines that work, and I just bought one.

Many people think Speed Queen machines are the answer. Speed Queen makes commercial equipment, and they also make consumer products. Until 2017, they still made very sturdy washers that didn’t smell, used plenty of water, and completed cycles in less than an hour, the way washers used to. Unfortunately, they stopped making the good machines, and they replaced them with bad ones. The last good ones have “432” in the model numbers. If you buy a 2020 Speed Queen, you’re buying failure and heartache with a plastic water pump, and it will cost you a thousand dollars anyway.

My plan was to let my LG machine wear out and replace it with a Speed Queen. Then when it started making noises, I researched, and I found that Maytag was the answer. Nearly all Maytags are modern garbage, but they have a couple of models that work.

I learned this from a guy who is obsessed with washers and dryers. He runs a website called Loraine Furniture. He buys washers, takes them home, runs them, and makes Youtube videos. He refurbishes old washers. Many people are starting to realize it’s better to put $500 into an old GE than to spend $600 on a new Samsung that stinks.

The washer guy used to tell people to buy Speed Queen. Then Speed Queen gave up the good fight. Things looked bad, but then he discovered Maytag’s new machines.

If you buy a new Maytag, it will fill all the way up with water, like a real washing machine. It will load from the top, sparing your lower back and making it unnecessary to spend a hundred bucks on a base that lifts the machine and screws up the geometry of your laundry room. It will wash your clothing in something like 40 minutes, not 90. My LG has a time display on it, and it claims it will do a normal load in under 45 minutes. When I use it, I set the oven timer for 90 minutes, because the LG’s display lies like crazy.

Remember the days when you could do three loads of laundry in one afternoon? You can have those days back.

Here’s another problem with modern machines, and it’s a wonderful paradox: you can’t fill them very full, because they won’t get the clothes in the middle of the machine wet. I’ve removed dry clothing from my LG several times. It’s really something. It’s a great example of how statist thinking is self-defeating. They sell you a front-loading machine which is supposed to hold more clothing and save water and electricity. Then you have to run it twice to do one load, killing the water and power savings and wasting your time. They also add special “extra water” features which prove the manufacturers know the whole business is a hoax.

If you get a Maytag, you will be able to fill it up, the way you’re supposed to.

The Maytag he recommends is model number MVWP575GW. Lowe’s has a sister model which is basically the same, except the warranty isn’t as good. Why buy the Lowe’s model? Because it’s at Lowe’s, where you can get it easily and quickly. When your washer fails, you don’t have time to wait for the perfect deal.

Maytag’s machine is a commercial-style washer, and thankfully, it has very few features. Remember how your old washer had about 5 settings, and it worked great? That’s how the Maytag is. You don’t need a fragile video display and special modes called “Power Fluf” and “Techno Steam” to get clean laundry. Do you think professional launderers buy machines with video displays and stupid features? Of course not. But they get clothes cleaner than you do.

Why am I giving you this advice? Because your washer may fail soon, and if you’ve had it for 20 years, you may have no idea what you’re up against. If it’s a good machine, consider investing in expensive repairs. If not, Maytag will solve your problems for about a thousand dollars.

Will the Maytag be available when you need it? No idea. I’m surprised it’s legal and available right now.

Lowe’s says my new machine will be here tomorrow, which probably means next Tuesday, but I believe my LG will keep running until then, so I’m fine. Even if I have to go to a laundromat, it will be worth it.

Incidentally, never buy an LG appliance. If it breaks (and it will) you will not be able to call your familiar, reasonably-priced appliance repairman. LG will force you to hire their people. At least that’s what they did to me when my last (nearly new) LG broke. Maybe they’ve changed their policy. I won’t bother checking, because I have had two LG washers break down, I was forced to use their repair people once, their washers make clothes reek, and I don’t see any reason to have anything to do with LG in the future.

Greenie washers are generally front-loaders, and that’s bad, because front-loaders don’t last. There is a reason why nearly all washers used to be top-loaders. A top-loading tub doesn’t put a lot of stress on a machine’s mechanics. Obviously, a horizontally-mounted tub containing 40 pounds of wet laundry, spinning and stopping, supported by a single underengineered bearing, is eventually going to go funny. My last LG’s tub got out of alignment while it was spinning, and the tub knocked the magnets off the motor, destroying it. My current LG has a bearing screech, but it still runs. You can buy a new bearing for about $25, but installing it is like putting a new timing belt in your car. You don’t want to try, believe me.

I have been dreaming of getting a real washing machine for years. I hope it works out.

What else is on my mind? Covid! People are saying the vaccine is the mark of the Beast. Christians aren’t the only ones who don’t want it. Jews in Israel are resisting, which is odd, since they don’t believe the Revelation. I don’t know what their complaint is.

When covid was young, I thought a vaccine was a great idea. I’m not an anti-vaxxer. They’re generally nutcases and neurotics. Science-illiterate moms who think with their hormones. I’m a huge fan of flu vaccines, and I wanted the covid shot. When I heard people talking about the mark of the Beast, I wondered what was wrong with them.

Now I’m hearing disturbing things about it. I heard a podcast today, and Messianic Rabbi Zev Porat says the Israeli government is considering a bunch of “incentives” to make people take the shot. Among them: you will not be prevented from getting a mortgage, and you will not be prevented from boarding flights.

Doesn’t “incentive” mean a reward, not a punishment?

I can’t find independent confirmation of the threats to restrict borrowing and air travel, but I found a story saying Israel will provide vaccinated people with “green passports” allowing them to go to restaurants and other public gatherings and to fly without being tested for covid.

What, exactly, is “green” about vaccination? I wonder if “green” means the same thing in Israel and the US.

Another question: since vaccines aren’t completely effective, is it intelligent to release vaccinated people to mingle with the rest of us? Some vaccines have effectiveness rates below 50 percent, and many scientists expect the covid vaccine’s immunity to wear off quickly. Does it really make sense to turn the vaccine into a license to go out and breathe on crowds? Are the rewards really about science, or are they about showing us what Mommy State does for good boys and girls?

In any case, the vaccine appears to have the potential to have similarities to the mark of the Beast.

If you don’t have the mark, you will be devastated financially and socially. You won’t be allowed to buy or sell. It’s a Nuremberg sort of thing. People who reject the vaccine probably won’t be completely excluded from commerce, but they may face punishments (“incentives”) that severely limit their participation in important activities, and if so, they will be stigmatized and hated.

It reminds me of something God told me the other day: the rapture isn’t just an event; it’s also a process. Long before God removes you from the earth, he will change you internally and help you reject the world’s sick culture. He will help you give up secular entertainment and worthless pursuits like fornication and recreational drinking.

There are two earthly raptures: God’s, and Satan’s. God is pulling us out of society (and society out of us), while Satan is using force to drive people deeper into society and the arms of the state.

This year has been a wonderful training exercise for the Beast. Like Jesus, he has a body, and he has been using things like BLM, Antifa, and covid to train it. He has taught people to become filthy, entitled, violent, and openly bigoted against white people, men, conservatives, Southerners, and Christians. Jews are also getting some overspray.

The vaccine is not the mark of the Beast. It can’t be. The Bible says the mark will be put on people’s right hands or foreheads (probably for people who don’t have right hands). The vaccine doesn’t fit that description. Also, the Bible says the man who will be called the Beast will be revealed before the mark appears. The Beast has not been revealed.

Does all this mean the vaccine and the mark are not connected? Not necessarily.

Satan has been using 2020 to train people to serve him without reservation or hesitation. He has been removing all the internal obstacles that help people resist him. The vaccine may be a way of preparing people to receive the mark. By the time the mark gets here, we may have been forced to do so many other things, in the name of good, that taking the mark will seem like just another trivial violation we need to get over with. Just get it done. Get in line, stick your hand out, take the mark, get the “I Took the Mark” sticker, and go home and wait for your good boy check.

I am no longer willing to receive the vaccine. Too many people are wary about it, and many are Spirit-filled Christians. They may not have a proper understanding of the science, and they may not understand what’s wrong with the vaccine, but it sure looks like the Holy Spirit is filling people with concern.

Many people think the vaccine permanently changes your DNA. From what I’ve read, this is not correct. I’ve read that it uses RNA to trick your cells into manufacturing covid proteins so your body can create antibodies. I’ve read that the effect is temporary and doesn’t alter your DNA. Maybe that’s true (and maybe scientists are wrong, which happens), but it may be that an RNA vaccine is a tool to prepare us to accept shots that really do alter our DNA.

If common people can’t tell the difference between an RNA vaccine and a DNA vaccine now, many won’t be able to tell the difference later when we are offered another “harmless” vaccine that really does change our DNA. They’ll think it’s another RNA vaccine, or they’ll think it’s a DNA vaccine and that it’s okay to take it because they already had one that didn’t harm them.

Satan likes to move in baby steps. One day, you’re voting for Hitler to build up the German economy, and down the road, you’re cheering while the Einsatzgruppen round up your Jewish neighbors so they can drive them out of town and shoot them next to a ditch.

For all I know, the mark is something that alters DNA.

It’s an interesting question. Most people don’t realize that the battle in the supernatural realm is genocidal. Satan and God and fighting to get rid of each other’s seed. Satan was rightly partially castrated in the flood, and he is a castrater and abortionist. There are two families: God’s, and Satan’s, and God and Satan are working toward futures in which their families have overwhelming dominance and numbers on earth.

What is it that makes you a member of another person’s biological family? DNA. If you’re a Christian, you know that blessings and curses are hereditary. At least part of the time, DNA is involved. Intelligence, health, talent, good character, and looks are inherited. So are stupidity, mental illness, criminal tendencies, addictive tendencies, ugliness, sickle cell anemia, Huntington’s chorea, many cancers, dwarfism, and, some believe, homosexuality.

If you let a scientist change your DNA, isn’t it possible you’re changing your divine inheritance? Maybe your salvation depends in part on your DNA. Maybe changing it can make you a child of Satan and cause your blessings to be replaced with curses. That would certainly explain why every person who takes the mark will be damned.

Maybe spirits see our DNA, and when it contains certain flags, they enter us and do what they do, or they pass by because it says they’re barred. Maybe it’s like the blood on the lintels during the first Passover.

The flood was God’s effort to cleanse the earth of the DNA of fallen angels who impregnated women. What if the mark is Satan’s effort to use science to spread that DNA? What if he’s trying to hack DNA in order to cheat in the genocidal war? He uses the internet to imitate the way the Holy Spirit connects Christians. Why wouldn’t he use gene modification to imitate the spread of salvation?

I won’t take the vaccine. Not until I have reason to be comfortable with it. Covid is a mild disease, I’m not afraid of death, and I think I’ve already had covid. It’s not a big deal to me. The prospect of getting deeper into the body of the Beast is repugnant to me.

Right now, I may have three decades of life left, and they’re the worst decades, unless you count childhood, which is pretty awful. On top of that, I would have to live them in a world that hates me with unprecedented intensity and cruelty. I’m not all that desperate to be here during the diaper and weakness years.

We all get old. We all fall apart. We all die. It’s going to happen to every person who reads this, barring the rapture or early death. How hard are you willing to work to hold on just a little longer? What are you willing to give up? The word says he that loves his life will lose it.

Cling to Whatever Works

It’s December 26, and I am still here.

For a few months, I’ve had a powerful impression that the rapture would occur by December 24. I didn’t know whether to trust it or not. There are some things I believe I receive from God, which I have found to be completely trustworthy. Others have not always panned out. I suppose it’s up to me to decide which things to hold onto and which to discard.

From time to time, I get words and phrases, like, “I will not be rushed,” or, “There is nothing good about worry.” I generally record these things so I can refer to them later. They have always turned out to be consistent with the Bible and my understanding of Christianity, and as far as I can recall, none have turned out to be wrong. I believe I can go on trusting these words.

I also started practicing prophecy. It’s like praying in tongues, but you let yourself go in your native language. Derek Prince recommended it. I had some false starts, but these days, nothing I say turns out to be a problem. I don’t find myself making specific predictions, but God tells me he will give me victory, that I shouldn’t worry, that the evil times the world is going through won’t touch me, that I belong to him, and so on. Biblical prophecy isn’t always about the future, and when it is, it is often vague, so I don’t see any problems.

It seems like what I’m doing is like prayer in tongues, only stronger, because I understand what I’m saying. That makes sense to me, because Paul seemed to say that prophecy was better than prayer in tongues. One good thing about it is that you can relay what you hear to other people without resorting to interpretation.

Prophecy looks sound.

When I ask God yes or no questions, I get answers that sometimes turn out to be wrong. I don’t know if this is because my own desires make me override God’s real answers or because I’m imagining answers. The problems seem to be worst when dates are involved. It may be that my own biases are the problem.

I have had dreams that seemed prophetic, and as far as I know, they have proven reliable. The important thing is to know which dreams came from God and which ones are garbage.

Prayer in tongues is completely trustworthy. It never fails to work, and the more I do it, the better life gets. I have tried interpretation, and it appears to work, too.

I thought I should write this, because I often write about things I think God has told me. If I find out I have deceived myself, I should inform other people who listen to me, so they won’t be deceived, too.

I wish I could point to a preacher who has the answers, but if such a person exists, I don’t know who he is. They’re all unsatisfactory. They can only take you so far. You have to learn from the Holy Spirit.

Do I still think the rapture is imminent? Absolutely. There are too many positive indications. We are losing our free will because of technology, we appear to be seeing the dawn of the tribulation, the last great Christian country on earth has cast its vote for Satan, people are getting too filthy to share the planet with, and leaving us here no longer pays off for God the way it used to.

My advice is to keep praying in tongues and to keep asking God for correction and revelation. Read Psalm 32 and work on self-examination, confession, and repentance. Ask God to do the hard work for you, because otherwise, it will never get done. You can’t do it. Separate yourself from the common culture. There is no point in trying to please people who are going to hell.

Are You Really a Maker if You Buy Stuff?

I am still overthinking the business of procuring a new welding table.

To re-cover old ground, I thought I might buy a Fabblock table, which is a box made from 1/4″ plate, supported by transverse ribs welded to it on the underside. Then I thought maybe I should buy an Arc Flat table, which would be two or more cast iron boxes that could be bolted together side by side. Then I considered making my own table from a sheet of plate. After that, I thought maybe I should buy strips of plate, mill them flat, and bolt them to a table side by side with 2″ gaps between them.

I would like to have a fairly flat table. My current table has a 1/16″ crown in the middle, which means it’s pretty flat. I don’t want anything wavier than that. The biggest challenge in welding is putting things together square and flat, and the flatter your table is, the easier it will be.

I was getting to the point where buying strips of plate seemed like the way to go. Then I saw another sales pitch. It came from Texas Metal Works, a company that makes box-style steel tables.

TMW, as I will call it out of laziness, has a page where they defend their tables. One of the problems with choosing a table is the fact that a lot of the most detailed information comes from people who are trying to sell you things. It makes the information hard to trust. You have to dig around and try to determine how sound it is. Anyway, TMW’s page attempts to debunk a video made by a company called Fireball Tools.

Fireball makes inventive tools, including cast iron panels you can attach to a frame to create your own table. You can’t make tables of arbitrary size, because the panels are 12″ by 24″. A panel costs $125, and it requires a little machining, which I can do easily. If I made a 24″ by 54″ table, which is as close as I could come using Fireball products, the panels alone would run me $650, so figure $800 for a table which would be smaller than I want.

Fireball criticized Fabblocks. A standard Fabblock is made from 1/4″ steel. You can get thicker tables, but 1/4″ is where they start. TMW makes a table which is nearly the same thing, so when Fireball criticized Fabblocks, TMW had a dog in the fight.

Jason Marburger, the Fireball Tool guy, took a Fabblock and stuck a clamp into one of its fixture holes. Then he put about 1,000 pounds of force on it. When he was done, the hole had a burr around the edge. The clamp had a round post that went through the hole, and it worked by catching on the hole as pressure was applied. This only works because holes allow round rods to lean slightly. If they stood straight in the holes, they would slide right out. Because they lean over, there is friction.

I thought the Fireball video showed that 1/4″ steel was a bad idea, but TMW makes some good points.

1. No one in his right mind puts 1,000 pounds of force on a welding clamp. I agree with this point. If you have to put that much force on a clamp, something is wrong, and when you weld your joint, it will have an internal stress trying to open it, just as strong as the force you had to apply to close it.

2. Some welding accessories are made to work with 1/4″ steel, and if you make it thicker, you can get compatibility issues.

3. TMW is only too happy to make thicker tables on request, and they make more money from them, but they advise people to go with thinner tops instead.

4. TMW makes welding tables in a commercial environment, they can make new ones for very little, and they use their own 1/4″ tables to make the ones they sell.

TMW put up photos of one of their big tables hanging from two clamps, and they showed that the damage to the holes was so slight, they couldn’t be sure the clamps did it.

So we have two companies duking it out. Both make expensive products, but only TMW advises you to buy cheaper ones.

TMW says you can’t really get extreme, lasting flatness without spending several times as much money. Other companies try to make it sound like their lower-tier tables are extremely flat. For example, they’ll say the plates are cut on laser machines that have tolerances of a few thousandths or ten-thousandths of an inch over long distances, but they don’t point out that the tolerance of a machine isn’t the tolerance of a product it makes. Once the cut plate comes off the machine, things can happen to it in the assembly process.

Here’s a quotation:

All providers cut parts for welding tables on industrial CNC lasers, which are built to very tight tolerances. For example, a Baileigh Fiber Laser quotes .0004? per foot of repeatability, and ~.005? minimum cutting width. And while these numbers are impressive, they have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of fabrication of a finished product coming off them! They are products on their own.

Of course, that passage comes from a page in which TMW is comparing its own table to a truly flat one costing much more, so caveat emptor.

Making a table would validate my existence as a welder/fabricator. A lot of welders deride people who buy tables. On the other hand, zillions of professionals buy tables, so it’s probably more accurate to say that a real professional buys instead of building.

I figure I can make a decent table for under $800, whereas an assembled 5′ by 2.5′ TMW table could be sitting in my driveway next week for $1700. A 5′ by 2′ Fabblock kit, unassembled, would run $1250.

To make things more complicated, a guy just told me flat tables don’t stay flat once you use them. Does he know what he’s talking about? I don’t know. He’s a random guy on a forum. For all I know, his metal-bonding experience consists of several adventures with a Radio Shack soldering iron.

At least I’ve come to a tentative decision regarding table size. I was thinking of 3′ by 4′, but now I’m thinking 2.5′ by 5′. The square footage is nearly the same, but I would get an extra foot of length, and I think that would be much more useful than the 6 inches of width I would lose.

All this cogitation is based on the premise that the rapture isn’t coming this year. Still not sure what to think about that. I have never “predicted” that it would, but I keep having strong impressions that it will, and then there were the two Christmas-related rapture dreams I had. Also, other people have had rapture dreams involving Christmas. In my dreams, I found myself singing “I’ll be Home for Christmas,” and a lady who heard about these dreams said she had found herself singing that song in her dreams, too, and that it made sense to her after reading about my experiences.

If the rapture is upon us, there is no point in buying or building a welding table. On the other hand, if I place an order or start working on a table, and the rapture comes, my trying to get a new table won’t cause any problems.

When it comes to expensive tools, you need experience in order to know what to buy, but if you never buy anything, you aren’t likely to get experience. I guess I should make a decision and jump in. It looks like a maximum of around $900 is at stake, since I have to spend around $800 no matter what, and an assembled factory table would run around $1700.

Generosity Should be Rewarded

I want to send out a prayer request for a reader.

A while back, I put up a blog post about two young friends I called Diamond and Silk. They came to visit me on the farm, and I taught them how to shoot pistols. I wrote about the problems they had, finding ammunition.

Longtime Reader XC put up a comment offering to send them cartridges. He said he didn’t want to see women go about unarmed, and he had some .380 he was not going to use.

I put him in contact with Silk, and they worked out a shipment. Then nothing happened.

Eventually, the ammo showed up, and XC provided an explanation. He was delayed by a heart attack. In spite of a grave health issue, he still lived up to a promise he made to two strangers.

He sent 400 rounds, which he could have sold for about $300 on Gunbroker.

Anyway, I am asking people to pray for his health and a continually improving relationship with God.

God Ends Lack

I got an unexpected surprise today, and I got relief from a long drought.

Yesterday, I wrote about my friend Tina. I used to drive her to church every day. I don’t hear from her often, but a few days back, she texted me and invited me to watch her online graduation. She had earned a master’s degree.

I watched the ceremony, and I was very glad. I mentored a young man named Travis for years, and he was supposed to graduate from college this school year. He died after an accidental shooting. Seeing Tina succeed where he had been cut off was rewarding.

Today, my phone rang before 9 a.m. It was Tina. She called to ask my advice about some problems she was having.

As I wrote yesterday, Tina comes from a broken family, and her sister had to raise her. Tina has had to look after herself and plan her own future. She is an achiever. She is extremely focused and goal-oriented. She worked hard and earned scholarships. Now she’s out on her own, she hasn’t been blessed with a husband, and she is still carrying too much weight. She is having some problems with her landlady, who doesn’t seem to understand how residential rentals work. She also wanted prayer because she wanted to hear from God more clearly and more abundantly.

As far as I can recall, I have not had anyone to pray with since March of last year. Of course, I’m available, but people I know don’t seem inclined to take advantage. I used to pray with Travis, and I was able to share things God had given me so Travis would also be helped. Travis helped me as well. For a long time, I’ve been asking God to send other people to fill the void.

I own residential rental properties, so while I am not an expert on property law, I know a few things, and I was able to give Tina some information so she would understand her situation better. That was nice, but the real blessings were that I was able to share tactics God had shown me, and that we prayed together.

Yesterday morning, I got a supernatural revelation concerning my connection to God. It helped open the channel so he could give me the things he wanted me to have. It helped me know I was not imposing on him and that he was eager to supply and support me. I got to tell Tina about it. She has been fighting her own battles all her life, with less help than she should be getting. She should have a Spirit-filled husband as well as friends who team up with her supernaturally. She should have a house. She shouldn’t be worried about bills. She should have someone to pray with every day. She shouldn’t feel she will sink if she stops paddling.

We prayed for God to help her landlady to become Spirit-led. We spoke defeat to her efforts to put unreasonable demands on Tina. We prayed for Tina to hear God’s voice and to know she is part of him. We prayed for God to bring her together with a man who will stand by her.

I told her she really needed to spend time praying in tongues every day. I said it was where revelation began. She accepted the advice.

It’s great to be blessed, but it’s frustrating when you can’t get anyone else to listen to your story and receive what God gave you. Being able to help Tina was wonderful, especially after what happened to Travis. I hope we’ll get together for prayer in the future, and I hope to see results in her life. Maybe soon she won’t have to call an old man a long way off in order to have someone to pray with.

I suppose praying with almost anyone is a good thing, but it’s especially nice to pray with people who know a few things and have some connection with God. You get tired of going over the basics with people who are still at square one.

I’m not a model Christian, but I know a lot of helpful things. I will be very grateful if God helps me share a few, effectively, during my remaining time here.

What Graduation Looks like in 2020

Today I’m getting a taste of everyone else’s 2020. I’m watching an online graduation made necessary by coronavirus. Even the classes took place online.

I was a deacon at a church called New Dawn Ministries. While I was there, I met a young lady named Tina. She was in her teens. I don’t know a great deal about her early life, but I know her family was very dysfunctional, and she was raised by her older sister.

Tina made the most of her situation. She was extremely motivated. She participated in beauty contests in order to get scholarships, and she ended up going to the University of Miami.

I lived near the University, and her family lived in Broward County. They asked me if I could drive her to church every Sunday, and I agreed.

Tina did well in college, and she decided to get a master’s degree in leadership and management, with a concentration in human resources. She has been attending Purdue’s online program, and today she graduates. A few days back, she sent me an invitation by text message.

The ceremony appears in a window in a web browser. There are only 4 or 5 people on camera in the room with the podium. They are all wearing masks except when they speak. It felt very strange, watching figures in robes and masks filing into that dark, lonely room. It was like watching a scene from a post-apocalyptic science fiction movie, except I was watching real life.

They’re announcing the names of the graduates in alphabetical order. They’re showing a photo of each graduate. We’re in the B’s, and Tina’s last name starts with H.

Tina knew my friend Travis, who died in May. They attended UM at the same time, and they were friends. I had some hope they would pair up and marry.

I won’t get to see Travis graduate, but at least Tina made it.

I saw her photo and sent her a congratulatory text. Now I’ve closed the browser. No point in sitting through dozens of photos of strangers.

I was thinking about Travis, and I decided to do some counting. I counted black male and female graduates, with the intention of stopping when I got to 10 of either. When I quit, I had counted 10 women and only three men. Unfortunate.

It’s funny that I watched the graduation today. I had a dream last night, and it seems related.

I used to write for Tropic, the Sunday magazine of the Miami Herald. I met a number of the writers and employees. I remember them. Dave Barry, Gene Weingarten, Joel Achenbach, Michelle Genz, Philip Brooker, Ray Bubel, John Dorschner, and Doris Mansour. The editor I generally worked with was named Tom. I remember going to his house for a party. He had just built his own deck. Dave Barry’s young son was taking karate classes, and while I talked to Dave, his son kept punching me in the leg.

I never fit in with the group. There was a hardness to the writers, except for Dave Barry, who seemed to float above it because of his ability and his fame. They were cold, worldly people who looked out for themselves and had no romance in their hearts. Maybe it was because they were journalists. They published my work, but I felt there was a barrier I could never cross. I could never be an insider.

I seemed to connect better with the art people. Of course, I wasn’t in a position to compete with them, although one of my drawings did get published.

In my dream, I was at an outdoor table, eating lunch with several Christians and Tom. In the dream, the Herald still owned its gigantic waterfront headquarters. The table was maybe two miles north of the building, on the other side of I-95.

In the dream, I had quit writing for Tropic. In real life, I quit in about 1988. I had become a Christian, I felt Tropic and the Herald were not very helpful, and again, I didn’t fit in. As the relationship diminished, Tom sensed it. The last thing I remember him saying to me in real life was, “Don’t disappear.”

It felt like Tom was having lunch so far north of the Herald because he wasn’t comfortable being seen with me. I could tell he wanted me to do some more work for him, and I was willing to do small jobs, just to be helpful. He wasn’t direct, but he hinted at a desire to bring me back in.

Our lunch companions started talking about his choice to have lunch so far from his office. I got up to throw my soda can in the trash, and I said, “It’s because we’re conservatives. Or because we’re Christians.”

I woke up, and I felt distressed. I found myself thinking about the years I had wasted, trying to get the devil’s world to accept me. I tried to make it as a writer, and I had two comic strips that reached the development stage. Many times, I had the feeling I had finally broken the ice. Success was just a few weeks away. But it never came. I was grabbing Satan’s bait over and over. I didn’t realize there were two different families on the planet, and when it came to earthly promotion, I belonged to the wrong one.

If you belong to God, you’re not supposed to get wrapped up in secular accomplishments. The word says God sets him that is godly apart for himself. You shouldn’t feel you have to win prizes or titles. You shouldn’t believe you have to have your name on buildings. You shouldn’t feel like a failure because you’re not a big name in some field or other. Secular accomplishments are God’s garbage. They don’t go with you to heaven. Up there, your service to God is what makes you rich. You get to see your wealth every time you see a person you helped to make it.

Satan likes to dangle bait in front of people. He’ll say, “You can serve God and be an Oscar winner. You can be a billionaire. You can win a Nobel Prize.” He’ll give you the idea that you glorify God with your silly achievements, as if God needs you to help him get publicity. Generally, in order to get what he offers you, you have to whore out. If you don’t, he keeps you from winning, and he gives his tacky prizes and ribbons to people with less ability but more plasticity.

I didn’t feel good, thinking about the wasted years, but then I got a supernatural revelation that made me feel wonderful.

Every Christian who understands the Holy Spirit and grace knows we are not supposed to serve God through hard work or superior natural ability. We are not supposed to earn; we are supposed to receive an inheritance. This is why the volumes of the Bible are called testaments. A testament is a will. Jesus died, and we are supposed to inherit what he earned.

Spirits work and move in every person. The only spirit a Christian should carry is the Holy Spirit, but many of us are inhabited by more than one spirit. People who don’t know God are full of evil spirits, but they don’t know the Holy Spirit.

A Spirit-led Christian is supposed to be like a hand connected to a body. A hand doesn’t feed itself. It doesn’t even have a mouth. It doesn’t get a job to pay for its upkeep. The body feeds it and looks after it. A Christian who thinks he has to take care of himself and guide himself is like a severed hand with delusions.

If I am truly God’s son, I am supposed to be as much a part of him as my hand is part of me. My hand is supported from within the body, through various vessels. As a Christian, I am supposed to be supplied by God at all times, and–this is the important part–I should never feel that he is reluctant to supply ever need, more abundantly than I need. He allowed himself to be tortured to death so he could do that.

I really am God’s son, and he really is eager to do things for me.

I knew these things before last night, but you know how it is with revelation. I hope. You can know things perfectly well and still not have a good grasp of them. A supernatural revelation will make knowledge part of you, undeniable and suddenly obvious.

Things like faith, love, peace, and knowledge are supposed to flow into us without end, just as blood flows into hands. God didn’t put us here so we could be isolated and poor.

Satan isolates people and makes them feel alone and small, and that makes sense, because he’s a predator. Predators like to get their prey alone. God binds us to himself so we have his power and invulnerability of God. If we don’t see these things fully manifested, it’s because we’re blocking God with our misconceptions and disobedience.

There is always symmetry in the supernatural. If Satan cuts me off from help and prevents me from succeeding, God will make me an important member of his family, and he will give me victory.

If I had gotten rich writing or drawing a comic strip, I would be a mess. I wouldn’t have realized I needed to get closer to God. I would be subject to tremendous temptation, and I would probably give in all the time. I would have a social circle of cold, godless people who would keep drawing me away from God. I might have a horrible atheist wife (or ex-wife) who would be like a painful tumor to me. I would have friends and business acquaintances who would take advantage of me and make me feel bad about myself. I would have no prayer life. I would not know how to get God’s help when I or someone else needed it. I would be a rich failure.

The revelation I got last night is life-changing. Things will be much better from now on.

I hope you will keep trying to get close to God. It’s the only plan that works. The others are just traps.

Uncensored Upstarts Ease the Pain of Youtube Tyranny

Today I went against common sense and joined another conservative social site. It’s called Newtube. If you can’t tell from the name, it’s a Youtube competitor that doesn’t do political or scientific censorship.

I have very little faith in niche social media sites. They appear, they crawl, they stumble, and they disappear. They fail to serve their primary purpose, which is to spread information to the general public. If you’re on Gab or Full30 or Parler or Newtube, you’re probably only reaching other conservatives, and they already agree with you, so you’re not accomplishing much.

I have to admit: Newtube doesn’t seem quite as weak as the other sites. It functions, which is something other sites can’t always say, and there are thousands of people using it.

A scientist named Tony Heller has a very popular Youtube channel I enjoy. He also has a website called Realclimatescience.com. He has presented some very powerful information which does great damage to the coronavirus and global warming party lines. Youtube censors him. They are threatening to shut him down, because dissent is violence against humanity in the Antichrist’s homogenized future. Heller started a Newtube channel, and he tells people about it in his Youtube videos.

He has 8169 Newtube subscribers. That’s around 8% of his Youtube subscriber count, but it’s not negligible. Also, Newtube’s site loads without balking, so it looks like Newtube isn’t suffering from technical problems caused by undercapitalization.

He just did another video complaining about coronavirus propaganda. As you may know, South Dakota has a conservative governor. Her name is Kristi Noem. She refused to lock the state down, and South Dakota has done well economically and epidemiologically. The MSM can’t stand it, so they publish facially absurd criticisms, and Heller is going after them.

Here’s an example. Her grandmother died in a nursing home. The Daily Beast, which is appropriately and perhaps prophetically named, put out a silly message saying Kristi Noem’s grandmother had died in a facility “ravaged” by covid. Problem: she didn’t have covid. She was 98, and she died because she was old. It’s horrific that CBS left this information out. Tony Heller corrected the problem.

CBS put out a deceptive story saying South Dakota had one of the two highest hospital bed occupancy rates. Problem: 17% of ICU beds are free, and overall, 40% of hospital beds are free. If you’ve ever been to a hospital and looked around, you know they do a pretty good job of keeping beds filled. A hospital with 60% occupancy or 17% ICU occupancy is not a busy hospital. Heller’s video points these things out.

Only about 8100 people have seen the video. Pretty good for a conservative site. His Youtube videos typically get several times that many views.

It’s nice that someone is making an effort to provide an uncensored alternative. I think it will fail, however. The tech mammoths have too big a head start, and Newtube will probably never attract anyone who isn’t conservative. Spreading information among conservatives is helpful, but it won’t do much to change minds, since the minds that need to be changed have chosen to live under censorship.

I like Newtube. Maybe I’ll enjoy it, although I can forget about watching it on my Roku sets. I don’t think it will have much of an effect on public discourse. The left won and won big, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to catch up.

It’s sobering to see my predictions about thought control coming true. When did I start saying the left would do this to us? Long, long ago. Somehow, I am still shocked to see it happening. It’s cliche, but I’ll say it: this is America. This isn’t supposed to happen here.

I think the rapture is imminent, and if that’s true, so is the tribulation, which follows the rapture immediately. I wonder what censorship will look like during the tribulation.

Right now, there are millions of real Christians on earth, praying and doing what Christians do. Our presence restrains God’s anger and Satan’s evil works. The day after we leave, the restraints will be gone. Things statists wouldn’t dare do today will suddenly become acceptable.

Right now, the penalty for dissent is censorship, or you may lose a job or get doxxed. What will the penalties be like after the rapture? The past tells us what humans are capable of doing in the future. Actually, we don’t have to look at the past. We can look at extreme behavior that takes place right now, in places like Iran and North Korea.

The British had an empire that was at least as bad as the Third Reich. We don’t like to talk about it, but it’s a fact. They used to drag dissenters through London naked, hang them until they were nearly dead, sever their genitals in front of crowds, remove their internal organs, and fry their body parts while they were still alive. The monarchs themselves ordered it. If a Christian nation could do that, then godless 21st-century America will be capable of arresting, imprisoning, torturing, and killing those who reject propaganda.

Consider the Catholic Church. It used to be the biggest terrorist organization on earth. People were terrified of the church. They knew they could be burned alive for saying the wrong things.

Think of revolutionary France. Think about Cuba. Think about the USSR and China. Things can get very, very bad here.

We say, “It can’t happen here,” but we don’t ask why it can’t happen. The presence of praying Christians is the reason. Once we’re gone, it can and will happen here.

I mentored a young man named Travis Quinn, and he died in May from an accidental gunshot wound he received a month earlier. Today I happened to look at some Whatsapp texts he sent in March. He said he had had a dream of a world war. He said everything was exploding. Ships and planes were everywhere. The planes were dropping bombs. He felt surrounded.

Travis had prophetic dreams. I know, because I interpreted some of them. I think Travis foresaw the Antichrist’s coming world.

If you want to enjoy the company of people who haven’t been completely deceived yet, Newtube will probably bring you some satisfaction. If you’re hoping it’s the start of a movement that will change the world, I think you’ll be disappointed. It’s more likely that its membership records will be used to help leftists round conservatives, Jews, and Christians up for “special treatment.”

The Sooner You Listen, the Less You Suffer

If you hope to have any ammunition at all in the coming months, you have already blown it, so you need to get out there and see what you can do to mitigate the problem.

My childhood buddy Mike is visiting this week. He doesn’t get many opportunities to shoot where he lives. He’s in the Northeast. Poor guy. He’s bringing some firearms, but he hasn’t been on top of the ammo situation.

He has a rifle in 6.5 Creedmoor, and he hasn’t even fired it yet. I have been looking around, trying to help him find something to shoot. He has three problems. First, he can’t get anything locally. Second, ordering ammunition online is generally very expensive right now. Third, he can’t order ammunition online anyway, because it would arrive after his trip.

I know, I know. He should have been shopping in May.

The best local deal I could find for him was about $50 per box. Crazy. Ordinarily, very good 6.5 ammo goes for under $35, and a lot of it is considerably cheaper. A business near me sold Mike several boxes, and they’re holding it until he picks it up.

I use a site that provides alerts when ammunition is put up for sale. Today at 5:18 a.m., I got a message saying Sellier & Bellot 140-grain 6.5 Creedmoor FMJ was selling at a good price. I didn’t see the alert until after 10. Every box had sold by then.

I found a site that said 14 boxes were available. I ordered 10. I received an email acknowledging the order. Things looked good. Then the owner of the shop emailed me and said the computers were not keeping up with actual stock. He had nothing left, and the order was canceled.

I found a third site with a very good price, and it allowed me to put 5 boxes in my cart. Then the transaction wouldn’t go through. The shop’s proprietor emailed and said the company that processes credit cards was having problems. He said he would hold the ammo for me until things started working.

That’s where I am right now.

Why did I order ammunition, if it won’t be here for Mike? Because I already have the same stuff here. I can give Mike cartridges from my cache, he can reimburse me, and the new ammo will fill the hole. Maybe we can get the local place to take the expensive ammo back. They have no reason not to, since they should be able to sell it again in about 15 minutes.

I hope he doesn’t get stuck with overpriced rounds, but he really should have been preparing in the early summer.

As for me, the alerts paid a handsome windfall. I have some 6.5 hunting bullets for reloading, but I didn’t order as many as I should have. Today I got an alert, and I was able to get 300 more for a good price. Now I just have to learn how to reload rifle ammo. And I need some critters to shoot.

You may wonder why I don’t just give Mike rifle ammo, like a good friend. Well, if I give him ammo that cost me 60 cents per round, I may have to pay $2.00 per round to replace it, and I might not be able to get it at all. If one of us is going to have to overpay by a factor of three, it shouldn’t be me. And I do plan to give him a certain amount of ammunition. While reloading materials are scarce, prices have not changed, so I can still reload economically. I have some pistol rounds I can replace for much less than the going price of $45 per box. He can make it up to me by springing for pizza or something.

While he’s here we have to mount a scope on his rifle. That means buying rings. We’ll have to hit Bass Pro. We may have to lap the rings, since he is not likely to splurge for precision equipment. I have never lapped rings before, but it looks like a simple job, and I have the tools.

Remember the days when you could go to the gun range and enjoy yourself without wondering if you were shooting the last ammunition you would ever be able to afford? Man, those were good times.

Thank God I stocked up on a few things. Some calibers could be problematic in my future, but significant amounts of others may end up in my will. I should be able to enjoy my hobby to one degree or another for as long as I live, or until leftists confiscate everything and put me to work sweeping up dead birds at a wind farm.

Oddly, you can still get AR-15 ammunition at acceptable prices. It’s as though supernatural forces wanted us to be well-armed so we could murder each other during the tribulation.

The AR-15 is extremely popular, and it was designed for combat, not putting food on the table. Looks like Americans will be extremely well supplied if Trump haters riot and murder as predicted. I would expect to see leftists who are generally unskilled, unorganized, undisciplined, and poorly armed, facing defending conservatives who would fare much, much better.

It makes sense. If you think you’re entitled to equality of outcome in everything, regardless of whether you do anything to earn it, your entitlement mindset is also likely to apply to civil war and terrorism. You will probably expect to be handed victory because you belong to a group with a lot of social credit.

It’s easy to pick on old, unarmed Caucasians and Asians in public places. It’s easy to throw poop and bottles at the police, who are legally barred from using real force. Going into red areas and invading the properties of seasoned shooters and former military personnel will result in totally different outcomes.

There will be no participation trophies or affirmative action in a civil war. If you don’t know what you’re doing when you try to hurt others, meritocracy will put you in the grave, and all the street murals in the world won’t help. A disabled young man named Gage Grosskreutz could tell you all about it.

War isn’t tee ball. Leftism conflicts with reality, and the harsher reality is, the more the conflict is exposed.

It’s very sad. The world is full of human beings who could be agents of God’s love, and who could be preserved and unified forever in a realm of peace and joy, but most are condemning themselves to indescribable eternal torment because their pride and sadism won’t let them listen to correction.

Insert Clever 20/20 Vision Reference Here

I continue to marvel at the dual realities that exist in America.

For a long time, I’ve been writing about the alternate reality the children of darkness live in. Covid has made it much more obvious. Leftists and other enemies of God live in terror, locked in their houses, obsessing on masks and other things that don’t really do much to halt the spread of disease. They’re scared to death of a mild respiratory disease that does what other mild respiratory diseases do: it kills a tiny percentage of the people it infects, generally taking those who were in poor health and likely to die soon regardless.

I can understand why an octogenarian would worry, but young people are wearing masks when they mow their yards.

It’s amazing that we killed off old people with bad policies instead of protecting the easily-identified groups who were really vulnerable. Liberal governors sent the sick into old folks homes, pretty much guaranteeing the enormous loss of life we saw in the Northeast. What Cuomo did is pretty similar to the Inuit practice of exposing old people in winter to kill them, except the Inuits knew what they were doing.

Today I read about smallpox. Its fatality rate was about 30%, and people who got it died slowly, in agony, covered with extremely painful sores that made them feel like they were on fire whenever they moved. That’s what real plagues are like, but half of America is sacrificing its liberty and prosperity in the vain hope of avoiding a disease that kills something like one in 1000 victims.

Antichristians have more shortages than God’s children. People in major cities went without meat for months while people like me were buying it on sale. Generally, antichristians have fewer firearms, and they have had not been able to come anywhere near matching the abundance of ammunition Christians had on hand when the crisis started. Christian areas have fewer economic problems, too.

Today I can’t help thinking about the two realities. Toilet paper and antiseptic wipes are disappearing again in blue areas. Here, toilet paper is not hard to get, and antiseptic wipes are on sale. I saw canisters of wipes selling for $2.98 at Walmart this week, and I bought Lysol wipes for $4.98 later. Try buying them on Amazon or Ebay. Expect to pay nearly $30.

Here’s something crazy: local Walmarts are full of wipes, but Walmart’s website will not sell them. You have to go in and get them yourself. This means people in blue areas, where Walmarts have no wipes, can’t get them at all!

I have enough toilet paper and paper towels to get me through the better part of a year. I had ample supplies at the beginning of last week, and I picked up a little more when I heard the insanity was starting again. I never did without paper goods during the last wave of craziness, and I expect to do fine this time, too.

I wouldn’t have stocked up at all, but I know that fear of shortages causes shortages. Once one lemming goes over the cliff, the rest will follow. Even here, things are tightening up somewhat, and I have to get involved simply to insure that my supply won’t end up in someone else’s 1000-roll stockpile.

When my mother talked about old men from the country who were plainspoken and unsophisticated, she would say they were “rough as cobs.” The toilet paper shortage made me think about that. Now I know what the expression means. Hope I never have to experience it.

I’ve got lots of rubbing alcohol, which I use to clean counters. I have more hand sanitizer than I know what to do with; I bought one type and then decided I liked another, so I stocked up on it, too. I have all kinds of wipes. I bought extra in case my cousin who lives in Illinois needs me to ship them.

I don’t think I can get Lysol spray unless I pay through the nose online, but then I never used it anyway. My cousin asked about it. Her mother is in ill health, and they go through a lot of cleaning products. Today at the grocery, I saw another spray which is full of the really nasty chemical in Lysol. I sent my cousin a photo and asked if she wanted me to get it for her.

Here’s a tip: Lysol is ethanol and quaternary ammonium. You can buy both separately under other brand names, and Home Depot sells spray bottles.

I’m making crisis food again. I have a batch of dried apples in the dehydrator, and beef slices for jerky are marinating in the fridge. My paranoia room is starting to overflow. I don’t think I’ll be here for the really hard times, but I may be wrong, and if I’m right, someone else will benefit from my efforts.

I could have done better on the ammunition front. There are some calibers I never expect to have to buy again, but others are different. Example: I didn’t get into 6.5mm Creedmoor until this year. I have what most people would consider a lot of 6.5, but I wouldn’t be comfortable maintaining what I would consider a normal routine of range trips with it.

Decent Creedmore ammunition still pops up from time to time, and I have materials to make 400 more rounds, so things could be worse. I should probably try to get a few dozen shotgun shells for squirrels. They’re not too hard to get.

Here’s a weird lesson. The traditional wisdom is that you should buy guns in common calibers so ammunition is easy to find. Forget that. I’ve taken on tons of ammo in unpopular calibers since the insanity started, at very good prices. You can get popular stuff cheaper during normal times, but when things go nuts, your 9mm and .22 weapons will starve. I think 6.5 cents per round is a good price for .22 ammo. Right now, people are selling the cheap stuff for 28.

Today I learned something disturbing. I am not storing jerky correctly. I found one piece in a bag with what could have been a thin patch of mold on it. I wasn’t sure. It could have been solidified fat. I did a responsible scientific test to find out. I ate it. It seemed okay. I hope it was. I’m not dead yet, and I’m not having visions. I started burrowing through my other bags, and I found one that definitely had serious mold. I couldn’t rationalize eating it, so I threw it out.

It didn’t occur to me that I should not be opening and closing bags randomly as my desire for jerky dictated. I should have left all the bags closed except for the one I was slowly emptying, and I should have put that one in the fridge.

Now all of my jerky is in the freezer while I take steps to save it.

I learned that I should use oxygen absorbers to slow spoilage down, so I ordered a bunch. I’m also going to move the meat to vacuum bags.

I plan to heat it before I move it. I read that mold and most mold spores die at 120°, so I’ll heat it past that point before storing it again.

I think the reason only one bag went funny is that I killed the bacteria and mold when I dehydrated the jerky. My dehydrator works at 155°. When I opened bags to take pieces out, I must have reintroduced mold and microbes.

It may be that I didn’t dry the meat enough. I’m not sure. It seems awfully dry. Dryer than many store brands.

I can move it to vacuum bags, freeze most of them, and leave one out to see what happens to it. I don’t really want my freezer jammed up with jerky, so if I can store it at room temperature, I will.

There are no problems with my dried apples yet, but I plan to add oxygen absorbers anyway. My grandmother just put hers in big jars and forgot about them, and they never spoiled. Her apples were somewhat drier than mine, though. I went by guidelines I found on the web.

Things are going well. It’s frustrating to hear about other people who are trapped in leftist strongholds where it’s like Soylent Green every day. I pray for God to reach people, but I don’t think there is much time left.

This is What Shopping Looks Like as the Antichrist Approaches

I finally did it. I broke down and ordered me a plate carrier.

A plate carrier is an unattractive vest that holds body armor plates. You can put four in, to protect you from all sides. It works great if you get shot where you happen to be covered by a plate, if you don’t mind broken ribs and so on. Unfortunately, many things most people consider important are not found in areas typically covered by plates.

The idea, I believe, is that it’s better to lose a part you don’t need to survive as long as your head remains alive. I’m not sure I agree, but that appears to be the philosophy.

Plates aren’t the whole picture. You have to get trauma pads. These are stiff foam pads that go behind the plates. When a bullet hits a plate, it may dent it, and it will definitely transmit energy to the person behind it. Pads are supposed to spread the impact out. I don’t know if they work. They look okay in Youtube videos people shoot behind their trailers.

You can also get ballistic helmets. I don’t like the word “ballistic.” It means nearly nothing. I would call them “anti-projectile” helmets. They’re not that great, in case you’re wondering. They’re supposed to be very good at protecting people from light shrapnel, but if you get shot in the head while wearing one, there is a good chance the bullet will go through OR it will push the helmet in so far, your skull will be broken. It’s still a lot better than the product most people wear in armed confrontations, which is nothing.

I don’t have a helmet. I felt like God wanted me to get armor, but I haven’t heard anything about helmets. That’s good, because a decent new one will run at least $450, and good luck finding one you can have in less than a month. You can get used military helmets for maybe $200, though.

Here’s the really sad thing about helmets: they’re disposable. At least the fancy plastic ones are. When a Kevlar helmet takes one shot, it pretty much shatters where the bullet hits it. The next round that hits in the same general area will not hit hard plastic. It will hit mushy broken plastic. The only remedy is a new helmet.

A couple of companies make steel helmets, but everyone makes fun of them. Not sure why. They’re just as light as plastic, they don’t push in nearly as much when they get shot, they don’t shatter when they get shot, and they work better around the edges. If you shoot a plastic helmet near an edge, it’s much more likely to let the bullet through. My best guess is that people hate steel helmets for the same reason people used to hate rifle scopes: a stupid, baseless resistance to change. But I don’t know much about the subject. It’s just an impression.

I was thinking it might be neat to have a thermal scope, in case Soros sends a busload of entitlement-minded, violent racists to my house at night. I could spot them hundreds of yards away, and they would have a pretty hard time getting close enough to me to fight back. Experts, however, say the in thing is a night vision monocular and an infrared laser. You put the monocular over one eye, you spot people in the dark, you light them up with a laser they can’t see, and then you light them up with something else.

It sounds pretty good, but I don’t think it would enable a person to hammer invaders from a really long distance. You wouldn’t see them until they were maybe a hundred yards off, and you would be in a lot of danger at that range.

Maybe the answer is a separate thermal doodad for picking up targets. You find them with it, and then you switch to night vision in order to deal with them. You could find an invader way off in the distance, which would be hard with night vision, and then once you knew where he was, you could use night vision to aim.

I don’t know. I’m just making up guesses using very limited information.

Okay; my guess was right. FLIR makes a product called the Breach. It’s a little monocular you can use to look around. And it’s dirt cheap. Only $2500. Let me check the couch cushions to see how much change I have.

A former Green Beret on Youtube says he carries a Breach for spotting, while backing it up with night vision. I guess I’m smarter than I thought.

Man, I would love to have a Breach. I could wander around my property locating critters for fun. But not $2500 worth of fun, I think.

It would be hell on coyotes and coons.

In the past, I have scoffed at people who talked about the need to be able to shoot bad guys at long distances. The main reason is that shooting a perp a long way off is nearly always murder. You can’t say you were reasonably afraid of great harm if you shot a guy with a knife a hundred yards away. But these are different times. These days, there is a real possibility that armed groups with very clear intentions might menace people from a hundred yards or more, leaving no practical way to avoid fighting. If 10 “protestors” with rifles start coming toward you from a long way off, and you know who they are and why they’re there, you can’t just wait until they get close enough to make police investigators happy. You have to start shooting while they’re still at a disadvantage.

The price of a night vision monocular is not far from the price of a Breach. I’m not sure why night vision monoculars cost so much. I bought a night vision scope for $600, from a company that also makes highly regarded monoculars. Anyway, if you wanted thermal for spotting and night vision for closing the deal, you would be looking at the price of a good used car.

It’s cheaper than a funeral, granted. But a lot of intelligent, informed people expect to do well with a $500 AR-15 and three or four mags full of ball ammo. Kyle Rittenhouse had no armor, no helmet, and no weird optics, and he successfully battled a large crowd of vicious armed aggressors bent on murdering him in the street. He killed two, maimed one, scared the rest off, and didn’t damage property or hurt the innocent.

I don’t know why I find this stuff interesting. Christianity is primarily about love. I really can’t see myself shooting anyone. Sometimes you want to be able to do a thing even if you don’t want to do it. I would be highly disturbed if I hurt anyone, even to protect innocent life, but the knowledge that I can hurt the wicked is still comforting.

Don’t be Buried Alive for Eternity

Believe it or not, I am still not perfect. From time to time, I do something that is obviously sinful. Of course, I feel bad about it later. This is especially true right now, because I keep feeling that the rapture will come before 2021. It’s possible to lose your salvation, and I don’t want to wander off into rebellion at the worst possible time.

The other day, I did something I should not have done, and afterward, I asked God for help not to do it any more.

Yesterday, I looked at Youtube while I was taking my birds out for their daily social time, and for some reason, videos about oubliettes popped up.

“Oubliette” is a French word, and it comes from the verb “oublier,” which means, “to forget.” An oubliette is a deep hole where you put people you want the world to forget. Oubliettes have been popular means of torture and murder throughout human history. They are often found in dungeons.

A common oubliette design features a cavity shaped like a wine bottle. There is a narrow opening at the top, and the cavity widens toward the bottom. There are no windows. There are no doors. The opening may be 20 feet above the floor. The living area may be too small to permit a person to lie down or even sit. Imagine having to stand until you die.

Sometimes people placed in oubliettes were fed disgusting food. Some were not fed at all. Some were lowered in on top of the bones or rotting corpses of earlier occupants.

Once you were placed in an oubliette, your only hope was that someone would eventually lower a rope, like Jesus himself, to extract you. Failing that, you were out of luck. There was no hope. You were gone for good, your enemies had won, and your suffering was going to fuel their pleasure.

It was a wonderful way for a vicious person to harm an enemy with maximal cruelty and vengeance. You take your enemy and lower him into the cistern. Once he’s in there, you go on with life, perhaps living in luxury in a palace of which the oubliette is a part, and you have the pleasure of knowing your enemy is in agony, dying slowly, in a place where no one can see or hear him. Maybe you can amplify the pleasure by having your servants throw your garbage and excrement in with him. This was done to some oubliette prisoners. How could revenge be any sharper?

The word “dungeon” means the main tower of a castle, so it must have been common for oubliette owners to keep their victims in their own houses, perhaps so they could savor their agony and humiliation.

There are oubliettes in the Bible. They aren’t called oubliettes, but they performed the same function.

Jonah was swallowed by a whale. A whale’s belly makes a fine oubliette. The language of the Bible suggests Jonah died in the whale and proceeded to hell, where he stayed until the Lord brought him back.

Jeremiah was put in a cistern in a prison yard. A cistern is a masonry structure, often underground, for storing water. My aunt got her water from a cistern. It was not a nice place. It was perhaps 10 feet deep, it was all concrete, it had an access hole big enough to let a man in to clean it, and black sediment used to accumulate in it. The water came from my aunt’s roof, and God only knows what was in it. Birds defecate on roofs. The Bible says Jeremiah’s cistern, which belonged to a prince named Malchiah, was in a prison yard, and the bottom was full of mud. “Malchiah” means “son of the king.”

Daniel was thrown into a hole where lions were kept.

Biblical tombs were like oubliettes. They had narrow entrances, they had no windows, and they were sometimes sealed with stones too large for a trapped person to move. Lazarus and Jesus both ended up in tombs. Satan tried to put Jesus in God’s oubliette under the earth, perhaps so God would have to relent and free the rebellious spirits along with Jesus.

The Bible talks a lot about saving people from “the pit” and “the mire.”

One of the worst curses in Judaism is to be forgotten. Orthodox Jews call Jesus “Yeshu,” which was never his name. They know better. His name is “Yeshua,” which means “salvation” in Hebrew. The word “yeshua” appears over and over in the Old Testament. In Hebrew, “YESHU” is an initialism for, “May his name and memory be blotted out forever.” That’s why they typically say “Yeshu” or refuse to name him at all. Some deny this, fearing persecution, but many admit it. It shows what a curse it is to be forgotten.

Today I happened to watch a video in which Messianic Rabbi Zev Porat told an Orthodox rabbi about Yeshua, and when the rabbi realized who he was talking about, he asked if he was talking about “him.” He wouldn’t say his name. Why? Because he didn’t want to keep his name alive by speaking it. He’s not the only religious Jew in Porat’s videos who won’t mention the name.

The concept of condemning someone to permanent captivity and erasing his memory is something that comes from the supernatural. God prepared the pit in the earth for spirits that couldn’t be rehabilitated. They were condemned, and that cost them their names and inheritances. They are now nameless beings without any inheritance, their presence among the children of God is unacceptable, and they will eventually be separated from us forever, in the biggest oubliette of all: the lake of fire. Once there, they will be forgotten. We will live in luxury and freedom from suffering forever, while they burn far away in God’s oubliette.

People who say they’ve seen hell describe tiny chambers and pits in which people are chewed by giant maggots and burned. Bill Wiese, who says he spent 23 minutes in hell, says he was put in a cell with two vicious creatures that had a thousand times his strength.

This stuff is real. I do not want to be in an oubliette for a minute, let alone forever. The suffering that takes place in the pit is incomprehensible to me. I can’t imagine it. Wiese said the memory of what he had seen and felt was so unpleasant it would have killed him, but God reached into his mind and changed him so he couldn’t fully recall the suffering.

I think about this, and it gives me new resistance to sin.

In the Bible, being in a confined space is a curse, and being in a large space is a blessing. You can see this in many verses and stories. You can see it in the history of Israel. When the Jews received it, it was a very big place. Now, it’s much smaller, and geographically, it’s hard to defend. Rebellion put them in a confined space. If they want it increased, they have to cooperate with God.

If you don’t make it in the rapture, you’re in danger of going to the oubliette. You have a chance to repent in the tribulation, and maybe some unsaved people will be around when Jesus returns to rule, and some of them will repent. Other than that, you’re facing the oubliette.

The rapture is a separation based on the reading of a will. “Testament” means “will.” The New Testament is the will of Jesus Christ, who died and left beneficiaries. If you’re not an heir, you have no name in heaven. You will be separated from the heirs.

It’s very scary.

I hope I keep this priceless lesson in mind until I leave the earth. I see why Paul taught about working out our salvation in fear and trembling.

I’m not overly concerned about times when I stumble. The word says that though a righteous man may stumble, he will not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholds him with his hand. But I don’t want to tempt God by sinning deliberately, counting on him to catch me afterward.

God gave me something great the other day: “The process IS the destination.” We tend to think we haven’t made it because we’re still here and we’re still imperfect. But we don’t have to be perfect on earth. We just have to be headed in the right direction when we leave. Your course is what matters. Thousands of years ago, Satan was a powerful cherub who hovered over the throne of God. Now he’s the slimiest, most contemned, most defeated and hated being in existence. I was created from dirt, and I had no idea who God was. I was born ignorant. I was misled. I sinned a lot. I damaged myself. But I’m headed for heaven and eternal joy. I’m better off here on earth than Satan was in heaven, because he was headed for hell, and I am headed for paradise. I have a name. Satan lost his.

As long as you’re sticking with the process, you’ve succeeded. It’s about all you can expect here on earth. Maybe someone down here has been perfected. I don’t know. But I know it’s not necessary in order for you to be saved or to be in good standing with God.

My life is very strange. I live in a wide place already. I have over 4,000 square feet of living space, and I live on a farm. When I drive around, I’m not jammed into crowded roads with throngs of hostile people. I feel space all around me. I think God did this for me for a reason. He wanted me to understand how he blesses people for listening.

When you look at an opportunity to sin, you’re looking at a ticket to the oubliette. I hope God reminds me of that several times a day from now on.