TLR Kickstart in Raleigh

To say I had an interesting weekend would be an understatement.

When I travel, I don’t blog it until I get home. Blogging your trips is like asking people to rob your house. I was away for 5 days, and now I’m back. I went to a Last Reformation “kickstart” event in Raleigh, North Carolina.

I only have one friend from childhood, and that’s my choice. I don’t have anything in common with any friends I had when I was a kid, except for my buddy Mike. We met when I was in the third grade, if memory serves. I lived in house on a northeast corner, and his family moved into the house on the southwest corner.

We haven’t always kept in touch, and I guess I would have drifted off, but Mike dug me up and contacted me every so often, and that kept the friendship alive.

I went to the kickstart for two reasons: I wanted to participate in street healing, and I wanted to help Mike get a proper baptism, including the baptism with the Holy Spirit and prayer in tongues.

The original plan was to have a baptism here at the house, but then I learned about the kickstart. It was in Appalachia, sort of, and I feel drawn there. I thought it might give me a chance to visit Tennessee and look at properties. I also thought, wrongly, that it would enable me to get a look at the new Last Reformation center near Charlotte, which is actually over a hundred miles from the location where the kickstart was held.

I felt it would be good for Mike to meet other Spirit-led Christians, and I thought he would learn some important things from the teaching, so off we went. He flew to Charlotte from New Hampshire, and I drove from Ocala, picked him up, and took him to Raleigh.

I have to say that I didn’t like Raleigh at all. The traffic is terrible, and drivers are pretty rude. The city seems invisible. I found myself putting in a lot of car miles on tree-insulated highways that all looked the same. It wasn’t possible to see anything that looked like a city. I just saw highways and malls, except for a visit to the University of North Carolina.

The people there aren’t particularly nice, and that surprised me. I suppose it’s because it’s a college town. It’s full of people who came from other places, and it draws leftists, who are not the nicest people there are. It’s nothing like Ocala. Living here is like getting a hot oil massage all day. The people are wonderful.

I really dislike cities now. In spite of all the good things that happened in Raleigh, I was very happy to leave and return to my farm. I hope I never have to visit Raleigh again.

The trip did not start well. I slept poorly the night before I left. I don’t recall the reason. The next day, after picking Mike up, I made the mistake of drinking an Arnold Palmer, which is tea mixed with lemonade. We shared a room in order to save Mike money, and between the effects of the caffeine and the difficulty of sleeping near someone who snores, I barely slept. This was after driving 600 miles at one crack, so when we got to the event the next morning, I was eager to go but not feeling my best.

The two most prominent figures in the Last Reformation are Torben Sondergaard and his friend Jon Bjarnastein. They are not essential to the success of events, but they showed up. Torben drove from Charlotte, where he now lives.

Torben spoke a lot. We heard more of his testimony concerning his expulsion from Denmark and the way God provided his new headquarters near Charlotte. I wish I could recall it all.

He made the mistake of allowing a Danish TV crew to film him for a “documentary,” and of course, it turned out to be an anti-Christian hit piece. They followed his group as well as some corrupt ministries, including one headed by someone accused of molesting girls. When the edited footage was shown on Danish television, Torben became a pariah. People sent him emails accusing him of pedophilia because they confused him with the other preacher. Politicians said the Last Reformation abused children and the disabled by casting demons out in front of them.

The Danish legislature passed a law against “mental violence” because of Torben. They declared that mental violence should be punished the same way real violence was punished.

Sound familiar? Remember the pampered, faint-hearted millennials who had to cuddle puppies and use coloring books because Trump got elected?

I probably disagree with you about something. This makes you a victim of mental violence. I hope you won’t have me arrested.

Since mental violence is just as bad as physical violence, I assume it’s okay to respond with physical force. I would think the law would permit you to punch people who talk about Jesus, in order to protect yourself from harm.

One day someone called Torben and told him he needed to leave Denmark. The authorities were preparing something for him, and he needed to go. He and his family filled 8 suitcases and left their home in the middle of the night. They came here and applied for asylum.

They ended up in South Florida at first. Torben was concerned about money. A man called him and said that if he ever needed money for rent and so on, he could help. Torben thought he was responding to the stories about the flight from Denmark, but it turned out the man knew nothing about it.

Torben was staying in Palm Beach, and he was about to travel, flying out of the Fort Lauderdale airport. The man told him he lived near the airport. They agreed to meet. The man met him at the terminal and gave him an envelope. When he left, Torben found that he had been given $50,000.

TLR started looking for a new center. They believed they were going to take a property in New Jersey. Someone told them about the North Carolina property, and they decided to visit, thinking it might be a good idea to buy it in a few years.

For some reason, they visited the Ark Encounter first, in Kentucky. This is a tourist attraction. It’s a full-size replica of Noah’s Ark. While they were visiting, Torben’s daughter asked him how Noah got the animals to go into the ark. He told her God, not Noah, brought them.

When they arrived at the property, the owner came out to greet them. He told them he was Noah and that they were the first animals to enter the ark.

They hadn’t been in communication. Torben was using a realtor.

The property is a 50-acre resort with dozens of rooms and an RV park. The owner was a Christian. He said God had told him to buy the place. He hadn’t used it for anything. He had kept the grass mowed, and that was about it.

The owner wanted $2.2 million, but after talking to Torben, he dropped the price to $1.2 million. Torben didn’t have it. Another man contacted him. He was in the process of selling a home in another state. He said he wanted to donate the proceeds, expected to be in the area of $800,000. Torben didn’t want to borrow money. The sellers agreed to lease it with an option to buy.

In a very short period, Torben went from having nowhere to live to having a huge property, with the prospect of having a huge amount of equity right from the start.

It gets weirder. Their air conditioners needed work. They were going to hire someone. A man from Canada said he wanted to visit. They asked him about himself. He said he was a retired air conditioning repairman. Problem solved. One day, Torben’s wife said the property needed a fence. Before they could buy one, a man who owned a fence company said he wasn’t busy, and he wanted to give them a fence for nothing.

Torben said some other amazing things. You have to remember that he’s Danish. He hasn’t been watching CNN every day for the last 10 years. He can’t be expected to fully understand what American Christians deal with. Nonetheless, he described our political problem perfectly. He said things were going well now because we had a friend in the White House. He said things would eventually change. Rage was building up on what he called “the other side,” and when that side regained power, we would have the kind of problems Christians now have in Denmark and other countries.

How long have I been saying that?

He said there was a “Satanic lullabye” in America that had put the church to sleep. We’re obsessed with money and our own desires, so we are prosperous but fat and weak.

I enjoyed hearing this, because I knew there were Christians there who were Democrats. It’s surprising how many charismatics don’t pray in the Spirit, don’t hear from God, and don’t understand how evil the Democratic Party and leftism are. The people at the kickstart had a lot of respect for Torben, and now they were hearing about politics from him. It was a good correction for them.

He mentioned Chick-fil-A. It’s funny how a fast food chain has become such a big deal to Christians. He had an encounter at a Chick-fil-A, and he told about it. He loves the food there. I don’t know if he’s aware of the persecution from homosexuality activists.

I’m conflating things he said over several days.

They put us in groups, and we went out to heal. Our group had two little girls in it. I would say they were around 6 years old. They healed people. Nothing spectactular; we didn’t see legs grow back. But they took away pain.

I only got to pray for one person. We were across the street from UNC, and I prayed for a girl named Beatrice. She was having neck pain. Sure enough, it went away.

At lunch, we talked a lot and saw how similar our views were. The Holy Spirit is binding people together. That was nice. We also discussed problems and errors. We talked about the Sozo/Bethel movement, which is something a lot of people are concerned about. None of us thought Bethel was a sound movement.

The Sozo people will tell you to imagine a traumatic event in your life and ask Jesus to show you where he was when it happened. People who go through it will say things like, “He said he was by the door, and this is what he felt.” I gave it a sincere try once out of consideration for a close friend who is involved in it, and nothing whatsoever happened. I haven’t seen anything like their approach in the Bible.

Our group was late leaving the church where the kickstart was held. Our leader, a guy named Ash, had a lot of responsibilities to handle. A lady with demonic issues was on the floor while other groups left, with members of our group praying for her and casting spirits out.

I joined the group and sat a few feet away. The lady writhed and foamed at the mouth. She made sounds like an angry animal. A woman named Jen was at her head, and Jen does not do well with spit, so she had to leave the room. She asked me to take her place, so I sat down behind the demonized lady, who I will call Sally, and put my hands on her shoulders. I resumed telling the spirits they had to leave.

She started to convulse, and we had to get a wastebasket in case she was sick. The spirits left her, and peace filled her.

Afterward, she said that while she was on the ground, it hurt to look at the people trying to deliver her. She said they shined with a very bright light. She wanted to look at them, but it was too hard.

We had to repeat the process the next day. That’s normal. Spirits like to try to come back. They are probably ordered to do it.

Had it not been for Sally’s need, we would have been able to pray for more people on the street.

On Sunday, we were prepared for baptism. Mike kept saying he wanted me to do it. They had kiddie pools out back, but he wanted to do it at our hotel. I told him we would do whatever he wanted. He listened to the lecture, and he talked to Ash for a while. Then he decided he could not be baptized at the event.

We left and drove 8 miles to the hotel.

Mike was concerned because I couldn’t sleep, so he decided to get a room for himself. He picked the worst possible time. He did it while we were supposed to be getting him baptized and running back to the event. It took a very long time. Instead of waiting until later, he packed all of his things and tried to move them to the new room. Obviously, this could have waited.

This is normal. When evil spirits know you’re about to do something good, they will do their best to obstruct. They may come up with “urgent” things you absolutely have to do first.

He checked into a hotel 350 feet away, and there were delays. He couldn’t actually go into his room until they cleaned it, so he had to bring all of his things back to my room.

He put on shorts, and we went to the pool. There were three boys splashing and yelling. We couldn’t wait any more. We had to do it.

I put him under, baptizing him with water and the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus, and he got back out. We started walking out. One of the boys asked Mike if he liked McDonald’s. He said he did. I told them Chick-fil-A ruled!

Back at the room, Mike was highly disturbed. I don’t want to into it, but baptism was overwhelming for him. You expect to see this kind of thing with women, but men tend to be harder to upset. I was shocked to see how profoundly he was affected. It took quite a while for him to recover.

He then took a surprisingly long shower and took quite a while to get dressed. We were absent from the event for a couple of hours. I was afraid we would miss everything. I wanted to be sure someone other than me got to help him release the gift of tongues.

The lady with the demon problem was on the ground again, so I joined the group and got to work. Mike sat by himself and talked with God. When we beat the demons again, a young man needed help praying in tongues. I kept telling him he needed to start moving his mouth on his own. People tend to demand that God make them speak. It was taking him quite a while to get going, and it didn’t look like I was needed, so I went and talked to Mike.

When the young man started speaking in tongues, Ash and I took Mike inside, and Ash counseled him. We prayed for him and stuck by him, and after a while, the gift was released.

Mission accomplished.

After things wound down, Mike wanted to rest. He was very drained. I drove him to his hotel, and then I returned to the kickstart. I was wiped out from lack of sleep and driving, but I was not going to miss out.

The next day was a day of prayer and testimony and so on, and thank God, we didn’t start until 2 p.m.

Mike had to go to Cancun for dental work, so I had to pick him up at 7:30 the next morning, drop him at the airport, and drive home alone. I stopped at a Chick-fil-A for breakfast, and I got out my laptop and looked at maps and routes. I wanted to go Tennessee very badly.

I prayed and surfed, and eventually, I felt that God was telling me to go home, so I got in the car, and I finally arrived at my gate at 6:30 p.m.

I am surprised to see how much I had to do for Mike. I think of him as a sturdy, resilient guy who is anything but needy, but he needed a lot of help and patience this weekend. It reminded me of looking after my dad, and that’s very strange. I wonder how much of it was due to supernatural opposition.

I highly recommend TLR kickstarts. I am never going to join TLR, Bethel, the Royal Family, or any other denomination, and I am not suggesting they don’t make mistakes, but what they do is generally right, and it’s very powerful.

If you want to hear about TLR errors, I can mention a few things.

First, Tom Loud, a Royal Family/Identity preacher disagrees with some TLR doctrines. His belief is that they think you can’t be saved unless you get water-baptized and you speak in tongues. I don’t know if this is what they believe or not; I’m just relating what his secretary told me. I don’t think omitting these things will land you in hell. I could not baptize my dad before he died, and I saw no indication that he spoke in tongues, but I’m very confident he made it.

Second, Torben says he got driven out of Denmark because he didn’t listen when God spoke softly. He says he was comfortable with what he was doing in Denmark, so he didn’t pay attention when God started telling him to leave, and then he had to leave in the middle of the night, under threat of imprisonment and losing his kids.

That sounds like a mistake.

I have had concerns because I am so comfortable here. I have a magnificent house and farm. I love the people here. There is very little traffic. I keep feeling that God wants me in Tennessee, but I like it here, and I can’t seem to find a property that resembles what my heart tells me he wants for me.

I don’t want to leave at the point of a gun! I want to go early, when I’m not rushed.

Ash and I talked. He said he used to have a big house with a music studio. He sold it and started renting. Now he thinks God is telling him to get something he can move around in, like an RV or trailer.

Together with Mike, we prayed that God would show both of us where to go and that he would help us make whatever moves needed to be made.

Yesterday, I had the strangest sensation. I started driving home, and I realized I didn’t want to go back to Florida! This house is a treasure, but I didn’t want to go. I believe God is answering our prayers.

TLR is doing good work, and you can find information about their events on their website. If you’re tired of boring Christianity in which nothing ever seems to happen, you might want to give them a try.

Movie Hate Feeds your Demons

I had an interesting experience yesterday.

I watch Youtube a lot. It’s full of good Christian material, it has many valuable educational videos, and it gives me something to do when I’m spending time with my pets. Yesterday on a whim, I clicked on a couple of thumbnails for videos taken from the movie Heartbreak Ridge.

If you haven’t seen this movie, I can sum it up. Clint Eastwood (who actually spent the Korean War as an Army lifeguard in North Carolina) is a tough Marine sergeant with lots of combat medals. He takes over a platoon of spoiled punks. In the process, he beats a lot of people up and turns his platoon into a top-notch fighting machine.

Clint’s character says lots of crude things during the film. He makes fun of homosexuals and suggests other men have done perverted things with housecats.

It’s a funny movie. Not the gentlest kind of humor, though.

I watched a couple of fight scenes from the movie, but I quit because I felt it wasn’t healthy to keep watching people vent their rage. Christians are supposed to be full of warm, affectionate love, so I stopped watching.

I talked to God about it, and he gave me this: watching actors do cruel and vengeful things is just as bad as pornography!

This pretty much kills about 60% of screen entertainment for me. James Bond, John Wick, every superhero, most Clint Eastwood characters, Jason Statham, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris…what’s left? Chick flicks? No way! I’m not going to sit through two hours of cancer, adultery, shattered dreams, self-pity, veganism, blind self-righteousness, and man-bashing.

I don’t know why women enjoy films about misery. Strangest thing. Maybe it feeds the victim complex many women wallow in. Women are more manipulative than men, and wallowing in self-pity is a great strategy for manipulators. It has worked for moms and wives throughout history.

Watching cruelty and revenge is a lot like watching porn (so I hear…*cough*). It’s highly stimulating. You get drawn in emotionally. Many of us are subjected to abuse and injustice in this life, and when we see actors beating their bullies, we get some of the pleasure of fighting back and making abusers taste their own medicine. It can be very satisfying to see an actor blown up, crushed, mutilated, or whatever.

It should be obvious that the pleasure is in our flesh, not our spirits. When we enjoy this stuff, we give power to the flesh, and the flesh is the enemy of God. It has to be subjugated so the spirit can rule.

I gave up what I call “revenge porn” some time ago, but I didn’t realize how bad it was for me until last night. I have to avoid watching even short clips, the same way I avoid watching erotic videos.

To be close to God, you have to be distant from the world. This has become obvious to me. I can see why John the Baptist moved to the wilderness and why Jesus spent so much time alone. If you immerse yourself in the culture of the world, one of two things will happen. You will be corrupted, or you will simply feel fatigued and disgusted, as though you were being forced to share an apartment with pedophiles and pimps.

I’ve noticed that the closer I get to God, the more people I lose and the less contact I have with corrupt cultures. This is why God moved me out of Miami. It’s a sick, twisted place. God recognized me as a son, and he doesn’t want his sons stuck in places like Miami. Going there briefly to minister is okay. Living there is not.

He moved me to a better place. I have improved considerably since I’ve been here, and I think this is why I feel like moving to an even cleaner area.

This is why the rapture will take place. The world will be extremely filthy, and God’s remnant will be too clean to stay here and be subjected to it.

I love the area where I live, but I have suffered a lot here. I thought about it yesterday. I went back and read things I wrote while I was taking care of my dad and after his death. Looking after him was very, very hard, even though I didn’t understand it at the time.

I witnessed a lot of things that were painful to see. He deteriorated the whole time he lived up here. He lost his dignity. He became a weak little old man who walked like a toddler. He had to start using a walker. He then ended up in a wheelchair. Strangers came to the house to bathe him. He lost the power to control his life. We reached the point where he had to ask me for things, like a child asking a parent. “Can we do this?” “Can we go there?”

I had to go and sit with him in an assisted living facility every day. I made him cookies so he would have some sense that someone cared about him.

There were financial issues that were extremely stressful. It took me a long time to get them under control.

While he lived in this house, it became filthy. He developed a habit of rubbing spit on things, which was too much for me to take. He defiled the food in the kitchen. I had to clean up messes of types that shouldn’t exist in a first world house.

It was tough, and now, even though I love this property, when I look around, I think about the difficult times a lot. I also miss my dad. I feel as though he should be out walking on the private road I live on, as he used to. Sometimes I feel as though I should drive to the ALF to see him, because it’s that time of day.

I don’t want to go back to dealing with the negative parts of his personality. They were oppressive. I don’t miss that. I wouldn’t want the pre-salvation Dad to come back to life and return to me. But I still miss him sometimes.

If I go somewhere else, I won’t have to see the place where he sat every afternoon or the area of the front porch where he used to read his newspapers. I will never catch myself calling a new place “our house.”

I suffered tremendously in Miami. So did my mother. My dad and my sister were abusers, so they weren’t as unhappy. Abuse is all about putting your unhappiness in other people; you use them as emotional toilets. They were causing most of the suffering. When I left Miami, I was thrilled to escape a place where so many painful things had happened. I may have a similar feeling if I leave Ocala, even if this area is a much, much nicer place to live.

Here’s what I think: if you want God to move you away from a place where you’re unhappy because of the nature of the people around you, you need to be sanctified to the point where you won’t be a liability in a better place. God takes pains to move his people to areas where they fit in better. Why would he ruin that by inviting you, if you’re not ready? If you insist on hanging onto the world’s culture, you’ll just defile your new surroundings and make his other children unhappy.

Sometimes I’m afraid that if I move, I’ll never have another home I love as much as this one. But isn’t that typical of people who refuse to grow? If you take that attitude in life, you will resist leaving the womb. You have to be willing to let go of the old in order to receive new things that are better.

I plan to continue the sanctification process. I don’t want to be submerged in a sick culture any more than I have to. To insist on hanging onto unproductive things is to fight God.

The Faint Smell of Competence is in the Air

Yesterday I finished building my new bench grinder pedestal. I exaggerate somewhat. It still needs to be painted, and I’m thinking of grinding some metal down to make it look better.

It was a big job. Took two sessions over two days. I used aluminum welding squares made by Fireball Tool.

For a long time, I only had one welder. I had a Lincoln PowerMIG 180C, on a Lincoln cart. The cart was not good. It didn’t really fit the welder. I upgraded to a bigger two-tier cart from Eastwood. The Eastwood cart had a defective part, so I complained. They sent me a second cart for nothing. I fixed the defective cart, and I used it to hold my plasma cutter and bench grinder.

The cart was okay, but it was very low to the ground, and it was bulky and hard to maneuver. This is why I built a grinder pedestal. I wanted something higher and more nimble.

I didn’t want a heavy pedestal. One of the pitfalls amateur fabricators fall into is the belief that heavier is always better. In reality, one of the big goals of competent engineering is to reduce material waste. If you’re building, say, metal shelves, you don’t want to spend $50 per unit on steel when you can spend $15. I could have gone with heavy tubing, but I decided to use rectangular tubing with 1/8″ walls.

The pedestal only has one column. I used 3″ x 3″ square tubing. This stuff will support thousands of pounds, so the 90 or so pounds it will carry won’t challenge it at all. The only thing to be concerned about was rigidity, and it’s pretty hard to flex a 3″-square tube by pushing a piece of metal into a grinding wheel. By “hard,” I mean, “clearly impossible.”

You can buy cast iron pedestals that probably have walls 1/4″ thick. It sounds good when you’re telling your buddies about your cool new “beefy” pedestal, but if you make a pedestal that way, you’ve added weight and cost without realizing any benefit. You’ll regret it the first time you have to move it.

Speaking of moving, I was determined to have casters. The more things you put on wheels, the bigger your shop will seem. I had a set of casters on hand already, so I was ready to go.

For the top, I planned to use a 10″ square of 1/8″ plate. The metal dealer was not able to provide that when I showed up late on Friday, but they sold me a 16″ square that was a drop, so I saved some money, and I decided not to cut it down, because I could use the extra area for things if the need arose. Some people like to clamp fixtures in front of their grinding pedestals.

I have been afraid to weld complicated objects like this because of an experience I had with my arbor press. I made a stand for it, using scrap taken from a door at my dad’s old house. I lined the parts up well when I welded them, but when I stood the stand up, it wobbled. It was warped. I didn’t know metal would warp that badly when welded, and I didn’t know how to prevent it.

When you weld little things, warpage usually doesn’t matter. If you put a 5° bend in a part 8″ long, you probably won’t even see it. In a part three feet long, it’s different.

I want to create a welding table, or at least a set of legs and a frame for one. One of the purposes of a welding table is to provide a flat reference surface for projects. A lot of people use their garage floors, but concrete floors aren’t really flat. I had a problem. I wanted a welding table in order to allow me to weld things flat and square, but I needed a welding table in order to create a flat and square base…for the welding table.

There are various ways to get around this problem. You can make your own jigs, which may or may not work. I chose the easy way. I bought myself two welding squares.

A little company named Fireball Tool produces a lot of innovative items for tool users. They make welding squares cast from thick iron and aluminum. They machine the castings to get flat surfaces and correct angles. You can clamp things to the squares before you weld them, and the squares will help them remain aligned until they cool.

Because the squares are cast iron and aluminum, welding spatter doesn’t stick to them very well. This is a plus.

I didn’t see why anyone would want cast iron. It’s heavy, it rusts, and it shatters. Sooner or later, I’ll drop any tool you give me. I don’t want to spend a lot of money on a square and then destroy it. An aluminum square may deform, but I have a milling machine and welders, so I can repair aluminum. Welding cast iron is not easy.

They make two main types of squares. One is an L-shape with a sharp outer corner. The problem with this is that the outer corner fits in the inner corner of whatever you’re clamping. You can’t get in there to weld. Their other product, the Mega Square, has another side, cut at 45° to the others, where the L-shaped square has a corner. You’ll understand when you see the photos. When you clamp steel to two sides of the Mega Square at 90° to each other, you can reach into the inside corner to weld.

I ordered two different sizes, figuring one would always be too small and the other would always be too big.

I chose to use my Harbor Freight Titanium Unlimited 200 multi-process welder. It’s extremely handy. I picked MIG because it’s the type of welding I do best.

First, I laid the metal out without welding it to see if everything looked right. It seemed okay.

After that, I took an angle grinder and knot wheel and cleaned most of the rust off the steel. I then cleaned the parts with window cleaner. Raw steel is always covered with rust and black dust, so if you clean it before you work with it, you can avoid a lot of hand-washing and laundry problems.

I followed the angle grinder with the belt grinder, deburring everything to get rid of sharp edges. I beveled things so the weld beads would fit in better. I wasn’t because I was worried about penetration. This project will never see significant stress. It doesn’t need perfect welds. The bevels will help assure that the welds are deep and strong, but that wasn’t the purpose.

After the metal was cleaned up, I drilled holes for the casters. If I had waited until the pedestal was assembled, I would not have been able to get the parts onto the drill press, so I had to do it early. I used a machinist’s square, a carbide scribe, and a center punch to locate the holes. I started them with a center drill and finished them with a unibit. These things are great. It cut through both walls cleanly and accurately, and it even beveled and deburred the holes.

With all this done, I was ready to weld. I clamped two pieces of steel onto the big Mega Square and let fly. It worked perfectly. No distortion at all after the parts cooled.

It looks like there is hope I can build a table frame after all.

I followed the same process with the other side of the base, and then I put the whole mess on the table, clamped it as well as I could, and welded the column in place.

Everything went well, but I ended up bowing the piece the column attached to. I welded it pretty quickly, I didn’t let it cool between segments, and I didn’t clamp it straight.

The bow didn’t really matter. It was maybe 1/4″ over two feet. The bowed part was not going to be on the floor, so it could not make the pedestal rock. The pedestal was going to have a caster at each corner with the bowed part centered between them about 4″ off the floor. Still, I wanted to see if I could fix it.

I had heard about acetylene straightening. This is not the same thing as heating a piece of metal so you can bend it. When you do acetylene straightening, you heat a small area of a part just until it begins to melt. This expands the metal in thickness. When it contracts, it stays thicker than the surrounding metal, but it contracts in the plane of the wall you heated. This means it bends the part in the direction of the side you heated.

If you think you’ve done flame straightening with a propane or MAPP torch, you don’t know what flame straightening is. Read up on it. You can’t do it with propane or MAPP alone.

I have an acetylene outfit, but I don’t have tanks yet because I’m waiting for a good deal. It occurred to me that a TIG torch ought to work. I turned the pedestal upside-down, drew lines where I wanted to apply heat, and gave it a whirl. It worked great. The bottom tube is now straight. There is a tiny bit of bend between the center tube and a tube that has casters in it, but it’s so small, I felt that trying to fix it would be obsessive.

The TIG torch left some lumps on the steel, so I used a flap disk to make them less lumpy. They’re on the underside of the pedestal, so no one will see them.

Attaching the top plate was hard. I could not use a square. I had to grind the top of the column carefully to make sure it was absolutely level. Then I attached it to the plate with a magnet, and I tacked the plate in place while sitting on the floor underneath it.

The top plate now has a slight bow. I decided not to try to prevent it, because I knew it would be forced straight when I bolted the grinder to it.

Now I had a pedestal, but I was not satisfied with the open ends on the bottom tubes. I made little plates and welded them in there.

This was scary, because I have had serious problems with weld control. For years, it has been hard for me to see anything but the arc when I welded.

A few weeks back, it occurred to me that I might have a vitamin A deficiency. I have had some gallbladder issues, and the gallbladder is what allows you to digest fat. Vitamins A, D, E, and K are fat-soluble, so if you don’t absorb fat, you can become deficient. I got myself some vitamin A and some lecithin, which emulsifies fat. I started talking both every day.

When I welded yesterday, I was able to see what I was doing. The difference was tremendous. Was it the vitamin A? I don’t know. I just know I’m not afraid to weld things I would not have touched a year ago. I had no problems welding the little plates in, apart from basic lack of skill.

I held the plates in with little magnets when I tacked them. I can’t tell you how useful these are for welding.

I may take the grinder and grind the ends of the tubes smooth, so it looks like they were never open.

I attached the casters and the grinder. Of course, I found that two of my screw holes were in the wrong places. This kind of thing always happens. I’m going to have to put two new holes in the top plate. I may weld the old ones closed, just because I can.

The pedestal is fantastic. You can jump on it without flexing it. It rolls very easily. The brakes hold it very firmly when you need to use the grinder. The platform is around 40″ off the floor, so the grinder is at a very convenient height. I love it.

I may add features. I would like to have a steel loop that holds a water bowl.

I bought primer and paint. I’m going to paint it forest green. This will take several days because the paint takes forever to cure. When I’m done, I’ll be sitting pretty. I’ll have a very nice stand I can move with ease, and I’ll be one step closer to getting rid of my extra Eastwood cart. My plasma cutter is sitting on it now, and it works, but I want something less bulky. Maybe another Harbor Freight Vulcan cart. They’re wonderful.

I should have my machine tools here in two weeks. I still have some wiring to do.

I think I’m going to buy a welding table top and forget about making one. The premade ones are just too good. I’ll be satisfied with fabricating a frame to hold it.

Things are looking good in the shop.

In other news, I had a pain in my wrist and hand this morning, and after watching some healing videos, I prayed for healing and commanded myself to be healed. The pain is almost totally gone. Really neat.

Conclusion: Yes, Miami Really Does Stink

I still do not have a quote on moving my machine tools here, but I am closer. A guy from a rigging company just came by and looked the place over to see how hard it would be to get trucks in here.

I said something about being eager to cut all ties with Miami, and we started talking. The poor guy was born in Hialeah.

HIALEAH.

Cubans have a word: “chusma.” It’s sort of like “redneck.” When a southerner calls you a redneck, he means you’re the kind of person he doesn’t want marrying into his family. It’s not a compliment. It’s okay if people like you show up to lay sod or fix the roof, but you better not be on the property after sundown. A chusma is very similar. A chusma is a person with no class whatsoever.

Hialeah is the hub of chusma activity in North America. Cubans make fun of Hialeah all the time. Cuban women make fun of the way Hialeah women do their nails and hair. It’s a running joke in Miami.

This poor guy was BORN there.

Miami is bad enough. Hialeah…unthinkable.

He said he left after an incident at his home. He was working on his truck, and some kid in a Japanese car tore through his lawn, like he wasn’t even there.

I have seen these kids many times. It’s the weirdest thing. I can’t explain it, but they’re very common. It’s always a scrawny kid with a very small, very round head, shaved or nearly so. Their heads look like little coconuts. They drive tiny Japanese cars which are very slow, but the cars always have aftermarket tailpipes as big around as coffee cans. They make a terrible noise as they accelerate incredibly slowly.

Because they’re so slow, you get to enjoy the noise for a long time. It takes them forever to pull away.

I don’t know where these kids come from. It’s like there’s a factory somewhere. Their heads are always round and tiny. They never have much hair. They always have that crazy tailpipe. Their cars are always unbelievably slow. They rig them up to make noise to compensate.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these kids on foot. Just in Japanese cars. They don’t even look like other Cubans. It’s like they materialize briefly while visiting from a hell dimension full of Honda Preludes with 300,000 miles.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure the machine-moving guy got a visit from the mysterious coconut clan.

He told me something interesting. He said the heavy-hauling business was more active than he had ever seen it. I had to ask him: was it because businesses were being torn apart, or was it because they were being started?

During the Obama years, you could go on Ebay and find dozens of bench grinders, lathes, saws, and so on for very good prices. The economy was not that great, so people were selling tools. It got better toward the end, except for people like me, who like cheap tools.

News heads like to tell us Trump is destroying the world. If Trump mailed every person in America a gold bar, they would say he was trying to poison us with heavy metal. I asked the machine-moving guy my questions because I wanted to find out the truth about the economy.

He said construction was keeping truckers busy. It’s moving frantically right now. He also pointed out that construction moves in booms and busts, so he expects a bust.

Have you noticed that a huge percentage of tractor trailers have signs on them saying, “WE’RE HIRING”? I don’t recall seeing that before Trump.

Anyway, whatever may be in store at the end of the boom, things appear to be going pretty well under Trump at the moment.

He told me he can get stuff moved in 48 hours, from the time the order is placed. That’s wonderful. I want the machines here NOW NOW NOW.

Actually, I want them here in 2017. No, 1975.

I probably won’t be able to do anything until week after next, but as soon as I can, I will get the ball rolling. Can’t wait.

In even better news, I now have a contract to sell my last bit of Miami real estate which isn’t income-producing. God willing, it will be gone by the new year. Maybe considerably sooner.

Once this property is gone, I will think about moving north and getting rid of everything else I have in South Florida.

It amazes me that people told me I would miss Miami. I hate Miami more every day. The longer I live in Ocala, the more I love Ocala and hate Miami. I haven’t missed Miami for one second. It would be like missing dysentery.

No one here misses Miami. I’m not the only refugee here. The others don’t miss Miami. I have friends who moved to Kissimmee and Orlando. They don’t miss Miami. My friends who moved to Pompano Beach don’t miss Miami.

My friend in Orlando says he feels sick when he visits Miami. He can’t stand it.

No one who moves ANYWHERE misses Miami. Maybe Cubans do, but I’ll bet they don’t. They pump Miami up when they live there, but they probably change their tune when they’ve lived anywhere else.

It will be so beautiful, watching the remaining cords snap. The big ones were houses that produced no income, sucked up money, and presented problems all year round. The little cords aren’t that bad, but I still want to cut them.

Today I bought steel for a bench grinder stand. That’s my big weekend project. I’m really looking forward to doing some metalworking. It will be even better when I have a lathe and mill so I can do more stuff.

The next time you hear from me, my bench grinder may be riding in style.

I feel like God put me here to heal. I’m getting over my family, Miami, the putrefaction of American culture…I was going to make a long list, but that’s about it.

If things are this good only two years into the process, how good will they be in 2025?

Return of the Machines

Woody Allen once said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” How true that is.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve contacted someone with a business proposition and received no response or a response so late it didn’t matter. Also, I know a lot of working-class people, and I’ve noticed they don’t respond to texts, answer the phone, or show up when they say they will. I believe this is one of the main reasons they live from hand to mouth.

This week I started calling rigging companies to see if I could find someone to move my lathe and milling machine to my home in Ocala. So far, out of four companies, one has responded. They don’t sound too good, but at least they proved they’re conscious, so they may end up with the job.

Another company just called. I’m up to two!

Before I started calling these companies, I talked to a big outfit in Miami. My dad used to be their labor attorney. Very nice people. They moved my lathe into my shop in Miami for nothing. They want $4000 to move my machines here, so I feel like there is probably someone out there who will do it cheaper. Some companies don’t have locations near both Miami and Ocala, so they would have to charge to send more things longer distances. For example, one company said they would have to send two trucks from Tampa to Miami to pick up the machinery. I found a company that has locations in Miami and Ocala, so I’m hoping they will be able to use different crews on both ends and save me cash.

It will be wonderful having machine tools again. It will be wonderful having one more tie to Miami severed permanently. I’m in the process of selling a house there, and once it goes, I will have no place to lay my head in Dade County. I truly look forward to having to rent a hotel room if I ever have to visit again. I hope I never have to visit, though. That would be even better.

One of the things I’ve really missed is drilling holes accurately. I have an industrial drill press which cost a fortune new in the 1960’s or 70’s, but once you’ve used a mill, it’s hard to take any drill press seriously. A mill does everything a drill press does, much, much better. I’m sick of using punches to mark holes and doing my best and still having holes a millimeter away from where I want them.

I am considering building a welding table. I would want to mill the top flat. I can do that easily with a milling machine. Without one, it would be like using a teaspoon to plant a tree.

I considered buying a trailer and moving the machines myself, but it seems like a bad idea. I would have to spend $2500 on the trailer, and I would have to rent a forklift on both ends of the jobs. I say “jobs” because I would have to make two trips.

I don’t think I’m a good choice to secure a top-heavy 4000-pound machine to a trailer and then drive it around curves. A boat or tractor, sure. Random household junk, no problem. A lathe is another story. It should not be my first or second hauling job.

If I did it myself, I would spend maybe $900 on forklifts, so the total cost, with everything included (fuel, whatever), would approach or top $4000. I would have a nice trailer when it was over, so I figure I would come out $2500 ahead, but I might also have a lathe lying on its side beside the road somewhere.

Getting this stuff moved and dumping the house will put me much closer to feeling free of Miami. I will still have investments there, but they don’t require travel.

What a poisonous place Miami is. It leaves a mark. The other day, I found myself standing behind two Cubans at a store here in Ocala, and I couldn’t wait to get away from them. They’re probably wonderful guys. I don’t care. That’s not the point. They remind me of a place where my family endured decades of defeat and misery. I don’t even like to drive by Cuban restaurants. I haven’t had any type of Cuban food since 2017, and I don’t plan to fix any in the foreseeable future.

The mental association is unpleasant, whether or not it’s rational. If Miami were full of Norwegians, I wouldn’t want to be reminded of them, either.

Every decent person I know in the Dade County area agrees with me. They can’t wait to get out. None of them ever ask me why I don’t like Miami. It’s almost a litmus test. If you like Miami, you’re probably shallow or blind.

My young friend Travis is stuck at the University of Miami until May, and he may have to stay on in Miami for some time after that. He hates the city. He keeps telling me about people he knows who got out. It’s like he’s talking about runaway slaves. They all tell him how much better life is.

Cubans are the only people who like Miami. They moved there from a worse place, and they turned it into a very Cuban-friendly place. They give each other preferential treatment. They don’t have to learn our language or adopt American manners. Many of them don’t know about the rest of the country. They tend to stay put, and they make their kids stay, too. They live in a strange state of blindness. Everyone else wants out, out, out.

By the middle of the last century, southern whites were pretty much gone from Miami. Northerners took their place, but they eventually began following them. Now even some Cubans are fleeing. They don’t like the South Americans who are moving in.

Black people really hate Miami. They’re right. They are treated very, very badly by the dominant Hispanics. Anti-black racism is thick there, and it’s very hard for blacks to find decent work. In a lot of places, black people make racism out to be a much bigger problem than it is, and they are held back by a victim complex, but Miami gives them ample reason to complain.

It’s so nice to be away from voodoo, car horns, traffic, pervasive Spanish, and rudeness. I can’t describe it.

Can’t wait to see those machines sitting in my shop and to receive a closing statement via email. It will be like bathing after simmering in a heated septic tank.

Gallant Apparently had a Vasectomy

I am completely out of touch with American values.

Months ago, I read that Kim Kardashian charges millions of dollars–“millions,” plural–to make one Instagram post. I think about that a lot.

To me, Kim Kardashian is a lewd, crass, self-destructive, highly toxic person, very like the sort of inexpensive prostitute you might see if you drove through a bad area of your city at 3 a.m. I see her for what she is. She is not very bright. She has no talents. She does nothing productive with her life, except for one typical leftist cause which will probably be destructive in the end. She has nothing interesting to say. If I knew her, I would avoid her, the same way I would avoid a female meth addict who propositioned me in a parking lot. There is nothing good to be gained by interacting with her, and she has an air of dirtiness about her.

Many of our celebrities are like that. If you went to an area where whores and drug dealers congregate, and you gave each one of them ten million dollars and put them on TV, they would fit right in with our current crop of media idols.

Kardashian’s popularity proves that a big percentage of Americans see her completely differently from the way I do. They crave Kardashian news. They want to be like her. They want to wear what she wears. They think her TV show is top-notch entertainment. They truly admire her. How can that be true?

I can’t absorb this. I can’t make my mind assimilate it. It’s like living in a country where people think horse manure makes a good corsage.

Instinctively, I have the incorrect feeling that everyone thinks Kim Kardashian is gross and trashy.

I am writing about her to illustrate my point, which is that my heart and the heart of the general public are completely different.

America is like a country of children without fathers. We reject the beautiful, protective lessons of the past, and we do as we please. We are making ourselves silly and weak.

Yesterday I found some neat videos on Youtube. I don’t know why they popped up. There were made over half a century ago. They were videos that used to be shown in schools.

The purpose of the videos was to help kids get it together and live like advanced human beings instead of savages. One video was about neatness and personal grooming. Another helped girls understand that promiscuity was self-destructive.

I decided to watch the video about neatness. I figured it couldn’t hurt. I had ample reason to feel that way.

I have often told people a story about my youth. My mother took me to a department store at the 163rd Street mall in North Miami Beach, to buy clothes. I would guess that I was about 11. A nice old Jewish lady waited on us. The lady tried to explain something to me. I can’t recall what it was. She decided to use an analogy, which I recall. She said, “When you take a shower, you don’t just stand there. You soap yourself up and clean yourself off.” She may have added more information. I don’t know.

Years later, I realized what she was trying to do. She saw that I was a dirty kid, so she was trying to give me a hint about hygiene. I will probably never remember what we were talking about. Maybe she was saying I should stand up straight while my pants were being measured, instead of slouching passively. She saw that I was in trouble, and she wanted to help without offending my mother, so she came up with something to say.

She could tell (or maybe smell) what I was doing in the shower. I used to get in, stand around, and get out. I didn’t use a washcloth. I was probably in junior high before I started shampooing my own hair. Before that, I didn’t think about it. Every so often, my mother would make he hold still while she did it for me, and the rest of the time, I didn’t concern myself with it. I didn’t realize I was dirtier than other people, and I thought my situation was normal.

Kids don’t automatically know how to bathe. Someone has to tell them.

My parents didn’t teach me much of anything. It’s shocking, when I think about it. They expected me to succeed, and they held me accountable, but they didn’t help. They didn’t show me how to do it. They expected me to figure it out all by myself.

Unbelievably, I learned something from the hygiene video, at my advanced age. The announcer said it was important to wash between your toes. I don’t do that. I haven’t thought about it, to tell you the truth. I just figured all that soapy water running down there would get the job done. I scrub my feet with a soapy cloth, but that’s all. This says something about my upbringing. Even at my age, it continues to affect me negatively.

I watched a few more videos. I thought they were fantastic. I felt sick, thinking how much they would have helped me when I was a kid. I felt cheated.

In truth, I was cheated. We owe kids our help. They can’t make it without it.

I also saw some videos in which people discussed life in the mid-20th century.

I assumed they would say they longed for a time when people had it more together. I fully expected them to say America was a kinder, more orderly, more peaceful place back then. Boy, was I wrong. All they could talk about was the “oppressive” atmosphere and the harsh rules. They truly thought things had gotten better.

Yes, things have gotten better, if “better” means a boy who has decided he’s a girl can go into a girls’ locker room and shower naked with actual females who have no say in the matter. Things are better, if having filthy language on billboards is good. If smoking dope in a park where kids can see you and smell the smoke is good, then things have gotten a lot better.

If self-discipline and honoring your elders are bad things, then life is much better than it used to be. If having babies out of wedlock is good, things are fantastic.

I have a thirst to see myself improved. It looks like most Americans are thirsting for the same things monkeys want.

My parents should have told me things. They should have explained Christianity to me and seen to it that I participated whether I wanted to or not. They should have given me a desk, a chair, and a lamp and said, “This is where you work in the evening. This is when you work. This is how you keep a schedule so you don’t fall behind. On this day every week, we will check and make sure things are going smoothly.”

I was very, very smart, so I was able to do well in school without self-discipline for many years. There were obvious problems, though. I always did long-term projects the nights before they were due, because I couldn’t plan. I started to do badly in math, because you have to study math continuously; you can’t cram.

I can’t tell you how many times I saw the sun come up because I was working on a paper or project that was due that day. If your son is doing this, you are failing him.

My dad used to come home from work, take off his shirt and pants, lie on the couch in the den, and watch TV in his underwear. My mother spent a lot of time in the kitchen and living room. My sister and I lived outside the house and in our bedrooms. That was our family life. My sister and I filled our time however we saw fit, within very loose rules.

When my sister was 14, she started stealing my mother’s car, driving to a bar on 79th Street, and sitting with men. She had a friend who lived a block north of us, and she would go, too. I wonder what the people who made the videos would have thought about that. They probably could not have imagined it happening. One of their videos cautioned girls about parking in cars with boys. It didn’t say anything about sitting in bars with grown men!

The Seventies were different. It was not that hard for a young girl to get a drink at a bar without getting carded. Back then, they sold cigarettes from unattended vending machines, too.

Youth is when you learn good habits. They become like servants to you. They poke and prod you to do the right thing. If you don’t have good habits, you have bad ones, and they prod you to do wrong. If you wait until you’re old to strive for good habits, you will have a much, much harder time, and you will probably fail.

I don’t know why I didn’t become a criminal or a beggar. It’s amazing that I did as well as I did.

My sister eventually became a criminal and a beggar.

It’s remarkable that my teachers were of no help. Even the best of them were useless. My schools could have taught kids responsibility and basic life skills, but they didn’t. Maybe liberal educators got rid of the lifestyle videos because they found them judgmental and old-fashioned. Liberals always work to destroy the character of young people.

My teachers weren’t afraid of teaching values. They can’t use that excuse. No one can say they felt the teaching of good values was the exclusive province of our parents.

They taught us nature was sacred, and that we had to be environmental extremists. They taught feminism and socialism. They told us the horrible, hedonistic self-immolation of the Sixties was very good. They only had scruples when it came to things like belief in God, honoring our elders, sexual purity, good manners, and self-discipline.

They were dupes and tools. I don’t know how else to say it. Most of them weren’t even good at teaching.

Maybe other people don’t hate America’s new ways as much as I do because they were raised better than I was. Maybe they didn’t have the problems I had, so they don’t appreciate the good things they got from self-discipline and solid values.

I feel very foreign when I think about these things. I never feel at home on this planet, but the sensation of being different is much stronger when my nose is rubbed in the distinctions.

One of the purposes of the rapture is to put us in a place where we are in sync with the beings around us. We won’t feel foreign in heaven, or even on earth if we return here to rule after the tribulation. We’ll be normal, and those who are not in our family will be the wallflowers and outsiders. That will be nice, at least for us.

If I could go back and change my childhood, I would want two things. I would want to be raised by people who were led by the Holy Spirit and full of knowledge about God, and I would want them to teach me how to live correctly. If I had those things, any other problems I had would take care of themselves.

One of the wonderful things about God is that he gives us a new beginning. You can’t go back and be eight years old again. You can’t grow up in a proper Christian home, marry your childhood sweetheart, raise a Christian family in your youth, and head into middle age with all that behind you. But you can become the kind of person you would have been had you started life correctly.

Sometimes I think about the disgusting and disgraceful things I’ve done, said, and felt, and I wonder how I would survive the shame if they were exposed. Then a thought comes to me: if, when those things are exposed, I can say I’m not that person any more, and I don’t do, say, or feel those things, then I won’t be so ashamed.

Because of God, I can have that.

I wish I could go live in a secure fortress with other Christians and only come out to get groceries. I really do. I wish I could live in heaven and only come down here during the day to work. America is extremely filthy, and it’s not going to change. We’re just seeing the beginning.

At least I don’t have to be part of it. I’ll be able to say I got off the field before it was too late.

Kids have absolutely no idea what to do with their lives. Your kids are extremely unlikely to figure everything out for themselves. If you don’t get in there and help them, you will surely be held accountable. You probably won’t like the results of your parenting efforts either.

I Hate the Term “Easter Egg,” but…

I haven’t written all that much about the challenges I face over the last 10 days or so, but it has been a stressful time. As of today, everything has been resolved completely in my favor. While I was prophesying to myself, God said this would happen, so I got two blessings, not one. The blessing of seeing that prophesy was true is much greater than the nice things God said would happen. Pleasant events are great, but the knowledge that God tells you things is priceless. Isn’t it something we all wish we had?

God gives me little indications that the things I say are from him. For example, he said he would lift me up on his love to accomplish good works.

That sounds like meaningless flowery language to the cynical ear of the flesh, but God chooses his words with precision. They always have meaning.

Twice, I have had dreams about flying on love as though it were a wind. I was not thinking about that when I prophesied, but God reminded me afterward.

Maybe 6 years ago, I had a dream in which a warm, invisible force carried me through the air, down a sidewalk, between trees that were very dense with healthy leaves. More recently, I dreamed a headwind lifted me up and carried me into the leaves of a tree. The wind came toward me from the front, but it propelled me forward.

After I had those dreams, I interpreted them, and I believed leaves represented good works. Both times, God lifted me on love to good works.

We tend to think of Christianity as a lifetime of obeying commands because of guilt or a feeling of obligation. That’s a very low form of Christianity. In reality, love is supposed to be our motivation.

The Bible says love, not obligation, is what led God to permit the crucifixion. It would be very hard to submit to torture and execution because of duty, but God did it because the alternative was to see much worse things happen to children he loved. Nearly anyone will jump in front of a car for his own child.

Love is what motivates you to do things that please God. He worked this into the words he gave me, and I saw it later.

Satan (or “Stan,” as I sometimes type his name by mistake) has done a great job of blocking love in us. He sends us bullies and tormentors. He sends lovers that pretend to want us and then discard us. He gives us entertainment in which violence in the service of vengeance is satisfying to the point of being delicious. He exalts aggression and verbal cruelty. He makes us afraid to love, and he encourages us to hate.

It’s a strong strategy. Love is one of the roots of the kingdom of heaven. Isolate people from it, and you prevent them from knowing and pleasing God.

Satan also uses fear to cut off our love. It’s hard to love when you’re afraid, and the Bible says completed love casts out fear.

The Bible says Satan is a ROARING lion, not just a lion. He roams the streets seeking people he MAY devour. The Bible doesn’t say he can have whoever he wants. He roars to put us in fear, and fear cuts off love and faith and drives us to do things that land us in snares.

Love is a big deal. It’s not just a pleasant feeling. It’s protection.

Love is also the glue that binds the members of the kingdom together. Duty can’t do that. God gives his children favor and help because of love, and we help each other and serve him because of love.

Our culture is full of popular spectacles and pursuits that work against love.

I quit watching superhero movies. The writers depict violence and cruelty as satisfying. I also quit watching revenge porn. The John Wick films are good examples. Someone kicks John’s puppy to death, so John mutilates and kills dozens of people, and the writers make you feel great about every incident. That’s not healthy, even as a fantasy.

Superhero movies are also unhealthy because they create false messiahs who do the kinds of things the disciples originally wanted Jesus to do. They wanted him to come and annihilate their enemies and start an earthly kingdom. They wanted to see the Romans humiliated. Jesus won’t be doing things like that until he returns, but Robert Downey and Ryan Reynolds pretend to do them right now, like little kids tying towels to their necks and jumping off their garage roofs.

The desires the disciples had for revenge and supremacy were carnal, and so are the longings you feed when you watch actors pretend to cut people up, burn them, and so on.

Superheroes are proud. No one helps them do what they do. They don’t pray. They don’t bless and curse. They’re better than other people, and they get all the glory for what they do. They sound a lot like fallen angels and the nephilim. I believe this is where their inspiration came from.

It’s great to hear from God. I plan to do it as much as I can. As long as it keeps working, I will pursue it. Anyone can make a mistake, but prophesy keeps paying off and conforming to scripture, so I have no reason to stop at this time.

Don’t Drown in it; Make it the Pavement You Walk On

I feel like writing something else about God.

The Bible compares the world to a sea, and it compares voices (words) to waters. The Bible uses fish and the Sea of Galilee to symbolize human beings and the world. The Bible says God has a voice like many waters. The Bible says the words of the Holy Spirit that come up inside us are “living water.”

One of the things I don’t like about the world is that we are born submerged in filthy water. We are generally surrounded by voices that push us to destruction. Fallen angels and demons tempt us and lie to us, and so do people. So does our own flesh. We are besieged around the clock, by innumerable voices. Unfortunately, we don’t necessarily hear from God as much. Generally, we don’t. I was an adult before I heard from God, but I heard from the rest all the time, dating back at least to my birth. I probably heard spirits before that.

We need something to tilt the scales in our favor. We aren’t strong enough to fight continuously with our own words, which lack power anyway.

We’re like accused dissidents or terrorists being interrogated and abused by a series of inquisitors. When we capture terrorists, we don’t send a man in to talk and let him work until he’s worn out. We send one man in, and when he starts to fade, we send another in. We don’t let the terrorist sleep. Everyone is fresh and rested except for the terrorist, who becomes exhausted and gives up because he’s alone. We are not supposed to fight alone. We are part of a team, and the strongest member, who never sleeps, is God.

The word says faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. It makes sense, then, that bad things also come by hearing, and that they come by the word of other spirits, other people, and the flesh.

There is always symmetry in the supernatural.

Prayer in tongues is the word of God. When you pray in tongues, your mind may not understand while you pray, but gradually, things penetrate, and you start understanding things you haven’t learned with your natural mind. This is why prayer in tongues builds faith and brings revelation.

God also speaks through prophecy, the word of knowledge, the word of wisdom, and discernment of spirits. God has told us to covet prophecy. He wants us to have it. Failing to pursue it and expect it is disobedience. It’s available, and you should have it.

For a while, I’ve been praying for God to talk me constantly, to overcome the other voices. “Coincidentally,” I saw a Derek Prince video this year in which he showed people how to prophesy. I started doing it. I can’t tell you who will win the Kentucky Derby next year, because that’s now how prophesy works, but God tells me about the future all the time, and he tells me who I am in Christ.

It’s really good. It’s more direct than prayer in tongues. I can understand it as I hear it.

Satan, who is creation’s premiere loser and worst coach, tells me I’m just a random person. He says God has discarded me because of my evil nature and sins. He says God won’t do anything for me because I don’t deserve it. He says I’m crazy to follow God instead of common sense, and that it will blow up on me soon. He says I imagine everything I believe about God. He never says that about the things I used to believe about his own power! He never says my enemies are weak.

God says I am literally his son. He says I am a royal. He says I have great authority. He says I am exactly the kind of person he wants to do things for. He says I don’t need to deserve, because Jesus deserved, and I inherited what Jesus had. He says things are going to get better and better.

When I started doing this, I did it in fits and starts because I was afraid I would say stupid things. When I said something that sounded good, I wanted to quit, because I didn’t want to go on and say something insane which would prove the first thing I said was not from God.

I quit worrying about that. I started prophesying more and more. I haven’t had any letdowns yet. On rare occasions I’ve felt that I was going off course, so I stopped and started over, and things went fine.

When Peter tried to walk to Jesus on the Sea of Galilee, he sank whenever he considered the water and not Jesus. He rose when he focused on the Lord. That’s how life works.

We are stuck in this world for a while, and we have to make certain concessions. We have to eat, sleep, and bathe. We have to have money and things. We have to put up with all sorts of hostile beings. We are pulled away from God a lot. We are his feet, and the filth of this world that gets on us because of our connection to it is like the dust the disciples were told to shake off their shoes.

Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. He was showing how the Holy Spirit would counteract the “dust” our association with the world would cause to adhere to us. The flow of the Holy Spirit washes it off. If the Holy Spirit isn’t speaking in you, you’re like a person who has no access to a shower. You need help.

I am spending a great deal of time letting the Holy Spirit speak through me. I don’t know how I would get by without it now. Satan tells me ridiculous things about the future, and the Holy Spirit refutes all of it and gives me peace.

Satan will never quit, so I can’t quit. He has a real problem now that I have God’s weight on the scales with me. In the past, he and his kids could bully me and torment me, and I had no power to fight back. Now he’s the quadriplegic and I’m the heavyweight champion.

Christians need to know these things. The defeat most of us live in was never intended for us.

What Unimportant Thing can we Fight About Today?

Are we supposed to be baptized in the name of Jesus only, or in the names of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

I thought I knew the answer, but then I thought I didn’t. Now I know I know.

Traditionally, churches have baptized in the name of the Trinity. There is scriptural support for this. In Matthew 28, Jesus commanded the disciples to baptize in all three names.

Question answered, right?

No.

Throughout the New Testament, scripture says people were baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, without mentioning the Father and Holy Spirit. It doesn’t say the Father and Holy Spirit were not named, but it doesn’t say they were.

We pray in Jesus’ name, not the name of the Father or Holy Spirit. We cast out demons in his name. We say we are the body of Christ, not the body of Yahweh. We say we are “in Christ.” This is strong support for baptizing in the name of Jesus Christ. It seems like pretty good authority.

It seems very clear that we should baptize in the name of Jesus Christ. It’s less clear that we should not mention the Father or Holy Spirit.

The question is interesting to me, because I was baptized by the Last Reformation, and they teach that you should be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, not the Trinity. I assumed they knew what they were doing, but then I read Matthew 28. I decided they were wrong. Now I think they’re right.

In addition to the numerous citations in the New Testament, they rely on Eusebius, an early Christian, to support their view. Eusebius is presumed to have seen very authentic versions of the gospels, and he has said that Jesus commanded his followers to make disciples in his name. Baptism is not mentioned. There is also a Hebrew translation of Matthew that omits the reference to the Trinity.

Problem: Eusebius quoted the version with the Trinitarian reference in at least one other work, so he clearly approved of it, unless his work was altered.

Problem: the Hebrew translation anti-Trinitarians rely on can’t be dated to anything close to the first centuries A.D.

TLR isn’t the only organization quibbling with the conventional text. The Black Hebrew Israelites and the Muslims object to it.

What’s the answer?

First of all, it’s a big mistake to fight over things like this. Obviously, God is not going to invalidate your baptism for mentioning the Father and Holy Spirit, and since Jesus Christ is one with them, and since we do all other things in his name, it certainly should be sufficient to name him only.

Poring over old books is a major error when it comes to interpreting the will of God. You may have to give them a certain amount of consideration, but if we believe the Holy Spirit speaks to us today and tells us things like where to live and which pair of socks to buy, surely we should expect him to resolve theological questions for us.

When you get too attached to books and opinions, it shows you’re getting distant from the Holy Spirit. God does not have opinions. He does not think argument is “healthy” or useful. God has the truth, and he delivers it to everyone with no inconsistencies.

Worshiping the opinions of men has destroyed the power of God’s people over and over. The Talmud damaged the Jews tremendously, and so has Catholic gossip and pantheism masquerading as revelation.

If study were the answer, Judaism and the church would never have fallen apart, right? There have been a tremendous number of able scholars, and they generally get essential things completely wrong.

Here’s something God just showed me. When we say someone has been baptized “in the name of Jesus Christ,” we’re not describing the type of baptism or what has happened to the person. We are describing the motivation and authority of the person PERFORMING the baptism.

If you heal in Jesus’ name, it means you are doing it with his authority. It doesn’t mean Jesus is doing it, or that only Jesus is God, or anything else. We have no problem accepting the idea that the Holy Spirit and angels heal when we lay hands on people. We don’t require Jesus to show up in person. We’re just using his authority, and the means is up to the Father.

If you pray in Jesus’ name, it doesn’t mean you pray to Jesus or that you pray only to Jesus. Jesus told us to approach the Father in prayer.

It follows, then, that when you say, “in the name of Jesus Christ” when you baptize, you’re just showing that you have his authority to baptize. You’re not relying on your authority, or the authority of angels, or the authority of the federal government, or the authority of the Rotary Club. You’re using inherited authority that was the property of Jesus Christ while he was on earth and now belongs to you.

The threshold question God would ask is, “Who authorized you to do this?” The answer is, “You did. You authorized Jesus Christ, and I inherited his authority.” This endorsement makes the transaction go through.

These things are clearly true, so it must be that when we baptize, we do it in the name of Jesus, just as we pray in his name and cast out spirits in his name. The cooperation of the Father and Holy Spirit are guaranteed because they are united in purpose with Jesus, so you don’t need to mention them expressly. They respect and honor his name.

“Jesus Christ” is shorthand for “Yehoshuah the Messiah,” and “messiah” means “anointed one.” “Anointed” means “given authority.” We have inherited his anointing, so we use his authority. Baptize in his name, and you baptize as though you were Jesus himself. You’re of the body, and you can join others to the body.

It’s not like “being baptized WITH the Holy Spirit,” which means having the Holy Spirit surround you and live inside you. When you’re baptized with the Holy Spirit, you’re not receiving his authority. You’re being baptized WITH or IN him. You become immersed in him and filled with him, as though he were water. You’re giving him authority in you. Not the same thing as being baptized (with water) into the royal family in the name of Jesus.

I hope TLR supporters and other Spirit-led Christians won’t get into a big stink over this issue. It’s a colossal pit we don’t need to fall into.

I’m very confident in the answer I have received.

Yes, he Does Have a Right to It

The further along in Christianity I get, the more I realize Christians are in a special class of privileged people.

When I was a kid, I thought I had to suffer in church for an hour a week to get to heaven. That was about all I knew. Later on, I learned about faith. I didn’t know I was supposed to give myself completely to Jesus, however, and I didn’t know God would work miracles for me as a matter of routine. Eventually, I realized God would do a lot of things for me. It took me a while to understand that it was important to get his help doing what he wanted, not in fulfilling tawdry desires.

At some point, God showed me that I had to be sanctified. I couldn’t do what everyone else did. I had to repent. I had to get cleansed of demons and iniquities. I realized that there was a connection between the things I did and the way my life went. I started getting cleaned up, and it certainly helped, but when I stumbled, I overestimated how much it hurt my relationship with God. I felt that it set me back much more than it actually did.

I started noticing that God’s presence, and the sense that I was approved, were very strong right after I sinned and repented. I felt like I should be in the doghouse for a while, but there he was, unmistakably. It was hard to accept. It was as if he had forgotten all about what I had done.

I punished myself, but he was moving ahead as if nothing had happened.

I should have realized he wanted to move on. When I have a problem with a person, and that person repents and apologizes, I don’t want to hear about it any more. I just want to resume the relationship. If I’m that good, then surely God has to be better.

My dad and my sister were very different. You could tell my dad you were sorry 50 times, and he would continue yelling as if you had told him to kiss your rear end. He changed toward the end of his life, when God reached him. My sister is still angry at me for things I did when I was in elementary school.

I’m finally starting to understand that it’s about who I am, not what I do, say, or think. As long as I don’t deny God and quit, he lets offenses go pretty much instantly. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t punish me.

I watch teachers who talk about sonship. They keep saying we’re sons and daughters of God. We’re not just servants. I know these things, but lately they’ve been penetrating deeper.

Back in April, God gave me a sentence: “Thank you for making me nobility.”

That sounds proud, doesn’t it? But it also sounded proud when Jesus told old priests and rabbis he was the son of God.

Nobles are generally heirs. Real nobles, I mean. I don’t mean rock stars who get phony knighthoods from the queen of England. In the old days, a person who did something for a monarch would be made a noble, and after that, his descendants would be nobles by inheritance, no matter how stupid or obnoxious they were. Those people went on to rule over individuals who, in many cases, were much smarter and more capable than they were. It was not a meritocracy.

God was telling me I was in line to receive all sorts of good things as a birthright, whether I deserved them or not. I was born a second time, into his family. After that, I was an heir, and I was destined to receive things I had not earned.

The other side of the coin is obligation. A noble is supposed to keep high standards and take care of the people he lives among.

God wasn’t telling me I got to brag and push other people around. He was just telling me I would be more blessed than other people, and that I should maintain higher standards than others.

The other day, I was thinking about this, and I used Google to read about employees who had problems with their boss’s children. It was fascinating. All over the web, there are people fuming because their bosses put up with bad workplace behavior from their kids. They actually go to forums and ask other people what can be done about it. The answer, almost always, is “nothing.”

Of course you can’t do anything about it. The boss built his business so he could make his kids rich. The business isn’t yours. You just work there. You’re actually an instrument the boss uses to give his kids things you seem to deserve more than they do.

If you hate the boss’s son for getting better treatment than you do, you’re as wrong as you can be. You’re working in the boss’s son’s business. It already belongs to him, even if he doesn’t own it legally yet. You need to learn your place.

Jesus was the ultimate boss’s son. People think he knew everything God knew and had all of God’s power as soon as he was born, but that’s not true. He was a man who had to live by faith. Jesus the man didn’t earn God’s power while he was in human form, and he wasn’t born with it. It just dropped on him. God helped him all the time. He couldn’t fail. God didn’t let him.

The book of Job says the sons of God were gathered, and Satan was among them. It doesn’t say he was a son of God, however. Just that he was “also” there. He’s not a son of God. He belongs to a lower class of being. He’s an angel. I’m sure God loves angels, but they’re employees, not sons. God created the world for Jesus and his other children to rule. There was no path to that promotion for any angel, no matter how beautiful, wise, hard-working, or faithful.

The Bible says Christians will judge the angels. That means we are above them. Psalm 82 says we are “elohim.” That means we are gods.

In the Bible, “family” and “nation” mean nearly the same thing, and men are like nations because they can give rise to families. When Abel was killed, God said Abel’s “bloods,” plural, cried out to him from the earth. Some believe this means that in God’s eyes, Cain had killed a nation in Abel.

Abraham paid a tithe to Melchizedek. Hebrews says Levi, a descendant of Abraham, tithed through Abraham, because he was a seed in Abraham’s loins when the tithe was paid. You can see how strongly God views the connection between ancestor and descendant.

We are literally God’s children, and that’s why we get away with so much. It’s why we are spared so many things that happen to other people. The big calamities of the world are for them, not us. No wonder the world hates us.

I have come to understand two things: I have to agree that the good things that happen to me in spite of myself are completely appropriate and good, and I have to agree that the bad things that happen to people who reject Jesus are also completely appropriate and good. I will certainly feel compassion for the cursed, but I can’t criticize God for what befalls them. He is right to let it happen and even to make it happen. He sees everything, and only he knows what’s right. If he were to explain it, we would all agree.

God’s favoritism makes perfect sense. If you build a fortune for your son, you will bend over backwards to see that he gets it. You will be more patient with him than anyone else. You will forgive more. You will give him bigger rewards for the same work. It’s not evil. It’s the way things are supposed to be. We are supposed to look after our offspring and give them preference.

If you were living in the Warsaw Ghetto, and you knew the Germans were coming to liquidate it, would you build a hiding place, drag your neighbor’s children into it with you, and let your kids die? Of course not. You’d take your own children.

Consider the passover. Every Jew who put blood on his house was spared, along with his entire family. Every firstborn Egyptian died. The mean ones died. The nice ones died. The babies died. It was right. God was looking after Abraham’s seed, who were privileged because of who they were.

When God flooded the world, Noah was spared because he pleased God, but his family was spared simply because they were Noah’s seed. His wife wasn’t his seed, but she was his flesh. It didn’t matter whether his sons were upright people. They were privileged because of their name.

God drowned old people and babies. It was right. He knew what he was doing.

I can’t say why God chooses his children. There are some very, very nice non-Christians out there. The natural thing is to assume God would spare people like that. But that’s wrong. They die and burn forever, and it’s right. When we know all the facts, we’ll understand this.

People always ask why God saves Christians and sends “good people” to hell. There are no good people. No one wants to admit that, but it’s true. God treats Christians as though they were good because they’re his children. He shed his blood giving birth to them so he could preserve them and keep them. Heaven is his house, and he built it for his family, not strangers.

The world is full of envy. The children of failure are building up a white-hot rage toward anyone who seems privileged. White people, Americans, Jews, males, heterosexuals, conservatives, people who are financially comfortable, anyone wearing a red hat…we’re all treated like criminals now.

Satan’s children beat drums in the street and sing and chant about taking what we have (so they can waste it and lose it). They don’t realize two important things: they can’t be blessed, and God’s children can’t be cursed. Take what we have and kill us, and we will live again with better things than you can dream of. Meanwhile, what you took will make you suffer, and you will lose it.

To a child of God, all suffering and loss is short-term, and the same is true of the victories of the children of darkness. Victory can’t stick to them. They repel it.

This stuff is very interesting to me. Churches should teach it, but Satan runs the church, so you have to hear it from the Holy Spirit or catch someone talking about it on Youtube.

Jesus said the end would come when the gospel of the kingdom had been preached everywhere. Kingdoms are transferred through inheritance. They go from fathers to children, not to strangers. The real power of Christianity comes to people who understand that they are sons of God. Obeying rules, doing nice things, and giving preachers money won’t get you anywhere.

I’m not saying it’s not important to do good. I’m saying it’s not what gets you into the family. Doing bad things won’t get you into hell, either. Not if you’re a son.

The only way to make it is to join the family.

The story of creation is the story of a war between races that are also families. One race is the family of God, and the other is the family of Satan. That’s what’s going on. It’s why Cain killed Abel. It’s why there was a flood. It’s why Hitler killed something like half of the Jews. It’s why Haman tried to kill them. It’s why Pharaoh killed Jewish babies. It’s why Herod killed the children in Bethlehem.

It’s why Muslims kill Christians all over the world, and it’s why people who hate us will be killing us in America, with no repercussions, before long.

You can find more proof in the Bible. The destruction of Sodom, the massacres under Joshua…go look.

I never give anything to charities that aren’t related to Christianity in some way. Why should I? God isn’t behind that stuff. It’s just Satan’s children doing PR, to make the world think righteousness is unrelated to God. I don’t mean they don’t want to do good. They’re just deluded.

I don’t support scouting. I walk right by the cookies. I don’t care how cute the kids are. The Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts thumbed their noses at God. I’m not going to support that. Let their organizations rot. Life will go on without them.

I am privileged. I am supposed to be privileged. It’s God’s plan. He gives his children help and power, and I do not have the authority or the desire to go against his plan.

God really will do things for you, and he’ll tell you things. He will bless you silly. You just have to join the family and let him to it his way.

I believe things are going to get very bad in America, and I expect to be subjected to very little of it. I hope God helps people draw close to him and learn who they are. I hope he keeps helping me to accept my identity instead of struggling to help myself.

Widely Publicized yet Little Known

I learned something interesting this morning during prayer. I finally got a good definition for the Greek word “agape,” and, like all revelation from God, it was simple and obvious even though it took me a long time to get it.

Agape is tossed around a lot by Christians, and my feeling is that they use it to manipulate and discourage believers. They say it’s an incredible form of love human beings can’t really understand. If you have it, you will do absolutely anything for others. You will give away everything you have. You will kiss people’s feet while they beat you. You will do whatever other people tell you to do and give them anything they ask for. It sounds more like spinelessness and neediness than love, to tell you the truth.

If you buy into the weird teachings about agape, you’ll naturally feel that you could never have it. You’ll probably want nothing to do with it. It sounds like a person with agape would have a horrible life.

Catholics, in particular, make Christianity sound terrible. They have a strange obsession with “saints” who were tortured to death or who mutilated themselves or voluntarily lived in misery and poverty. St. Lucy, for example, supposedly cut her own eyes out to discourage a persistent suitor. St. Lawrence was supposedly roasted on a grill. You can go Google the others.

It’s not helpful to exaggerate the suffering of Christians. Kids hear that kind of thing, and of course, it turns them off. Life is hard enough without making up fables about torture and so on.

Many clergymen are more interested in telling people they’re too dirty and weak to succeed than in telling them how to become God’s successful, powerful children. It’s a bizarre quirk of human nature. We should be building each other, but instead, we tell others Christianity is a demanding, painful ordeal they clearly can’t endure.

Agape doesn’t mean you give up all your dignity and basically become a human spittoon. God loves his children, and although he permits persecution, we are supposed to live in victory and abundance. Mindless submission to cruel, wicked people who will never come around and repent is not agape. It’s probably a manifestation of an unhealthy guilt complex. It can also be pride. “Look how I suffer for God. God is impressed with me because I’m better than you but I let you abuse me.” I’ll bet everyone reading this is familiar with that act.

Jesus said his yoke was easy and his burden was light, and I have no problem with that. I have no problem with being pampered and sheltered. Bring it on. I can’t get enough of it. This world is awful. I want all the help I can get, and I prefer not to earn it. Earning is for the wicked, as in, “The wages of sin is death.” I’m an heir. I inherit.

Here is the definition of agape: affection.

That’s it. That’s what it means. It means a warm, tender, compassionate feeling for another being. It’s something you’re capable of having, especially with the Holy Spirit’s help. It’s not beyond you. God doesn’t ask us to do things and then make them impossible.

Inheritance is all about helping you do things you could not do on your own.

Just about everyone feels affection. The Christian version is different because it’s supernaturally imparted, and it is less dependent on the way the object behaves. You can feel it for truly nasty creatures who do great evil.

That makes sense. God feels affection for us, and even the best of us are pretty bad.

I keep watching videos of healers on Youtube, and while I love what they do, I am aware that something very big is missing: affection.

I don’t mean that they have no affection. Clearly, they do. But it’s not like God’s affection, and I don’t think it’s their primary motivation. Love is the reason God created the universe. It wasn’t duty or a desire for harmony or a need for justice. He wanted other beings to shower and perfuse with love, and he wanted them to feel great affection for each other. If we go out and heal people, we should also be so full of supernatural love, they can feel it.

Jesus visited me twice. The primary thing I felt was the heat of his love. It was like radiation. I literally felt it, like the heat of the sun hitting my skin, except that it passed through me and surrounded me.

I don’t have that. I’m a nice guy for the most part, but if you meet me, you won’t feel waves of love making your knees weak.

John said that perfect affection cast out fear. He said that if you don’t love your brother, you are not of God. That’s scary. He said that he who hates his brother is a murderer, and we know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him!

Jesus said some people would be cast into hell after saying, “‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?” It seems clear that you can heal people and still be way out of line.

There are preachers who have made themselves very rich by healing, or pretending to heal, sick people. There are preachers who make a big show of what they do, not so people can learn from it, but so they will be admired and supported with donations. I would like to heal people, but it’s pointless if I don’t have the right motivation.

This world is a tough place. Life begins with pain, and then people mistreat and abuse you. Satan and his children show up in most people’s lives long before they hear from God. We learn to be angry, defensive, and cruel, in self defense. Later, we go on offense, and we feel that the evil we have been subjected to makes it justified. We develop poisonous habits that go against God’s nature. Then, when we become Christians, we may remain snared in these strongholds.

People who are supposed to teach us fill us with lies that make things worse. They say Christianity is a set of rules, with a God who keeps score, like the College Board, and then decides whether you have enough points to get into heaven. They say we have to earn what we get. Contradicting Jesus very directly, they say Christianity is hard, and that you have to be a very special, very good person to make it. They tell us we have to change ourselves, which is completely ridiculous. They teach us nonsense, and as a result, most of us don’t get far.

Christianity is a supernatural way of life. It’s about spirits and supernatural power, not human effort and WWJD bracelets. God transforms us supernaturally. He is the only path to supernatural affection. He is the only one who frees us from hostility. He can drop affection in you like a bagboy dropping oranges into a sack. Through authority inherited from him, you can silence the hostility of your flesh instantly. We should be pursuing these things instead of trying to see how good we can be without his help. He isn’t looking for competition.

Love and fear are enemies. I want love–affection–to flow from me, and I don’t want fear in me, except for fear of the Lord.

I believe the church is still half-baked, even though we are seeing a lot of miracles. Without an atmosphere of supernatural affection, we are not complete. We’re supposed to be the representatives of Jesus, and love radiates from him with great power. If it’s not radiating from us, we are still not who we should be.

The Power is Yours

If you read this blog, it’s easy to get the idea that I become attached to one preacher after another, and that I abandon them quickly so I can run to to new people. This is not at all true, but most Christians and Jews are used to thinking in terms of following human leaders, so it’s easy for them to assume I’m looking for one and that I’m not faithful to the ones I find.

I gave too much of myself to Rich Wilkerson and the pedophile who ran my last church. This is true. But I did not turn them into gurus or idols. If I had, I would still be at Wilkerson’s disgraceful church, driving people’s luggage around and making pizza. Either that, or I would be visiting Albert Santiago in prison, trying to help him start a new ministry. I kept listening to the Holy Spirit and any man I thought was relaying information from him. This is why I got pushed out of two churches in a row. I challenged the cults, so I no longer fit in.

There is no man out there I can follow without reservation. There isn’t supposed to be. I am not looking for one. Occasionally, though, I come across people who relay solid information from God, so I listen to them for a while, and I recommend them to others. Most of the time, these people don’t teach me much that is new. They merely confirm what the Holy Spirit has already told me, and they may expand on it.

I spent a lot of time listening to Derek Prince. He gives people a nice, solid foundation to build on. He’s not perfect, though. He said some things that were not quite right, and he had a serious pride problem.

I watched a lot of Tom Fischer (Cardboard Box Church) videos. He was also very good, but his ministry cooled down when he got married, and he started talking about essential oils in his videos. He got into a multi-level marketing company that sells these things, and he created a second Youtube channel to promote them. If there is a reputable, sound multi-level marketing company out there, I have yet to hear of it. They tend to be snares for people who have financial issues and who may be naive.

When you join an MMA, you may find yourself pushing your wares to friends and relatives, driving them away in exchange for small commissions. The general rule is that you can’t sell enough to make a real profit, and only the company makes money.

To me, preaching is preaching, and business is business. They should not be connected at all. I never saw Paul offer a sale on new tents in the Bible. I think Fischer is great, but I feel like I know a few things that haven’t been revealed to him yet.

I went to a Last Reformation event and got baptized after listening to Torben Sondergaard. I think TLR is doing wonderful things, but it’s starting to look like a denomination with a strong flesh-based structure, and denominations are not good. I will never join another church or denomination, because I know that as soon as a ministry becomes a human organization, Satan starts finding ways to take over.

Yesterday I found out that TLR told me something that was just plain false. They only baptize in the name of Jesus. They say that this is how all baptisms in the New Testament were done. It’s not true. Jesus said his followers were to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I don’t know how TLR could have been wrong about it.

I don’t know how important the error is, but it shows you have to test everyone.

By the way, I compared the Acts 2 School to a cult the other day, because they charged for seminars, made people share quarters, and subjected them to obnoxious rules. Since then (if I understand things correctly), I have learned that they got these ideas from TLR, and they have changed their minds about them. I don’t know whether their ministry is worth anything, however.

When I went to my TLR event, I stayed in a hotel, there was no charge, and I came and went as I pleased, so it’s hard to know what the truth is.

I’m not going to go sleep in a bunk bed in a room full of strangers unless an angel wakes me up in the middle of the night and hands me a signed note from God. I can tell you that much. Not when I can have a queen-size bed and my own toilet.

It may be that TLR gave them these ideas because TLR is from Denmark, where people are used to being told what to do.

The search for sages and under-messiahs is a big problem. It wrecked Judaism and Catholicism. People get the idea that they have to find a man they can rely on, so they can give themselves completely to his teaching. That doesn’t work. Every man makes mistakes. The Jews rely on the Talmud, which is full of guesses, contradictions, and lies. The Catholics rely on a lot of weird quasi-pagan doctrine they stole from the Greek pantheists. All of this nonsense came from fallen angels, men, and men’s wild guesses. It’s extremely destructive.

Moses wished all of God’s people were prophets. He didn’t want to hog the glory. He knew it wasn’t his.

I almost feel hesitant to bring up new preachers I’ve listened to, because most Christians are determined to find one preacher or denomination and cling like barnacles.

I’ll say what I think, though. I’m not responsible for the way people take what I write. It’s 100% on them. If you’re listening to the Holy Spirit every day, he will help you understand, and if you’re not, nothing I can do can clear up your misconceptions.

You’re never responsible for how other people take things. Never.

I’ve been writing about Tom Loud and Pete Cabrera lately. I even emailed Loud to ask about visiting and doing street healing with him. Doesn’t mean I think he’s the solution to all my problems, however.

He said something I loved. He said we’re not supposed to depend on healers. He said he can’t be on call all the time for everyone because, for example, he might want to take a vacation with his wife. If you’re constantly asking strong Christians to pray for you, grow up. You should be as strong as anyone. You should be praying to God, not to Pete Cabrera. It’s not someone else’s job to be your on-call nurse. We are supposed to help other people, but we are also supposed to have our own lives. You can’t carry a grown Christian around on your back like a papoose.

Pete Cabrera begs people to go to the Bible and the Holy Spirit to check what he says. He tells them they’re not supposed to rely on him. He’s right.

Last night I watched a very good video Loud made. It was about authority. The main thing I took away from it is that God is not running the world, except perhaps in a very general way related to major events. I knew that already. God put man in charge down here, and all the evil that happens here is our fault.

Loud expanded on the question of who has what authority, and helped me learn more about it.

Very often, we ask God to do things we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to bless and curse. We have the power to drive out demons. The apostles didn’t beg God the way we do. They just spoke his power into the earth.

Loud said something that had never occurred to me. The Bible says God doesn’t do anything without telling his servants the prophets. Loud says he does this because men have authority down here. He says God himself has restricted his own authority by turning the world over to us. He says God actually needs a prophet to say something will happen before God has the authority to get it done. He says Noah preached about the flood in order to give God the authority to cause it.

That was new to me.

I think he’s right. We seem to be more in charge than we realize, and our words are more powerful than we understand.

My life has gotten much, much better over the last few years, and I think it’s because I started speaking. I have been blessing and cursing like crazy. I speak defeat to my enemies. I speak God’s help to people. I tell my mind, body, and spirit what to do. Things keep improving for me. The Bible says, “Life and death are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.”

It’s working for me, consistently. Using words, I’ve been planting good seeds for years, and the longer I keep doing it, the more good things grow. I also planted a lot of evil seeds in the past, and I’ve had to wait for the resulting thorns and weeds to wilt.

Christians are always wondering why they don’t see God’s many promises come true. It’s probably largely because they don’t bless and curse. In many cases, God’s word is like human law. When you go into a courtroom, you don’t get any help if you remain silent. The judge agrees with your enemy, and you lose. If you win, it’s because you claimed something the law promised you. This may be why Jesus was so quiet while he was being tried. If he had spoken too much, he might have been delivered, and the whole plan would have been ruined.

He argued with hostile Jews, and they were never able to touch him. He was nearly silent when he was kidnapped, beaten, interrogated, and tortured to death, and he was not protected.

Words are extremely important. They were the tools that created the planet we sit on. A diploma is words. A contract is words. A death sentence is words. Jesus called himself the word of God.

Words are at the root of everything. Control the root, and you control everything that comes from it.

I’ll post the video here. Maybe it will help you.

Over the last two days, something very odd happened. I lost my Bluetooth earpiece. I searched the house, workshop, and car. I looked through my laundry. I searched the washer and dryer. I went over the same places over and over. I looked at clean clothes I had put away. It was nowhere to be found.

I was expecting an important call, and I didn’t want to hold the phone up the whole time. I started practicing what Tom Loud taught in a video I wrote about a day or two back. I got my carnal mind out of the way. I spoke God’s defeat to the difficulty of finding the earpiece, as well as his victory to me in finding it. I asked him to bring it to me. I commanded my carnal mind to shut up, and I told it to submit to my spirit.

I thanked God over and over for returning the earpiece to me.

Yesterday I finally ordered a new earpiece. I was not giving up, but I wanted to have a second one in case this happened again.

Last night I showered and got dressed for bed. I put on a pair of shorts I had laid out on the dresser. Later, I felt something in my pocket. I reached in, and there was the earpiece.

You can’t tell me I hadn’t looked there before. I had made a point of searching all the shorts I wear at night. And it showed up before the call arrived.

Make of it what you will.

The carnal mind is a problem. I’m not saying it hasn’t done anything for us. It gives us inventions. It helps us think so we can get through the day. Unfortunately, it also fights with God. It thinks miracles don’t happen and that anything that seems impossible is, in fact, impossible. It’s wrong about the important things.

The mind of the flesh prevents us from raising the dead and making legs grow back. Medicine can fix a lot of things, but it can’t cure a cold, make a dwarf grow, create a new eye, grow a new tooth, or do any of a number of things that would alleviate terrible suffering. Medicine is also expensive, and not everyone can get treatment. It doesn’t help humanity much when a new medical treatment pops up and only a ten-thousandth of the world’s population can get it. The carnal mind cuts us off from a world of free help our human efforts can’t begin to compare to.

I’ve had blisters healed over a period of minutes. I know it sounds insignificant, but think about it. You can go to the Mayo Clinic, offer them a billion dollars to make a blister go away, and have them tell you it can’t be done. They’ll say you have to wait. I didn’t. Didn’t cost me a penny, either. They were just blisters, but they might as well have been tumors or amputations. The same principles apply.

Carnality relies on hard work. As Adam could tell you, hard work is what happens when you give up access to divine help. Divine help is better. When you get God’s power working for you, you don’t need a medical or engineering degree. You don’t need an MBA. You don’t need an army or a fortune or any other source of earthly power. You take a shortcut around all that mess. That’s how life was before the curse.

Jesus was an uneducated handyman, and he made a withered arm grow back.

Tom Loud and some of the others aren’t teaching what we think of as “the gospel.” To nearly all Christians, “the gospel” means the gospel of salvation. We think that if we teach someone he can avoid going to hell by asking for salvation, we’ve taught the gospel. Jesus said the age would end when the gospel OF THE KINGDOM was taught all over the world. That’s what Loud is teaching. He’s talking about our authority as princes. There is more to Christianity than going to heaven.

How long can the world last, now that these ideas are spreading?

Loud said something that amazed me. He said Christians would eventually “infect” people, like sick patients spreading disease. I’ve been saying that for years. We’ve been relying on popes and preachers and big buildings, thinking we needed these tools to spread God’s kingdom. We were totally wrong. God doesn’t need a TV preacher’s cameras. He needs a bunch of anonymous believers, going around doing miracles and helping people to feel his love. It was wonderful to hear someone else use the infection analogy. It was the first time I had heard anyone else say it. It proves it came from God, not me.

This stuff will take off, and there will be a harvest. Then it will die down due to market saturation, and the end will come, because people will have heard God’s case and made their choice.

Market saturation is one of the main things that fills hell.

Technology is putting an end to free will, so we should be aware that the end is finally coming close. Without free will, there is no purpose for mankind to continue to exist. Once the earthly powers know where we are all the time, control our movements, and have the ability to decide who can buy and sell, it will be time for us to leave.

How long will that take? Based on current technology and the rate at which technology grows, I would be surprised if it takes 10 more years. Right now, the government or Google–Satan’s intelligence and control network–knows exactly where I am. It knows where I go when I take anything resembling a major road. It knows what I buy. It can record and transcribe every phone call I make, and it can have computers search the transcripts to find out if I’m saying anything it doesn’t like. I live way out in the country, and this is how little privacy I have. If you live in a city, you might as well live naked in a giant fishtank on national television.

There is no free will without privacy. When people know they’re being watched, they don’t do what they want to do, so they can’t be judged.

I hope we start seeing more miracles and, more importantly, more supernatural faith and love. We really need to go out on a high note.

You have to be the Bouncer

I watched a Tom Loud video last night with dinner, and he did something pretty neat. He explained exactly how he heals people. He didn’t have a creepy seminar and charge people $300. He didn’t ask for money. He didn’t hold anything back. Very nice.

It turns out he got his start after watching another Youtube healer, Pete Cabrera. Cabrera is not a trained preacher. He was illiterate until he was in his late twenties. Somehow or other, he started hearing from God and healing people.

Loud contacted him and asked what he was doing, and he said he didn’t know.

Eventually, Loud started healing. He realized his carnal mind was in the way. It kept telling him he wasn’t going to heal anyone. He succeeded when he got rid of the blockage.

That’s interesting to me, because God showed me something a long time ago. When God cursed humanity in Eden, he gave us curses that reflected the curses we had put on him. One of them was difficulty in childbirth. The reason human beings have such difficult births is that we have large brains. Our heads are so big they stretch women’s genitals and cause tremendous pain. God showed me that our minds make it hard for us to enter his kingdom. We insist on relying on logic and proof, so entering the kingdom of heaven is like taking a camel through the eye of a needle.

Loud says we have two minds, and I know that is true. The body has a mind, and the spirit has a mind. We literally have two minds, and they fight.

He says he accepted the fact that his carnal mind would never really get with the program, so he ignores it now.

At the end of the video, he gives people a great way to silence the carnal mind and get into God’s presence. You say, “Mind, submit to my spirit. Spirit, take me to the father.”

I know this works. I have been commanding my mind and spirit for a long time. For example, say it’s time to pray, and I can’t quit thinking about something I want to do in the workshop. I’ll say, “I command my flesh, my mind, and my spirit not to think about tools until tomorrow at 10 a.m.” The tool thoughts go away. They may come back, but they do go away.

In the psalms, there are similar commands. “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.” That’s not just flowery talk. It’s literally a command. It’s an example for us to follow.

We need to silence useless voices in order to communicate with God, so this information is important. Christianity is not a game with a set of rules. You don’t try to behave and then see if God likes your score enough to let you into heaven. Christianity is a relationship with a father who talks to you every day.

You should be praying in tongues every day, because God will communicate with you through tongues. You will find you know things no human being told you. You should be prophesying to yourself and others for the same reason. If your flesh won’t stop yammering or telling you it won’t work, you’ll be isolated and uninformed.

You’ll feel better if you silence your flesh. Your flesh brings worry, anger, shame, fear, unbelief, lust, covetousness, and all sorts of other things that are unpleasant to experience. Your flesh can be manipulated into feeling certain ways by circumstances. Your spirit can’t. You can literally be walking up the steps to the hangman’s noose and not be worried or even upset, as long as your flesh is muzzled. Remember Jesus, sleeping in the boat during the storm. He wasn’t just composed. He was ASLEEP.

You can tell your mind and spirit to believe this or that. Whatever you need. If you’re worried, command them to stop. If you’re angry, command them to stop. Command them to believe, love, forgive, or whatever else you need.

Your circumstances can’t control your emotions and state of mind if you use the authority God has already given you, but if you don’t try, you can be as miserable as the lowest, most defiled unbeliever.

Loud says he heals something like 80% of the people he works on. That’s pretty good. It certainly beats the typical Christian average of 0%. Healing is important, because it shows people God is real and knocks the lies out of their heads. Paul, who was highly educated and very smart, said he didn’t win people with men’s wisdom but with God’s power. He said, “And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.”

I think the video is very powerful, and I recommend you take a look. At the very least, watch the last 5 minutes.

I Just Came to Meet Your Boss

I am considering going to another Last Reformation event.

The Last Reformation’s founder, Torben Sondergaard, got driven out of Denmark in January. He invited a documentary crew to film his ministry, and of course, they twisted the truth and made his organization look like a sick cult. The Danes rose up in arms and threatened to pass laws to ban what he was doing. People said doing his type of ministry in front of kids was abuse, which is completely untrue. He feared losing his children and going to prison.

Over the last month, he has been provided with a big, beautiful property in North Carolina. I believe he said it has 90 rooms. About 75% of the cost has already been paid, and the Last Reformation is leasing to buy the rest. No loans. They’re already planning their first event.

My friend Mike needs to be baptized, and I would like to complete what I started when I went to their event in Clearwater in December. I would like to pray for the sick and see results.

I have also considered flying to Seattle to see Tom Loud, who does street ministry and healing. I really want to get going.

I found an outfit in Florida. It’s called the Acts 2 School. It’s in Vero Beach, which is a couple of hours away. I thought it might work out because Tom Loud has worked with them. I assume he has some clue about the people he deals with.

When I looked at their website, I noticed two things. First, they charge $300 for their events, and second, you have to live on the premises for several days.

Oh, boy. Charging a hundred bucks a day, up front, for teaching? That can’t be God’s will.

They have a student handbook, which I examined. If you attend an event, you have to live in a common bedroom with strangers. You have to sleep in a bunk. You have to eat with everyone else, when the leadership chooses. You have to help prepare food, wash dishes, and clean the facility. You can’t talk to a person of the opposite sex in the room where he or she sleeps. At 10:30, they turn off the lights. YOU don’t. They do.

“CULT.” This is the word that comes to mind.

1. If you really have faith in God, you should be able to get by on freewill offerings and whatever other resources he provides. If you have to charge people hefty fees up front, God is not blessing you. The people you charge are. They are not merely brothers and sisters; they are also customers.

2. Sleeping in a common room is fine for people who have no choice. It’s not fine for married people, older people who have money and status and are tired of being nannied, or people who snore. There are hotels around Vero Beach. There is no good reason to tell people they can’t use them. Charging a hundred bucks a day for self-prepared food and a self-cleaned bedroom and bathroom is way out of line. I grant you, a Holiday Inn would cost just as much without food and drink, but you would have privacy, you would not have to clean anything, and you would not have people telling you what to do and when.

3. If a grown person feels like staying up until 10:45 or whenever, it’s up to him. This is America, not socialist Cambodia. Turning off the lights for free adults is insulting and somewhat crazy.

I guess what I’m saying is that I decided not to go.

I’ve seen a lot of video about Scientology. They practice slavery, right here in America. They tell people where to live and what to do. They tell them who to associate with. They make them do unpleasant work for nothing. They put people who misbehave in buildings with doors that lock from the outside. They forbid people to communicate with others. This is not what religion is supposed to be like, and it’s very dangerous for a Christian leader to go down the same path.

It’s very hard to prosecute Scientology leaders because the people they hurt are afraid of them. They fear for themselves as well as their friends and families (especially children). It’s remarkable that such things happen in America, but they do. We have many Muslims here practicing slavery. Pimps practice slavery, too.

Who would join a ministry that reminds him of Scientology? It’s like paying to be punched in the face.

Cults don’t honor people. God just showed me that. They humiliate them. The Bible tells us to honor other people. If you put a 65-year-old man in a room full of strangers, make him clean toilets, and tell him when to go to bed, are you honoring him? No. You’re dishonoring him. God hates dishonor and emasculation. He gets buried in it every day, so he knows what it’s like.

Elisha was dishonored by a bunch of kids, and God sent two bears to maul them. That’s harsh. God’s law said that if a son was nasty to his parents, they could have him stoned to death. It said that if a woman tried to stop a fight by squeezing a man’s genitals, her hand had to be cut off. It said that people who did not honor their parents would be cursed.

Dishonor is bad. Unfortunate for me, because I used to excel at it.

I don’t know if Tom Loud endorses these people. The video he made with them is several years old, and they rarely update their own Youtube channel.

I think he has an issue with the Last Reformation. He said his friend Doug Collins is involved with a ministry, and he gave the impression that he’s not enthusiastic about it. Doug Collins is a Last Reformation member.

Tom Loud got Doug Collins started doing miracles. Collins called him and asked to be taught. Loud was not involved with the Last Reformation. Collins found them later.

My only concern with the Last Reformation is that they may be getting too structured and man-based. If it turns into the Torben Sondergaard religion, it will fail just like Catholicism did.

I’m not a joiner. I don’t care if you line up hundreds of dead bodies every morning and raise them with a wave of your hand. I’m a child of God, not a child of Perry Stone or Benny Hinn or Tom Loud or anyone else. If I have to know your secret handshake and let you tell me and my family what to do, I’m out. Psalm 23 says, “The Lord is my pastor.” Deal with it.

Loud says God told him he ended the healing revival of the 1950’s because it glorified men. He says God showed up he would bring it back, however. I don’t doubt that God said these things.

It’s crazy to have a movement that glorifies men and turns them into celebrities who supposedly have powers the rest of us don’t have. Preachers are supposed to help us meet and get to know and obey God, not themselves. You know what the Bible says: “Call no man ‘father’.”

Christianity is reproduction. That’s very important to understand. God is reproducing. When you have kids, you don’t hope to have one normal kid and 9 kids without arms and legs. All your children should be like you in their capabilities. God isn’t looking to produce three or 4 Reinhard Bonnkes and Todd Whites and leave the rest of us in iron lungs and wheelchairs.

I guess we’re weak because we are the spiritual children of men, not God. We take after our fathers.

Remember what Moses said? “Enviest thou for my sake? Would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!” Moses was always in danger of being worshiped for being special, and he wanted no part of it.

Lust for attention and worship is what caused Satan to be blasted out of heaven. He wanted to dress up like Liberace and stand in front of everyone, being admired, praised, and obeyed. He said he would sit on the throne of heaven. Preachers who glorify themselves and don’t replicate themselves are just like he was.

I don’t know if the Last Reformation is going to become a carnal, failed denomination or not, but it’s something to be wary of. The Last Reformation has never saved anyone, and there is no guarantee that it will exist a month from now. You have to keep your eyes on the source, no matter who fails around you.

God said, “A thousand shall fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, but it shall not come near thee.” No matter who fails, you have to focus on the one who never can. No one can carry you or walk your path for you.

It’s all very interesting.

I like the Last Reformation, and they do reproduce. They teach people how to heal and so on. I just don’t want to be obligated to their leadership. Men in leadership make mistakes. Often, they disagree with God and with people to whom God has been speaking. That happens to me a lot. I don’t need any more of it.

It’s one thing to have some random person with no power criticize the things God says through you and to have him tell you to do things God doesn’t want you to do. It’s another when it comes from someone to whom you have given your loyalty.

My last pastor told me I wasn’t allowed to lay hands on people, and I was a deacon. He said demons could leave me and go into others that way. Meanwhile, he was laying hands on people, and he was involved in a sexual relationship with his young niece, which started when she was 6.

Rich Wilkerson at Trinity Church in Miami had a rule that he was the only one who was allowed to receive or interpret a message in tongues. I wonder how he expected to get God to obey that rule.

I think he’s an atheist. I don’t think a person who believes in divine judgment could do the things he does.

The further you go with God, the fewer people you can listen to without being dragged downward. The more aligned you are with God, the more people will disagree with you, and you will find that as time passes, you get into conflict with people who are higher and higher on the Christian food chain. I suppose the status of your persecutors varies with your status with God. After all, ordinary Christians fight demons, but when Jesus was tempted, Satan himself showed up.

When Paul became the chief voice in the church, Peter, who was very close to God himself, rose against him and had to be corrected.

It’s interesting. When Israel was threatened by Goliath, who was the greatest warrior among the Philistines, God sent his anointed king to kill him. He sent his best. I suppose Satan does the same thing, when he has to, although he likes to send human beings who are low and unworthy of respect.

It’s a form of dishonor to send a lackey or a child or someone else of low regard to fight a worthy enemy. In the play Cyrano de Bergerac, a noble hires flunkies to drop a log on Cyrano, who laments this disgrace as he dies. Liberals love sending kids to bait and insult conservatives. It’s a filthy tactic intended to humiliate. Witness David Hogg and the Thunberg girl, whose unfortunate mental illness is being used to shame people who resist the climate hysteria industry.

It’s astounding how much power Satan has in the church. He owns it. He’s not an invader who comes in quickly to make raids and then leaves. He sits on a throne of authority. He is at home in the church. He built it.

I’m not going to Vero Beach to pay some character $300 to turn the lights out on me. If you can’t treat me like a man and teach me while I’m staying at a hotel, there is something seriously wrong with what you’re doing.

I would like to be able to do the things the apostles did, and, most importantly, I would like to be able to do it because of God’s love flowing through me, not because I want an achievement, because I’m angry at Satan, or because I feel obligated to do things for God. Love is the big thing that’s missing from every ministry I’ve seen. They’re starting to get the gifts of the Spirit right, but when you’re around God, you feel his love the way you would feel heat while standing in front of a searchlight. We have to get that, or what we do will be weak and half-baked.

I think a trip to North Carolina would be nice. We’ll see what happens.

“This Variety Always has Black Bark”

I’m back to writing about my workshop again. Or am I?

Today I wrote about the favor God was showing me. I said it seemed like I couldn’t go to Home Depot without them giving me something for nothing. After I wrote that, I visited the store to get 30 feet of 10/3 power cord for my band saw. The guy who cut the wire made a measuring mistake. I got 31 feet for the price of 30.

Okay, I give up. I surreptitiously returned the last two things they gave me, because I was pretty sure the employees who gave them to me did not have the authority to give things away. This time, I let it go. You can’t give Home Depot back a foot of wire. It was going home with me, or they were going to cut it off and put it in a dumpster. There was no way they were going to go back to the wire area and cut it off. I had to take it.

It was almost as though God were joking with me.

I went to the metal dealer today to get some things I needed. I have a sprayer boom for my golf cart, and I’ve been attaching it to the back of the cart with clamps. That’s no good. I need a support that goes in the cart’s 2″ receiver. I bought three pieces of square tubing to make one.

I also bought several pieces of angle iron in different widths. My Offroad Swag finger brake is a wonderful tool, but in order to make it work, you need accessories. Little pieces of narrow angle iron serve as bottom die adaptors. The press’s bottom die is a huge piece of angle iron which is too wide to work with some things, so you rest small pieces in it to fill up space.

I bought three feet of 1″ steel strip for no good reason at all. I thought I might need some for a plate for the sprayer mount. Screws would go through it to attach it to the boom. I would only need maybe 4 inches for that. I bought three feet because 1″ steel strip is a handy thing to have when you weld. You never know when you’ll find a place where a little strip of steel will save the day.

Scrap is very important. You can’t make anything without scrap unless you drive to the store every time an idea pops into your head. I try to buy more materials, fasteners, paint, glue, and other things than I need, because I know they’ll be useful later.

Yesterday I took some goat wire and stretched it between two shelves on my monster shelf thing. I put it there to prevent long metal objects from falling off the side. I’m using a shelf as a material storage area. The old system of piling it in the corner of the room is no longer in vogue.

Scrap is already piling up on the shelf, making me feel more secure.

I bought 20″ of 2-1/2″ square tube. I made a front end loader support for my Kubota the other day, and it came out great, but it was too short to put the loader as high as I wanted it. The tubing I bought today will become a new support. I could have cut the old support and welded more metal in to make it longer, but I didn’t think about it until I had the new metal, and I don’t know if I trust my welds for a job like that.

When I got home, I cleaned my new steel with window cleaner and paper towels because new steel is always covered with black grime. I deburred the steel using the belt grinder, and I also ground an angle into one of the pieces for the sprayer support so it would project backward from the golf cart when the finished support was in use.

I put 5/8″ holes in the tube that will go into the receiver. There are matching holes in the receiver, and a pin will go through them to hold the support in place. The Silver & Deming bit left huge burrs inside the tubing where I couldn’t hit them with the belt grinder. Enter the Dumore hand grinder.

This is a tool that falls between a Dremel and a die grinder. It’s small enough to use with one hand, but it won’t poop out as badly as a Dremel, and it’s a real industrial tool, so it will last longer than a year. I put a carbide burr on it, reached into the tubing, and ground the burrs out in a hurry.

Nice.

There’s a reason why new Dumores cost hundreds of dollars. Thank God I bought one that was new old stock.

I used a Walter flap wheel to clean up the tubes, and then I used my Harbor Freight MIG to weld them together. It was great. The welds, though imperfect, look better than most professionally done welds. Most pros make ugly welds. Most pros aren’t that good, if you want the truth. It’s a wonder things don’t fall apart and kill people all the time. I was very happy with my work.

The Titanium welder is a joy to use. I don’t know how it will stand the test of time, but for now, I’m thrilled with it. It’s light. It’s easy to use. The Harbor Freight Vulcan welding cart is ergonomically perfect. Zero complaints.

I cleaned the newly made support with a wire brush, and then I sprayed it with black hammer finish Rust-Oleum, using the tried-and-true “hang it from a magnolia tree you don’t mind painting” method. It looks wonderful. There are worse-looking welded products on store shelves across the world.

I’m not totally happy with the tubing I got for the upper part of the support, so I didn’t make that part. I’m going back to the metal place to see if they have something a little wider.

I enjoyed my visit today. The lady who runs the place started talking to me about guns and politics and so on. Of course, she has a carry permit. So nice to live among sane people.

While the paint on the sprayer mount was drying, I started on the front end loader support. I used the dry cut saw to cut one end at a 47-degree angle, which was the biggest angle I could manage with that tool. I then took the plasma cutter and started turning the 2-1/2″ tubing into a C-channel. It has to slip over the tractor’s hydraulic rod, so one side has to be open.

The first time I did this, it took a very long time, because I relied on bad information and didn’t give the plasma cutter enough air. It didn’t cut all the way through the part, so I had to finish the cutting with an angle grinder. This time, I left a few spots that weren’t cut, but severing them only took a couple of minutes.

When I was done cutting one side out of the tubing, I was left with a lot of rough metal on the inside of it. I tried smoothing it with a flap disk, but it wouldn’t really get in there, so I used the Dumore again. It’s terrific. It smoothed and debored everything so a person handling the support can’t get hurt.

I cleaned up the shop and put everything away. The support is waiting for me to come back and weld end plates on it.

I got a great deal done in a very short time. That’s rewarding. So much better than fumbling around and wasting time because I don’t have the right tools or the needed skills.

Welding is a huge blessing. I can make things other people have to buy, really quickly and cheaply. I can customize them. I don’t have to make do with things that aren’t quite right.

I’m planning to build my own welding table. A manufactured table will cost over a thousand dollars, and I just don’t think it’s justified. My milling machine will be here soon, and with it, I’ll be able to make a precision top for the table without paying some company my life savings.

I’ll bet I can build an excellent three foot by two foot table with casters and a fold-out plasma area for $250.

The little Harbor Freight portable table I use now is fantastic for the money, and if you want to weld when you’re away from your shop, it can’t be beat, but it’s flimsy for a main welding table, and it’s small, so it gets crowded.

Maybe if I go to Home Depot tomorrow, they’ll give me a table.

Things are coming together nicely. I almost look forward to spraying the yard.