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.

Taking Ecclesiastes 10:18 to Heart

I learned something useful today. Putting a small amount of ginger in beef jerky really improves it.

I made another batch yesterday, and while I was mixing the marinade, I thought about teriyaki. My best guess is that teriyaki jerky requires replacing all of the Worcestershire sauce with soy sauce, but for some reason, I stuck with half and half, and I added about a quarter of a teaspoon of ground ginger. I didn’t have fresh ginger.

It made a big difference. I wouldn’t say it tastes gingery. It just has more zing to it. I think powdered ginger will actually work better than fresh, because it has a sharper flavor.

So that was nice.

I grabbed the wrong cut of meat by mistake. I wanted eye round, and I think I bought bottom round. Anyway, today, the surface of the jerky has oil on it. It’s not congealed fat. Just oil. They say you should use beef with as little fat as possible. This cut seems to have more fat than eye round. The danger of using fatty meat is that the fat will go rancid. Will that happen when the meat is still lean but slightly fattier than eye round? I don’t know, but it tastes better. I’ll keep an eye on it, and if it doesn’t go bad, maybe I’ll switch to this cut permanently.

I also got new gutters installed. This house had only one roof gutter when I moved here, and it was between the roof and the patio enclosure. There was no guttering over the garage, so big, fat raindrops fell directly on the driveway. They were starting to wear it away, and I couldn’t leave the doors open when it rained, because so much water splattered into the garage. I had them run guttering over both doors. Feeling smug about that.

There was also an issue over the front porch. The roof was designed in such a way that a huge amount of water was directed onto the porch roof when it rained. It caused some rot, and I had to spend a grand on repairs. Now there is some hope the new guttering will direct the rain elsewhere.

The strangest part of the roof design was the lack of guttering on the workshop roof. The rain fell straight onto the grass, in front of a concrete porch. The rain destroyed a strip of grass beside the concrete and washed out a lot of the dirt. I could not grow anything in front of the porch. Rain also threw dirt all over the concrete. Now I have a gutter that runs the length of the building, and I may go crazy and plant something in the ugly rut where the rain used to fall.

I don’t know what’s happening in the world, and that suits me very well. I have plenty of jobs to keep me busy. I don’t need to read fake news to kill time as well as my digestion. The election will have an outcome whether I read about it or not, and if the rapture comes, it won’t matter. It shouldn’t matter, regardless, because God looks after me very well.

It has occurred to me that readers may be confused because I say I feel like the rapture is upon us, but I also talk about planning for shortages, civil war, and so on. I’m writing about different possible futures. One involves me being here while leftists torch the country and force sane people to dig in and defend, and the other involves me being somewhere above, gleefully oblivious to everything that happens here. I keep feeling powerful indications that I won’t be here, but I have been wrong before.

Today I prayed God would see to it I never found myself in a situation in which I would truly need to use a firearm. I have asked for that before. I don’t want to be pulled down into the mire with the pigs. I don’t think Christians were put here to shoot people. I think when you find yourself in a situation like that, it means something has gone wrong in your relationship with God.

The ammunition situation has gotten even worse. I set up alerts so a search site would tell me when certain types of ammunition were available. This morning I got an alert, and when I checked before 8:30 a.m., the site was sold out. People are hovering by their computers, snapping ammunition up as soon as it appears. Either that, or George Soros has a bot doing it to keep patriots from getting cartridges. Of course, people have been storing up ammunition since the Obama years, so Soros and Bloomberg could bankrupt themselves and still fail to accomplish their goal.

I don’t really think billionaires are buying ammunition to cause problems, but it would make a great conspiracy theory.

I wonder what life in blue America is like. Hell, I suppose. Terrorism, lack, and irrational fear surrounding a mild disease. My cousin near Chicago still can’t buy disinfectant wipes, but they’re slashing them to $2.98 per can at my local Walmart, just to get rid of them. My cousin near Atlanta says they finally have meat in stores, although restaurants can’t get what they want because they’re last in line. My Illinois cousin is visiting my aunt in Kentucky, and she can’t get wipes there, either. Of course, Kentucky isn’t all that red. Not down deep, regardless of whom they voted for. They love government handouts too much.

There are two realities, and I’m very satisfied with mine. I have zero interest in experiencing or even witnessing the false, unnecessary reality of leftists.

If you think about it, the two-reality solution continues after death. It might as well start now.

My Welcome Wore Out Years Ago

I have a new batch of beef jerky in the dehydrator, and I just made macaroni and cheese using a new recipe. I also put a new laser/flashlight device on my AK-47. It’s an uneventful and peaceful day, which is odd, since it keeps looking more and more like the end of the age is here.

Yesterday I texted a few people I don’t hear from much. Two are former armorbearers from Trinity Church, the corrupt money-worshiping establishment I attended for about 4 years. One said he was looking for an AR-15; I don’t think he understands that he can’t wait around. The other just bought a C308, which is a knockoff of the Heckler & Koch G3, a 7.62x51mm semiauto sort of like an AR10. These guys live in Broward County, which is the county where Fort Lauderdale is located. We don’t communicate often, so it’s not like we’re conspiring to amass firearms and ammunition. It’s a grassroots thing, which means it’s probably supernatural.

I keep thinking of On the Beach, a 1959 film featuring Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. The story goes like this: there has been a nuclear war. There is a deadly layer of fallout suspended in the atmosphere, and it has sterilized entire continents. Because most of the explosions took place above the equator, the radiation is confined there temporarily. People still live normally in the Southern Hemisphere, but they expect to die like everyone else. The only question is how long it will take the fallout to move south.

Gregory Peck plays a married submarine captain. Ava Gardner plays a single American woman who lives in Australia. Peck takes his boat to Australia, where he and his crew work together with the Australian government. There is some doubt as to whether the fallout has completely exterminated the human race above the equator.

The movie’s characters don’t stop living just because they believe there is no hope. They avoid thinking about their destiny. They continue raising families and doing their jobs. They have parties. A character played by Fred Astaire restores a used race car and competes in it. Old men at a private club discuss the best way to make sure they waste as little as possible of the club’s wine collection. People try to make the most of life, but at the same time, the government distributes suicide pills intended to help citizens avoid dying slowly from radiation sickness.

Isn’t this a lot like our situation? It’s as if the sentence has been pronounced and we’re just waiting for the walk to the gallows.

The big difference between our current predicament and the one depicted in On the Beach is that only one group of modern people is headed for disaster: those who aren’t close to God. A much smaller group expects deliverance and relief. We actually look forward to the end.

It’s yet another illustration of the fact that we live in different realities. The children of darkness dislike God and morality, they think 2020 is a disaster, and they’re worried and afraid. The children of light cling to God and feel grateful for the way he has prepared them. They see 2020 as a time to prepare for something beautiful. They look forward to dropping their earthly problems and being transported to heaven in perfect, youthful bodies.

I’m having a pleasant day, thinking about things like macaroni and cheese and beef jerky, but all over America, people are stewing in resentment and fear, plotting violence and theft. I’m not worried about getting sick. I’m not wondering if I can pay the rent. My head isn’t full of demonic fantasies about horrific oppression under a second Trump administration. I’m making reasonable efforts to prepare to defend myself if someone brings violence to me, but I don’t feel like hurting anyone. I don’t blame other people for my problems. I don’t think people of another race have stolen all the land and money. I don’t believe Jews run the world and need to be dealt with. I don’t think taking up arms and cleansing the world of people who disagree with me is a smart idea.

My religion tells me God will do any cleansing that has to be done.

With the passing of every week, it looks more like the things people like me have been expecting are really happening. America is becoming like a violent banana republic. Even leftists are talking about civil war. Signs of the rapture keep accumulating.

I suppose it’s always hard to believe it when you find yourself witnessing historical events of extreme impact. Noah’s friends must have been stunned when water started falling from the sky for the first time, just as Noah had predicted. The disciples must have been amazed to learn that Jesus really had risen. But extraordinary things do happen, and when they happen, people do witness them. Someone has to be be there. There is no reason why it can’t be us. Just because life has been very different all our lives doesn’t mean we can’t witness a world transformed by a blizzard of obvious supernatural events.

People are behaving as though what we’re seeing were a momentary aberration to be followed by a return to life as it was in 2019. They get engaged, build houses, and start businesses. They buy stocks and other investments in hopes of long-term gains. Businesses send out email ads trying to sell us things we may not be able to use for very long. We plant trees we know take several years to start bearing. Vintners are putting up bottles of wine they know won’t be ready for at least 10 years. High school seniors started 4-year colleges this fall. But how much of it will pay off? What good is it to give someone a 5-year car loan today if the tribulation will be howling around both of you in November of 2021?

I have a tenant who wants a 3-year lease. I refused to do it because some people who think they hear from God are predicting extreme inflation for next year. I don’t want to be locked into x dollars per month if the market rate will be 5x in two years. I think I should have been more flexible. If the tribulation is about to start, I won’t be here to worry about inflation.

More and more, I feel that it doesn’t matter what I do to safeguard my future. I see things I want, and I think, “I shouldn’t spend the money.” Then I think, “It makes no difference at all. Go ahead.” I’m not thinking about investing. I have no interest in cancer screenings. I just can’t believe I’m going to be here very long.

I thought about writing a will, but then I thought this: most people I would want to leave wealth to are going to go in the rapture. Do I really care which child of the devil gets my property? It will be a curse to that person, regardless of who it is. Does a butterfly worry about what happens to its chrysalis?

If the end of the age is really here, terrorist rioting will increase and become as bad as it can possibly be. Conservatives may finally start taking part as aggressors, not victims. It will be part of normal life. Major wars will start. Diseases that make coronavirus look like chickenpox will cover the globe. People won’t just lack toilet paper and Lysol wipes. They’ll lack bread, canned goods, grain, and produce. They’ll eat rats, squirrels, crows, pigeons, and songbirds. They’ll eat their own pets. They’ll butcher zoo animals, like they did in Venezuela. They’ll go to parks to kill ducks and swans. They’ll trap ants for food.

I walk across parking lots now to get into stores, and I see scenes from disaster movies. I see people wearing masks. I see markers on the pavement and sidewalks, telling people where to stand. I hear creepy, insincerely cheerful recorded female voices reminding us to be nice because we’re all in this together. It’s like HAL 9000 had daughters.

The voices are always female, because psychologists who advise businesses say female voices will comfort us and not make us feel bullied or challenged. How do I know that? I know it because I’m old and smart. I don’t have to check.

Coronavirus is not a big deal, but we’re already living as though the plagues were here. God is showing us two things: diseases we can’t beat can happen, and when they do, we will respond irrationally, making things much worse than they have to be.

Coronavirus is a mild disease which appears to be vulnerable to vaccines, but what if it were like AIDS? There is no reason we can’t have a fatal airborne disease that can’t be cured and won’t let us create vaccines. It looks like coronavirus doesn’t produce symptoms in most people. There have been infectious diseases that killed the majority of their victims even with treatment, and some of those diseases are still active. They haven’t done the damage they could have because they were contained or because they’re not easy to transmit, but there is no law that says an infectious disease can’t be untreatable, unpreventable, and easily transmitted.

Imagine what America would be like if we had a real plague. What if we had an incurable disease with a 50% mortality rate, with no hope of finding a vaccine? If 200,000 deaths confined almost exclusively to people who were likely to die anyway have driven us to hoard and tyrannize, think what a real plague would do to us.

How quick we have been to give up our humanity. I’ve been taking ludicrous continuing legal education courses, and I’m required to get several hours of training in the area of technology. It’s amazing to hear the speakers talk about Zoom and cloud computing. They say many firms have discovered they make more money by staying home and avoiding nearly all in-person encounters. Our noses have been rubbed in the fact that remote communication isn’t more expensive; it’s cheaper and more efficient.

If it’s true in law, it’s true for many other businesses. It means we’re not going back to normal interaction even if coronavirus disappears. Unless there is a compelling reason for you to be among other people, it’s not going to happen. We’re making ourselves a nation of shut-ins, deliberately. It’s like we’re all turning into gamers, living on Cheetos and satisfying our need for socialization by spewing hate on 4chan.

It doesn’t take much of a threat to turn us into willing matrix residents. Our homes are turning into wombs, with ethernet-cable umbilical cords and Amazon Prime bloodstreams.

Maybe the only mentally healthy people in the future will be those whose jobs have physical components, like using shovels and handing people bags of hamburgers. If you don’t have to shower and go to work to make a living, you may have to start forcing yourself to get together with people in order to get your RDA of human contact.

The human race has a natural tendency to use technology to minimize contact. I don’t think we understood that 30 years ago, but it’s obvious now, and our overblown pandemic has exacerbated this pathological inclination.

I guess I’m off on a tangent. To get back to the subject, I know we are in a unique era unlike all previous human crises, and very few of us realize it. It makes sense that the end of the age should come now, because there doesn’t seem to be any way for us to continue as we are. I hate to use one of the left’s favorite manipulative words, but our situation is unsustainable.

I don’t know whether my impressions are right or not, but it doesn’t matter, because we’ll know by the end of the year. If coronavirus is under control, terrorist riots have stopped, and people have forgotten all about civil war, then my impressions will have been proven wrong. If I’m right, things will be much worse than they are now, and the trend will be downward.

I will not stop praying for the rapture. The quality of life for American Christians is no longer acceptable, so I would like to go home with my brothers and sisters. Even though I have peace, prosperity, good health, and fun things to do, I don’t want to hang around in a world where there is no major Christian nation left.

This must be how Jews felt before 1948.

It must seem strange to pray for the end when my life is so pleasant, but the one who makes it pleasant showed me there is a much better place.

One longs for a world in which his kind is mainstream. I think that’s understandable. If there were a movie-style matrix, then Neo would want to unplug at the end of the day and enjoy the company of other people who lived in the real world. He wouldn’t want to live forever in a place where no one understood reality or him. For me, it’s like living in Miami, where half the population can’t speak English because they have no gratitude. I used to have to use hand signals and do pantomime in order to make people understand me. Getting a haircut or ordering a meal could be a tiresome process. It’s nice to be in a place where people understand me without a lot of striving.

I don’t know what’s happening with the pandemic. If a real second wave comes, or just seems to come, I may need to get out and buy more paper towels and toilet paper. I suppose more frozen meat couldn’t hurt. Apart from these possible concerns, I don’t foresee any other practical issues.

That’s all I have. I should sign off and spend time in prayer. If things pan out the way I expect, I hope neither you nor I are here to witness it.

Newly-Minted Beef Tycoon Solves Your Problems

To answer the question I know you want to ask, yes, I have mastered the art of making beef jerky.

It’s like saying you’ve mastered the art of stirring coffee, but still.

Making jerky is extremely easy, but as is the case with many foods, you can have problems because people provide bad information.

Yes, Alton Brown is on my mind. How did you guess?

Alton Brown says to marinate jerky for 3-6 hours. I tried that. Like many tips from Alton Brown (Shun knives cough cough), it does not work. You would be surprised how long it takes marinade to get into a thin piece of beef. I made my first batch of jerky his way, and it was okay, but it was not as flavorful as store jerky. Yesterday I made a batch using beef that had been soaking for about a day, and it was very flavorful. Hand it to someone who didn’t know any better, and he would think it came from a factory.

It might actually be good to dilute the marinade or to go 12 hours. My jerky is so full of marinade flavor, it almost covers the meat taste. This morning I put a piece in my mouth while I was closing the bag, and in the few seconds I was holding it, I started to drool on myself. More than usual.

Brown also says to slice beef as thin as possible. Bad idea. When jerky is too thin, it gets too dry, it’s no fun to eat because it’s tiny and crumbly, and it takes up way too much room in the dehydrator. If slicing jerky 1/4″ thick makes a pound of beef cover three shelves, slicing it half as thick makes it take up 6. How big is your dehydrator? Do you really want to take over twice as long per ounce of jerky, and to clean everything twice?

I like 1/4″ slices. They work. When you eat a piece of jerky made from 1/4″-thick beef, you know you’re eating something. It’s not like chewing air.

I also learned that smoking the meat is a waste of time. To give Brown a little credit, he recommends liquid smoke. Real jerky manufacturers have smokers, but I did it both ways, and if there is a difference, it’s not worth the effort.

You don’t need to cook your jerky in the oven, either. Do your own safety research instead of listening to me, but my dehydrator heats to 155°, and my jerky was not raw when I took it out.

Final thing: don’t overdry your jerky. A lot of people recommend going up to 13 hours. That’s lunacy. Yesterday I went from noon until around 5 p.m. at 155°, using jerky up to 1/4″ thick, and it was dryer than it needed to be.

Here is what I recommend:

Use eye round roast. Maybe other cuts will work. This one is guaranteed.

Soak your meat for at least 12 hours.

Use liquid smoke instead of smoking.

Cut the meat at least 1/4″ thick.

Don’t bother cooking the meat before drying it.

Be very careful not to overdry the meat.

Use 1-1/3 cups of marinade per pound of beef, and marinate in a bag to make the marinade go further.

Use the same “secret” recipe everyone else uses. Here is what I used, and you can substitute ingredients.

INGREDIENTS

2/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
2/3 cup soy sauce
2 tbsp. brown sugar
2 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. Liquid Smoke
2 tsp. Thai chili sauce (not sriracha, although sriracha would work)

I think teriyaki jerky will result if you use pure soy sauce and add a bunch of fresh ginger. Just a guess, but how could it not work? If you like spicy jerky, use more chili sauce. I’ll bet you would have figured that out on your own.

There must be a thousand recipes that work just fine. Everyone pretends their recipe is astonishing and special, but they’re not. It’s extremely simple.

I don’t get Alton Brown. Is he ever right? He’s wrong about knives, jerky, and steaks. Is there ever a good reason to listen to him? I can make bad food just fine without his help. If I look to someone else for tips, obviously, I want tips that actually work. Otherwise, I waste food and my time.

I guess the answer is to use his advice, but only when it has been tested by people you can trust. Good luck finding any! People who fawn on TV chefs will defend them even when their food tastes like sawdust mixed with dog chow.

Some guy on Youtube recommends the Presto Dehydro dehydrator. He says you can buy a small one and add shelves later. I have not tried it. The small one is $40.

I have a 9-tray Excalibur I bought a long time ago, when prepping first entered the mainstream of American conservative thought. You can’t buy one now. If you go to their website, you’ll see that they’re sold out. Maybe that should concern you. Maybe God has been warning a lot of people.

If you simply buy your own jerky, you won’t spend a whole lot more, and of course, jerky is not the unique solution to food supply chain interruptions. You can buy beans, macaroni, canned fish, canned soup, protein bars, protein powder, canned milk, rice, white flour, and all sorts of other stuff. You can buy butter on sale and make ghee, which doesn’t need refrigeration. You can even buy fancy bagged bugout rations, which seem ridiculous to me. You need water and heat to make them work, and if I have water and heat, then why not make something resembling real food, for a tenth of the price?

I’m pleased with my jerky. It will last at least a year, even without oxygen-sucking packets to extend its viability. My dried apples will last years, plural. If a food crisis lasts more than a year, it means the tribulation is here, big time, so a few crisis supplies, or a garden, won’t really help.

Here’s something preppers don’t seem to talk about: human beings are resilient. We find new ways to cooperate and survive. If blue-staters manage to deprive us of stuff to keep nuclear plants going, we’ll adapt and use our endless supply of coal and oil. If they kill our cell service, we’ll build networks. If they confiscate our bank and security accounts, we’ll create our own banks and securities firms. We have the vast majority of the farmland, we have the oil and the coal, we have lots of industry (not like the 1860’s), we are much better at fighting, and we have God on our side. We even control a lot of California farmland. Unless the tribulation itself comes down on us, we should be able to keep civilization going in “Jesusland,” as Der Spiegel calls conservative America, regardless of whether there is a civil war. We may get damaging interruptions, but they would last weeks, not years. That’s my opinion at this moment.

I’ve probably said it before, but I always think of this when I think of prepper scenarios: Jews in Auschwitz had submachine guns and hand grenades. Look it up. People have ways of getting what they need when God is with them.

I have been too pessimistic about the dystopian future. Barring the complete manifestation of the tribulation, things shouldn’t be all that bad in red America. Even in the tribulation, billions of non-prepping human beings will survive 7 years. They will wish they had died, but still.

I think blue America has more to fear, and that makes sense, because they reject God more completely. They don’t produce a lot of food or oil, the police and military will break against them, they don’t know how to fight, they don’t have the kind of armament we have, and they are burdened with huge numbers of ignorant, hostile, ungovernable welfare addicts who will do nothing but complain, riot, and steal. People who live on the government nipple will be useless for fighting and government works, and they will attack the people who are actually able to get things done. Blue society may decapitate itself, as it did in Cambodia. Without competent people to organize and command, how will a new nation of mindless terrorists pose a threat to red-staters? If they were any good at anything, they wouldn’t be what they are today.

I suppose this situation would breed a new crop of blue-state conservatives, too late to do them any good. There will be a price for being a virtue-signaling poser.

Let’s say Orlando residents rise up against people in my red county and try to kill us and take what we have. First, you would have to organize that kind of rabble and get them to act in concert. Can’t be done to any significant degree. Maybe you would get occasional caravans of unintelligent, selfish, unskilled people who would be more likely to shoot each other than to harm me or my neighbors. Second, you would have to get them to drive a long way to attack. That’s not something they’re inclined to do. They’re inclined to loot stores and homes that are within walking distance, and they are inclined to prey on each other because it’s convenient and they are lazy. History proves this. Third, they would have to be able to overcome us when they arrive. So people who don’t know how to shoot would have to overcome entrenched, orderly, easily commanded, highly motivated 2A proponents, many of whom enjoy shooting scoped rifles, and many of whom are sitting on large stockpiles of ammunition.

Anyone who can kill a deer at 200 yards can kill a person at the same distance. What percentage of our modern terrorists can hit anything at 7 yards?

Think about Kyle Rittenhouse. He was up against at least two assailants with firearms, and he maimed one of them. He also killed a “man” armed with a skateboard and a third person who was attacking him. He did it quickly and easily, he didn’t harm the innocent, and he got away. That’s a picture of future encounters if America has a civil war. People who aren’t ready shouldn’t start trouble with people who are. A gun doesn’t make you a factor unless you know how to use it.

To shoot invaders on my land, I would just have to get a big screen TV box and put it in the pasture. I would wait for them to fight over it, and then they’d be easy pickings. They might even kill each other and save me the trouble.

I guarantee you, we would have a real militia in place before the Antichrist’s ad hoc troops arrived. I wouldn’t have to go it alone. I wouldn’t have to stay awake every night, peering across my land with a thermal scope in order to kill invaders before they arrived at the house. There would be patrols and watches. The sheriff and the police departments would be everywhere, helping coordinate the effort. It would be the exact opposite of the situation in blue cities, where people would be too busy looting, burning, killing, and raping to think about coordinated sorties into other areas.

There would also be large prayer meetings here, all the time. That’s the most important thing.

Life would be different for stubborn conservatives who live in places like New York and LA. They would be killed in their yards or in front of their apartment buildings, by people who see them (or pretend to see them) as thieves and traitors. Law enforcement could not save them. The neighborhoods of professional victims are too big; the supply of murderers is too abundant. Conservatives, Jews, and Christians (not fake Marxist Christians) would drown in seas of demon-controlled handout addicts. So would their children.

It would be nice to offer my property as a shelter for unprepared blue-area friends, but how would I feed them, and how would they get here? Sometimes you can’t help people even if you want to. I know a number of people who would like to hole up here. Can’t take all of them. Maybe a few, if they bring their own food. If trying to help your family just means I have to starve along with you, it’s not helpful at all.

Once the closest ones arrived, the rest would probably be up the creek.

It’s interesting to speculate about the future. I just hope God removes me before things get bad. If I’m storing up arms, ammunition, and food for people who will be left behind, fine with me. They are welcome to it as long as I’m with God. It’s a fantastic trade.

In the meantime, I enjoy my little efforts at preparing food. Hope it goes bad because I never need it, but it’s comforting to make an effort.

Cuomo Dusts Off Centuries-Dead Libel

This just in from New York City: Jews spread disease!

Wait…that sounds familiar. Let me Google.

Okay, Wikipedia has the goods. When the black plague hit Europe for the first time, Jews were blamed. They were accused of poisoning wells. And they admitted their guilt! Well…after a little torture.

That’s something for people who support torturing terrorists to think about. I would confess to being a chicken before I would let myself be tortured. It’s not a great way to get sound information.

Wikipedia says anti-Semitic violence swept Europe during the plague years, and in one place, 2000 Jews were burned alive. One wonders if scientists in that area checked plague statistics to see if things got better after the well-poisoners were dead. Maybe I should not belittle medieval scientists. We can’t even get modern scientists to admit putting sick old people in long-term care facilities caused covid to blow up in New York, or that mask edicts and lockdowns are not correlated with reduced infection rates. Those things are clearly true, but we’re still told to remember our place and do as we’re told.

It shouldn’t shock us if old prejudices flare up among ignorant people (such as politicians) in spite of common sense, but it’s remarkable that scientists remain as biased and irrational as ever.

Governor Cuomo, the mastermind behind the old-folks-home catastrophe, is now going after Jews in New York City. To his shock and dismay, religious Jews insist on practicing their religion. This involves gathering in large groups. You can’t really do what Jews do with everyone standing inside his own 6-foot circle; it was pathetic enough when Biden tried it with press conferences. Cuomo is said to be sending various types of government hassle-merchants into a Jewish area, to fine and cite people into submission. One man who owns a restaurant that only does takeout business was fined for leaving his front door open to let fresh air in. The crime? Opening for dining.

Cuomo is stepping in because he didn’t find Mayor DiBlasio’s targeted efforts harsh enough, and guess what Cuomo called his delousing…I mean anti-coronavirus campaign? The “Cluster Action Initiative.” Does that sound familiar? The Nazis called their effort to exterminate Polish Jews “Aktion Reinhard.” They called their euthanasia operation “Aktion T4.” When they decided to kill concentration camp prisoners who were not useful to them, they called it “Aktion 14f13.” It was better known as “special treatment.”

Who is giving Cuomo dictation? Satan himself?

Are there no Jewish people in his administration? I’m a gentile, and I saw the problem with the name immediately. Hasn’t anyone pointed this out to Cuomo? Since when has the party of warm and fuzzy bunnies started using the language of military aggressors to describe health initiatives?

Leftists also blame Christians for coronavirus. They closed our churches. They have tried repeatedly to link Trump rallies to outbreaks, although no one is making any effort to caution BLM and Antifa terrorists, who wander the streets in huge throngs. In the minds (“mind”?) of leftists, “Trump supporter” is just another way of saying “Christian.”

Leftists can do whatever they like, no matter how likely it is to spread disease, and the MSM stays silent, but let two Jews or Christians get together to pray or root for Donald Trump, and journalists scream “SUPERSPREADERS!” as though all the viruses wore crucifixes and little red hats.

The spirit of antichrist hates both Christians and Jews. It is the spirit behind anti-Semitism, and it has also driven persecution of Christians. You may think this can’t be true, because Jews persecuted and murdered early Christians, and Christians have murdered many Jews. You don’t understand how it works. Like any evil spirit, the spirit of Antichrist likes to take the people it hates and turn them into programmed assassins. It loves pitting us against each other. What’s better than having loyal servants who torment and kill your enemies? Turning your enemies into loyal servants who do the killing for you, with gladness.

It’s bad when your persecutors kill you in spite of dogged resistance, but you haven’t really been humiliated, violated, and defeated until you’ve been fooled into doing the dirty work for them. You can’t get any lower than that.

Sooner or later, in order for the tribulation to get going, Christians and Jews have to be slandered and demonized so effectively a substantial portion of the world’s population wants to get rid of them forever. That’s where we’re headed. Coronavirus is being used to herd us in that direction.

Religious people believe that the effective practice of their religions is more important than receiving optimal protection from a contagious disease that kills a tiny percentage of its victims. They want to please God, help others, and avoid punishment in the next life. The Antichrist’s people believe this life (“your best life”) is all there is, and they listen to the spirits that control the MSM. They listen to the nonsense about covid being a major plague that kills huge numbers of people. They see religious people as dangerous, superstitious savages who should no longer be humored. They feel entitled to control us with rules premised on the notions that God does not exist and that holding onto this miserable life is so important, human rights should be nullified in exchange for marginal increases in safety.

The Antichrist’s people may not believe in Satan, but they listen to him all day, and he tells them the same things he told the Romans, the Nazis, and the Marxists: Christians and Jews are a problem that needs to be addressed.

Cuomo may be able to point to infection maps and say he’s only going after Jewish areas because they have a high covid rate. The real problem, though, isn’t just that he’s infringing First Amendment rights or generally being overzealous. It’s also the inflammatory language, which is heavy on references to Jews. Cuomo and his underlings keep characterizing the local infection rate as a Jewish problem, and he complains about Jewish “clusters.” Then there is his use of the phrase “Cluster Action Initiative,” which sounds like the forced cleansing of a Jewish ghetto.

Cuomo runs the risk of mainstreaming anti-Semitism and making it acceptable. Once that happens, ignorant people in the streets will take over. People who are too stupid to draw logical distinctions will not know the difference between “social distancing good” and “Jews bad.” There are a lot of rank anti-Semites in New York already, especially among blacks and Hispanics, and they don’t need a power-mad governor giving them license to commence pogroms.

It’s very sad. Jews helped elect this man. Jews in America invariably vote for their enemies and demonize their friends. In Israel, they name streets after Donald Trump. Here, they empower the people who hate them most, and they fear the people who send more charity money to Israel than all Jews combined.

It will get worse, and America Jews will continue to appease. They support appeasing terrorists in Israel, and now they’re supporting domestic terrorism which will eventually focus more intently on them. We have already seen leftist provocateurs going after “Wall Street bankers.” Which ethnic group is primarily identified with Wall Street and banking?

If it’s rewarding to chop your enemy’s head off, how much more rewarding is it to persuade him pay for and sharpen the hatchet, to make him believe his friends detest him, and to convince him you’re the best friend he has? It’s a beautiful thing, if revenge can have beauty.

In one of the Hannibal Lecter novels, Lecter gives a pedophile drugs. He convinces him he wants to have a good time with him. Then while the man is giggling and enjoying himself, Lecter persuades him to cut his own face off, eat part of it, and feed the rest to dogs. He also cons him into putting one of his own eyes out and breaking his own neck. That’s how Satan does things. It’s not enough to hurt you. He has to make you take pleasure in hurting yourself.

Jews and Christians will become more and more unpopular. Violence against them will increase. Eventually, the state will endorse all of it. The tribulation is on the way, and America is not going to wise up and prepare.

Give me Dried Meat, Water, and Bullets, and I can Survive Anything

My first batch of beef jerky is done. I just took it out of the dehydrator. The verdict: pass. It’s real jerky. It will work.

I used about 2 pounds of eye round. I cut off maybe an ounce of fat, and I ended up with 14.8 ounces of jerky. I thought the yield would be a lot smaller. It looks like the ratio of jerky to fresh meat is nearly 50%. The meat is slightly drier than I would like, so I think the ratio, once I get it together, will be at or above 50%. Based on a perusal of per-ounce prices of store jerky, I believe I made between 20 and 40 dollars’ worth for $15 or so, including marinade.

I’m leaving the bag open so condensation will not settle in it and make the meat wet. I think that will cause mold. I plan to close the bag up when the meat is cool.

Is it worth the effort? It doesn’t look like a giant bargain compared to the jerky I could have gotten for $20 per pound, but it looks great compared to the stuff that costs over $40 per pound.

I can get Uncle Buck’s jerky from Bass Pro for $20 per pound, and I like it a lot. On the other hand, it’s not as dry as my jerky, so I would be paying for a considerable amount of water. Wild guess: with water taken into consideration, I’ll say an Uncle Buck’s price of $25 per pound would more accurately reflect the food value I’m getting. Maybe I’m getting a 40% savings?

I may keep making it. I think I can make top-notch jerky, and a 40% savings is pretty good.

As has often been the case, I am disappointed in Alton Brown. He recommends marinating for 3-6 hours. Based on my results, let’s make that 24 hours. I went over three hours, and the flavor could be stronger. Smoking for one hour (smoke time, not including warm-up) worked fine, though. I don’t know if his Liquid Smoke idea is any good. It would allow me to skip the smoker, so that’s a big plus.

Do I really want to make jerky as well as I can? If it tastes fantastic, it will be hard to go easy on it in lean times. Maybe okay jerky is best.

I saw a How It’s Made video about making jerky. Maybe I’ll watch it again and look for tips.

I plan to keep drying apples until I can no longer stand it. They’re wonderful.

Walmart sells nuts really cheap, so I bought pecans. I guess if I bought raisins and almonds, I could make my own trail mix. Lots of calories, good shelf life, and not much weight or bulk.

I got two big jars of Hoosier Farms powdered cheddar. This is the stuff they use in things like Cheetos. I pop corn with bacon grease and put powdered cheddar on it. It’s decadent. I figure I can also use it to make mac and cheese, along with my ghee and evaporated milk.

None of this is going to be very helpful if our dystopia doesn’t include electricity. I’ll have no water. I supposed it will be made available somehow, but people would probably have to wait in long lines at distribution points, which could be impossible to reach without gasoline or diesel.

I’m putting my chips on an electrified apocalypse. A generator and diesel would run me over $50,000 for one year, and if diesel were hard to find, I would be able to do it no matter what I was willing to spend. You can’t just put a 20,000-gallon diesel tank in your yard. Not unless you’re a hard core nut. If your tank isn’t enormous, you’ll have to refuel it often, and if there is no fuel, you’ll look pretty stupid after the first tank runs out.

I have relatives (long deceased) who had natural gas on their land. They sold the rights, and in the package, they demanded to have gas piped to their house, free of charge. People like that are sitting pretty. If you live in Appalachia where there are hills, and you have gas, a clean creek, and enough land to grow food, you will be an aristocrat when Democrats destroy civilization.

Conservatives have nearly all of the oil and coal, and we have lots of refineries. We have lots of ports. Presumably, some things will still be available to us even after demon-ridden leftists extend their Tiktok-video mouth-frothing and shrieking from 30-second periods to entire days.

Tomorrow I’ll try to knock off more dried apples, and I’ll probably hit Walmart one more time. Then it’s time to sit back, pray, and hope the people who expect an imminent rapture are right. Leaving for heaven would be a lot better than sitting in my house eating disaster food and scanning the woods for “protesters” with a rifle scope.