There are Little Raptures Everywhere

As days go, this one has been pretty good. I helped my friends Alonzo and Teri move into their first non-rented house.

Alonzo and I were armorbearers at Miami’s Trinity Church, under the authority of the fine family of pastors that made public-nudity enthusiast Kim Kardashian one of America’s best-known Christians. The armorbearers used to meet for breakfast at a Denny’s on Hallandale Beach Boulevard, and I used to talk about the importance of speaking in tongues and getting free of iniquities and demons. Alonzo was always quiet. I thought he was just waiting for me to shut up. In reality, he was taking it all in.

He and his family lived in a pretty bad situation. They had part of a house in Liberty City, which is about like South Central L.A. He hated his job. Things weren’t going all that well.

Over time, he and Teri moved closer to God, and he blessed them. They moved to a place farther north, away from their relatives. Then they moved to Orlando. This was a step up from South Florida, which is a very dark and corrupt place, but it could have been better. After Orlando, they moved to Sanford, and now they’re between Sanford and Ocala in a very rural setting. They own the house they’re moving into. It has 5 bedrooms. It’s in a quiet, peaceful area packed with conservative Christians.

If you know this blog, you know I had a young friend named Travis Quinn. He was also an armorbearer. He was a lawless ghetto kid. He started listening to me. He tried the things I was doing. God changed him a great deal. He found himself living in Coral Gables, as my house sitter, going to the University of Miami on a music scholarship.

Unfortunately, he was shot accidentally in April. We were told his injuries weren’t a big deal. Then his condition worsened, and he died. During his last month, he wasn’t able to communicate with anyone except his family.

I had assumed Travis would be my big success story, but it looks like Alonzo and Teri got what I thought he would get. They have 5 wonderful kids. Their marriage keeps getting better. Now Alonzo says God is talking to him. He says God told him that if he fasted, God would do things for him, with no effort from Alonzo, that would amaze him. Alonzo fasted, and suddenly Alonzo found himself able to move into his house ahead of schedule. He didn’t have to pay his last month’s rent. He didn’t have to pay a power bill he thought was coming due.

The place where he used to live was better than the places where he lived before, but it wasn’t perfect. People smoked dope where his kids could smell it. The neighbors weren’t great. Now he’s in a thinly populated area where life is very, very easy.

His kids will be two miles from school. There is a big grocery store so close he can walk to it. There is a great pizza place a mile and a half away. Three of the kids now have their own bedrooms. It’s wonderful.

He and Teri have had the same coronavirus experience I’ve had: peace and plenty. They both have jobs. No one they know has gotten sick. It’s as though God has wrapped them in a blanket.

Moving was a breeze. It’s July in Florida, and it should be about 95 degrees outside. It was very comfortable today. I joked because I felt a drop of sweat at one point and had to run for shade. Ordinarily, my clothes would have been sticking to me after 20 minutes. I don’t even need a shower.

He took me to lunch today, and the pizza place we found was excellent. It was surgically clean, the staff was great, and the food was wonderful.

We talked about the time we live in. As former Miami residents, we agreed that it feels like the day before a hurricane. If you haven’t experienced a hurricane, you won’t understand, but things are extremely quiet the day before one arrives. The sensation is peaceful, but ominous. Many people are saying the rapture is nearly here. As Christians know, the rapture will be followed by the storm of God’s wrath.

I keep feeling the rapture will take place in December. For a while, it seemed like the 24th was the day. Then it seemed like the 11th was correct. I don’t know the answer, but I have a strong sense that I will not be on earth in 2021. I hope the rapture is coming, because the coronavirus, #MeToo, Antifa, and BLM curses we’re enduring seem to be part of a larger pattern of destruction which is going to get worse, not better. I have no desire to be here to see fools and brothers to apes rule us without God’s opposition.

I have been invited to Thanksgiving dinner. Alonzo says he wants to have a real Thanksgiving dinner at his own house. That will be great. It’s less than an hour away, so it will be very convenient to drive down and then transport myself back so I can lie on my back and recover.

They live fairly close to a 900-yard gun range, so that will give me more reason to visit their area.

I still know people who are mired in South Florida. Alonzo and I think God moves people to better places as they get closer to him. There are areas where nice Christian people are concentrated. It seems that God wants to preserve these places as though he were weeding gardens. I don’t think he wants to move too many backward people there. The same principle can be seen in the Bible. When the Jews behaved badly, their land spat them out. They only lived there and did well when they were obedient. The modern era is exceptional, because God moved them back while most of them were still atheists and leftists, but many have come around.

I think God let me fester in Miami because I belonged there. I would hate to go back. Today I saw “Miami” on road signs, and it made my insides tense up.

I think I’m as happy about Alonzo’s move as he is. It’s wonderful to see someone get in gear and catch God’s blessings.

We Think he Will Make his Move Soon

I made an important decision today. I decided to buy hundreds of rounds of Sellier & Bellot 6.5 Creedmoor FMJ ammo for rifle practice.

The ammo problem is pretty bad right now. You can still get nearly anything you want, if you’re willing to pay maybe 1.75 times what it’s worth. Personally, I am not willing to do that, and I do not understand people who are.

I don’t buy ammunition in person, because you have to be a chump to do that. You drive around to the few stores in your area, and then you find out they don’t have what you want or they do have it and the price is insane. A lot of people still do this, and it must be a good thing from where I sit, because I use the Internet, and if they were using it, too, there would be no good deals left for me.

Some people buy in person, and others go to ripoff websites and pay their insane prices. I know this, because the sites run out. It amazes me that people would rather be milked than spend a few minutes searching the web.

I just spent about an hour looking for what I wanted at a good price. I could have spent well over a dollar per round and given up after 10 minutes. I knew someone out there had to be selling for between 60 and 70 cents, so I persevered, and I got what I needed.

Why did I buy Sellier & Bellot? I’ve already mentioned it. This stuff is phenomenal. If you look around, you can find a site showing 2″ groups fired from 300 yards. This is about 2/3 MOA. The guy who tested it got a velocity spread of 7 fps.

Is it the best 6.5 Creedmoor ammo available? I’m sure it’s not, but I will be very surprised if, during the next year, I get so good I can shoot 2/3-MOA/300-yard groups with anything. This ammunition will shoot better than I can, and I don’t see that changing any time soon, so it seems to me it’s a tremendous bargain.

Any ammo that will hit a rat reliably 900 feet away is good ammo.

I should try their soft-point ammo. Maybe it’s just as good, and it would work if I needed to shoot for food.

Some people look down on Sellier & Bellot. It tends to be cheap. Thing is, they have an impressive modern factory. You can see a video tour on Youtube. In comparison, CCI’s .22 factory looks like a converted garage. That is not much of an exaggeration. Sellier & Bellot is a serious company. If their ammo is cheap, so much the better. Cost and quality are not always closely related.

I could not shoot today. Of course, it rained. It rains every day. I have no idea when it will stop. I’m going to have to start shooting before noon. It’s nearly always dry then.

I am cornering the .17 HMR market, and if I can ever get outside to shoot, I’ll be using my Savage 93R to work on my prone shooting. It’s cheaper to shoot than most pistols, and if the wind is still, it will shoot into an inch at 100 yards. Hard to imagine a better cheap training round. If the wind isn’t still, that will be fine, because I’ve had some training in dealing with wind, and I need to put it to use.

I’m going to try an Athlon scope on the 93R. I already have a Burris scope, but having trained to use mil-dot optics, I see no point in continuing to fool with different technology. I like the idea of learning to use the Burris correctly, but after that, there seems to be no reason to continue.

With the Burris, you shoot at various ranges and take note of where your shots land, and then you use the information later to help you make use of the holdover marks on the reticle. With my training and equipment, I’m supposed to test the ammo with a chronograph, enter data into my ballistic calculator, determine the range to targets, and aim where the calculator tells me to. It’s supposed to enable me to hit things on the first shot at any distance. I didn’t pay a load of money to take a class to learn all this so I could forget about it and go back to Elmer Fudd technology.

In order to get an Athlon, I had to go for crazy magnification. I had to choose between 8 and 25, and 8 was not going to fly. I think 25 is a lot for .17 HMR, but on the other hand, if I hunt with it, I might be hunting tiny critters with kill zones the size of ping pong balls. It seems like the best choice for the money.

The Vortex company made a name for itself using Asian-made scopes to compete with expensive Caucasian optics. Primary Arms came along and did the same thing to Vortex, undercutting their prices. Now Athlon is undercutting both of them, and the scope I’m getting is supposed to be as good as, or better than, the thousand-dollar Vortex I own. It costs $400. How can I not try that?

What if it turns out to be better than the Vortex? I’ll feel pretty stupid. I paid over $800 for it.

I still need to make a few ammo purchases to get me into the security zone. Once I feel like I have a few years’ supply, I’ll put my ammo away and start buying fresh ammo to shoot. That’s the plan.

Thank God I’m not doing this with food. Today someone sent me an ad for dried disaster rations. On sale, they wanted about $120 for 25,000 calories. So 12 dollars per day for 10 days, and then you starve. I think I can beat that at the grocery store. I fail to see the bargain. Ordinary stores carry a lot of things that will last a decade or more in a pantry.

If starvation becomes a widespread problem, I would rather just die and leave. How much should I be willing to fight to stay in this world, when I’m a heartbeat away from a place where no one is hungry and they never need air conditioning? Eating rehydrated desperation food from a 5-gallon pail is not my idea of living.

Now that the RPR is working, I should go visit the long distance range. Wednesday would be a good day for that. My farm is fine for a hundred yards, but the range offers 900, and there are no cattle walking between shooters and targets.

I’m not far from completing my basic armory and ammo dump. Once I’m done, the credit card companies may send people to see if I’m okay. When I stop spending money, they may assume I’m dead.

Shattering Idols May Get you Promoted

A while back, I got banned from The High Road, a contentious and unpleasant firearms forum, for saying (correctly) that a gun writer named Massad Ayoob had no business giving people legal advice. The moderators banned me, claiming I had violated the rules. Either that was a lie, or they have a rule against discussing Massad Ayoob honestly. At least a couple of forum bigwigs know him personally.

He’s not a lawyer. He’s not even a real cop, not that cops know much about the law. They do not.

He was a part-time cop (“captain” over 5 officers) in a nearly crime-free town the size of a high school. I thought he had no education at all, but today I learned he has a bachelor’s degree in business, from a college with an 84% acceptance rate. So he should be able to manage a hardware store or a restaurant. It’s not legal training.

I don’t know why it was so hard to find evidence that he had a degree. I did try. Maybe he downplays his education because it’s so obvious it didn’t prepare him to discuss things like law, ballistics, firearm design, ammunition design, or bullet wounds. Also, if he touts his background, people may look at it and marvel at the lack of military and big-city police experience.

From my non-expert standpoint, I guess (“guess”) he can speak with some intelligence about using a gun to defend yourself, but it appears he learned what he knows through a career as a writer. So he’s a bit like a person who Googles something a lot and then writes about what he read. That would make him more like Mr. Beauchamp than English Bob and Little Bill.

Self-taught people can be very sharp, but when it comes to law, it hasn’t worked out that way for Ayoob. His writings about the law impress laymen, and they probably impress bad lawyers, but they’re not great. His advice for people who use lethal force is scary, and it comes from a person who, like all laymen, is barred by law from representing people in legal matters. He’s probably right 75% of the time. Any half-bright person who reads up will usually be right about the law. The problem is that you can be right most of the time and still not know what you’re doing.

He used to be nearly alone in his field. As recently as two decades ago, not many people wrote seriously about self-defense tactics. Now you can use Google and find a huge number of people who have what appear to be superior qualifications. You can find experienced cops (who have actually had to shoot at criminals), Navy SEAL’s, Delta Force retirees, former military instructors, people who have worked in various government jobs involving firearms, individuals who have run private security firms, and so on. You can find real ballistics experts and wound experts, and you can find competitive shooters who have done much better than Ayoob. You can find lots of very skilled people who design and make guns. You can find extremely knowledgeable people who make ammunition. You can also find a lot of qualified attorneys who are willing to give general advice from a position of some authority.

Ayoob has done some good work, but it seems to me that his reputation as an oracle was never justified, and in 2020, it’s less justified than ever. No one has the last word on all things gun-related. People who hold themselves out to be demigods say dumb things all the time, and in the right circumstances, even a true expert can be corrected by an intelligent person who spots an error. Nonetheless, many gun enthusiasts quote him as though he were God himself.

Anyway, I got the boot, and it was pleasant news, because the forum was full of angry, condescending pedants and posers. Many gun forums are like that. It’s a shame, because people need good information on firearms, and if we’re going to keep our gun rights, we need to have some sense of community.

The moderators were arrogant, pompous, unfair, and rude. Not all the time, but enough. Visiting the forum was like visiting an abusive parent in the process of losing is faculties. It was necessary to walk on eggs in order to avoid starting kerfuffles that drove threads off-track and destroyed the purpose of posting. I limited my visits. Before posting, I would ask myself if the benefit was worth the aggravation.

I didn’t sit down today to write about being expelled from the playpen. That was just background. I felt like writing because I wanted to talk about the pleasant experiences I’ve had at another forum.

I tried to join two forums after I was paroled from The High Road, and there were some weird issues with my IP address, so I didn’t succeed right away. Finally, one of them let me in. I’m glad I made it, because my experience there has been infinitely better than my experiences at places like The High Road and The Firing Line.

The High Road and The Firing Line are related forums.They sprang from the same root. A bitter, ugly conflict caused a schism. They share at least one moderator.

The Firing Line is somewhat less unpleasant, but it’s still very flawed. One of the problems both forums have is denial. The people who run them are deluded. They think they can build bridges and attract leftists. As a result, members have to be very careful about mentioning politics and God. Things that matter to most gun enthusiasts.

My guess is that the proprietors want to make money by attracting people and selling ads. Or maybe there are some leftists among the owners. I don’t know. But the result is that they end up stifling the population segment that feeds them. Of course, the vast majority of the members are conservative, and many are Christian. They should be welcomed and encouraged, but they’re treated as though they embarrass the management.

When I joined the new forum, I got some big surprises.

First, I had to post an introduction. I got so many friendly responses, I had to shut off notifications. Everyone wanted to say hi, and they posted photos representing their states. That will never happen at The High Road or The Firing Line. I didn’t know what to make of it.

After that, I looked at the history of the place and the rules. It was created because other forums were lame, and they don’t tolerate rudeness.

I found a thread some character started. He was thrilled it was Sunday, because that was football day. Remember when it used to be church day? Spectator sports have always competed against churches and synagogues. That’s by Satan’s design.

Almost no one who responded was happy about football day. They criticized the unpatriotic, whiny pre-game protestors. They said they had better things to watch on TV. The guy who started the thread started responding in anger, and he got banned the next day.

This is typical of sports cultists. They have a demonic devotion to teams and players who do extremely trivial things for a living. You can tell they have a problem, because they get angry at people who say they’re not fans. If you say you don’t watch football, American men are likely to get upset with you. They may even insinuate that you’re a homosexual, which is a little weird, given the big homosexuality problem in football and other contact sports. Ordinarily, heterosexuals are less likely to want to watch big, sweaty muscular men in tight pants, and let’s not even talk about wearing a Target jersey with another man’s name on it.

I was amazed to see how people responded to the football thread. Especially the moderators. I felt at home.

They also have a religion forum. You can go in and talk openly about the antichrist, the rapture, and Jesus. That’s amazing. If you tried that at The High Road, it would never fly. Check out their rule:

We have learned from bitter experience that discussions of politics, abortion, religion, and sexual orientation often degenerate into less-than-polite arguments or claims that “my God is better than your God”. For this reason, we do not discuss such subjects on THR, and any threads dealing primarily with these subjects will be closed or deleted immediately.

They suggest rudeness and conflict are their concerns. The truth is that they allow rudeness all the time. They’re just afraid of offending non-Christians.

The new forum allows religious conversations, and they even have a chaplain. You can post prayer requests.

As for politics, they boot people who start anti-gun threads. They haven’t sold their souls. They know who supports them. The forum itself has a pro-Second-Amendment position. They say so. No hiding.

You can go to a thread and say rioters are spoiled criminals who want to promote socialism. You can say the police should blast them with water cannons to restore peace. No problem!

In short, it’s a much healthier place. The people are nice, the moderators understand who they need to attract and retain, and they don’t pretend to be something they’re not.

One of the signs of a successful Christian walk is seeing venomous, godless people removed from your life. When you’re in need of refinement, God doesn’t want to subject his children to you too much. He wants to bless them, and they can’t have blessed lives if they’re constantly forced to endure obnoxious people. As you improve, he will move you to better places. I saw this principle at work when God helped me move out of Miami. I see it in my experience with The High Road. Those people are a mess. Spending time on that forum is like hanging out with toddlers in day-old diapers. It produces a feeling of being besieged. Moving to a nicer place is like taking a shower and putting on fresh clothes.

If you hate the place where you live, and you’re tired of the people around you, maybe you need to clean yourself up so you’re fit to be put somewhere else. That’s how I see it. I love it where I am, but I think God will move me to an even nicer place if I cooperate and grow.

The rapture is the final expression of this principle. When it no longer makes sense to make us stay in this world, God will put us in a place where we are all alike in our hearts. There won’t be any rioters. No one will be pulling down statues. We won’t have to read news stories about pregnant “men.” We’ll never have to picket any abortion clinics. I see why we talk of eternal life as rest.

I feel more motivated to improve. There are rewards. There is relief ahead. It’s worth the trivial sacrifices.

Today is my third day of fasting until 3 p.m. Yesterday, after I was done, I felt bursts of faith that startled me. I felt self-control increasing and the drives of the flesh decreasing. It’s exciting. Maybe this type of fasting is the key to the breakthrough I needed. I don’t know if I’ll ever eat before 3 p.m. again. At the very least, I can see myself abandoning breakfast.

If I want to be separated from the filthiness of the world, I need to be separated from my own filthiness. I want God to bless me by putting me among good people, but if I’m still a mess, he can’t do that, because he won’t want to subject them to my presence.

I hope to keep posting good reports. I hope I’m really onto something.

We Rejected the Vaccine, and we Don’t Want the Cure

Decided to fast again today. I’m like a dirty stable that hasn’t been shoveled in a while. I need to keep going until I get it done. Sometimes I think I should fast every day from now on.

I really do not want to be here after the rapture. I don’t like this place right now, when our problems are minor. I can’t imagine spending a single day here with God’s protection, and every person who thinks like me, removed.

A strange thing has been happening. I listen to an audio Bible whenever I drive, and I play it in the house a lot. I keep hearing passages about disaster.

For some reason, Jeremiah keeps popping up. I’ll hear him say something in the car, and then I’ll go in the house and hear the same thing coming from the TV.

The other day I wrote about the horsemen of the apocalypse. The first is a crowned figure on a white horse, and he goes out to conquer. Then comes a red horse with a rider who brings violence. Then comes a black horseman who brings lack. The final horseman brings death by things like disease.

These things were written in around 90 A.D. Long before that, Jeremiah said this, about Judah and Jerusalem:

Then the Lord said to me, “Do not pray for this people, for their good. When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence.”

Jeremiah mentioned the same problems, in the same order. Of course, John had read Jeremiah, but that doesn’t mean he copied him. John was a prophet. Unlike today’s preachers, he didn’t have to plagiarize in order to have something to say.

The white horseman is Jesus. I have written that I suspected as much, but later in the Revelation (chapter 19), he is named as a man on a white horse. If I were any kind of Bible student, I would have known that. He goes out to warn and prepare people, so when the other horsemen show up, human beings have no excuses that would incline God to spare them.

Jesus rides into the world to defeat the antichrist, and he does it on a white horse. In the gospels, he rode the white colt of a donkey into Jerusalem.

This morning, Daniel was playing, and I heard this:

Then the Lord said to me, “Do not pray for this people, for their good. When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence.”

He wrote this after fasting and praying to find out what would happen to the Jews.

What a picture of what’s starting to happen in America. God brought disaster to the Jews because they didn’t pray and turn to him. Right now, America is sliding toward catastrophe, and we’re not praying or repenting, either. We pin our hopes on ridiculous masks and government officials who tell us one thing one day and the opposite the next. Where are the prayer rallies? Where are the preachers who say we brought this on ourselves? Responses like these should be immediate, but we’re barely seeing them at all.

Here’s what God said about Jerusalem and Judah in Isaiah 3:

For behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts,
Takes away from Jerusalem and from Judah
The stock and the store,
The whole supply of bread and the whole supply of water;

The mighty man and the man of war,
The judge and the prophet,
And the diviner and the elder;

The captain of fifty and the honorable man,
The counselor and the skillful artisan,
And the expert enchanter.

“I will give children to be their princes,
And babes shall rule over them.

The people will be oppressed,
Every one by another and every one by his neighbor;
The child will be insolent toward the elder,
And the base toward the honorable.”

When a man takes hold of his brother
In the house of his father, saying,
“You have clothing;
You be our ruler,
And let these ruins be under your power,”

In that day he will protest, saying,
“I cannot cure your ills,
For in my house is neither food nor clothing;
Do not make me a ruler of the people.”

It’s an interesting passage. These things are happening to us right now. We used to have rulers and influential people who were capable and reasonaby mature. Now we have disgraceful, unlearned brats. We make ignorant ghetto boors billionaires. We have a lot of masculinity-hating women in power. The Bible says it’s a curse to be ruled by women. It’s demeaning, it exposes men’s failure to assume their proper roles, and women in power generally make the wrong choices. Ask Adam. If only women voted, we would already live in a totalitarian communist state.

For quite some time, I’ve believed God gave us Donald Trump because he didn’t want to put a gentleman in the Oval Office. I don’t think he wanted a gentleman to have to suffer the libels and unfair attacks. The children of darkness do their best to make conservatives suffer while they’re in office. They file frivolous suits. They get them charged with crimes they didn’t commit. They impeached Trump for things that aren’t even illegal. Decent people shouldn’t have to deal with that, but to Donald Trump, these things mean absolutely nothing. On his scale of suffering, mosquito bites are worse.

More than ever, nice people have abundant reason to avoid running for office. They risk ruining their lives and exposing their famiies to abuse, in order to help a nation of people who, increasingly, are not worth the sacrifice.

People speculate on the source of coronavirus. They claim a lab created it. They say it came from bats. It came from sin. You can stop speculating.

God is allowing it to make people sick, kill them, ruin them financially, and keep them out of church because we sinned and sinned and sinned, and we never repented or even admitted guilt. It’s probably not going away soon, and if it goes away, something worse will follow it. The idea that we can shelter in place, ignore our sins, and wait for things to get better is fatuous.

You can’t run from God. The Bible talks of rich people who call on the mountains to fall on them and hide them. This is already happening. People are buying underground bunkers. They’re not going to work. Can anyone be stupid enough to think he can go where God can’t go?

As plagues go, coronavirus is a joke. I don’t want to see the real plagues that come after the rapture. Not being able to buy eggs or toilet paper for a month was annoying; I don’t want to know what the horseman of lack will bring America. Racist, Marxist rioting has inconvenienced us. I don’t want to see what the horseman of violence does when there are no Christian people on earth praying for God to help humanity.

The other day I wrote about the flood metaphor. Lots of Youtubers are posting videos about the rapture, and they say they see flooding. I posted a video like that about 5 years ago. The Bible says we will be lifted into the air during the rapture, and that means invisible water will make us float. I feel God has been using this concept to open my eyes to Bible verses which are about the rapture. There are more of them than you would think.

Take a look at Psalm 32:

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.

When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.

For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah.

I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah.

For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him.

Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah.

Here’s a passage from Matthew:

And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.

And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus.

But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.

And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?

And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased.

Here’s some of Psalm 69:

But as for me, my prayer is unto thee, O Lord, in an acceptable time: O God, in the multitude of thy mercy hear me, in the truth of thy salvation.

Deliver me out of the mire, and let me not sink: let me be delivered from them that hate me, and out of the deep waters.

Let not the waterflood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me.

Look at Matthew:

But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,

And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.

Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.

Many Christians say “days of Noah” refers to sin, especially sexual sin, that will fill the world before the end. We don’t talk much about the reference to the flood. Jesus is saying the rapture will be like a flood that lifts certain people and drowns others.

Psalm 29:

The Lord sitteth upon the floood; yea, the Lord sitteth King forever.

There are too many verses to quote in one blog post. Flood references are all over the Bible. Jesus even compared carnal preachers to people who had millstones tied around their necks and were thrown into the sea. Many, many famous preachers will be here after the rapture, and my guess is that many will go to hell. I think there must surely be a lot of them there already.

A flood is starting to wash over us, and most of us are sitting under the water holding our breath, hoping the water will go away on its own.

The Bible makes sense, and it’s not hard to understand. It just seems hard to understand because we have supernatural blindness, like the men of Sodom who couldn’t find the door of Lot’s house.

I hope I get it together and keep it together long enough to make be buoyant. The last thing I want is to be stuck in a ruined world with people who hate me.

Smart Preppers Prepare Supernaturally

I’m fasting today.

Generally, I keep it quiet when I fast. Jesus discouraged people from making a show of fasting in order to impress others. I’m not trying to impress anyone. I’m embarrassed about having to fast. Since the epidemic got into high gear, life has been very easy for me, and I’ve let my flesh take over. I eat too much and do too little, and some bad behaviors have been creeping up on me.

On a related note, I’m thinking about coronavirus. I’m wondering why it hasn’t gone away.

Here’s what I think God is telling me: virtually no one is calling for fasting and prayer. We’re wearing ridiculous masks that do nearly nothing, and we’re very self-righteous about them. Half of the country is blaming Donald Trump, not because he’s the problem, but because that half of the country will jump on any chance to libel him. We’re criticizing each other’s cleanliness (we have a point) and our social-distancing failures. The truth is that we got this disease because we’re sinful and rebellious, and the door we came in is the only way we can go out.

There is nothing even faintly resembling a national call to prayer, which is exactly what we have to have, if we want to move on. I think most Americans would prefer death to repentance, however. We’re in love with fornication, homosexuality, pride, drugs, anger, cruelty, pleasure, and ourselves. We think the God of the Bible is ignorant, backward, and unreasonable. We would rather make our own way. Our own way leads to disease, starvation, and murder, however.

The epidemic doesn’t make sense, and God told me something very important a long time ago: when something doesn’t make sense, look for a supernatural cause. This is true of curses and also blessings. If you wonder how an unrepentant serial rapist became “America’s dad,” or how Oprah Winfrey became a billionaire while doing a mindless job other people did just as well, or why Americans responded to coronavirus by hoarding things that wouldn’t help and were never actually scarce, there’s your answer.

The statistics appear to be pure nonsense. I can give you some examples. When the epidemic was getting started, the CDC’s website said we had had 80,000 flu deaths over the last season. A month or two back, a different figure appeared, and it was about half as high. In May, the US coronavirus curve went nearly straight sideways for about a month. If you look at representations of the same curve now, the horizontal part is gone, as though it had never happened. They’re telling us the epidemic never slowed down, and we all know that isn’t true.

We will never know how much of the surge is actually illusory. Testing has increased very dramatically, and this has warped our data. In my area, the graph representing the number of people tested looks almost exactly like the graph of new cases, and that says a lot. No one in authority made any effort to confront this issue, which is at least a nationwide phenomenon, until people pointed out the obvious and forced them.

A couple of days ago, I got a haircut. I listened to the conversation in the shop. I learned something interesting. People who are dying in ways that seem to have nothing to do with coronavirus are being added to the death toll. I knew there were stories about this out there, but until this week, I hadn’t heard from anyone with personal knowledge. I heard about someone who died in a motorcycle crash and another person who had had coronavirus but had died from a heart attack. Both, according to the people I listened to, were declared coronavirus casualties.

Hospitals get paid more when they claim patients have coronavirus. It’s a lot of money, and diagnoses are subjective. People in healthcare generally lean left. If they overdiagnose, they get more money, and they get to add to a state of hysteria that tends to work against conservatives.

The statistics are cooked shamelessly every day. That’s unquestionably true. On the other hand, there do appear to be a lot of new cases.

If coronavirus has proven anything, it’s that epidemiology is a joke. I’m sure it must be good for something, but epidemiologists have failed miserably at explaining this epidemic and making predictions. Apparently the science has not yet reached the point where it can make reliable predictions, which makes you wonder if it has significant value.

We don’t really know what’s going on, but we do know coronavirus is still here. We should repent and pray. It’s not happening. When you receive punishment from God, and you don’t repent, he sends something else, and his punishments tend to be progressive. The longer you stiffen your neck, the worse they get.

No one knows who I am. When I blog, nearly no one reads what I say. I can’t do anything significant to help, apart from prayer. I can’t take out newspaper ads or buy millions of banners on websites. I can’t hold a press conference or address stadiums full of people. There isn’t a whole lot I can do for other people, but I can repent and pray here at home.

I’m not focusing on avoiding coronavirus. I don’t worry about that (or anything else). I am concerned about preparing myself for the rapture and for living life until it comes. Coronavirus doesn’t scare me. To me, it’s just a reminder that life is a very serious game. I don’t care about death. I would be thrilled to go right now. I just want to be aligned with God so I will live correctly while I’m here and I will go to the right place when it’s over.

Usually, I avoid watching fiction, unless reruns of Duck Dynasty count. I feel God wants me to limit my exposure to video fiction. Hollywood is run by smug, ignorant fools who corrupt the rest of us with their willful stupidity. This week, I felt he allowed me to see a couple of films. I watched both Sicario movies. These films are about a jaded, vindictive man the government hires to fight Mexican drug lords.

Last night, I watched a scene in which a group of thugs drove a hostage through the desert. One group was in a Ford SUV with a gaudy green paint job. The men in the car were trashy-looking. They looked exactly like the tattooed, smirking ticks and lice who actually work for gangs. They were listening to obnoxious Spanish rap.

I was repelled. I thought about the godless lifestyle. I have a little experience with it. Loud music, drunkenness, drugs, no sleep, impudence, pride, malice…it’s repugnant. I thought about the tens of millions of people who live that way every day in America. You don’t have to be a Mexican criminal to live in that atmosphere. Most people I’ve gone to church with do it. Christian music in church; rap in the car, the house, the workplace (if any), and the club. Trashy tattoos. Trashy clothes on the women. Dope. Filthy language. No prayer except on Sundays. Shacking up. Strings of illegitimate babies.

Thinking about it made me realize how sick I am of this world. I really want out. I’m fine when I’m alone or with other Christians–real ones–but associating with the general public is unpleasant. It’s like riding in a hot bus with a bunch of people who never bathe or brush their teeth.

My attitude is correct; it’s healthy. It came from the Holy Spirit. The closer you get to God, the more you find wrong with yourself and society. In other words, you grow up. Only a small percentage of people really grow up. They prefer to go through life like babies who never have their diapers changed.

We’re supposed to love people who are against God. We’re not called to bring them into our social circles and endure their presence around the clock.

I used to like bars. The thought of going into a bar is unpleasant now. Bars are for drunkenness, fornication, and fighting. Every bar is a sore on the face of the earth. They should all be burned. I used to like fishing and taking trips to the Bahamas, but those things brought me in contact with shallow, selfish people who never did anything for anyone else. Somewhere, people were witnessing or feeding the poor, but these characters were thinking about drugs, drunkenness, sex, and the lofty goal of catching big fish. I used to like jazz, but it has nothing to do with God, and it has been created and performed by drug addicts and drunks. I don’t want to hear it now.

I’m not out to change the world. A desire to force other people to comply is carnal. My goal is to control myself and my immediate environment. I am content to hole up in my own little Patmos and try to reach people from inside it. I say all bars should be burned. I don’t mean I think Christians should burn them. That would be insane. It would be nice if they disappeared, however.

To get back to coronavirus, if you belong to God, plagues aren’t for you. If this minor plague gets you, something is amiss. The Bible repeatedly mentions shortages, disease, and violence. Because Americans aren’t learning from disease, our nation will probably see severe shortages and widespread violence before too long. I am working to be excluded. If God excluded the Jews from the plagues of Egypt, surely he will exclude his real children from whatever problems America faces.

Rumors of Yesterday’s Rapture are Greatly Exaggerated

People on Youtube are predicting the rapture will come on July 22, 2020. I’m hoping they’re wrong, because that was yesterday, and I’m still here.

Others think it will be July 25. While nothing could make me happier than to see them proven right (other than having it happen right now), I think it will happen later. People are using weird astronomical calculations to come up with July 25, but the word says God tells us what will happen through prophets, not astronomers. Figuring things out isn’t prophecy.

I watched a great video yesterday. A lady who sounds sort of Jamaican dreamed she and her son were in a school bus, outside a school, waiting for the school day to end. The bus symbolized the separation of the rapture, obviously. School was wrapping up. People who weren’t prepared for the rapture were getting a last chance to learn and repent.

I loved this video, mainly because she used the phrase “going home.” The word “heaven” sounds nice, but “home” has a special meaning. The concept of home is a big deal in the Bible.

Adam had a perfect home. He lost it, and he could never return. In his home, everyone was in agreement. There was no anger or argument. Even the animals were friends to Adam and his wife. Once they were driven from their home, things changed. They had two sons, and one murdered the other. The human race became so corrupt and disgusting, God killed nearly everyone. It’s getting the same way now.

The Jews had a pretty good home in Israel, but like Adam, they were driven out by God. They rebelled, so the land vomited them out. In Israel, when they behaved, they were dominant and prosperous. When they acted up, foreigners came in and humiliated them by ruling over them. They eventually had to leave, and they have been tormented in other nations ever since. Homelessness is a major theme in Jewish history. Apart from Israel, they are strangers wherever they live.

Americans had a sweet situation for a long time. We had our problems, but our nation was generally safer than other nations, and it became the strongest, best nation on earth. Then our rebellion increased to the point where God had to do something. Now foreigners come in illegally and take our jobs and commit crimes (other than the crime of being here illegally). Revolting people push us around politically and in our workplaces. A barbaric nation that used to be afraid of us is becoming dominant over us. The earth has never been “home” for real Christians, but America was the next best thing. Now our “Israel” is being taken from us.

The problem with our predicamant is that there is no place else to go. Christians were able to leave Europe when religion was in decline there. We were able to move to America and live in hegemony. Now that America is not hospitable, we’re stuck. We are out of fresh continents. We can’t go to Mars.

There is no large country left that can function as a home for us. For this reason, the rapture is more exciting to me than it ever has been. There is nothing left for us here, so it’s wonderful to have a new nation that will take us in. Heaven is our nation, it’s perfect in every way, and the people who hate us will never, ever be seen or heard there. Once we take the bus ride, we will never even have to think about them again.

We will never look at the news in heaven and get knots in our stomachs. Won’t that be nice? What a change.

We will still have to think about the earth. Prophecy says at least some of us will have to return to Earth in 7 years, but it will be a changed place. No rioters. No LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ tyranny in the workplace. No secular government to take our money and rule us with insensitivity and spite. No crime problem. No pollution. No plagues. No poverty. Jesus himself will be here as our king. We won’t have to worry about being abused by President Kamala Harris or President Elizabeth Warren.

I was thinking about it last night, and I realized that if I am brought back here, the rapture won’t be a permanent move for me. It will be more like a vacation. My lifespan won’t be over if the tribulation ends within the next decade.

At times I’ve wondered what I should do with my stuff. Should I write a rapture-ready will? I’m not sure how that would work, because 1) everyone I would want to leave things to is a Christian and would hopefully be taken in the rapture, and 2) I don’t think anything I left anyone else would be helpful to them. When the full-blown apocalypse takes place, what good will money and land do anyone? They won’t save anyone from famine, war, pestilence, or the disasters that will kill big percentages of the plants, animals, people, and sea creatures.

Now that I see the rapture as a 7-year rest, I wonder if I should forget about plans for my estate. Maybe my property will survive, and I’ll be entitled to reclaim it. If I’m raptured, I won’t be legally dead anyway, so anyone who tries to take what I have will have no claim.

No one thinks about this stuff.

During the rapture, we will go home to heaven. When the tribulation is over, we’ll return to something we have never experienced: an Earth where we are not rejected. It won’t be home, but it will be ours; our big Israel. We will be kings and queens. No one will question it. No one will protest displaying the Ten Commandments in a public building. No one will tell us kids can’t pray in school. If there is money, we’ll be able to put the face of Jesus on every coin and bill, and no one will be able to do one thing about it.

I’ve already experienced something like this. God moved me from Miami, a trashy city which is like hell’s embassy, to a place where you can go to a store that belongs to a major chain and hear Christian music while you shop. The people here are polite and patient. They are hard to provoke. They do things for each other. It’s not perfect, but it’s a huge step up, and it’s a picture of the rapture.

Every day, I thank God over and over. I look around and I say, “Look at this place! Look where I live!” I say these things out loud while I drive. If I’m this happy here, how will I be able to stand the joy of being at the marriage of Jesus in heaven?

I can’t wait to go home. The closer I get to God, the more he isolates me from corrosive people and spirits. I can’t wait to be completely free of them and to know I will never have to see or hear them again.

The Bible clearly says God’s chosen will know when the rapture is coming. I thought we wouldn’t know, but fellow blogger Baldilocks corrected me. Christians love to say they don’t claim to know the date, but in reality, there is no reason why we can’t. The Bible says it won’t come as a thief in the night to God’s children. The surprise is for everyone else.

It looks like July 22 was not the day, and I don’t think July 25 is it, either. I keep feeling it will be December 24. Pray and see what God tells you.

God kept telling me my dad would not be alive on April 1, 2019. He told me this for months. Then my dad died a week before that day. Now I feel like God is telling me I won’t be here on January 1, 2021, and December 24 comes about a week earlier. Does it mean anything? I’ve been wrong before.

December 24 is my dad’s birthday.

I hope I’m not here to see the children of the devil elect a post-Trump president. It was painful enough to see them elect Clinton and Obama. Biden is demented and presumably dying, and if he is elected, the extreme-leftist black woman he chooses to be vice president will be in charge. Life will be unbearable for anyone who belongs to God. Israel will be in big trouble. It will be very ugly.

There are rabbis who predict that Netanyahu will be Israel’s last prime minister prior to the coming of the Messiah. I don’t consider rabbis prophets, since they missed the Messiah the first time around, but it’s interesting. Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while, and in the Bible, a Jew who rejected and persecuted Jesus uttered a prophecy.

Some Christians and Messianics point to the writings of the late Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri to “prove” Jesus is the Messiah. I have written about it before. I am not convinced.

Kaduri, who was an extremely influential rabbi, claimed he was in communication with the Messiah. When he died, he left a note about him, and the first letters of the first words of the note spelled “Yehoshuah,” which is the long form of “Yeshua,” or “Jesus.” Kaduri’s students confirm that he believed Yeshua was the Messiah, and at least some are now Messianics. They don’t equivocate. They say he expressly stated that Yeshua was the Messiah.

Kaduri’s followers put the note on his website. They were proud of it. Then when the “code” was discovered in the note, the note was taken down, and his son started claiming it was a forgery. Now some notebooks Kaduri filled have been published, and a handwriting expert says the same person wrote the note and the notebooks.

Here’s the thing: Kaduri said the spirit of the Messiah had attached itself to someone in Israel. Was he talking about reincarnation? This is not a Christian doctrine. The Bible clearly says Jesus will return in the skies and that everyone on earth will see it. I suppose he could do that after living in Israel incognito, but it doesn’t sound right. He said he would return in the sky. If he’s living in Israel, that’s a return, and he’s clearly not in the sky.

Of course, the Holy Spirit attaches himself to every Christian who does Christianity right, and the same thing applies to Messianics. If Kaduri was referring to the Holy Spirit, and not reincarnation, then there is no problem. He said the Messiah was already in Israel, but that’s vague. It’s not the same thing as saying a human Messiah in a flesh body was in Israel.

Jesus visits people and talks to them. He visited me twice. I suppose he could dwell on a person for a time if he wanted. That would not be reincarnation.

A Christian preacher has written two books asserting that Kaduri was right. The book is being used to win Jews over.

I don’t believe a reincarnation prophecy could be correct. I also have doubts about Kaduri’s salvation. Jesus plainly stated that if a person denied him before men, he would deny them before Yahweh. We are told that Kaduri said he hid his belief because he was afraid of persecution. If that’s true, how is it possible for him to be saved? If he had been communicating with Jesus, presumably, he would have been told to stand up like a man and tell others what he believed.

I am not sure what to make of the Kaduri stories. If they’re unsound, people shouldn’t use them as conversion tools. You can’t build a strong house on a soft foundation. But it’s interesting. Also, sometimes false prophesies are partly true. Kaduri had a long history of giving people magical charms, which means he was a witch, but Saul got sound information through a witch, and besides, a witch can repent.

Kaduri said the Messiah wouldn’t return until Ariel Sharon died. Sharon had a stroke soon after he said that. He was in a coma for an amazing 8 years, and he died in 2014. That was the year after the US Supreme Court forced federal recognition of absurd gay “marriage.” This shows Sharon died at about the time the world started to get really insane.

Kaduri also said Jews needed to return to Israel to escape natural disasters. So far, the disasters haven’t materialized.

The more I look at Kaduri, the more I think I’ve misunderstood what he said in the past. Maybe he was on the level.

This week, I had a few end-time thoughts which may be revelations.

First, why are there so many rapture dreams on Youtube, referring to floods and tsunamis?

I had my own tsunami rapture dream several years ago. I was sitting on the floor in my grandparent’s living room. Their house was a place of peace and escape for me. It was a place of belonging. My mother was in a chair in a corner. She was wearing jeans and a work shirt; items she would never have worn in real life. She had long hair. I have never seen her with long hair. I had a little dish of insecticide bait pellets in front of me.

I heard a horn sound. The pitch was low. It shook the earth. Somehow I knew the creature blowing it was way out over the Pacific somewhere. I realized the rapture was taking place.

My mother, the poison pellets, and I started rising in the air. It was as though the room were filling with invisible water. Everything else stayed put. I woke up when we started passing through the ceiling.

It’s strange that the poison was coming with us. It had obviously been provided by God, for some good purpose during my time on earth. Sometimes I think I have been bait for people controlled by demons. Many, many people have attacked me for no reason during my life. It’s something I expect. It’s normal for me. The poison would be the judgment God hands down to them later.

Why do rapture dreams resemble floods?

The first rapture was the flood. The earth was full of filthy people who were polluted with the DNA of fallen angels who had had sex with bird-brained women. This is where the giants came from. Enoch says they were giants in the flesh but not in spirit. God made water rise. Those who didn’t float died. Those who were lifted in the ark survived and ended up in a cleansed world.

Jewish legend, which is occasionally correct, says Satan petitioned God after the flood, complaining that God had locked up spirits that served him. He said he needed more of them to tempt mankind. God released a fraction of them, and they are with us today, if the story is true.

Things that happen in the physical world in the Old Testament are shadows of things that happen in the supernatural world in the New Testament. Physical water and the extermination of half-breed abominations symbolize other things that take place in later times.

After the flood, God promised he would not use water to destroy the world again.

In the Bible, water represents words and voices. These are the things that actually control everything else. The word says God’s voice sounds like many waters. When Peter sank in the Sea of Galilee, it was a picture of a person succumbing to the voices of corrupt people and demons. There is a sea of such voices that covers the world.

When the rapture comes, supernatural waters that do not come from evil spirits or their children will rise, and those who belong to Jesus will float on them. We won’t see water with our eyes. It won’t be physical water. It will be a supernatural tide that comes from God.

I believe this explains the flood of tsunami dreams. I use the word “flood” deliberately, even though it looks like a bad choice.

The second revelation, or possible revelation, involves the birth of Israel (Jacob) and Esau. Esau was a profane person who always threw away future blessings in exchange for immediate gratification of the flesh. He was like a pig. For all his faults, Israel was closer to God.

The Revelation says a woman clothed with the sun will give birth, and a red dragon will try to consume the baby when it comes.

The dragon is Satan. It sweeps a third of the stars from heaven with its tail, just as Satan corrupted a third of the angels.

The woman–God’s people–is taken by eagles and carried away to safety for 7 years. That just happens to be the number of years of tribulation that follow the rapture.

The dragon tries to destroy the woman by spewing water from its mouth, but the earth swallows the water. When a person’s words have no power, they fall to earth, according to scripture.

Satan is constantly filling the earth with the water of his lies and curses. “God isn’t real.” “Christians are silly, ignorant racists who hate women.” “Jesus is just like Buddha.” “There are many ways to heaven.” “Christianity is anti-female, and wicca is right because it recognizes the superiority of women.” “Science proves the Bible is wrong.” You’ve heard them all. Faith provided by God is what allows you to float on the water.

The Revelation talks about labor pains, but it’s not completely clear whether Jesus and his nation are the only ones who are being born. It looks like the antichrist is also being born, because he rises up before Jesus takes over the world, and like Esau, he ends up on the bottom.

When Israel and Esau were born, Esau came out first. He was the elder, so he was entitled to receive most of what Isaac had. Israel came out behind him, holding his ankle. Esau was unworthy, and he ended up selling Israel his birthright for a bowl of soup. Then Isaac was tricked into giving Israel the elder son’s blessing.

It appears to me that the birth of Esau and Israel is a picture of the end. The antichrist, who is the human representative of Satan, will emerge before Jesus comes in glory. He will rule in great power, like a king who inherited his kingdom as an eldest son. Then Jesus and his nation will return, take over, and expel the antichrist.

Esau was red when he was born, like the dragon.

It certainly looks like the birth of the twins was a picture of the emergence of the antichrist and his defeat and replacement. Satan’s children rule the world right now, but we will receive everything they’ve stolen, and they will be removed from our presence.

I’m not certain about everything, but I think it’s safe to say the age of the Gentiles (the age of the church) is over. I believe the apocalypse has begun. I believe the rapture will take place soon, and I strongly suspect it will be this year.

To Attack Christians and Jews is to Attack God

Today I thought about something that gives me hope for the upcoming election. Witches curse Donald Trump, and Christians pray for him.

You can look up stories about Satan’s servants gathering to curse Trump. Interesting thing: we haven’t seen any stories about them cursing liberals. Practitioners of witchcraft and Satan worship are overwhelmingly leftist.

Anyway, let’s think about Rabshakeh and Sennacherib.

Sennacherib was the king of Assyria, and he worshiped filthy, defeated spirits. He sent a servant the Bible calls Rabshakeh to Jerusalem to intimidate the Jews under King Hezekiah. “Rabshakeh” may actually be a title, not a name. He commanded them to surrender.

It wasn’t just a battle between kings. It was a battle of gods, or one God and some inferior, beaten spirits. Rabshakeh said this:

“Thus you shall speak to Hezekiah king of Judah, saying: ‘Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you, saying, “Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.” Look! You have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands by utterly destroying them; and shall you be delivered? Have the gods of the nations delivered those whom my fathers have destroyed, Gozan and Haran and Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah?’ ”

Attacking the Jews involved challenges, but attacking the creator of Rabshakeh and Sennacherib was a great deal worse. The heathens provoked God to prove his dominance and the feebleness of his enemies.

Hezekiah humbled himself and prayed, and Isaiah predicted that the Assyrians, who massed outside Jerusalem, would lose and be unable to shoot an arrow into the city. Then one night God killed 185,000 of the Assyrians. Sennacherib returned to Nineveh, and his sons eventually murdered him.

The story of the Exodus is similar. The Egyptians, and many Hebrews in Egypt, worshipped beaten spirits. Pharaoh believed he, himself, was a god. Through Moses and Aaron, God sent 10 plagues that not only weakened the Egyptians but humiliated the powerless spirits they served, as well as Pharaoh.

Non-Christian historians claim the Assyrians were disarmed by a sudden plague of field mice which ate their bowstrings and the straps of their shields. Somehow, this is supposed to suggest that God didn’t work a miracle to help his chosen. Is there any other story, in all of human history, of mice appearing instantly, in such great numbers they disarmed an army? Of course not. When God killed the Assyrians, it was a miracle, and if mice disarmed them, it was also a miracle.

It must be good for Christians when servants of broken spirits menace our friend Donald Trump and try to assert dominance over Jesus, the creator of worlds. There are times when God lets his rebellious children suffer defeat, but one would think he would be less willing to tolerate overt challenges to his own eternal and complete supremacy.

I would hate to see Trump lose. We could really use four more years of his help while the remnant gets it together.

When I was living in Israel, I had a vision. I woke up in the night, and my bed had turned 90 degrees so the foot faced east. I saw a quilt over me, and dead arms and legs are attached to the borders, perpendicular to them, flapping around frantically. At the foot of the bed, I saw what I thought was a woman with silvery hair. This person wore a pure white robe with a silver belt about 6 inches wide. This person’s arms were raised in worship. The face was raised to heaven. A light shone down on this person, like a spotlight from the throne of God.

I have always said it was a woman with short hair, like a man.

The other day, I saw myself in a video, and I looked familiar in a strange way. I looked like the person I saw at the foot of my bed in Israel. Maybe it wasn’t a woman. Maybe it was a vision of myself later in life. I didn’t get a long look, a robe is the same thing as a dress, and nearly any beardless person in a dress looks like a woman at first glance.

It made me wonder if it was a picture of me at the time I would be taken from the earth. My hair is getting that silvery look.

Before I got this idea, I had been having a strange feeling. I had the sensation that there was an invisible person who shared the same space I occupied, and that that person, not my physical self, felt the way a person feels before lightning strikes.

Before lightning strikes, people in the area may feel an electrical charge building on their skin. It makes hairs stand up.

Is supernatural lightning about to strike the earth? I keep feeling as though God is telling me I’m going to be raptured soon and that I won’t be around in 2021.

The Bible says Satan fell from heaven like lightning, and there is always symmetry in the supernatural. Maybe the raptured rise to heaven like lightning. Good and evil and triumph and defeat are all about direction. When Satan was in heaven, it did him no good, because he was headed for hell. We live on the roof of hell, but it does us no harm, because we’re on the way to Satan’s vacant office in heaven.

It seems like God should wait, because the world isn’t completely insane yet, and people are still being saved. Maybe I’m wrong, though. Maybe it’s sufficiently bad, and people are sufficiently stubborn, to motivate God to start using extremely painful means, through the tribulation, to convince the stubborn. Even if many people are moving toward God, maybe he has determined that many more would be saved if they had to endure the horrors of the apocalypse.

It’s hard for me to believe God would take me when I’ve accomplished nearly nothing for him. That’s on me, though. For over a decade, I have been trying to get cleaned up and aligned with the Holy Spirit, and I’ve been asking God to put me to work, but maybe it’s too little, too late.

The main thing I want is to miss the tribulation. I’m sick of humanity right now. I don’t want to be here when people are even more boneheaded, vicious, violent, proud, and filthy. Look how they act while they’re restrained by the prayers of God’s people. Imagine what they’ll be like when we’re gone.

I have to admit, part of me wishes I could see a little of it. I would like to see what pompous celebrities say on Twitter when it becomes obvious the apocalypse is in full flower. I would like to see their arrogant dismissals and fabricated explanations. I wonder what they will come up with. I can’t help but be curious.

Maybe in those days, female celebrities will wear nothing but face masks.

It’s a childish desire, though. When God releases you from something, let go and face forward. Savor what’s in front of you. It’s a bad idea to look back. Also, the suffering on Earth will be horrible to witness. From where I sit now, the tribulation is about as upsetting as a dental appointment, but if I could actually imagine it, I would wish I couldn’t.

The Bible says Jesus will come when the gospel has been preached to all peoples. Some think this hasn’t happened yet, but maybe it has. What may be the last frontier was breached in 2018. A young evangelist traveled to North Sentinel Island, where primitive, vile people are “protected” from helpful instruction by the Indian government. He was murdered before he could get through to them, but he went, nonetheless. Maybe that was enough. Some people say there are many peoples who haven’t heard about Jesus. I am highly skeptical. Books, periodicals, TV, and the Internet are everywhere, and evangelists have been at work for 2,000 years.

The word doesn’t say the gospel will be preached to every person. It only says it will be preached to every people. Is there any people which has had zero exposure?

Jesus said “the end,” not the rapture, would come when the gospel had been preached to all peoples. It may be that he meant the spread of the gospel would be completed during the tribulation. We know two witnesses will preach during that time.

If I’m still here a year from now, I’ll ascribe my feelings to confusion. It would be nice to be elsewhere, though. Try and imagine a life among faultless, brilliant people who love you more than your mother and agree with you about everything.

When I lived in Miami, I was surrounded by coarse peasants (I include the educated and successful) who were had the hearts of pigs. A pig naturally looks down at the earth all the time, hoping to find something nasty he can eat. He focuses on low things. People in Miami were crude, boorish, selfish, proud, racist, godless, prone to demon worship, and obnoxious. They made me hate leaving the house.

Then I moved to Northern Florida. Suddenly, everyone around me was polite. No one ever got angry at me. Seemed like everyone was a Christian. Strangers did nice things for me.

Moving to heaven should be the same kind of experience, only much better.

Digital Flea Dip Increases Peace and Love

It’s remarkable how disappointing people are!

Yesterday, I wrote a piece about the bizarre behavior of the moderators at a firearms forum I have used. I saw a crazy video featuring Massad Ayoob, a layman who gives people legal advice concerning firearms. He has no business doing this. Someone might see one of his videos and decide not to wait for a lawyer’s advice at a very critical time, and every lawyer knows this can result in prison time or even an execution. I wrote a forum post about it, and early the next morning, the moderators had sent me a personal message. A group of them had assembled for the purpose of telling me I was wrong.

I marveled. I did something insignificant, and I did nothing wrong, but they clearly thought it was momentous. They had assembled something resembling a firing squad, and they did it early in the morning. The guy who started the private message conversation lives in California, and it appeared he had started it at 7:35 Eastern time, or 4:35 a.m. where he lives. Maybe Ayoob got him out of bed.

I was not nasty about Ayoob’s video at any time. I was critical for sure, but criticism is a good thing, especially when your criticism could keep people out of prison.

Jesus was extremely critical and blunt; he said things that would spark protest marches today and send man-bunned college kids into special rooms full of therapy puppies. It’s important, in our efforts to be kind and loving, not to go too far and lose what Jesus called our saltness. When salt loses its saltness, it’s only fit to be trampled underfoot. If you can’t speak the truth when it’s not popular, and you can’t do it unapologetically, you aren’t doing one of the things Christians are supposed to do.

I’m not saying I went to the forum to evangelize, but one of my concerns these days is the danger of letting myself be childish and mean. You have to know the difference between useless, sadistic railing and blunt, well-deserved, useful criticism.

The moderators in the ad hoc forum jury said things that were obviously wrong, and I corrected them at length with no reserve or timidity, but I told them I wasn’t there to cause problems. I said something about how they should delete the thread I started if it bothered them.

Of course, I did cause a problem. The thread wasn’t that big a deal, but I caused a major problem by confronting forum moderators with their own unfairness, lack of real importance, and ignorance about the practice of law.

Shortly thereafter, the thread disappeared, and they claimed it was because I had made misrepresentations, which was completely untrue. The thing that bothered them, it appears, is that I said things that were true, about someone they held to be exempt from all criticism. I think losing a debate very badly in the private message conversation was also a major factor.

I didn’t care about the thread. Who would? It was trivial.

The things I found interesting were the dishonesty and corruption. I told them Ayoob was getting special treatment, and I said they ought to ask themselves why they were bothering to create what I called a star chamber or FISA court in the clandestine direct message conversation. Obviously, they don’t do this for every person who says another person made a bad Youtube video. They denied giving him special treatment, in a conversation, the existence of which was the direct result of special treatment.

I wondered if they knew what a star chamber was, and that’s why I used the term “FISA court.”

Ayoob is a forum member, and he knows some of the poobahs personally. A cynical person would say they singled me out for disparate treatment just because I made their pal look bad. I think that was what got them going, and I think the fact that I stood up for myself put the cherry on the sundae.

Who are Internet forum moderators to me? Should I be intimidated by them or in any way bow down to them? It would be ridiculous.

Ayoob never showed up in the conversation; at least not while I was participating. I thought it was odd that they would do his responding for him as though I had mugged a disabled person. Maybe he’s not doing well. He lives in Florida, where coronavirus is hot right now, and he’s elderly.

Anyway, I wondered why they didn’t ban me. They were clearly not above such things, and it seemed like the obvious next step. Given their childish behavior, I wondered if I would soon find that I had no access to the site. I thought it would happen eventually.

Guess what happened this morning? You’ll never guess. Not in a million years.

Yes, my username is now banned. The reason? “Violations of the rules.” Plural.

That’s all I know.

Of course, I didn’t violate any rules. I cooperated completely.

Oddly, I am still logged in. I can’t log out. There are fresh alerts for me on the site. One appears to be a private message alert. I think maybe they told me I was banned, in a conversation they should know I can’t see. If you go to the site and look at old posts I made, it still says “member” by my username. I guess the software does that. Surely they’re not pretending I’m still active, to cover their behavior.

So now I’m cut off forever from all the close friends I’ve made there, as well as the great information the forum contains.

Actually, I don’t find friends by going to Internet forums, and I can still go to the site whenever I want, using a new username they don’t recognize, and ask questions until the cows come home. And I belong to other forums. One wonders what they accomplished.

I suspect the thing that really set them off was a remark I made about the thread. While I was telling them I didn’t want to be a problem and saying they could go ahead and delete the thread, I said there was a website where the boss always agreed with me (since he’s me), and I would put my stuff there. I let them know I respected their very limited authority, but I also did something you should never do to a bully: I made it clear I would continue to defy them elsewhere.

Bullies are about two things: sadism and control. When you tell them their control is extremely limited, it makes them more determined to punish your defiance.

If you want to inflict great suffering on a bully, all you have to do is thwart his efforts to bully you and let him know he can’t do anything to you. You don’t have to do to them what they try to do to you. Just make it clear they can’t do what they want to do. The pain they feel is like red-hot whips. I can’t explain it, but I’ve seen it many times.

I don’t know how many people would have seen the thread I posted, had they not deleted it. Hundreds, maybe? I wrote about the whole business here, where it will remain as long as I pay my hosting fees. Thousands of people will see it. They can’t take it down. They can’t send me private messages. They can’t involve themselves in any way. In trying to cover up dissent, they put it before more people and destroyed their power to participate. They set me free and pulled their own teeth.

If my thread were still up, they could post all sorts of things vilifying me and praising Massad Ayoob to the heavens. Not an option now.

It’s nice to be banned. I feel light because I have been freed from a considerable number of cantankerous, unreasonable people. The atmosphere in the forum was pretty corrosive.

Gun forums are full of obnoxious, posturing men who think owning a Browning Buckmark makes them Rambo, Chris Kyle, and John Moses Browning, rolled up in a needlessly-camo-covered ball of unpleasantness. You have to walk on eggs around them. Insecurity hangs in the air like fallout after a nuclear test. Using a gun forum can be very helpful, but you have to be careful not to become contaminated with hostility and immaturity.

I got somewhat annoyed during the Ayoob digital kangaroo court, and that bothered me, because I don’t want to be infected with lingering anger over tiny trivialities. The prospect of having stuff deleted and being banned didn’t bother me at all. What could be less important? But the gaslighting and unfairness of the silly private conversation made me a little angry.

The majority of the people at the forum are reasonably pleasant, but the minority is not a small one, and it is well-represented among the moderators.

For a long time, I’ve felt that using the forum was a vice. It was something I limited deliberately. Whenever I thought about going there to post something, I asked myself, “Do I really want to do this? I want to be a man of love and please God. Do I want to risk being provoked by very small people in exchange for some unimportant information or a few minutes of diversion?”

I saw it as a throwaway activity. I had the feeling I would eventually be banned for standing up for myself or that the bullies would eventually take so much of the fun out of the forum I would quit, as I have quit other forums.

Gun forums are nasty places for people who don’t cower for bullies, and this particular forum is worse than others I use. To me, it was a place I went when I felt energetic enough to risk being insulted and belittled. I would think, “I know a lot of these people are basically land mines, but I feel like checking the forum out today, so what the heck.”

This is my second forum ban. The other forum was also a gun website. I joined the Rimfire Forum, and I got the boot within a month or so, if memory serves. I had just gotten started. I was trying to find a new trigger for a .22 rifle, and there was a guy who called himself Arrowdodger who was famed for the triggers he made. I tried to get in touch with him via various means, and he never responded.

I mentioned this on the forum, where he is revered, and when people defended him and someone blamed me for not continuing to pursue him, I dismissed their strange remarks, essentially saying a person who runs a business should not have to be chased by customers. I wasn’t nasty about it at all. I just didn’t bother applying a coat of sugar. Why would I? I wasn’t blaspheming God. Just saying a mere man like myself should communicate with potential customers.

Within a day or two, without warning, I was banned for spamming. Of course, I don’t spam. I don’t sell anything. It was a lie someone told, perhaps because the forum software required an explanation for the ban, and something had to be typed in a box. That’s a guess. They were never man enough to respond to email inquiries, so I will never hear their explanation.

One of the illusions firearms forum people tend to have is that they are manlier than everyone else, but in this case, they ran away and hid. Because I am so scary? What good are guns to people who don’t have the courage to stand their ground in emails? Gun owners like to call leftist protestors snowflakes, but at least the protestors have the guts and integrity to show up.

Bottom line: Internet forum moderators tend to be immature and corrupt, some are not rocket scientists, and the problem is worse in certain types of forums where insecurity and hostility are higher than normal.

The ban will be helpful to me, because it takes a source of irritation away. I can’t say I feel damaged, even though I was wronged, because the people who wanted to chew on my ankles ended up blessing me by removing themselves from my life.

Every day, I pray for a group of people I know, and of course, I’m on the list. As part of the process, I pray the Lord’s Prayer. What does it say? “Lead us not into temptation.” I expound on it. I say, “Please keep us away from temptation and provocation, and help us not to tempt or provoke others.” Provocation is temptation. Bullies are some of the worst tempters around. They are great at infecting you with rage it’s hard to get rid of.

The ban is a direct answer to my prayers, and I am thrilled to get it. I love seeing a prayer answered. I hope similar things are happening to the people I pray for.

It’s surprising how many doors Satan will use to get into your life. Things that seem insignificant can be chinks that turn into major perimeter breaches. Being given a desk next to a rude coworker, receiving a credit card charge for something you didn’t buy, or being lied about on an Internet forum can open the door to anger and unforgiveness that come between you and God.

In about 2015, God gave me what I call “the little rapture.” He told me to get rid of my social media accounts. I had been dishonored and sassed online repeatedly by numerous people I knew from church. Christian “friends” were the main problem. They had no respect for older people, the educated, or people with good prayer lives. Trying to help them was like trying to clean up Somalia. I was punished for it.

When I got rid of my social media accounts, I missed certain people, but I had peace. I was insulated. God still had access to me, and so did good people I knew, but unrepentant, arrogant, impudent boneheads did not. I was no longer required or permitted to wrestle with them. It was, and is, very nice.

The forum thing is also like the rapture. It separates me from an endeavor that did me little good and had the potential to be infectious.

I truly look forward to the rapture. Imagine the peace of being away from protestors, road ragers, politicians, abusive relatives, sadistic employers, and so on. It will be magnificent. Everyone around you will be bursting with love and support, and they will agree with you about absolutely everything. The love you will share with every person in heaven will be much deeper and cleaner than the strongest love you share with anyone here on earth.

Forgiving people is a beautiful, powerful experience, but it will be much better to be around people who never, ever have to be forgiven.

It was annoying to receive the strange treatment I got at the forum, but I can be purged of annoyance, and the freedom from provocation is very, very pleasant.

MORE

I mentioned the coward who banned me from The High Road on another forum where one member of the super-secret THR forum jury is also a moderator, to let people know I might not be around later. I wanted to thank the people on the other forum for their help, in case I got banned there, too. My remarks were up for an hour or two, and then they were deleted with no explanation. My guess is that a ban will be handed down later today.

Unfortunately, when it comes to this site, all they can do is watch.

MORE

Things keep developing. A moderator at the second forum sent me a message telling me to stop talking about the first forum. I told him I was actually glad someone was talking to me instead of sniping from cover. I said I would gladly comply, or he could ban me if he wanted, and there would be no hard feelings.

This is a moderator who lost an argument with me pretty badly a while back, and he’s a hothead who doesn’t like admitting error. I was polite, but his arguments were extremely poor and easily refuted, and he didn’t prevail or come close to prevailing. I expect to be banned because of that, not because I mentioned the other moderator.

George Santayana, I Listened!

I have had a fascinating experience. I went to a forum and criticized something I saw in a Youtube video. The thread was locked, and when I got up, I had a personal message featuring a slew of forum moderators as participants!

I explained how I disagreed with them. I did it politely. I said they should ask themselves why they chose to send me the strange personal message with multiple cc’s. I said they could delete the thread if it bothered them, and I said maybe they should have a rule that no one can disagree with the person whose behavior I criticized.

They deleted the thread, and here is the explanation: “I have deleted the thread because the OP has little value and misrepresents the issue.” This is not even a little bit true, but it’s the explanation. My response to them: “Problem solved.”

Guess who I criticized. I’ll tell you. Massad Ayoob. I’ve written about him before. I used to be impressed by his work, but that perspective has changed as I have learned things.

If you don’t know who he is, here are the facts. He is a gun writer. He has participated in pistol competitions. He was a part-time cop in a tiny (like fewer than 3000 people) town in New Hampshire.

Right now, that town has a grand total of 5 patrolmen. But when Ayoob “retired” from part-time work, he had the rank of captain. That’s very odd. I’ve known a number of small-town cops. I never knew anyone who called himself a captain. I knew deputies and sheriffs. I don’t think they knew they could make themselves captains. It seems very strange to me that a part-time cop in a sleepy little department would let someone call him “captain.”

Anyone can go to a police supply site and order stars or bars. Captain’s bars cost $8.75 on Amazon. For 10 bucks, you can be a brigadier general.

You can also be an admiral, but most of the admiral stuff is from Battlestar Galactica, so you might get sued by the estate of Lorne Greene.

The thing about it is that there are many, many LEO’s and military people out there who earned the insignias of rank. They fought in battles. Many were wounded or killed. There are many cops who worked their way up in departments in violent cities, taking part in shootouts. I would feel very odd, putting bars on my shoulders after working part-time, in very little danger, in a miniscule town where nothing happens.

I’ve seen a number of statements of his credentials, and I’ve never seen one that indicates he went to college or served in the military. He has no law degree. He works as an expert witness, which means lawyers pay him when they think he can state facts that will help their clients.

An expert witness is not allowed to talk about the law on the witness stand. He can only talk about facts. An expert witness who started issuing legal opinions would get in trouble with his boss–the lawyer–and he could also be held in contempt by the judge. Here’s a good parallel: a technician runs a complicated machine while a surgeon removes a brain tumor, and he pushes the surgeon out of the way and starts cutting.

A gun channel on Youtube put up a video in which Ayoob told people how to talk to the police after shooting other people.

This is what we lawyers call “legal advice.” Ayoob lives in Florida. In Florida, a layman like Ayoob can get in big trouble if he provides legal advice. If the situation is sufficiently egregious, he can be charged with a third-degree felony. Practicing law without a license is a crime in every state. Telling people how to talk to cops in a Youtube video is not necessarily practicing law, but the fact that practicing law without a license is a crime is an indication that there is a consensus that it’s very bad for unqualified people to give legal advice.

My dad defended 11 murder defendants, and he got 10 acquittals. Like nearly any other criminal attorney you may talk to, he told me this: you do not talk to the police when you get in trouble. He said 85% of prison inmates were incarcerated because they talked. I don’t know where he got the statistic, and it may have been somewhat outdated, but the principle was correct, and he didn’t make it up.

It should be obvious that Ayoob isn’t qualified to tell people how to act in pivotal legal situations with potentially catastrophic consequences. The main problem is that he isn’t a lawyer and does not understand the law. The other problem is that he’s giving outlier, contrarian advice that goes against what every attorney is taught in law school. It goes against what most criminal attorneys are taught when they practice. It flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s Miranda holding, which resulted in police being forced to tell suspects they had the right to remain silent.

I tried to explain why what he did was not wise, and of course, laymen in the forum disagreed. I knew that would happen. It gave me flashbacks to my childhood, when I couldn’t communicate with other kids. I would say things like, “It’s ‘LIBRARY,’ not ‘LIBERRY,'” and they looked at me like I was from Mars. I’m not the smartest person on earth, but I’m smart enough to be frustrated a lot when I try to explain things to people. The smarter you are, the lonelier you will feel.

At least one person mentioned advice a cop had given him. Are cops lawyers? No. They are not. I don’t care if you’ve arrested 3,000 suspects. Police experience doesn’t make you a lawyer, any more than prosecuting criminals makes you a cop. I have to note, however, that one person said a cop had advised him not to talk.

My main point was not that you should never talk to the police after you shoot someone. I believe it’s true, as do most lawyers, but there are competent attorneys who believe otherwise. The point was that a guy who writes for magazines and works as a paid witness has no business giving blanket legal advice on Youtube.

I’ll give you the only free legal advice my law school told me I could give people without risking serious problems: when you’re in trouble, hire an attorney. You say you may not be able to get an attorney right after you shoot someone? Sorry; they didn’t teach me how to make one appear for you. You can always hire one today, just to give you preemptive advice. That’s my advice. Hire an attorney.

I’m not telling you to talk to the cops. I’m not telling you to talk to them. I’m telling you this: hire an attorney.

Anyway, here is the thing I wanted to write about, and it’s a wonderful confirmation of my understanding of human nature: when I got up today, I had that personal message to deal with.

I can’t read anyone’s mind, but I have some opinions:

1. Ayoob has a cultlike following, and he gets very special treatment.

2. Gun forum moderators are not the most ethical people on earth. Something I already knew.

Imagine you belong to a gun forum, and one day, you criticize a Youtube video made by a non-famous person the moderators don’t know. Let’s say the video guy is telling people the .38 Special is worthless for self-defense, and you happen to know that the video guy is a bartender who has no formal training in ballistics or pathology. On the other hand, he has done a lot of reading. You say he shouldn’t be posting videos because he isn’t trained.

Will the forum moderators gang up and send you a message to reeducate you? Will they delete your thread?

Of course not.

Why is Massad Ayoob different? Why was he sheltered?

If anything, he should get less protection than a bartender. He is presumed to be extremely knowledgeable and able. The Ayoob of myth should be able to swat me like a fly. Why not give him a shot at it?

What were they afraid of? What were they trying to prevent? Unfair criticism? The forum is packed with unfair criticism. It’s normal. No one cares. People say things that are wrong, other people contradict them, they insult each other for a while, and no one cares.

They didn’t flip out because I was wrong. I wasn’t, and they don’t have a policy of deleting erroneous posts. It wasn’t because I was unfair. I wasn’t, and they leave unfair material up every day. What does that leave?

Ayoob is supposedly a member of the forum. Is he in frail health? Were they afraid he would have a stroke if he saw someone disagree with him? Is he funding the forum? Were they afraid he would cut them off?

It doesn’t look like they had any faith in his ability to respond to my posts. They never gave him a chance.

Truthfully, he wouldn’t have had a chance had they allowed him, because…he’s a layman. It’s pretty obvious that laymen shouldn’t give legal advice.

I’ve written about my participation in forums before, and I’ve noted a few things. Some types of forums draw reasonable, polite people (no, really), and others draw the other kind. I participated in a bodybuilding forum briefly to do research for something I was writing, and the people were completely vile. Maybe it was the steroids. I’ve run into a lot of annoying, supercilious pedants on machining forums, but woodworking forums aren’t too bad. Food forums are full of culinary jihadis. The hate and factionalism are shocking.

Gun forums are pretty low on the list. “I shoot better than you.” “I’m tougher than you.” “I’m more patriotic than you.” “I will shut you down whenever you say anything everyone else has already swallowed without questioning.” My policy with gun forums is to zip in when I have a question, shrug off whatever abuse comes my way, and zip back out. Posting a thread questioning the infallibility of Massad Ayoob was a lapse. I had a weak moment. Something to thnk about so I can correct myself in the future.

As a Christian, I try to limit the provocation in my life. I have been very contentious in the past, and I fight it and pray about it now. I should never have mentioned Ayoob’s obvious error on a forum. It was like walking past a gang of prostitutes with hundred-dollar bills hanging out of my pockets. I knew better.

I don’t have a ton of respect for Ayoob. The more I learn about him, the more he seems to be about sizzle, not steak. He shoots well, and he has done a lot of work to educate himself about tactics and weapons. That’s about it. His ability to analyze legal questions is negligible, and he ought to know it. He also got into a ballistics/wounding dispute with Dr. Martin Fackler, a physician who is perhaps the world’s greatest authority on bullet wounds. How can you make a decision to do a thing like that, knowing how your own abilities stack up? It’s like running onto the field during the Super Bowl.

Twenty years ago, Ayoob might have been a rare source of useful information, but now you can go to Youtube or other sites and get free advice from SEAL’s and Delta Force soldiers who have actually cleared buildings and killed people in gunfights. You can hear from real cops who, though not captains, worked full-time in dangerous cities and fought armed criminals multiple times. You can hear from real lawyers. You can also find source material people like Ayoob rely on. Buying an Ayoob book or watching an Ayoob video is now not a productive use of time. You can do much better and pay nothing, or you can take a class from someone who has more experience and personal knowledge.

Every time he gives you tactical advice, it’s secondhand. He had to ask the people who were really there, in armed confrontations, after being trained properly by others who had the same kind of experience. Why not ask them yourself?

This is a guy who didn’t have a nine-to-five job. He was a writer. He didn’t have a company infrastructure to guarantee him a paycheck of pension. Result: he had to promote himself in order to keep working. This is probably why he went overboard. He must have formed a habit he couldn’t break.

To get back to the point, human nature is disappointing in that it never disappoints when you expect it to let you down. I knew there was no way I would convince most laymen on the forum they weren’t as qualified as Benjamin Cardozo, and I knew disagreeing with Massad Ayoob would turn the poobahs against me. I knew I would not be treated fairly. I knew there was no way any of these people would see, or at least admit they saw, their own errors.

Human beings are as predictable as termites. It makes you wonder what good our 1350-cc brains do us.

The fact that I said what I did, in spite of what I knew about human beings, tells me I still need improvement. I don’t have to go through life poking Happy Fun Ball™.

What’s in the Scroll?

It’s very weird how the truth, and by “truth,” I mean the only truth, which is God’s truth, works. It’s not hard to understand, and it’s generally very obvious, but we are often unable to see it. We can’t see the truth until God shows it to us with supernatural revelation, and then it appears simple and obvious, because it is.

Human beings are born blind and deaf. We don’t have the equipment to perceive the truth. It has to be revealed to us by God. The reason we don’t understand things is that we are supernaturally blocked.

I have wanted to put together an end time timeline so I would know what was going on around me. I used to sit around with Microsoft Word open, trying to make a list. I looked at the Bible, and I wrote things down. It should have been very easy, but it wasn’t, and I made mistakes.

Yesterday I decided to try again, and it all came together in a very short time. That’s how things work when God helps you.

Here’s how it looks:

1. Falling away.
2. Persecution.
3. Rapture.
4. Tribulation and the rule of the Antichrist.
5. Return of Jesus.
6. Satan and other inferior spirits bound.
7. Messianic age, with Jesus on earth, ruling with resurrected believers.
8. Satan released to tempt the world.
9. Satan defeated and imprisoned forever, along with the damned.
10. Heaven and earth destroyed.

That’s not everything, but it’s a few things I consider important. Right now, it seems pretty sound.

The age of the Gentiles, which I call the Church Age, is over. God isn’t watering the plant, and it’s withering. If we’re not in the apocalypse, which comes next, we’re in some kind of interstitial transition period.

Yesterday, I wrote about the rapture. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I keep feeling that God is telling me I am not going to be on earth next year. On the other hand, people love to say we can’t predict anything. While Jesus was with the disciples, he said he didn’t know when the end would come. People point to that and say Jesus still doesn’t know, so we won’t know, either. He said his “day” would come like a thief in the night, and he said he would return when the disciples thought not. Many Christians think we’re going to be taken by surprise.

I opined that Jesus had probably been told the date of the rapture at some point after saying he didn’t know it, because the Bible didn’t say he would never be told. I guessed that he would give his people warning, because the Bible says God doesn’t do anything without telling the prophets.

In my comments, Juliette Ochieng, AKA Baldilocks, piped up with the answer. In 1 Thessalonians 5, we see this:

But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.

For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.

For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.

But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.

Well, there you go.

I read the Bible, and I listen to the Bible, but I don’t remember all of it all the time. The answer was right there, and I didn’t remember reading it.

Jesus warned Lot, and he warned Noah. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the flood were pictures of the apocalypse. God works in repetitive patterns. He’s not going to take his favor away from the world suddenly, fail to inform his children, and leave them in the world to suffer not only the torments intended for the lost but also unrestrained persecution.

So the news is very good.

What about redemption, though? I don’t mean salvation. I mean restoration. The world has been cursed for thousands of years. Many saved people have died young. They’ve even died in the womb. They’ve been barren. They’ve had deformities. They’ve died single. They’ve been poor and diseased. They’ve been murdered by unbelievers, including rabbis, popes, and priests. What about compensation?

The Bible clearly says believers will rule the world with Jesus for a thousand years. It’s not referring to believers who appear out of nowhere. It refers to those who lived before the return of Jesus.

This means you get a second chance at life. If you were deformed, maimed, or sick, you get to live whole and healthy. If you were mentally ill, you get to live with a healthy mind. If you were poor, you live in abundance. If you were persecuted, you live in safety. You get to prosper. You get to marry your childhood sweetheart and have an ideal life.

The Bible says people in heaven don’t marry, but the Messianic age will take place on earth, not just in heaven. It says people will live long lives. It says, “the child shall die an hundred years old.” It doesn’t say, “the resurrected person will die an hundred years old.” There will be marriage and reproduction.

It ties up a lot of loose ends. The Bible is full of wonderful promises for us, but we often die without seeing them realized. It also promises things to the Messiah, but Jesus was killed before they came to pass. We know the reward of Jesus comes after his return, fulfilling every prophecy, and we know we are his body, and we inherit the blessings he earned. It makes sense that we, too, would be fulfilled in the Messianic age.

This is how I see things at the moment. I don’t see any reason to doubt it.

There are lots of promises about people who have been thwarted, receiving all the things of which they have been deprived. How can those promises be true if we don’t get a do-over, just like Jesus?

It’s astounding to see how disgusting the world has gotten. We see filthy language on billboards. The Internet has made us murderous and vicious. The lowest of the low are our celebrities and role models. We even have Sports Illustrated trying to turn men into homosexuals.

Imagine going back to 1980 and telling the staffers at Sports Illustrated they were going to try to convert heterosexual men. They would have assumed you were insane. But Sports Illustrated now has a castrated male swimsuit model, and the intention of their swimsuit photos is to arouse heterosexual men sexually. They’re trying to convince straight American males it’s okay to lust after a man. This guy also works for Victoria’s Secret, so men have already seen him prancing around in women’s underwear.

It’s going to work. Mark my words. There is no idiocy human beings can’t swallow when the Holy Spirit is gone and peer pressure is applied.

It’s going to be a bad time for women when homosexuality diverts males in large numbers. Women are hard for men to get along with, and they have babies. They expect to be supported. They earn less money. Selfish men who have no sexual desire for women will have great incentive to abandon them.

When two gay men get together, they have some advantages. They understand each other well. They have similar desires and opinions. They don’t have to worry about babies popping up to interfere with their selfish lives. They don’t have to have the burden and fear of long-term commitment. They are likely to have more money than a straight couple. These truths will put women in a bad spot.

When it comes to sex, men love novelty. Men in gay relationships can switch and swap all the time, keeping sex interesting. No wife can pull that off. Marry the most beautiful woman on earth, and in a few months or even weeks, you’ll find her less exciting than other women. It’s just the way men work.

Of course, the tribulation will be terrible for women, and everyone else, in many other ways.

I wonder what will happen to the unborn in the rapture. The unborn are people, and they have no sin. Will they be taken? Will pregnant women find they are suddenly no longer pregnant? Will children below the age of accountability disappear? Will people who lack the mental capacity to sin disappear? Am I the only one who wonders about these things?

How will TV preachers explain it when the rapture comes and they’re still here doing their shows? What excuses will they come up with? Maybe they’ll say God chose his special, anointed, exalted servants to stay during the tribulation, preach to the unsaved, and, of course, collect a lot of offerings.

I think we’ll have a very good idea when the rapture is coming. I think it will be very soon. I think the rewards for people who make it will be far better than anything we can imagine. I don’t believe we have anything to worry about.

Zoloft and Xanax are Counterfeits

Nothing good comes out of a person unless God first puts it inside him. It’s impossible to do all the things Jesus wants us to do unless he gives us supernatural revelation. I just got a great one.

I was watching a video from One for Israel Ministries. It’s a Messianic ministry in Israel. They put up wonderful testimonies from Jews who got to know their Messiah. They get death threats from rabbis, but they seem to be doing fine.

In case you don’t want to sit through the video, I’ll spoil it for you. A man was in the French army. He was treated badly because he was a Jew. He knew a large, muscular Muslim named Korish. The Muslim asked him for things all the time, and he gave them to him. One day Korish asked him for a cigarette, and he refused to give it to him because Korish never thanked him.

Korish beat him so badly he lost consciousness. He believes he died. He left his body. He prayed to God, asking him to do something, if he really existed.

He reentered his body. He was in a coma for over 5 months. When he woke up, he was given a complaint to sign. Korish would have gone to prison, and he would have had to pay his victim a lot of money. He wanted to put Korish in prison, and he wanted to kill him when he got out. Korish was a mess. He cried all the time and couldn’t eat.

The victim’s family was experiencing a wave of salvations accompanied by miracle healings. He started reading the New Testament. He was captivated by the story of the landlord who forgave his servant’s debts.

I won’t summarize the story, because every Christian knows it.

The victim thought about what he owed God for saving his life, and he forgave Korish. He owed God much more than Korish owed him.

I thought about this. I forgive people all the time. I’m not stupid. I know I have to do it. I also know it makes life easier. I ask God to help me forgive people from the heart. I’ve been asking for that for years.

Today I got a revelation. Somehow, I suddenly had a heartfelt appreciation of the forgiveness I had received. I always try to be forgiving, and I fight self-righteousness, but until today, I couldn’t completely shake the idea that I was doing people a favor when I forgave them. Of course, I’m not. It’s an obligation. In relation to God, I am much worse than the worst person who has harmed me, but God is letting it slide. I am not an underserving victim surrounded by inferiors. I am just like the people I forgive. I knew that already, but now I can feel it. Only God can make me feel it.

I feel peace surrounding me. I want to get off the couch and go run an errand, but I feel like I’m glued here. Everything is so quiet.

The mind can’t save you. The mind is just a door you can use to let the Holy Spirit in.

I’m very grateful. I couldn’t do this on my own. I have been trying so long, I can’t remember when I started.

The funny thing is that I’ve seen the video before.

I guess I’ll sit here and swim in the fog of peace until I can get up.

Will I be Here to Use my Toys?

The cattle helped me make a decision. I’m building a platform for prone shooting.

I tried shooting on an anti-manure tarp plus a mat, and while it worked, it could have been better. The wind kept folding the tarp over the mat, and I was so low, I had to walk up and down between the mat and target, moving weeds. Also, I have the impression that mirage is stronger close to the ground. Not sure.

I’m making the platform 19″ high. I got that figure by measuring a chair. The seat was 19″ off the ground. I know I’ll want to be able to sit on the platform sometimes, so why not make it a convenient height?

The frame is going to be pressure-treated wood held together with 1/4″ screws. The surface will be 1/2″ plywood. It’s pretty flexible, but I’m going to have a few slats under it to prevent it from bouncing.

Back when I lived in Miami, I could buy marine plywood. I don’t think anyone knows what it is up here. I have to use whatever Home Depot sells. I’m going to paint it with Kilz and then maybe tractor paint. I’ll use a light color so it doesn’t hold heat if the sun hits it. I don’t see any reason to paint the pressure-treated parts.

The top will be galvanized steel, with a 4″ drop from front to back. That should be enough to make rain run in the right direction. The main purpose of the roof is to keep cattle out. They get into everything. If I made the platform lower and didn’t add a roof, they would be in there all the time, taking selfies.

It’s not easy squaring up frames that are 8 feet long. I decided to use my plywood sheet as a square. I would guess that the saws in plywood factories are trued up fairly well. Using a short carpenter’s square won’t work. I’ll have to finish the platform on my concrete driveway. How flat is it? You tell me. It will have to do. The platform will surely have a little flex in it, so I would guess that it won’t matter if the driveway is off by a quarter of an inch here or there. The platform will probably bend a little when I put it in the pasture anyway.

If I move, I should be able to take the platform apart and put it in my truck. Hope so. I don’t care about losing the money, but I don’t want to spend three days building a second platform.

Getting it to the pasture will not be easy. I’ll have to carry it with the tractor or move it in pieces.

I look forward to using this thing. Lying in the dirt is not that much fun.

It turns out I bought the wrong long-range scope. A guy who taught my first shooting course recommended a Vortex Viper PST, and some guy in the class said they were on sale, cheap, on a certain website. I went to the site and bought one. Then, a week after it arrived, I realized the man who recommended the website was wrong. The scope that was selling cheap was a first-generation model, and my teacher told me to get the second generation scope. So now I have a scope I don’t want.

I looked for a deal on the newer one, and of course, it was a lot more expensive. I ordered one. A Vortex scope is already a compromise, so I’m not going to make things worse by failing to buy the best version.

It looks like the vendor will take the scope back and charge me a hundred bucks for restocking it. I would be able to send it for a full refund, but I’ve already mounted it on a rifle. I don’t know if they would be able to tell it’s been mounted, but I want to do the right thing, so I’m not going to lie about it.

I’m thinking I should offer it to my buddy Mike for the same money. He’s not quite as serious as I am, so I think he would be happy with this scope, especially with a big discount. If he doesn’t want it, I’ll ship it back. Then he’ll have to spend a lot more.

For the most part, I’m living life as though the apocalypse were not well underway; as though I were definitely going to be here on earth for the rest of a normal lifespan. I don’t know what else to do. I keep asking God if I’m really going to be removed, and I keep getting the same answer. I hope I’m right. I do not want to be here for President Kamala Harris or President Elizabeth Warren.

I’m praying more, and I keep asking God to help me do whatever it is he sent me here to do. Maybe he’ll tell me something.

Jesus said he didn’t know the time of the rapture, but I don’t think he said he would never be told. Maybe things have changed. Maybe he has been given the date, and maybe he is willing to give the rest of us information. The word says God doesn’t do anything without telling his prophets, and Jesus is certainly a prophet, even in heaven.

Some people think God gave Adam’s children 7000 years here on earth, and that the millennia are like days. This is something I have often wondered about. We are edging up on 6000 years since the birth of Adam. Would God really be that obvious? Did Jesus die at the turn of one of God’s millennia? Would he start the apocalypse close to the 2000th year after the crucifixion?

There is supposed to be a messianic age 1000 years long. It’s like a sabbath after all of mankind’s troubles. If the sabbath lasts 1000 years, shouldn’t every “day” be that long, especially since the word says that to God, 1000 years are like a day? That reference was made with regard to the apocalypse. Here it is, from 2 Peter 3:

But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness,

Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?

If Peter says the world will be destroyed at a certain time, how can it be related to the rapture, which is the main thing that concerns me?

It’s somewhat confusing. The Revelation says there will be terrible problems during the tribulation, but it says the world will be utterly destroyed 1000 years later, after the messianic age.

The Revelation says Satan will be bound during the millennium. Because evil spirits won’t be here, people won’t go through the kind of temptation mankind has historically experienced. God will release spirits to tempt people at the end, and there will be a final battle with Satan. After that, heavens and the earth will be destroyed.

I don’t think Peter can be referring to the tribulation when he says there will be destruction, because he writes of total, not partial destruction.

He says “the day” of the Lord will come as a thief in the night. If “day” means “millennium,” then the day of the Lord, during which the world will be destroyed, can come as a thief in the night, even if the final destruction, which takes place at the end of the day, is expected when it occurs. The part that comes as a thief in the night is the beginning.

I think this makes sense.

To recap, here’s what I think.

Jesus probably knows the date of the rapture, even though he did not know it 2000 years ago. He probably won’t tell us the date unless we’re very close to it, and he won’t tell people who have rejected him. He appears willing to give us general ideas about the time of his return, perhaps narrowing it to a month or week.

He will rapture those who are close to him. Then the tribulation will occur in full force. Seven years later, the tribulation will be ended by the return of Jesus. He will rule for a millennium, and people who didn’t reject him will be resurrected to rule with him.

Evil spirits will be bound in hell, so no one will be tempted or otherwise disturbed by them. At the end of the millennium, spirits will be released to tempt man. There will be a battle with Satan, and he and his family will be imprisoned forever. The heavens and the earth will be destroyed and renewed.

Sometimes I think about my future. What if I’m wrong, and I’m doomed to stay here until my lifespan is finished? I suppose that would be tolerable, because I’m set up pretty well now, and I’m sure God would look out for me. What if I’m right? If so, I don’t have to plan for my future on earth, because it won’t happen for another 7 years, and when it happens, I’ll be on a planet where Jesus rules and people are taken care of.

Should I come up with a will that takes the apocalypse into account? I don’t know. Who do I know who will still be here, yet whom I care enough about to provide for? If only ungodly people can inherit from me, do I really care which one takes what I have?

Maybe I should care, because maybe one of them will come around during the tribulation and receive salvation.

Before my friend Travis died, I thought I might make him my main beneficiary. Now he’s much richer than I am and needs no help.

I’m going to try to stay close to God. I do not want to be here during the tribulation, and I don’t want to be useless in the meantime.

Church Age Ends; Tribulation Soon to Follow

Last night, I had a sobering experience. I heard myself thinking the world was ending. I heard it over and over. Then I got the strong impression that I would not be here on earth next year.

When it comes to things like this, I have been wrong a few times. I’m generally right. I remember being filled with the strong sense that my dad would not be alive on April 1, 2019, and he died on March 25. I had the impression a long time before he died. It didn’t come to me on March 24.

If anyone wants to take time to pray that I would know the truth, I would appreciate it. I don’t want to be deceived.

The Bible says we will not know the day or the hour of the rapture, but it doesn’t say we won’t have a good general idea when it will happen. It doesn’t say we won’t know the year. Sometimes you have to read carefully in order to avoid making a mistake.

The Bible can be confusing. It says God doesn’t do anything without telling the prophets, but Jesus told the disciples he would come at a time when they thought not.

Did he mean believers would not know the rapture was imminent? Maybe not. Maybe he meant he would return 2000 years later instead of revealing himself as God in their time. The disciples seem to have expected things to wrap up quickly. It could be that when he said “you,” he was referring to the people who were with him at that moment.

Here’s something interesting: “apocalypse” doesn’t mean “end of the world” or “destruction.” It means “revelation.” Things will be revealed.

I was praying about these things last night, and I kept feeling a strange sensation. I concentrated on it and tried to define it. I realized I felt as though I were in the presence of someone straining to give birth.

I embedded a video made by a pastor in Kentucky. He had dreams he felt were prophetic. He thinks 2021 will be a taste of hell in America. He predicts 80% inflation. I didn’t want to hear that. I don’t have a nine-to-five job. If my cash disappears, and my investments turn into liabilities, and precious metals become relatively worthless, what will I do to survive at my age? After I got the impression that I would be raptured, I felt much better. I don’t want to be a beggar or a laborer when I could be at the marriage supper of Jesus Christ.

Yesterday I saw something truly disgusting, and I considered it a sign that God is done with the world. Sports Illustrated is putting a castrated man in its swimsuit edition. They fully expect other men to be aroused by him. Many of them will be aroused. Men who object will be vilified. Wait and see. It’s not enough to tolerate homosexual eunuchs. We are now expected to participate in their sick fetish.

Try and imagine this happening in 1985. No; that doesn’t get the message across. It’s not that shocking if things change a lot over 35 years. Try and imagine it happening in 2015. Man is changing with extreme rapidity now. Psychosis is a pandemic.

It’s easy to see how Sodom ended up with gangs of homosexual rapists who had no interest in women. Homosexuality is rare in healthy cultures, but the word says God gives people who reject him over to it. He stops blocking it, so it spreads. I wouldn’t be shocked if homosexuality became the majority orientation among American males, assuming there is still enough time for it to happen. For quite some time, I’ve believed it would eventually happen.

The world of athletics has always been full of homosexuality. Football is full of unexpressed perversion. Wrestling is unbelievable; it amazes me that men have the stomach to spend hours practicing. A huge percentage of female athletes are lesbians. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Sports Illustrated should become a leading force in the drive to mainstream sodomy and convert heterosexuals.

Ten years ago, you were required to tolerate. Now you are expected to participate.

In America, sport is the god of most adult males. They have a sick, infantile devotion to it. If your god tells you to lust for other men, will you be able to refuse?

There are many, many families in America who spend over $10,000 per year on spectator sports. They go into debt to do it. They paint their houses with team colors. They get in ludicrous bar fights over whose team is best. People have tattooed team logos on their heads. Athlete worship is a powerful tool. We take people with low IQ’s and low character and turn them into apostles because they can jump high and throw balls through nets.

How long have I been saying homosexuality would be used as a club to beat Christians? Probably a decade. I’m sure people thought I was nuts. I was a hundred percent correct. Who would have expected this in 1995? Who would have connected homosexuality to the widescale persecution of the church?

Tolerance is a one-way street.

I wish the rapture were tomorrow. The older I get, the more offensive the earth becomes, and the more I long for something good. I guess everyone in labor wishes it would pass quickly.

Most Christians will be right here during the tribulation. Most of us are complete hypocrites. We lie to ourselves, and we let TV preachers and greedy pastors lie to us. The rapture will be a litmus test. If you’re still here when it’s over, you will be exposed. It will be the correct outcome, and you won’t be able to dispute it.

Things are unpleasant now that we have a mild epidemic, mild shortages, and a little bit of violence. Don’t forget; God is restraining things while his children are here. When we’re gone, he will let the dam burst. Imagine what it will be like when there are severe plagues everywhere, it’s hard to get food, and neighbors are killing each other in every suburb.

The word says the rich will ask the hills and mountains to cover them and hide them from God’s wrath. That’s already happening. Rich people who think God can’t penetrate earthly obstacles are building underground shelters. Instead of listening to God, they’re taking their cues from a Kubrick character.

I hope the impression I have is correct. If I can’t reach enough people to make staying on earth worth the trouble, I want to leave. I don’t want to be poor. I don’t want to live under the likes of Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. I don’t want the annoyance of having my law license revoked because I opposed sexual sin on my blog. I don’t want to be told I can’t buy or sell. I don’t want to have my property confiscated. I’m not excited about prison. I would like to put this place behind me. I’m tired of being rejected for telling the truth.

I would give up a thousand acres and a mansion in Tennessee for half of an efficiency apartment in heaven.

She Walks in Beauty

It’s a banner day. My Ruger Precision Rifle is here, and I got the scope and bipod installed. Mostly. I haven’t tightened the screws on the scope yet.

It’s amazing how much difference good training makes. I adjusted the rifle’s length of pull correctly. I installed the scope correctly with the right eye relief (checked while lying prone) and the right comb height. I have the right tool for applying the correct torque to the scope screws, so I’ll get that done, too.

What about lapping the rings? I haven’t done it. Seekins, the company that made these expensive rings, says it isn’t necessary because they’re super precise. Before I finalize things, I’ll check with my new lapping bar. It came with silicon carbide abrasive, but I found out this material leaves grit embedded in aluminum rings, and the grit takes the finish off scopes, so I got myself a special garnet abrasive used for musical instruments. I am on top of this.

You know what would be great? Being able to shoot the rifle. I waited a whole day for a background check, and then I had to call the pawn shop and remind them. By the time I got home, it was way too late to set the rifle up and also shoot.

Since writing the last paragraph, I have used a torque wrench to fasten the scope down properly. I also screwed the sunshade into the objective end of the scope. Now all I need to do is to adjust the eyepiece and parallax and start shooting.

I’m thinking about building a plywood table for prone shooting. I think a 4′ by 8′ sheet of plywood will be big enough. I used yard tools to clear out a shooting lane in the pasture, and I got a tarp to put between my shooting mat and the ground, but I think a foot and a half of elevation would be nice. It would give me a lower shooting angle, making it even less likely that I would shoot over the berm, it would give me a place to sit while fighting with rifle problems, and it would help me see over the weeds. It would also make the tarp unnecessary.

I would probably have to put a roof on the platform to keep the cows off of it. They’re like juvenile delinquents. They get into everything. I still can’t believe they slobbered all over my chair and folding table.

Unless there is a deluge tomorrow, I’m going to try to shoot the AR-15 with its new scope. Once I work the bugs out of the system, I’ll think about 6.5 Creedmoor. Both rifles should be a joy to shoot.

My buddy Mike is getting serious about taking the shooting course I took. He’s thinking about putting a Creedmoor barrel in his Savage .308. He’s also thinking about cheap scopes. I told him it would be way better to show up with a .308 and a great scope than a 6.5 Creedmoor and a Chinese toy that breaks on the first day.

I hope we still have a country when the course rolls around.

The second course, which I am determined to take, is scheduled for after the election. I would hate to pay the fee and then lose it because America had fallen into insanity. I guess I should be more concerned about the apocalypse itself than the $750 tuition.

I guess I’ll be a pretty good long-range shooter by the first of the year. Minimally competent, I mean. A minimally competent long-range shooter can do pretty cool things compared to people who never train.

Am I becoming a sniper? I wonder. I didn’t have sniping in mind when I signed up for the first course, but two snipers taught it. Killers. Not putting them down; they did it for you and me, and they must be very brave men. But I didn’t think of shooting as sniping when I signed up. I thought of it as a fun skill.

Some people are excited about the prospect of treating deranged fellow citizens like TV zombies. Not me. I just wanted to be able to use the tools I had bought. A scoped rifle can end up like an unplayed electric guitar a young man leaves in a stand to impress girls. I don’t want that to happen to my rifles.

There are thousands of potential snipers in America, due to the popularity of long-range shooting. I’m not even including ordinary hunters who haven’t been trained yet manage to kill animals hundreds of yards off. There must be a million of those. The countryside is a potential killing field for brainless urban rioters who might decide to branch out after easy victories over city-dwellers and suburbanites.

Me, I just want to ring gongs and maybe vaporize some prairie dogs.

It’s nice to be good at things. Hope I have time to improve.

Plus Cheery Thoughts About the Apocalypse

It’s a frustrating day. My Ruger Precision Rifle arrived at the pawn shop yesterday. I have seen it. I have touched it, with quivering, eager, enraptured fingers. But my background check is still adrift in cyberspace. I have not been allowed to bring the new baby home.

In Florida, background checks go through the Florida Department of Law Enforcement; wonderful, wonderful people, doing a hard job and doing it well. I want to emphasize that last part. While they are diddling around with my rifle.

They match your name up to lists of people they know can’t buy firearms. If there are no matches, they clear you. If anything they pops up, they look into it, and eventually, they clear you. Or not.

The shop owner told me he was seeing two types of checks: the kind that take 5 minutes, and the kind that take 4 hours. It looks like I’m in the latter category. Last time, I had to fill the form out one day and pick the gun up the next. Same thing is happening now.

My guess is that someone with a name somewhat similar to mine did something bad this year. This is my second long background check in a row. Something changed between my last reasonably fast check and the two long ones. It can’t just be the backlog caused by increased gun sales, because I bought a gun a month or two back and got cleared while I was still in the store. There was a backlog then, and they still got me out the door in less than an hour.

I used to wonder if they were deliberately messing with me because I bought so many guns. Thing is, they’re supposed to destroy all background check records, so when I buy a gun, the FDLE should have no idea whether I’ve ever bought one before. Would they lie? Here’s what I think: they are wonderful, wonderful people, doing a hard job and doing it well.

The current administration is pro-civil-rights (more accurate than “pro-gun”), and Florida law enforcement people have a reputation for feeling the same way, so one assumes they would not do anything to reduce gun sales.

The delays are irksome, because they amount to a de facto waiting period. I’m not supposed to have a waiting period. I have a carry permit, and for some reason, this means I don’t have to wait. It’s a little odd, because the waiting period exemption applies to long guns, and a carry permit does not. Maybe the assumption is that if you’re already carrying, a waiting period won’t prevent you from shooting anyone. You’ll just tell the clerk, “My wife burned the taters again, and you guys are holding me up, so I guess I’ll have to shoot her with my carry piece. Thanks for ruining our anniversary.”

I looked up the numbers to see how many checks are done in Florida every month. Guess how many they did last month. Wrong. They did over 200,000. A lot. It makes me wonder how many guns Americans actually have. Anti-civil-rights nuts like to say we have 300 million, but even if you cut Florida’s current monthly total in half to reflect more typical times, Florida alone must be adding a million guns per year, not including private transactions. Wouldn’t that mean Americans are adding something like 10 million per year, making allowances for snowflake states where the serfs don’t get to buy many guns?

If the numbers are right, we should have added something like 200 million guns since 2000, and America has been around a lot longer than that. Guns don’t disappear very often, and most are used very little, so most old guns are still around. Maybe we have more than half a billion guns.

That’s fine with me. The more good people are armed, the more motivation bad people have to leave them alone. We worry a lot about bad people getting guns, but we should probably worry more about good people not having them. The kind of people who want to go after the innocent in America are generally cowards, and they avoid confrontations with anyone who can retaliate.

My guess, based on what the pawn shop guy told me, is that I’ll be getting a call between one and two.

I think I’m getting over the AR bug. I was not a fan of the AR platform, but I bought an AR-15 anyway just for the experience. Then I made fun of it. Then I improved it and started loving it in spite of the design’s obvious silliness. I thought I might build a second AR in 6mm ARC for fun. Today I read some statistics about reliability issues, and now I’m off the AR again.

I read that 19% of troops surveyed said they had experienced an AR failure DURING A BATTLE. When I say “AR,” I mean all types. The M16, for example, is really an AR-15 with full-auto included.

It would be bad if 19% of troops said their guns had failed at any point in their service, including during training, but having it happen during a battle is really bad. It means a lot of Americans have been killed by AR malfunctions; when your rifle fails during battle, you can die. That’s not a small thing. Also, remember, the men who were killed by malfunctions didn’t get to take the survey, so 19% is probably lower than the real figure.

I read an article by a Green Beret, and he pointed out something I hadn’t thought of. The AR has a buffer tube which has to be in line with the barrel, and if the tube gets bent, the gun can’t shoot.

Rifles have bolts, and when they extract and eject cartridges, the bolts have to go backward. There are plenty of semiauto and automatic rifles that don’t have foot-long bolt-and-spring assemblies, but for some reason, Eugene Stoner put such an assembly on his guns. It looks like it was totally unnecessary. The buffer tube is a pipe that holds a spring that operates an AR’s bolt, and in order for the bolt carrier to go backward, a big piston has to travel down the pipe toward the shooter. If the pipe is bent, you’re done. You can’t shoot until you buy a new pipe.

Many guns give you the option of hitting your enemy instead of shooting him. It looks like you can’t do that with an AR. If you hit someone with the butt, you can bend your tube, and then all you have is an expensive club. You can say the answer is to avoid hitting people with your gun, but tell that to someone in combat. What if a soldier is right in a terrorist’s face, and his magazine is empty? Sorry; go get a pugil stick instead. Say, “Time out.”

Even if you don’t hit people with your gun, what if you drop it and step on it? I think that happens in combat. Just guessing.

Another problem with the buffer tube is that it forces you to use a stock which is at least as high as the barrel. There is a reason why long guns have had bent stocks for maybe 500 years. You need to be able to sight down the barrel. You need a place to put your face.

The stock height doesn’t seem to be a problem for me, but I’m not the only person who owns an AR-15.

I may still get another AR15, but I’m afraid I’ll be tempted to set one up for self-defense, and that’s a bad idea. It’s obvious to me that .223 and 5.56 are very poor home defense calibers, but 6mm ARC would be phenomenal. It would cry out to be used against burglars. The caliber would be better than the rifle.

Maybe if I get one, I should weld a long-range scope to the receiver so it could never be used for self-defense distances.

Just kidding.

People get furious when you criticize the AR-15. You should see all the filthy language they use on the web. It’s bad even by Internet standards. “Rage” is the correct word; it’s no exaggeration.

I don’t understand that. You can criticize any product I buy, and I won’t care. I’m not a rifle. Why does it upset other people? Criticism is good. It helps you to stop screwing up. You have to have a serious maturity problem in order to be infuriated by mean remarks about something you bought. People are way too emotionally invested in products. Insecurity leads to bad decisions.

Years ago, at a gun show, some kid heard me talking about my LR-308. He was walking around with an AR-15 on a sling. He had to know what kind of LR-308 I had; it was important to him. I told him it was a DPMS. He was so happy; it was cheaper than what he had. His superiority had been confirmed.

He comforted me, saying my gun was as good as one from Spike’s, a company I had never heard of. I don’t know what he was carrying, but based on his age and attitude, it was probably a $4000 gun he hadn’t finished paying for. He obviously wanted people to see it, since he was lugging it around at the show.

I could have walked up to a table in that very show and bought any AR-15 in the place, and I could have paid cash. I could have bought 10, just to impress the cool kids. What for? I had a 1-MOA rifle from a very reputable company, capable of doing anything you can do with a gun costing three times as much.

I admit, I didn’t have a portrait of Col. Jeff Cooper [genuflect] laser-engraved on the stock, and the bolt carrier wasn’t platinum-plated. If you want economy, little sacrifices have to be made.

Try what I did. Do two Google searches. Here they are: 1) “AR-15 problems,” and 2) “AK-47 problems.” The search results speak for themselves. They are in no way comparable.

Today, out of idle curiosity, I looked around for AR alternatives. The best one for under a thousand dollars is the Mini-14, which is superior in every way except accuracy, which doesn’t matter for self-defense. But the Mini-14 is still expensive, and it shoots the same crummy .223 cartridge. I thought about a Mini-14 in a better chambering. Then I realized I already had Eastern bloc weapons that do exactly what a .30-caliber Mini-14 would do. There was no purpose in changing anything.

I made the right choice years ago when I decided to keep a Vz58 beside my bed, and nothing has changed. It was a great move. An AR-15 would be a big step backward.

Flame away.

I have a ton of .223 ammo, and I don’t regret buying it, because the AR-15 will be a blast at the range and for shooting irritating four-legged mammals. Reliability issues don’t matter when you’re shooting a target or a coon that keeps knocking over your potted plants.

I haven’t shot a living thing since my dad died last year. I lost my taste for it during the grief. I have to go back to firearm pest control. It’s something responsible men have to do. You don’t let squirrels and other pests screw up your property just because every death makes you think of your late dad.

Will I get many chances to shoot the Ruger Precision Rifle before the world ends? I wonder.

Yesterday, a longtime reader provided a link to a disturbing video. A pastor in Kentucky had a couple of dreams. In one, he saw sick people all over the US. Then the coronavirus epidemic hit. In another, he saw chaos which was supposed to take place in the fall of 2020.

I’ll embed the video here. It’s both disturbing and tedious. Sorry if it bores you.

He says the dream indicated that people would be fighting and killing each other in our streets. That, you don’t have to be a prophet to predict. If Trump wins, there will be terrible violence, because leftists have decided rioting is good. If Biden wins, there shouldn’t be rioting, because the people who riot will be celebrating, but as leftist oppression set in, there would surely be widespread civil disobedience in the areas of firearms ownership and carry.

Conservatives just don’t riot. It doesn’t happen. If you see conservatives fighting in the street, it means they were attacked.

I don’t think that will change.

He also said there would be inflation, and he mentioned an 80% drop in the value of money. That concerns me more than rioting. I can’t keep other people from killing each other, I have done what I could to get away from cities, I have encouraged other people to move, and I am able to deal with the stress of watching stubborn people destroy themselves. Inflation would be bad, however, because I need to eat, and I can’t grow much of anything.

Is he right? I am not able to get a clear impression from God. Most of the time, people like this turn out to be wrong, even if they’ve been right before.

I’m wondering if I should buy a property in Tennessee, ASAP, not just for a refuge, but as a hedge against inflation. Land will always have value. Cash and securities won’t. Even gold and silver can become useless.

I keep asking God to tell me what to do. I don’t want to move after it’s too late. I don’t want to beg and live in a shed on someone else’s land. I definitely don’t want to be an agricultural laborer at my age.

Truthfully, I don’t want to be here. If this is the end, may the rapture come ASAP. I have no desire to live in squalor or die at the hands of vicious, unthinking people who have the hearts of apes.

Last night, a young lady I know called me, and she asked if I had seen the same video. That was not comforting. I hadn’t mentioned the video to her. She found it on her own.

She talked about being bound to South Florida for many years. She said she didn’t have the same ties now. I told her she had to get used to cutting people loose. It’s a big part of Christian life. She’s a Haitian girl who grew up in the suburbs, but she has always wanted to live in the country. She had a dream about Tennessee, before I ever mentioned it to her. Weird.

I told her one of my burdens was the knowledge that I couldn’t help most people I knew. I have a good number of friends, and they like to visit. I have spare bedrooms. I have land. Still, I can’t house three dozen poor, unprepared, unskilled, unarmed people and look after them. This is especially true given that I live on sand. Growing food for one person would be hard enough.

I can help a couple of people, but friends who think their families are going to be able to show up and move in are going to be out of luck. Whoever gets here first will win, and the others will have a problem.

The young lady who called is married. Two small children depend on her. Her husband had very little interest in God when they had their first child and became entwined. She knew better. He’s coming around, but it’s very late, and he hasn’t laid any groundwork for the future.

I don’t think I can do much for them. I could take on a wife. I could conceivably shelter an orphan or two. It’s not my place to be a husband to a husband. A married man should be in God’s presence every day, getting God to provide for his family. It’s not my job.

Don’t marry anyone who isn’t close to God. You will regret it.

Here’s a funny thing: I live like a hermit, and I don’t see people often, but there are a bunch of people who depend on me in one way or another. Most of my friends fit this description. They need counsel and other things all the time. I know some of them see my home as a potential haven. I don’t know if they understand how many people want my help or how hard it is for a single man to carry several families. I can’t do it. I need a helper, not people who ride on my back. They need to get ahold of God’s favor, just as I do.

As for my feelings about the future, for a long time, I’ve had the feeling that it doesn’t matter if I let my responsibilities go. I’ve felt that if I chose, I could ignore them, and it wouldn’t make any difference. I’ve felt that if I decided not to do my taxes, it wouldn’t matter, because by the time the IRS would normally have noticed, they would be unable to do anything about it. Maybe chaos really is coming, and the government will be unable to keep up with what we do.

I know I have to live in the country among peaceful Christians. I have to get God to provide abundance for me no matter what happens to America. I will help other people if I can, but I’m not a lifeboat.