My Help Cometh from the Lord, Which Made Heaven and Earth

It looks like my guests for this weekend are postponing. They have some work to do around the house, and they have a guy coming over. I can’t complain. Having overnight guests three weeks in a row throws off my routine.

Sensing that things are slowing down, I spent the morning looking at Tennessee properties on the web.

It looks like buying in Tennessee will be more complicated than buying in Ocala. The population density is lower, so there are fewer properties and sales. That means it’s harder to put a value on a piece of land before you buy it.

I’ve been using real estate websites, obviously. Some of them assign value estimates to properties. It’s alarming when a property I like has a price of x and an estimated value of x/4.

Nobody wants to end up like Mr. Douglas. Remember him? He and his wife bought a farm in Hooterville, which is a town in a state bordering Tennessee. Their realtor, Mr. Haney, assured them they were getting a great deal on what turned out to be the old Haney place. Then they found out they were getting a lot less than they bargained for.

One of my favorite Youtube evangelists, Tom Fischer, made a sudden move from South Florida to Tennessee. One month, he was talking about his arrival in South Florida, and it seemed like he would stay there. I thought he had made a huge mistake. The next month, he was wandering around eastern Tennessee. While he was there, someone gave him a piece of hillside property, and he said he was planning to build on it.

The other day, I saw a new video in which Tom said his lot had turned out to be unsuitable for construction (hence the gift, one surmises). That’s not surprising, but I was startled when he said the property was in Townsend, Tennessee. That’s the area I’m excited about.

Coincidence? Probably not. God is moving Christians to that area.

Sometimes I start to worry that I’ve waited too long to look for a place. Property values are going up in eastern Tennessee. God is on my side, though, and if he told me I’m going to have a nice Tennessee home, then I’ll have it. No one can call him a liar and get away with it around me.

This week I have gained a deeper sense of the importance of knowing God. This is something Christians don’t emphasize enough. Jews and Muslims don’t emphasize it at all. They consider God very distant. I know God isn’t distant. I communicate with the Holy Spirit every day, and Jesus visited me twice. Distance is for limited people. God can treat every Christian like an only child. He isn’t busy.

Christians are taught that God is their father, and we are told to ask him for things, but what kind of child asks his father for things yet doesn’t socialize with him? The purpose of creation was reproduction; God wanted children. If you have children, obviously, you want to spend time with them so you can enjoy each other’s company. If your relationship with your parents consists of obeying rules and asking for support, you have a very sick family. God must want more than that from us.

Many times, I’ve cooked for friends, and more than once, people have left my house right after they finished eating. It’s one of the reasons I got tired of cooking. I was being used. I don’t want to treat God that way. I want to spend time with him without asking for anything. I want to love him for his personality, not just the things he does for me. I believe this is where favor comes from.

If God wants to show his favor by leading me to a nice property in Tennessee, I’m all for it. I hate relying on my own guesswork.

I may visit Tennessee very soon. I have no strings on me. I want to look around before the leaves fall.

High Occupancy even in August

My bed and breakfast continues to attract customers.

This weekend, I played host to friends I got to know at Trinity Church and New Dawn Ministries in Miami. I will call them Fred and Ginger. Fred is half Nicaraguan and half Puerto Rican. I think Ginger is Puerto Rican, but I’m not sure. Their 13-year-old son Rupert came with them.

I have a list of people I pray for. I pray that God will move them out of areas where his people are weak and the spirits against them are strong. I ask him to give them homes in places where his people are strong. I ask him to use those properties for prayer and gatherings. So far, I’m the only one who has received these things. Fred and Ginger are not doing too bad, though. They lived in Little Haiti when I met them, and they had to deal with voodoo parades on their street. Now they have a townhouse in Pompano. A step up from Voodooville, AKA Miami.

Fred and Ginger drove up in June, and we had a long prayer session the day after they got here. We prayed a lot during their visit. Someone I know was baptized with the Holy Spirit, and since then, she has been praying in tongues a great deal, which means her life is going to change tremendously.

Fred got fired from a job he had had for a long time, and he got a similar job which didn’t pay as well. When he came in June, he and Ginger wanted prayer for a new job. Fred was also unhappy because he was mismanaged. He wasn’t trained well, and the company didn’t back up employees. They had very lofty expectations, but they didn’t do the groundwork to support them (much like the churches we attended).

I have been praying for God to rid people I know of things that aren’t pleasing to him, including jobs. This weekend, I realized I might have had a hand in Fred’s firing. I didn’t feel too bad, because he hated the job. He was at peace with what had happened, because the job was so unpleasant.

A week or so before they arrived, I had a dream in which Fred showed up at a table where I was eating. His head was shaved. To me, this always symbolizes a lack of prayer in tongues. I relayed this info to Fred, and as he talked to me, he essentially admitted he hadn’t been praying in tongues enough. That was a relief. If someone comes to me and says he has been praying in tongues for two hours a day and still suffers a lot, I don’t have much to offer him. If he hasn’t been praying, I know what to recommend. You can’t have a really blessed Christian walk without it. You will have problems you should not have.

I don’t know if Fred will jump back into prayer in tongues or not. Sometimes he is slow to take advice.

It was wonderful to have them here. There is nothing like having Spirit-filled Christians to pray with. I have two more coming this weekend.

While they were here, I dreamed about my dad. He generally symbolizes Christian leaders. I dreamed we were walking down a street. He was telling me a story from his days of practicing law. When we got to the end of the street, we came to a wooden dock. I stopped on the dock. My dad walked right off of it and sank to the bottom.

I didn’t jump in. In the dream, he was pretty healthy, and he was capable of swimming. I figured he would pop right up. He didn’t. He was under the water for 5 or 10 long seconds before I saw his head emerge.

I started guiding him toward a ladder about 10 feet away. Two women showed up. One had short hair and extremely large breasts, like soccer balls. She was distressed by my dad’s predicament, and she seemed angry at me. She jumped in the water and pushed him toward the water.

When he reached the ladder and climbed out, it turned out the ladder was nearly on land. He rolled off and onto dry land covered with green grass.

I took the dream to mean that I don’t need to sink to the level of frustrated Christians in order to help them. That would be enabling.

Water represents the water of the world, which is the bad ideas and words of spirits who are against God and of people who don’t know God. When you don’t have authority that comes from time spent with God, you sink below the water and lose. My dad represented anointed Christians who don’t spend enough time with God.

The ladies represented feminine insurgency in the church. Women are not supposed to lead churches, period. Sorry, but that’s how God has set things up. These days, churches are feminized. They don’t talk much about judgment and consequences. They gloss over personal accountability. They teach us we’re supposed to wallow in other people’s problems and coddle them, which is nothing like what Jesus did.

The lady with the big breasts had short hair because she didn’t spend enough time with God. She didn’t hear from him, so she took charge inappropriately instead of submitting and letting me handle things. Abnormally large breasts represent compassion which is out of hand and not balanced by logic.

The ladder represents Jesus. He was Jacob’s ladder (or stairway). The dry ground with grass is where God wants to put us. In Psalm 23, he says he makes us to lie down in green pastures. He doesn’t make us plant green pastures or hoe weeds. We just lie down and eat.

The lady sank into the water with my dad and got herself wet. Her pushing didn’t help my dad at all. He was almost at the ladder when she got full of pride and took over.

I was saved from the striving and fussing. I stood on the dock, dry, and watched a confused person act up and make a fool of herself.

The message is that we don’t have to carry people like babies. We’re supposed to be helpful, but not to the point where other people’s failings eat into our blessings. Example: if your son is a compulsive gambler and tells you someone is going to break his legs for money, you’re not supposed to mortgage your house for him. He needs to repent and go to rehab. It’s not on you if he refuses.

I have a responsibility to warn other people when they’re blowing it, but I don’t have to get involved with their carnal efforts to save themselves. If they’re not doing what God has told us to do, they need to get back to that before bothering me and spreading their problems to me. I am available to pray and guide and so on, but I don’t have to pay off your student loan (although I got roped into doing that for one defeated person).

When people fall off the dock, I’m not supposed to dive in and wrestle them to shore. They’ll just fall off again, unless they change their ways. I’m supposed to stand on the dock or the shore and tell them where the ladder is.

When Peter sank in the Sea of Galilee, Jesus didn’t sink with him. He stood on the water and reached down to him.

I woke up after this dream with a new understanding of favor.

I was my grandfather’s favorite grandchild. My mother was his favorite child. I was my parents’ favorite. I’m the smartest person in the family. Now that my grandparents and parents are gone, God favors me. He doesn’t favor everyone. There are many people he does not favor, and many are Christians. I’m not supposed to feel bad about this. It’s a good thing. It has to be good, because God ordained it. Anyone who demands an explanation needs to demand it from God, not me.

To be favored is to be a favorite. This is what God offers you, if you turn to him. Joseph was a favorite. Jacob and Isaac were favorites. David was a favorite. Daniel was a favorite. It’s okay to be a favorite.

I tend to think of Psalm 91 as a psalm of protection, but it’s more accurate to call it a psalm of favor. It’s about a person who escapes the problems other people have, because he is close to God. Diseases don’t touch him. He is delivered from problems. He watches while thousands of people fall around him. He is set above spirits that reject God. No evil befalls him.

It’s okay. If God makes you one of his 1%, you have nothing to feel guilty about.

If I get to stand on the dock while proud, carnal Christians who don’t pray strive and resent me for refusing to jump into the mosh pit, it’s okay. It’s right.

Remember Mary and Martha? Jesus was at their house with guests, and Martha was working her butt off to serve everyone. Mary sat at Jesus’ feet instead. Martha told Jesus to order her to get up and help her. Not only did Jesus refuse; he told Martha what Mary was doing was better.

It was better–more righteous–for Mary to sit at the feet of Jesus and do nothing than for her to help her sister.

It is believed that John was the only one of the 12 disciples who did not die a violent death. Ancient sources say the emperor Domitian put him in hot oil in a stadium full of people and fried him alive, but he felt no pain and was not injured. His deliverance spurred a lot of conversions. Sure looks like John had favor, and what does the Bible call him? “The disciple whom Jesus loved.”

When Jesus was murdered, he turned his mother over to John, not Peter, to be looked after. That says a lot.

We are not responsible for what happens to other people unless we fail to speak the truth to them. If we warn them, whatever happens later is their fault. Completely. Not one particle of responsibility adheres to us.

If good things happen to people who are close to God, while other people suffer and lack, it’s fine. It’s what’s supposed to happen. The Bible says, “The young lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.”

People ask why God created the world, knowing spirits and people would end up in hell. The answer is that he’s not responsible for what anyone else does. The fact that he created you doesn’t mean he’s to blame for anything you do.

I’m not responsible for other people’s suffering. I don’t owe anyone a single word of apology or explanation if I do well. It’s unpleasant, to say the least, to watch people fail unnecessarily, but it would be worse, and it would not be God’s will, if I chose to share their misery and abandon his favor.

My beliefs about personal accountability have firmed up a great deal since my dream. When you and I stand before God, he won’t let you tell him what I’ve done wrong, and he won’t let me tell him what you’ve done wrong. We’ll be expected to account for ourselves and no one else. He won’t care if you didn’t get slavery reparations or student loan forgiveness. He’ll want to know why you didn’t spend time with him and give yourself to him.

The entitlement crowd is pathologically deceived. I’m so glad I don’t live near them. I don’t know what I’d do if I had to move back to Miami, or if God sent me to live in Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, New Orleans, Atlanta, St. Louis, San Francisco, or any of the other envy hotspots. Cain murdered Abel because of envy, and his descendants are no better.

I hope I’ll be dead or raptured before the rot gets to the place where I live!

A Gas-Powered Brush Cutter Beats a Herring Every Time

The joy of the Lord is strength. It will help you get up and get things done. I am learning that firsthand.

Every day, I say something along these lines: “In the name of Jesus Christ, who is God, I speak the Lord’s opposition to every created being who is against the Lord, me, or his children on this property and every other property that belongs to me. I speak victory to the Lord, to his children, and to me, and I speak the glory to Jesus Christ. I am a son of God, and this is how things are supposed to work.”

When I do that, I have strength to get up and do things. When I don’t, I may or may not have strength.

Today I tackled some lingering tasks.

The lady who used to live in this house made some unfortunate landscaping choices. She put some sickly hedges beside the house on one side, and some were beside the driveway. They looked awful. They were diseased. They grew too high for the area. I decided they had to go. The lady who came out from the university’s extension office agreed fully.

I started ripping them out with the tractor this week, but I learned that they were not as easy to remove as other hedges I had destroyed. They had stubborn roots, and they liked to slip out of the rope I used to grab them. I found out there is a device called a grubber that grips shrubs securely so a tractor can remove them, but grubbers are made in China, and they tend to break, so I went outside today and used a sharpened hoe. It was not pleasant, but it worked.

I pulled every visible trace of the shrubs, and then I planted two dwarf podocarpus bushes. These bushes look great, and they’re indestructible. They require no fertilization and no pesticides. They won’t grow higher than three feet. I’m starting to think every shrub should be a podocarpus.

I filled the area in with bagged soil, and then I added melaleuca mulch. Hopefully, I’m done with that particular spot. Now I have 15 more feet to do, beside the house. I may buy that grubber after all.

I found a cable while I was digging the shrubs out. I had been afraid of that. Intelligent people bury cables a couple of feet deep, but not everyone is responsible. I found what appeared to be a phone cable about six inches down, right next to a shrub root. I didn’t cut it with the shovel. Not at that point, anyway. I may have cut it elsewhere, because I was using a sawzall on roots. I don’t care. I don’t use the phone cable. If I ever decide I need it (very unlikely), I can run a new one myself and do it right.

Yesterday, I hosed the old shrubs with 2,4 D, which is a weed killer. I figure any bits I leave in the ground will be less of a problem if they’re already dead. If I don’t kill the shrubs before pulling them, I may leave living roots which will try to come back.

Yesterday was weed-and-feed day, which is why I had 2,4 D on hand. I sprayed the whole yard. It does a dandy job of killing things I don’t like. This is an incredibly weedy region, so heavy applications of chemicals are mandatory unless you want to live in what looks like an abandoned lot.

I had a hard time getting my Fimco motorized sprayer to work. It refused to prime itself. I replaced O rings. I replaced hose. Finally, I realized Fimco just makes bad products. The design of the equipment, not the condition, was the issue. It does not seal very well, no matter what you do. I had to open the system up, pour water into the pump, and then turn it on. Now I have a new project. I’m going to add a T to the system with a hose and valve for priming the pump. I’m not going to let bad engineering force me to take the pump apart every time I want to use it.

Today after I fixed the shrubs, I got the pressure washer out and bleached the hidden side of my workshop. I bleached the house and shop a month or two ago, but I didn’t get around to the side of the shop that faces the woods. It was pretty bad. Today I went through more than half a gallon of high-powered pool bleach, and I still need to bleach the shop one more time.

I like using the pressure washer, because I brought it back from the dead. I installed a new hose. I fixed the carb. I put a new muffler cover on it. I have a cover for the cylinder head, and I’m going to replace that. I even have special paint to fix the rusty frame. I found out where to get cheap replacement pumps, so when the original Chinese pump dies, I’ll be able to keep the pressure washer running. The motor is a nice Honda, so I should be able to keep the pressure washer going for a very long time.

Later on, I grabbed my portable pump-up sprayer and wandered through the woods by the house, hosing everything down with glyphosate and Dawn. Grape vines, Virginia creeper, and poison ivy are taking over, and I’m not having it. I must have blasted a third of an acre by hand today. I also got out the gas brush cutter and cut away a lot of the shrubbery by my water pump.

I have complained that every tree here is a trash oak. Today I noticed that the same principle applies to weeds. Every weed is a grape, Virginia creeper, or poison ivy. It’s not completely true, but it’s true enough. When you look out through my woods, you see grape leaves everywhere. The plant life here has almost no variety.

It reminded me of something I already knew: the woods in Florida are not friendly or particularly useful.

In Appalachia, you can walk through the woods without problems. You can sit down. You could take a football and play catch under the trees if you wanted. There’s a lot of room, because weeds don’t take over. There is also a huge variety of plants, and many are useful. Ginseng, blackberries, teaberries, sassafras, various mints, and huckleberries come to mind.

Florida is not like that. It’s grape, grape, grape, Virginia creeper, grape, grape, poison ivy, all day. And the grapes don’t bear fruit. Almost all of the plants are male. When you find grapes on a female vine, they’re about the size of garbanzo beans. Mostly skin and seeds.

So, to recap, the trees are useless and tend to fall on expensive things, and the plants are worthless and annoying.

I think I need to rig up the sprayer and blast the woods with 2,4 D or glyphosate. Hunting season is coming, and I don’t want to be buried in grape leaves while I punish squirrels for existing.

I love it here, but I can see that when I try to make this a substitute for Appalachia, I am jamming a square peg in a round hole. It’s never going to be Tennessee or North Carolina. I can see why so much of the land here was undeveloped until fairly recently. It’s not like settlers could come here, build log cabins and barns from quality wood, make furniture, grow crops, and gather berries and herbs. The land doesn’t have much to offer unless you’re an animal.

This is a neat place to live, in the age of concrete block houses, air conditioning, and grocery stores. Before technology tamed this place, it was not hospitable.

That’s my impression, anyway.

I’m glad I have the Lord’s joy, because I am working a LOT. I have a lot to do. Because so much of the landscaping is screwed up, I’m doing much more than maintenance, which is a big job all by itself. Things should ramp down once I get the shrubs fixed, a couple of trees planted, and some rocks removed.

Unfortunately, I’m doing these things during the summer.

I hope the place looks better, not worse, when I’m done. If I move, I’ll have to sell. I don’t want buyers to show up and grimace at the landscaping.

All Self-Made Men go to Hell

I have an interesting testimony today.

Recently, I wrote about a dispute with a collection agency. My dad stayed in an assisted living facility for four days, we paid in advance, and then they started sending bills. They told us to ignore the bills because they were computer errors. Then their collection agency started calling me. I found out the facility had not deposited the check, and I had to stop payment. The collection agency wanted me to pay them about $900, plus the original $600 bill, plus an additional $150 for an imaginary fifth day.

I contacted the Secretary of Agriculture and filed a complaint about the facility. That’s what you do in Florida, believe it or not. I contacted the Secretary of State and filed a complaint about the collection agency, which was making insane claims about me, losing documents, and refusing to deposit a new check I sent them as payment for my dad’s stay.

I tried to deal directly with the facility, but their business office coordinator would not take my calls. The receptionist flat-out told me she had accosted the business office coordinator and informed her of my efforts to reach her, but she didn’t respond. I told them I was considering going to the facility and sitting in the lobby across from her office, but when I prayed about it, I felt that God told me not to do that.

This was a stressful business for me. I didn’t want to have to go to court or arbitration. Courts and arbitrators can be very stupid. I didn’t want to end up paying someone else’s lawyer when I was in the right.

Long ago, I received a word from God. I don’t talk about it much, because it’s not the kind of thing other Christians receive gladly. He had me say, “From now on, I will have total victory, because you are for me.” I think about that when I have problems with people who treat me unfairly.

Speaking to Jews who were under the law, Jesus suggested that if they were sued, they should give the plaintiffs more than they sued for. I talked to God about that. I’m not under the law, and I have this word from God. Giving dishonest, irresponsible people nine hundred bucks for making errors and lying doesn’t seem like “total victory” to me. If I paid them, how would God be glorified for keeping his word?

I told God I would pay them what they wanted if it would make him happy, but I felt strongly that he didn’t want me to do it. Eventually, I started asking him if I was permitted to pay them, just to get them off my back. The sum was not very significant to me, and my peace of mind was. Still, I felt that he didn’t want me to pay.

Yesterday, the business office coordinator called me out of the blue. She was contrite. She kept apologizing. She said they would be happy to close the account for the cost of my dad’s stay, minus whatever stop fees I had to pay on the two checks I had already sent. I was shocked.

I was so happy, I didn’t bother to ask her to take the cost of my return-receipt mail off the bill.

I told her I wanted an email so I would have some kind of record of our deal. Here is some text from the email:

I just wanted to follow up from our phone conversation we had yesterday regarding your account.

Thank you for taking the time to help me understand, that most of the outstanding balance is due to a check that was lost here at the community.

As we discussed, the total due is currently showing $915, of which only $570 was actually owed (lost check for $600 minus $30 stop payment fee). Plus at this time, you probably would want to place another stop payment, on the check you sent to collection agency saying “Paid in Full”, which they are not willing to cash.

If you are willing to pay the $540 that you agreed that was owed, I will credit the remaining $375. After your payment and my credit adjustment, this will leave the account at a zero balance, for a paid in full status.

Please mail the check to my address below. I also will let the collection agency know as well, to consider this a closed matter.

I do apologize for all the confusion and thank you for helping me to get this taken care of.

You can’t make things like this up.

I kept feeling that God was telling me they were going to accept what I had offered, and they did better than that. I should have had faith.

I can’t figure out what’s going on at the ALF. Is someone over there an alcoholic? Is somebody in the business office having a mental breakdown? Why would you lose a check? Why would you call a collection agency instead of sending an email or picking up the phone? Why would you refuse to talk to someone and then call him, apologize repeatedly, and do everything he asked you to do?

I hope I haven’t caused unnecessary problems for someone whose life is falling apart.

I made sure I prayed for all of the people who caused this mess, and I used my supernatural tools to reject anger and worry. Something bad must be going on, for them to behave as they have.

The main thing is this: I felt God was telling me a certain thing, and that thing came to pass, improbable as it seemed.

I didn’t always behave as well as I should have during this fight. In my second letter, I told the collection agency to be very sure they didn’t lose my new correspondence. I suggested they pin it to someone’s sweater. Still, God didn’t cut me off for that.

We are supposed to hear directly from God, and this is how we’re supposed to live in the staggering promises he makes in the Bible. If you don’t have the Holy Spirit, you’re flying blind, and you will make disastrous mistakes. God told me certain things, I chose to believe him, and he proved I had really heard from him. Traditionally, Christians have operated through guesswork, and that’s why they land in the soup so often. Life can be much better than it is for most Christians.

You need the baptism with the Holy Spirit. You need to pray in tongues a lot, because it will bring you information. You need to learn to prophesy. You need to start now, while life for Christians is still reasonably good. It will take you time, and you don’t want to start on the day you need to hear from God.

Remember the parable of the wise virgins and the foolish virgins. The foolish virgins didn’t refuse to get oil. They just waited too long. By the time they got started, it was too late, and they missed the arrival of the bridegroom as well as the wedding.

The wedding is the rapture, and the oil is the Holy Spirit in his fullness. Yesterday I heard Perry Stone say the oil can’t be the Holy Spirit because the foolish virgins bought the oil. He says you can’t buy the Holy Spirit, so the oil can’t represent the Holy Spirit. He’s wrong. The Bible describes the kingdom of heaven as a pearl of great price, which a man bought after selling all he had. If you can buy the kingdom of heaven, you can buy the Holy Spirit. You buy the Holy Spirit by trading yourself for him, just as Jesus bought us by trading himself for us.

God isn’t going to send angels down here and have them hold signs and cue cards. He’s not going to speak to us through greasy televangelists who wear $7000 basketball shoes. You have to be able to hear from him personally. You need this for yourself and your family.

This is the way God has chosen to communicate with us. He gave us the word of knowledge, the word of wisdom, discerning of spirits, tongues, interpretation of tongues, and prophecy. Once in a while he speaks in an audible voice, and he has occasionally had angels speak to people, but you shouldn’t expect those things to happen often enough to save you.

I’m not doing as well as I should be, but I’m getting better fast, and most people I know haven’t even gotten started.

Don’t think you can count on people who are in touch with God to help you. They will have a hard enough time looking after themselves and their families. God isn’t going to let them be so burdened with lazy Christians that they can’t receive his victory and deliverance. You can’t climb onto someone else’s shoulders and ruin what God is doing for them. You need to do this for yourself.

Buying Tools is Never Wrong

I know the entire world is wondering what happened when my jackhammer arrived.

My back was bugging me last week, which is one reason I bought the jackhammer. It arrived on Friday, and I felt good enough to break it out and use it. I only had time to run it about 45 minutes, but that was long enough to convince me everyone needs a jackhammer.

I guess it sounds stupid to say a person whose back hurts needs to buy a tool that weighs over 40 pounds and has to be held up while it rams a huge piece of steel into hard objects, but you have to consider the alternatives, including doing nothing.

I was trying to get a giant rock out of my yard. I pulled on it with a strap attached to the tractor, and as far as I can tell, I was able to rock it about a quarter of an inch. I bought rock-splitting wedges, and they worked great, but splitting chunks off an oddly shaped rock requires contorting yourself into odd positions while crouching in a hole in the ground, and you will have to do repeated splits. I used my rotary hammer to break up the rock, and it works well, but it’s much slower than a jackhammer, and because it’s only maybe two feet long, a certain amount of contortion is still needed.

The only other choice I had was to do nothing. I could put the dirt back in around the rock and continue trying to remember to drive the lawnmower around it for the remainder of my stay on this property. I wasn’t having that. That rock needs to go, and besides, I like using tools to make problems go away.

I bought a refurbished hammer from CPO Outlets, which is known for selling refurbs. Sometimes their deals aren’t all that great, but they sold me a thousand-dollar hammer for under $600. That was hard to pass up. I’ve bought other refurbs from them, and I think it’s smart business. A refurb, typically, is a tool someone bought and then returned because he didn’t like it. The manufacturers have to look them over and make sure they’re up to new standards. They are basically new tools, but they can’t be sold as new, so you get a break. You are likely to get a full warranty, so it’s hard to see any reason not to go for it.

I could have gotten a Chinese hammer for a lot less, as I have said, but it would have been Chinese, so it might have crapped out quickly, and I doubt I could have gotten it repaired.

Interesting thing: the manual for the hammer I bought bragged that it wouldn’t need to be serviced until I had 300 hours on it. That surprised me. None of my other tools have manuals saying, “Get ready for this tool to die at 300 hours.” Made me wonder if Chinese was the better solution. I don’t know how much money it costs to get a jackhammer serviced, so right now, I can’t judge. For all I know, it just means I have to take out a couple of screws and replace an O-ring.

CPO Outlets enhanced its profit margin by not including a bit for the hammer, but that’s okay, because I didn’t want the bit it would have come with. They come with pointy bits. I wanted one like a big flat-bladed screwdriver. When I checked them out online, I saw startling prices. Like $40 each. Then I noticed a DeWalt for $15. It was exactly what I wanted, and it was from a real company, so I ordered it. It works fine, and I can’t find anything wrong with it. I feel like I scored.

I took the hammer out to the hole, put the bit against the rock in a place where I thought it needed to be hit, and went to town. Right away, I was surprised to see how pleasant jackhammering was. I was nervous when I started. I thought the bit might jump around and put my feet in danger. I thought I might be jarred a lot. I equipped myself with safety glasses, a respirator, and ear plugs because I was concerned about noise and flying quartz chips. In reality, the bit stayed nearly where I put it, I was not jarred at all, nothing the bit broke off flew anywhere near my face, the machine was quiet, and if there was inhalable dust, there was so little I could not see it.

When I think of jackhammers, I think of fat guys on city streets operating huge air-powered hammers that seem to make them bounce around like toys on top of a washer full of towels during a spin cycle. It was not like that at all for me. It was more like having a pleasant belly massage. I guess the four fat springs on the hammer suck up nearly all of the pain.

Hammering made me wonder if I understood how rocks work. I think of rocks as things that exist in two states: shattered and not. I don’t think of them as things that can weaken gradually, like fatigued metal. When I hammered on my hard quartz rock, I found that sometimes the bit would stay in one place a long time, seeming to do nothing, and then the rock would suddenly give way, as though the prolonged hammering had softened it up. That was strange.

I had some problems with the bit getting stuck. Sometimes it will go straight down, making a tight hole, and then when it gets too deep, I’ll have to pull it back out. The hammering action doesn’t work when you’re lifting the hammer, so the machine doesn’t help at all. Also, you’re not supposed to pry with the bit. The hammer isn’t made for that. Which is a shame, because the bit alone probably weighs 8 pounds and could certainly pry as well as a typical pry bar. The hammer and bit, together, are about four feet long, so I would have a lot of leverage if I could pry with them.

It seems like I need to keep the sledge and rotary hammer nearby, in case the jackhammer gets stuck. I can beat the rock with the sledge or chisel the jackhammer it out with the rotary hammer.

I cracked a lot of big chunks off the rock in the short time I spent using the hammer. I can see that one of two things will happen. I may crack enough junk off the rock to make it small enough to tear out with the tractor, or I will simply remove stuff until the remaining rock is so far below grade I won’t mind burying it and moving on with my life.

Was this a stupid buy? I don’t know. I didn’t need to remove the rock at all. I could have painted it day-glo orange and driven around it. The house is 19 years old, and the previous owner never had to remove the rock. On the other hand, the rocks are annoying, and they really should be removed. It would cost me maybe a grand to get them removed with a bulldozer, and it would tear the yard up even worse than I have. After all that, I would not have a neat jackhammer and splitting wedges, or the ability to use them, in my tool arsenal. I would just have a bill and a messed-up yard.

It’s fun tormenting the rocks, and I have amassed a very big rock collection which I could conceivably use for decoration.

In other news, my friends Freddly and Freddelle visited this weekend, along with Freddly’s children Noah and Grace. Noah is my godson, and he is 4. I think. Grace is 10 months old. Freddly’s husband couldn’t make it.

Freddelle is a law student at FSU. I have known her since she was 17. We met at Trinity Church. She found out I was a lawyer and immediately began grilling me for advice. Over the years, I have been able to be somewhat helpful to her. She calls me a mentor. I would say I’m just a guy who gave her advice a few times. She had doubts about even getting into law school, and here she is, coming up on graduation, with one solid job offer already in the bag.

Freddly was an armorbearer at Trinity. The code name she gave herself was “Oreo,” which I found extremely amusing. I was somewhat instrumental in helping her reattach with God after the Wilkerson family and Trinity disillusioned and discouraged her.

When they started talking about visiting, I wasn’t sure what two Haitian girls who were suburban at best would do here, but things worked out very well. We went to a barbecue place and a great Italian restaurant, and on Sunday, we went on a glass-bottomed boat at Silver Springs. Noah was beside himself. You would think he had never seen a fish before.

Noah likes trucks and tractors, so that’s what he gets for holiday presents, and he was well-prepared for my farm. He has a Tonka John Deere, so we got the real John Deere lawn tractor out, and he helped me drive it around the yard.

Noah loves Marvin and Maynard, and I think they enjoyed his company, too.

The ladies and I talked about various Christian topics. They seem much more well-grounded than I had thought. I told them I was thinking of moving to Tennessee, and I mentioned the strange trend of Christians moving to that state. Freddly told me something crazy. She had had a dream in which she visited Tennessee. This was before she knew about my plans, and she has no Tennessee connections. She said she visited to see if it was okay for black people move there.

Something is going on in the supernatural.

My back is at about 95% now. I don’t know what I did to it, but it was not serious. I almost never have back problems, so a week of limited activity was a strange and unwelcome experience. Today I went out and did a few things. A three-trunked oak fell over for no reason at all, so I had to go out in the woods and cut all three trunks to take pressure off the trees it was leaning on. There was poison ivy everywhere. I had to walk like I was in a minefield. Before I started my saws, I hosed the whole area with glyphosate. I may have to go back in there, and obviously, it’s harder to get a rash from dead vines than big juicy leaves with oil all over them.

I noticed something interesting: when you cut a lot of wood and throw sawdust everywhere, it covers up poison ivy and makes an area less dangerous. I don’t think I’m very sensitive to poison ivy, because I have eaten mangoes with sap on them for decades with no problem, and I worked in the poison ivy before I knew what it was without getting rashes, but I don’t want to be exposed any more than I have to. When I came home, I used a brush and dish detergent to scrub the soles of my boots.

Cutting leaning trees is dangerous and difficult, especially when you can’t stand wherever you want. I relied on bore-cutting, which means cutting the middle out of a tree before you sever the remaining strap or straps on the outside. It prevents the tree from splitting, which can throw a trunk in your face. I was not able to get the tree down completely in the time I had, but I severed it from its roots, ensuring that it will dry up and rot faster, and I cut enough off the trunks to give substantial relief to the trees holding the fallen tree up.

I can get more done once the ivy is dead.

I am no arborist, but from watching Youtubes, I can tell I know a few things a lot of the old pros don’t. Some of them don’t know much about bore-cutting, for example. I’m not afraid to cut a leaning tree which is hung on other trees, because with a bore cut and two or three wedges, I can fix it so the tree can’t split in a dangerous way or pinch my saw. I can also fell a leaning tree that isn’t hung, as long as I’m okay with it falling in the direction of the lean. I don’t know enough to log or take down rotten trees that are still vertical, and cutting free leaning trees so they fall away from the lean is too much for me, but I know enough to do what I need to do on this farm.

Cutting leaning trees that are not hung is very dangerous. If you leave the wood in the center of the trunk, the torque from the lean may make the tree split up the middle, and then you get what’s called a barber chair. It’s a heavy trunk supported on a springy bit that has split away, and the trunk may bounce and swing unpredictably. They kill people all the time.

Here’s a video of a tree barber-chairing.

This shows why you should always wear a hard hat when you cut anything taller than you are. You can cut a tree a foot from the ground, but if it barber chairs, the base of the trunk may rise up over your head and then come down on you.

A barber chair ruins a lot of the wood in a tree.

I’ve noticed that some of the techniques loggers use are designed to spare the wood. For example, they often cut almost flush with the ground. My wood is worthless, so I don’t care about any of that. When I look at videos and read about tree felling, I discard the stuff that doesn’t apply to me and could cause problems.

Cutting a tree flush with the ground is hard on your back, and if something goes wrong, it may be hard to straighten up and run. You also end up with a stump you can’t pull out with a chain or rope. I have had to deal with stumps people cut this way (stupidly), and I wouldn’t dream of cutting them like that. The higher you cut a tree, the more leverage you have when you pull the stump with the tractor. I try to cut low enough to be safe and high enough to leave me with something to pull on.

It’s funny, but the oaks here rot like crazy while they’re alive, but once you cut one, the stump lasts forever. It absolutely will not rot. You really have to think about stump removal when you cut an oak here. You can always have a flush-cut stump ground, but it’s expensive, and then you end up with a permanent mass of wood just under the ground, where you had hoped to plant something.

It’s dumb.

I had a maple struck by lightning, and because it was not a dangerous tree, I ended up cutting it about six feet up. After that, I had no problem pulling it out. Took about three minutes. It was nothing like the flush-cut stumps that required hours of digging and hacking.

I guess the world has read enough about my doings for one day.

I’ll try to post some jackhammer photos eventually.

When all Else Fails, Spend More Money

The giant rock in my side yard is proving to be a stubborn and clever foe.

I have lots of rocks on and under my property. The other day I pulled a 6-footer out of the yard with the Kubota. I got cocky and started working on another rock. The more I dug, the more rock I saw. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve stumbled upon one of the longest roots of the country of China.

Last week, I shoveled and lifted quite a bit. I try not to lift anything heavy, but I still managed to strain my back. I felt bad on Saturday, but I prayed and did my thing, and on Monday morning, I felt great. So I went out to do more work, and on Tuesday, I strained my back again.

This time, I decided not to pray alone. I made sure I contacted my friend Amanda. She has been getting a lot of miraculous healings, and she prayed successfully for her son when he cut his toe very badly. It occurred to me that I ought to be contacting her whenever I had a physical problem. I believe in investing in success.

Last night little voices kept trying to tell me I had a serious problem which would not go away, but I got up this morning and felt fine.

When you help other people develop in Christ, they tend to come back and pay you dividends. Preachers don’t talk about that much, because most of them don’t know much. It’s a little bit like raising kids. If you raise successful kids of good character, you’ll have help when you get old. Same principle.

I had pastors who did me some good, and I tried to do good things in their churches, but they couldn’t be blessed. They wrecked whatever I gave them. Many people complain about the way their lives go, and they don’t realize they have turned themselves into people who are only capable of being cursed.

You can’t bless everyone. Curses bounce off God’s children, and blessings bounce off the children of darkness. It’s another example of the symmetry of the supernatural. You could give my sister 10 million dollars tomorrow, and in three years, she’d be broke, and she would also have made a lot of people suffer.

When we involve ourselves too deeply with cursed people who refuse to listen, they become parasites to us. Good things leave us, go to them, putrefy, and are lost. When Satan can’t get a grip on you directly, he may be able to use a cursed person you pity as a handle. This is the essence of enabling.

My back feels good, but I am not interested in a routine of injury and prayer, so I decided to invest in a jackhammer.

So far, I’ve been using a rotary hammer and some splitting wedges. The wedges work very well, but in order to use them, you have to have a rock of a suitable shape, and you have to be able to get at the part you need to split. Also, when you’ve split a rock, you have to be able to get the pieces out of the hole. A jackhammer should allow me to break the rock up into pieces which are light and easy to pick up.

I considered getting a Chinese jackhammer. They’re bargains. You can buy one, including an extended warranty, for less than a third of the price of a name brand. I found a refurbed Bosch for about twice the price of a Chinese model, and I felt like it was a better choice. It’s less likely to break down, and if I decide to sell it, the low up-front price, combined with the Bosch name, should permit me to get out with a very small loss.

I don’t know what I’ll do with a jackhammer once my few troubling rocks are gone. You can use them for other things. You can drive grounding rods with them. I don’t see that happening. You can use them for general destruction of annoying objects.

It will be nice to have. It was nice to have my little-used rotary hammer around when I needed it. I don’t know how easy it will be to use far from the house. My portable generator will power a welder, and it should run a jackhammer, but I can’t say until I’ve seen it.

The big rock moves very slightly when I yank it with the tractor. Maybe if I cut enough off of it, it will come out of its hole before being broken to tiny bits. I hope so.

I’m already using one rock from the job as a landscaping decoration, and I plan to use others. Bonus!

Sometimes I wish I had a skid steer. I suspect a skid steer is a better tool for this farm than a tractor. Skid steers are more powerful. They lift more, too. A skid steer can rip out stumps a tractor can’t even move. I think a skid steer would have enabled me to remove every annoying rock I have in a couple of hours.

If you’re wondering why they’re called “skid steers,” it’s because their wheels don’t have any steering mechanism. They’re always aimed straight ahead. To turn a skid steer, you move one pair of wheels one way while moving the other two the other way (or stopping them completely…I think). The result is that one pair of wheels may skid across the ground while the others turn.

Now you know.

I will post humiliating photos of the defeated rock when I have them.

You Owe Because We Say You Owe

I just spent at least two hours proving a condominium association owes me money. I do not know why people keep trying to bill me for things I’ve already paid for.

I own a rental condo. I pay the association every month for maintenance. Every so often, they send me a threatening letter saying they’re going to put a lien on the condo if I don’t pay up fast. The last letter said they would sue if I didn’t respond within 10 days of the date of the letter, and I received it on the 10th day.

You don’t send someone a letter that says they have to respond within 10 days of mailing, because you have no idea how long they’ll take to receive it. You don’t say they have to respond within 10 days of receipt unless you can prove they received it. In any case, you don’t send someone a letter demanding a response by a certain date and then mail it so late it arrives after the deadline.

I don’t know why they do this, because when you talk to them on the phone, they admit it’s all a bluff. I’m sure they would eventually sue me if I got far enough behind, but they don’t really do it after 10 days. They’re not obnoxious. Just weird.

I had to sit down and make a table listing all the checks I had sent. Four of my checks had been deposited yet were not credited to my account. This is not the first time. Someone at the association deposits my checks to other people’s accounts.

They wanted about a thousand dollars. Turns out they owe me over a hundred.

I really hate accounting. It amazes me that there are people who like staring at tables of figures. I had no trouble with real math, which involves variables, not filthy, naked NUMBERS. Actual figures are mind-numbing to look at. How can people stand it?

I would rather pay these people a hundred bucks I don’t owe than look at their ledgers. I hope they don’t know that.

An assisted living facility is also trying to get me to pay money I don’t owe. They kept my dad for four days last year. We paid in full, in advance, and they gave us a copy of the check. Then I started getting bills. I called them, and they said not to worry about it. I should ignore them. They took a long time to deposit checks, and their computers sent out bogus bills until the deposits were recorded.

Then they turned an incompetent and seemingly dishonest collection agency loose on me. They want me to pay the original bill plus $800, plus the cost of an additional day. My dad stayed for 4 days, their paperwork shows it, and they’re billing me for 5.

I eventually found out the facility lost the check. It wasn’t deposited. I had to pay to stop it.

The collection agency told me to send a dispute letter, so I did, with very clear exhibits plus a check for the original stay minus the cost of stopping the first check. They said to call in a week. I did, and they said to call in another week. The next time I called, which was maybe two weeks later, they said I hadn’t sent a dispute letter. They said I had refused to pay. They said they didn’t have a check.

During the same call, they admitted they had the check, which they refused to cash. I pointed out that it was mailed in the same envelope with the letter. They said someone must have failed to put it in the file.

They record all calls so they can use them against people in court. In their conversations with me, they provided a lot of evidence that they don’t know what they’re doing. I don’t think that helps their case.

I wrote a new letter, attached the old letter and exhibits, made a PDF of the whole thing, sent it to them by certified mail and faxed it to them twice, on different days. I may fax it a few more times. I wonder if they plan to acknowledge its existence.

I don’t know what they plan to do now. They can’t put a lien on anything I own. They can’t sue, because the facility paperwork calls for arbitration. They can’t arbitrate, because they’ll look like idiots and lose, and then they’ll have to pay the arbitrator.

They can’t hurt my credit rating, which I never use, because I don’t borrow.

I guess I do use it. People with good credit get lower insurance rates. But one crazy, disputed bill from people who are clearly inept will not hurt me.

You have to wonder why they don’t take my money and go away. I’m doing my best to pay them.

I freely admit, I should never have listened when I was told the bills would stop coming, and I delayed dealing with the collection people for maybe a month because my dad had just died, I was busy, and it didn’t seem urgent. But I don’t owe these characters $800 as payment for making errors.

I called the assisted living place several times, and I know their bookkeeper (probably the person who lost the check) has been told I want to talk with her. She refuses to return calls. I told them I might come and sit in their lobby until she comes out.

I don’t know if that’s a good idea. The roaches might climb up my legs while I waited. The insect life was one reason why I took my dad out of that place. I visited while he was eating, and I saw two roaches in the dining room. One was wandering around on a picture frame, surveying the room. I pointed it out to a worker, and she said she would have to notify the maintenance people. Didn’t bother the roach, mind you. He went on observing.

I reported them in to the state, so maybe that’s why they don’t want to talk. I also turned the collection agency in to the Attorney General. I don’t know if they ever do anything to help anyone, but it made me feel like I was striking a blow for old, feeble people everywhere. This is not how you treat the elderly. Okay, I’m not quite elderly, but my dad was, and if he were alive, they would be going after him. If he were alive and I weren’t around to help him fight the collection agency, where would he be?

My situation reminds me of a story about Eliezer, Abraham’s servant. He visited Sodom for some reason, and while he was there, a Sodomite hit him in the head with a rock. The Sodomite sued him, claiming a rock in the face was medical treatment. He said he was owed a fee for the therapeutic bloodletting. The judge, also a Sodomite, agreed.

Eliezer hit the judge in the face with a rock and told him to pay the other man what he owed.

I have conversed with God about the matter. I didn’t want to pay these characters for their collection “costs,” but I said I was willing to do it to make this matter disappear. I said I would do it if it pleased God. I even asked if it was okay to do it, but I feel like he doesn’t want me to.

I wonder what else I’m going to be billed for. Maybe reparations. I might be willing to give all the wealth my slave-owning ancestors, if any, passed on to me. Of course, that amounts to nothing. I’m willing to pay cash.

I already paid reparations. I’ve paid it many times. I paid it when people with lower grades and test scores got scholarships and I didn’t. Do I get credit for that?

The message here is this: never listen to any potential creditor when they say, “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of it.” They won’t take care of it. If they took care of things, you wouldn’t be having a problem to begin with.

Someone should have made me read this blog entry in January.

I spent so much time today working on a bill I don’t owe, I forgot all about bills I do owe. Guess the checkbook won’t be coming out until tomorrow.

Time for an ice cream sandwich.

Slouching Towards Bugtussle

Today I surprised myself. I contacted a realtor about a property in Blount County, Tennessee.

One of the problems I’ve had since my dad died is a reluctance to take ownership of things. For example, sometimes I say “we” when I’m talking about things we used to own together. “We have two wells.” “We have a pool.” Things like that. Sometimes I feel like I’m just managing things for my dad. I have even been reluctant to change the bad landscaping at my house, just because I feel like the previous owners knew something I didn’t and would disapprove.

I can tell you something that has helped me. Sometimes I say, “My dad moved to a far-away country and gave me everything he owns here.” This is true. He owns nothing in this world.

The idea of selling properties and moving to another state by myself is slightly intimidating. I wouldn’t be asking anyone’s permission. I would just go. I didn’t think I’d start looking for a new place so soon.

I was waiting for God to give me ideas about where to go. The older I get, the more I realize we screw up our lives by putting ourselves in traps God had nothing to do with. We choose horrible husbands, wives, careers, and homes. Then things go badly, and we’re stuck. You can’t just drop a spouse like a bruised peach at the supermarket. You can’t make a better career appear instantaneously. If you’re in the wrong home and the wrong area, you probably have a mortgage, and that means you’re stuck like a coyote with its paw in a trap. I don’t want to “follow my heart” or “go with my gut.” I don’t want to trust my ridiculous judgment. The world tells us to do those things, but worldly people live in defeat and regret. I want to get guidance from God.

I felt he was telling me to move to Tennessee, but I couldn’t figure out where to go. I knew I didn’t want to be in a flat area or a city. I wanted to know I was in Appalachia. I didn’t want to be in a county where they still had Klan meetings. I didn’t want to be close to Gatlinburg or the other tourist traps.

This morning I started to think he wanted me to move to Blount County.

I read up on it after I got this impression. It seems like a nice place. Good climate, nice hills, and real stores within a reasonable drive. Land prices are cheaper than they are here. I could set myself up on hundreds of acres of woods.

This week the nightly lows will be in the sixties in Blount County. That would be nice. I love Ocala, but it’s up around 95 degrees every day right now, and it’s only going down into the upper seventies at night. Working outdoors during the day is nearly impossible. You can put a couple of hours in, pausing frequently, and then you have to quit.

The human body is funny. When you overheat, you get tired, even if you’re not working hard. Your body will refuse to give you full performance, and it will make you breathe hard as if you were exerting yourself. It’s not helpful when I’m trying to cut downed trees or dig up a boulder.

I contacted a couple of real estate brokerages online about a property, and in my messages, I said, “No calls, please.” Both called within seconds. They apparently refuse to deal with me over the web like normal people. I sent the calls to voicemail.

Real estate agents are really annoying. When you call about a property, they don’t see you as a person who wants to buy that property. They see you as a lead. They want to turn you into “their” customer. Then they get 3% of the sale price of any property they tell you about.

I wanted to see what the property was shaped like. A lot of big properties are long and skinny, and I’m not having that. It doesn’t do you much good to have 300 acres if your neighbors are 100 yards away in both directions. I found the property on a government website, and it’s shaped like a lizard. No good. Oh, well.

I see where the term “gerrymander” comes from.

I got tempted to stray from Tennessee, and I looked at a place in North Carolina. It’s remarkable. It has two well-kept, very livable buildings. One is the main house, and the other is a sort of shop with its own kitchen. Really nice. It only has 40 acres, though. The number 300 keeps rolling around in my head. I really like big pieces of land. I always have. My favorite of all my grandfather’s farms was around 300 acres.

I am sorely tempted to spend a few days in Tennessee, just looking around.

In other news, I made real progress with my grilling. I went to Home Depot and got me a Bernzomatic TS8000 torch. I already have a Turbotorch, but it’s for the workshop. The Turbotorch was recommended to me as the best torch of the type, but it has been balky ever since I bought it, and it doesn’t seem to burn any hotter than the one I just got.

Today I made two 6.5-ounce burgers (because I had exactly 13 ounces of meat) and put them on the grill at its highest post-modification setting. As I grilled, I applied the torch to scorch the outsides of the burgers. It worked very well. I got some deep browning as well as a little crunch, and the insides of the burgers were hot and juicy. One had very little pink in it, and I always shoot for medium, but burgers are not steak, and medium-well is still very good. Medium can actually be a little mushy.

I have a Searzall tool on the way. I think I wrote about it. It’s a torch attachment for searing food evenly. Once it arrives, I should be all set. Regardless of the appalling shortcomings of propane grills, I’ll be able to put a good sear on the outside of every piece of beef I cook.

It’s amazing that the grill industry makes such feeble products.

I sound like I’m knocking my new grill. I think it’s an excellent product, as propane grills go. I believe it cooks as well as a $2000 grill. I should know; I had one. I just think the entire industry should be doing better. A $2000 grill should make amazing steaks, and when you buy a $100 grill that cooks as well as a $2000 grill, it should produce the same result. I have a $100 grill that, as delivered, cooked steaks just as well as an industry-leading, yet disappointing, $2000 grill.

It would be nice to have an electric salamander some day. That would put an end to the striving.

I still plan to get a square cast iron griddle for the butane stove. Frying puts a magnificent crust on a steak. I guess I could fry and then touch up with the Searzall! That would be interesting.

The feeling I get is that grilled burgers need to be at least an inch thick before cooking. Otherwise, the insides cook too fast. It’s just physics. I think the torch allows me to do a better job with thinner burgers.

I wonder how a propane knife forge would do. Someone needs to try that. It sounds stupendous. I guess the melting fat would be a problem, because it would run into the insulation and burn.

There’s a Youtube video of a lady cooking a steak using a forge. She’s not much to look at, she has a whisker problem, and her miniskirt is too short for a woman of her years, but she may be onto something.

Poor thing. It must be hard landing a man when you look like that. You have to give her credit, though. She’s in there punching. Takes good care of herself. Look at those toned legs.

I’m sure I’ll report on the Searzall when it arrives. Try to contain yourselves.

When You Have Jesus, You Don’t Need a Second Opinion

I have an interesting testimony today.

First of all, I spent some time yesterday working on removing a big boulder from my yard, and now my back is sore on one side, so prayers would be appreciated. Healing seems to be taking some time.

With that behind me, the testimony.

Last night I dreamed I was in some kind of doctor’s office. There were two small rooms in the office, and they were connected by a door. My dad was in one room, and my mother and my sister were in the other. I was with my dad.

My dad was old and in bad shape. He was not like the transformed father who passed away this spring. He was still in denial. Even after his health got very bad, he used to claim his only health problem was a lower back issue, and he would say he ought to live to be 120. In the dream, he was talking about some medical procedure his doctors had recommended, and he was trying to tell me, in so many words, that it would extend his life for a very long time.

My mother and sister listened to him through the doorway, and they started talking about the procedure. They swallowed the pitch. They clearly thought it was a great blessing and that my father ought to have it done. Their gullibility wearied me, and I closed the door on my dad and talked to them. I didn’t ask him to excuse us. I just closed the door.

You shouldn’t be disrespectful to your parents, but on the other hand, you shouldn’t haggle and negotiate with the flesh. Just shut the door while it’s still talking.

I don’t remember exactly what I said, but my message was that they needed to snap out of it. He was dying, he was grasping at straws, and they should have known better than to listen. They knew he was a master of denial.

What he really needed was Jesus, period.

I don’t like relying on doctors. The word says God heals all of our diseases–not “some”–and I believe we have medical science because we have failed to walk in divine protection and healing. If I go to a doctor, it’s because I’ve failed to get help from God, and that has to be my fault, not God’s.

It seems to me that the counsel of doctors represents the counsel of the ungodly. If your walk with God is strong, he takes care of you, and you don’t have to look to human beings and painful human effort to get solutions to your problems. God doesn’t get any glory when a doctor’s knife repairs you, and we know that God wants the glory, because he says so, over and over. If he wants the glory, he is definitely willing to do the work, because God would never steal credit for something someone else did.

God doesn’t mind doing things for us. He loves us, and besides, as he has reminded us, nothing is hard for him. It’s not a chore for him to heal you. God doesn’t work hard. He is rich, and he has never worked for wealth. He has infinite power and resources, so when you ask him to do something, you’re not imposing on him. It’s like feeling bad about asking for a teaspoon of water from the ocean. He doesn’t care. He wants you to have it.

The Bible says the man who doesn’t walk in the counsel of the ungodly is blessed. See Psalm 1.

While I was talking to them, a little boy came through the door. He was not like us. I come from blue-eyed people. The boy had dark skin, like an Arab, and his hair and eyes were dark. He was wearing shorts and no shirt. He was very friendly. He was happy. His walk had a little dance to it.

He started telling us about a man with some sort of plastic boots. I can’t recall the terms he used. He used words I interpreted to mean plastic boots. The man had helped him to be saved. He seemed to want to talk to the man. He said, “March the second is my birthday!”

Before the end of the dream, he took my hand, and he squeezed my fingers. His grip didn’t feel like a normal child’s grip. It was as if a grown man were hiding inside him, squeezing with greater strength. It felt like a little version of my dad were inside him, squeezing my hand through his to show me he was there.

At this point, I woke up.

I had to find out what had happened to my dad on March the second. I knew of one thing: my mother died on that day. It’s also her mother’s birthday. The night my mother died, my dad and my sister and I hugged each other in the driveway of the hospital in Miami, and my dad cried, which was something I had never seen before.

I got out of bed and looked at my website to see if I had written anything about my dad that would explain the reference to March the second. I found out it was a pivotal day.

Years ago, when my dad’s memory problems were minor, I used to pray for him to be healed. Then God told me he had cut my dad off, meaning he had lost patience with him and intended to reduce his protection. I quit praying for his memory to improve, because I believed God had made a decision and that I would be wasting my time if I prayed for him to go against it. My dad became demented and had to be moved to a facility.

On February 28 of this year, I talked to God about this. I said I felt selfish. My dad’s declining condition was a financial blessing to me. I stood to inherit everything he had. I also stood to be relieved of the heavy burden of his care. On the one hand, I didn’t want to interfere with problems that were intended to drive my dad back to God. On the other hand, it seemed wrong to let my dad slip without even trying to help.

I told God these things, and he made it clear it was okay to pray for my dad. I started praying for God to heal him.

Before this prayer, my dad had been changing radically. He had been losing his pride and his anger. He had started telling me how much he loved me and what a wonderful son I was. He had become less argumentative. He had prayed for salvation. He had been enthusiastic about getting to know God.

I prayed on February 28, and I visited my dad, as always, the next day. He was a different person, and I’m sorry to say he was a person I knew very well. When I arrived at the facility, he was calling his roommate filthy names. He was in a vile mood. His mind was clearer than it had been before my prayer.

He told me he didn’t really believe in God. He said he had gone along with me and prayed just to make me happy. This was a lie, but it’s what he said.

I asked God what I should do, and an idea came to me. I asked my dad whether he agreed that preparing for the afterlife was the most important thing a person could do. He agreed. I said I wanted to pray for God to do whatever had to be done to help him prepare, and he consented.

I asked God to give my dad whatever he needed to be given, and to take away whatever needed to be taken away, in order for him to be saved.

The next day, which was the second of March, my dad’s mental improvement was gone. So were his anger, rudeness, and pride. He was as he had been before I prayed on February 28.

My dad prayed for salvation without prompting, very sincerely, on March 21, but he began the final, uninterrupted leg of his life on March the second, which was the birthday of the boy in the dream.

Do I think God let my dad send me a message from beyond the grave, to show me he was okay? No. I don’t think my dad was involved at all. Communication with the dead is dangerous and wrong. Sometimes God uses the dead to reach us, but generally, the work goes to the Holy Spirit, human beings, and ministering spirits sent by God. The dead aren’t sent to us often, and we are never supposed to initiate or ask for contact with them.

Just to be clear, God can send the dead to us, but we are never to seek the dead.

The other day I saw a photo of a lady from the Bethel movement, lying on the grave of a dead Christian, trying to absorb his anointing. That’s not okay. It’s necromancy. The Holy Spirit is sufficient for us. She was worshiping a man, not God. Jesus didn’t die so I could go lie on Kathryn Kuhlman’s grave and hope her virtue would rise up and infuse me. He died so I could be infused with his virtue and know him personally.

If God himself lives in me, why would I need to lie on a grave to get his power?

I’m not a Bethel fan. They revere William Branham, a strange preacher who made a number of false prophecies with great conviction. A friend of mine gave me a Bethel book teaching about their “sozo” therapy. The idea is that if something traumatic happened to you in the past, you should ask Jesus where he was. People who have done this claim Jesus came to them and showed them where he was during their trouble, and they claim he heals their hearts. I gave it a sincere try, not wanting to brush anything off without considering it, but when I asked Jesus where he was when certain bad things happened to me, nothing at all happened. God talks to me all the time, but on these occasions, I got nothing.

I get a creepy feeling when I watch Bethel videos.

I just realized I have seen the boy in the dream before. In 1984, I was living on a kibbutz, and I was sent to Nazareth to buy charcoal for a cookout. When I got off the bus, the boy accosted me, and he would not leave me alone. He kept saying, “my FRIEND,” when he addressed me, with great emphasis. He walked in front of me like a herald. He bowed and made gestures ushering me forward, as though preparing a path for me. He told random people I was his friend. His face glowed because he was so happy to see me.

Of course, I am just a person. I am not God’s special, unique anointed one who was sent to fix the world. I am one of many. I am not good. I am not entitled to have my own John the Baptist to go before me proclaiming my arrival. I think people would be pretty let down when I showed up!

When I sat on the bus bench and waited to go back to the kibbutz, he sat down next to me and put his arm around me. He did something even more odd. He licked his index finger and touched my leg. Gross.

In the years before he died, my dad developed a practice of licking his index finger and rubbing things. He thought he was cleaning them. It drove me crazy.

I always thought the boy in Nazareth was demonized. I still don’t know what his story was. I actually wondered if Nazareth had child prostitution. Anyway, he was the boy in the dream.

Could my dad’s spirit visit me on one continent while he was alive on another? Did God send him to me in Israel for some reason? No idea. I know my dad wasn’t making much use of his spirit at the time! I also know the spirit and the mind are not the same. God’s word divides the spirit and mind.

The boy wanted to meet the man with plastic boots. I wouldn’t say I wear plastic boots, but I wear boots every day, and the soles are Vibram rubber, which is rubber molded like plastic. They’re lined with Gore-Tex, which is a fabric made from Teflon, a type of plastic.

The book of Ephesians says we should be shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. I have to say that I was so shod when I deal with my dad at the facility.

Interesting thing: in the Bible, feet represent people who are Spirit-led, and Gore-Tex keeps water out. Of people who confess to God and repent, the word says, “Surely in the floods of great waters, they shall not come nigh unto him.” The Bible uses floods to represent the sea of voices of people and spirits who are against God. Most people live submerged in that sea and drown in it. Jude called false preachers, like Rich Wilkerson and Joel Osteen, “raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame.” They speak for Satan and the world, not God.

Jude also called them “clouds without water.” God’s word is also water, as Noah found out, and these people don’t have it in them.

When my dad appears in dreams, he isn’t necessarily my dad. Sometimes he’s the leadership of the church. Sometimes my mother is the church. Sometimes my sister represents spirits that are against me and against God. The other day she appeared in a dream and tried to take things from my house. She appeared in a friend’s dream and tried to move into my house. My friend doesn’t even know her.

In all likelihood, my sister represented a spirit speaking against faith in God.

Why would God use a boy to represent a man who had been saved? God says we have to be born again, and he says we have to enter his kingdom like little children. He said to permit children to come to him, because of such was the kingdom of heaven made.

This is the dream I had. If you think it has value, ask God to explain it to you.

Cactus Cooler Cans Under the Cushions

I hate strongholds. Unless they’re good strongholds.

A stronghold is anything that’s hard to change. If you can’t quit overeating, it’s a stronghold. Cancer that won’t yield to prayer is a stronghold. Unassailable faith in God is also a stronghold; it’s just a positive stronghold.

I have rocks and stumps in my yard. I don’t know if they have anything to do with the supernatural, but they are stubborn obstacles to my enjoyment and improvement of the lot. Remember Joe Starrett in Shane? He had a big stump in a field he worked, and he never quit striving to get the stump out, because it drove him nuts. The novelist had the same feeling about stumps that I do.

I got myself a subsoiler for my tractor. It’s a big hook that goes down in the ground. You can hook it to stumps and use the hydraulics to lift them. It works well on small stumps and fairly big rocks, but there is a limit to what you can do with it. There are some big stumps on my land, and I have seen rocks half the size of cars.

I had three stumps and several rocks jutting out of the ground in an area where I wanted to put blackberry briars. I already have the plants. I managed to get the stumps out this spring, but the rocks would not yield. I started digging around them to find out where the edges were.

Today I dug around a couple of really annoying rocks, trying to find where they ended. The rocks were up against each other, and I figured that if I could find a way to move one, the other would then have less to anchor it, and I would be able to extract it, too. I unearthed a sort of horn on one rock. I decided to loop a tow strap over it, put the tractor in low, and pull.

When I took off, I was surprised to see a patch of ground the size of a yoga mat lift up. The two rocks were actually one.

I pulled the rock up halfway out of the ground. Then I propped it up with a piece of 4×4. With the rock in that position, I was able to loop the strap under it. The rock had a waist to it, so once the strap was around it, it could not come off.

The big danger was that if I reached under the rock with the strap, it might fall back on me, and then there I would be, waiting for death with a large rock on top of what used to be an arm. I avoided the problem by using a Johnson bar to shove the end of the strap under the rock. I then pulled it through from the other side.

I am painfully aware that many people die every day from doing stupid things. It’s very important to try not to be stupid when you use tools. That sounds simplistic, but it’s the truth. Most people who go to emergency rooms with horrible tool-related injuries did something stupid. Reaching under a half-ton rock held up by sand and a small piece of wood is very stupid.

When I took off with the tractor, the rock came right out, and I dragged it easily. That surprised me. It makes me rethink everything I knew about stumps and rocks. Maybe the strap is a better tool than the subsoiler.

Now I have a six-foot-long rock sitting in my hard. I’m considering using it for landscaping. I could probably sell it, but it doesn’t look too bad in the yard, and it’s a conversation piece.

The shovel in the photo is 44.5″ long, so that gives you an idea how big the rock is.

I feel fantastic. It’s great when an annoying problem suddenly gives way.

There are still two rocks I really want to uproot. Maybe it can be done. I hate getting in there with a shovel and doing all that exploratory work, when I have a tractor. Sometimes you have to do things the hard way.

If you need a thousand-pound rock, let me know. I am always open to offers.

Where Were You When the Wave Hit the Beach?

Last week I started watching a Youtube creator whose channel is called “Tsunami Dream.” He has an extraordinary testimony. He was hooked on dextromethorphan cough syrup, and he became homeless. He started hearing God’s voice, and he went through some remarkable experiences on his way to recovery.

I have been wondering why he called his channel Tsunami Dream. Today I decided to see if he had any videos I wanted to watch, so I searched Youtube for “Tsunami Dream.” A lot of things popped up, from a bunch of channels. They were videos about dreams of the rapture. People saw giant waves in their dreams, and they realized the waves symbolized our extraction from this world.

He has a video which is about his channel’s name, but I didn’t go to that first. I haven’t seen it yet.

When I saw that people were comparing the rapture to a tsunami, I realized something: I had had my own tsunami dream. It happened on October 24, 2016. My dad’s father’s birthday, not that I think that means anything.

In the dream, I was in my grandparents’ home. I mean my mother’s parents. My dad’s father died before I was born, and his mother was a big nothing in my life. She had no interest in me or my sister.

We were in the living room. I was sitting on the floor. My mother was sitting up in a recliner. She wore work jeans and a work shirt; I don’t think she owned jeans or a work shirt in real life. Her hair was very long; she never had long hair here on earth.

I had a dish of pesticide granules in front of me. Bait granules with poison in them.

I heard a very loud horn blow. It was loud, but not painful to the ears. I could tell it was making the entire earth rumble, and that everyone on earth was hearing it. I had the impression that whoever was blowing it was somewhere west of California, over the Pacific. It was a single note which went on and on.

The sound would have been pleasant, but the pleasing vibration was overshadowed by a powerful sense of dread and finality. I don’t mean I felt dread for myself, personally. I just knew this was a moment of judgment for many people, and that there was no longer any way for them to avoid suffering through repentance.

We started to rise into the air, as though the room were filling slowly with invisible water. The poison rose out of the dish, and I tried to cover it with my hands in order to keep it where it was. We rose up to the ceiling of the room, and we were about to pass through it when I woke up. Some things in the room rose with us.

I wasn’t afraid, but I felt very sober. This was a very serious moment for the world.

I knew we were experiencing the rapture. I couldn’t wait to see Jesus. I was very relieved to know I would never have to touch the burdens of this world again. I didn’t think much about the suffering other people were going to face in the tribulation. There wasn’t much time to think, and I had other things on my mind.

I’ll be honest. I hope that when I leave this earth, I no longer think about the people who are still here. I have had to put up with them for a long time. They are responsible for themselves, and I am not God, so my entanglement with them should not be prolonged in heaven. How can it be heaven if we still suffer because of things that happen on earth?

Until today, I never thought about the similarity between the rapture and a tidal wave.

The Bible is full of events which involve water and resemble the rapture. The Hebrews under Moses walked across the floor of the Dead Sea, between walls of water, with dry shoes. The Egyptian army took the same path and drowned when the water returned to its place. Noah and his family were lifted up on water that came suddenly and drowned the rest of humanity. Peter was able to stand on water and walk on it when Jesus took his hand. Jews were told to purify themselves with ritual immersion. Christians do this and call it “baptism.”

Water is a cleaning agent. It separates filth from things that are worth preserving.

The Bible says we will meet Jesus in the air. That’s exactly what would happen if we rose as though lifted by rising water.

To see how many Christians are having tsunami dreams, click on this link: Google Search for “Tsunami Dream.”.

Here’s an interesting thing about the dreams: they’re not old. Youtube has been around for 14 years, but the tsunami of tsunami dreams appears to have begun about two years ago. Some took place earlier, but the bulk of the dreams are more recent.

God has a pattern of moving people to higher ground. He moved me from Miami to Ocala, and I feel he is telling me Tennessee is next.

Here’s a passage of Psalm 32, which is a psalm about the importance of confession and repentance:

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

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

Many Christians–most–will be left behind when the rapture takes place, and they’ll have to endure the tribulation. They think of salvation as a license to sin, so they don’t confess or change. They love saying, “God knows my heart,” and, “Judge not,” but they get angry when people talk about repentance and the importance of being holy (set apart for God). When the rapture comes, it will be like a flood of great water, and most of us will sink, pulled down by the weight of carnality.

If you haven’t set yourself apart for God, why would he set you apart for him when the rapture comes? You’ve chosen your side.

Jesus described carnality as a millstone tied to one’s neck. He said that if a preacher caused someone to be offended by the gospel, it would be better to have a millstone tied around his neck and to be thrown into the sea.

The sea represents this world, full of voices and words that don’t come from God. When you’re complying with God and led by the Holy Spirit instead of your flesh, you float above the world, like Peter on the Sea of Galilee. When you’re carnal, and you rely on your own strength or the strength of any created being, you sink into the water, and that’s where you live, at the mercy of every wave.

I had a very carnal pastor at Trinity Church in Miami. His name was Rich Wilkerson. His testimony was always borrowed. This happened to this person. That happened to that person. He, himself, had no testimony, and he bore no fruit. He was a physical wreck. His church was, and is, a financial wreck. He taught lies in order to get poor people to donate more money.

He never took the stage and said he got a miraculous healing. He never had a revelation to share. He believed in hard work and positive thinking, which are not Biblical concepts. In the Bible, hard work is a curse. It’s one of the first curses God pronounced on people. When Samson fell, one of his punishments was hard work. He walked in a circle, turning a millstone, grinding grain for other people to eat. He never went anywhere. He just circled, like the Hebrews in the wilderness after they defied God. Wilkerson and his church walk in circle after circle.

It makes sense that Wilkerson ended up in Miami, because it’s a carnal city full of people who are a lot like him. It’s a terrible place to live.

Miami is lower, in every way, than Ocala. Tennessee is higher than Ocala. I don’t think you can beat Tennessee without going to heaven. I suspect it’s as good as earthly locations get.

People who are getting rapture dreams and visions are telling us the world is out of time. They speak with great urgency. Naturally, I wonder: will I get to Tennessee before the rapture? It seems pointless to start preparing for a move when I can’t possibly make it in time.

I believe God is telling me I’ll make it. If that’s true, then the rapture must be at least, say, 9 months off. It takes time to sell two houses, buy one, and move.

I need to get rid of my dad’s house in Miami, and I will also have to sell this one. I refuse to get a mortgage, and I don’t want to be short on cash when I leave.

Maybe I won’t make it. The rapture will come at a time when we think not, according to Jesus. People in Noah’s time were carrying on their normal lives when the flood took place, and God told the Jews in Babylon to build houses and plant things even though their stay was temporary.

It seems to me that things have not gotten bad enough, or good enough, to bring about the rapture. I think technology will destroy free will before Jesus comes for us. Surveillance and data collection will be so pervasive, you won’t need to be righteous to behave well, because Uncle Sam will be staring over your shoulder all the time, coercing you. Also, the church is very weak and ignorant. Even the people who seem to be in the remnant that will go in the rapture don’t seem ready. The world isn’t quite bad enough, and the church isn’t quite good enough.

I would guess, and it’s only guessing, that we have several years left. It will take a while to reach the point where freedom is completely dead. It won’t take decades, but I think it will take years. I can’t see God returning until leftists get their way and America is a socialist authoritarian (I repeat myself) state.

The existence of humanity is pointless without free will. God can’t judge us if we have no freedom to choose. God loves free will so much, he prefers putting people in hell and burning them forever to taking free will away. Once it’s gone, his business here on earth will cease to be profitable, and he will end it. God’s profit is saved souls–children–who go on to live with him forever. The saving of souls necessarily involves temptation and freedom.

It’s remarkable how God shows all of his children the same things.

More Toxic Items for the Trash Heap

When you’re a Christian, you’re supposed to have testimony. God is supposed to do supernatural things for you and around you all the time. If that’s what’s happening to you, be of good cheer, because it means your life has the potential to get much, much better. Once you get hooked up to the power source, good things will happen.

I had an interesting experience night before last.

I’ve been cleaning up my home, getting rid of objects which give evil spirits power. This is an extremely important thing to do. Praying for help with your problems while living in a house full of demon doors is like bailing out a boat without plugging the giant hole in the hull.

If you don’t cleanse your house, expect problems, and don’t be surprised if God refuses to help you with them. That’s the bottom line.

Recently, I threw out a bunch of literature I considered problematic. I threw out works by Plato and Homer, as well as some other Greek idolaters and/or sexual degenerates. Night before last, I realized I had two items which might be just as bad.

A couple of years ago, before my dad became so demented he could not drive, I got him a gift certificate from Barnes & Noble. I don’t recall the occasion. Maybe Father’s Day. He complained that he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to read, but he decided to drive to the store anyway. He came home with some neat bookends: heavy plaster casts of Homer and Socrates. He liked them a lot.

The bookends came with us to Ocala. I put them in my storage room along with a lot of other things I didn’t know what to do with.

Here is what occurred to me: if Homer’s pantheist works aren’t fit to be in a Christian house, and Plato’s praises of homosexual predation shouldn’t be here, why should I keep images of Homer and Socrates?

It bothered me to think of throwing the bookends out. I pitied my dad. He was once a big, strong, forceful man with a high IQ and power over other people, but in his last years, he was confused, and he needed help. He seemed to shrink. He used to walk around with his pants rolled up, just as the poem says.

I remember when he showed the bookends to me. He was very pleased with what he had done, and he seemed to want me to approve and share in his pleasure.

My dad doesn’t deserve pity. He is an immortal being with a perfect mind and eternal youth. He is invulnerable. He lives in a realm of joy and love. I forget this, and I feel sorry for him. I felt like throwing the bookends out would be like throwing my dad out and forgetting him.

I decided to get rid of them anyway. I didn’t hesitate for a minute. God has a problem with hellenism, and that means taking part in it, even in small ways, creates serious, annoying problems for me. It creates obstacles for God. That’s the last thing I want to do. I want the channel to be wide open.

I can’t take garbage to the dump on Thursdays, so I got out of bed and put the bookends in the garage with things I intended to take later. I have found that God will honor this just as well as taking things to the dump or destroying them.

I went to sleep, and hours later, I woke up suddenly. I heard a male voice yell, “BOH!”, as if someone had been kicked very suddenly and very hard from behind. I don’t know if “boh” means anything. It means “where” in Hebrew, but that may not have any significance. It may just have been an exclamation of surprise or pain.

Anyway, right after this happened, I felt a very powerful change.

I have a problem with my nose clogging up at night. It’s nowhere near as bad as it once was, but it happens. Right after I heard the sound, I realized my head was wide open. Not only was I not congested; I felt completely open and empty, as though someone had gone in with a tool and enlarged the passages in my head.

It was so extreme, it made a great impression on me.

It’s as if the bookends had been giving power to a spirit that wanted to take away my air.

I’ve had a little congestion since then, so I can’t say I was permanently delivered, but it was very, very odd.

Today the bookends go to the dump. My dad won’t care. They’re not his, and he doesn’t care about them in heaven. If he could come back, he would throw them out, himself.

I don’t want to suffer needlessly all my life and then get to heaven and find there were painful problems that dogged me to the end when I could have gotten victory simply by throwing unimportant things out.

My ideas must sound crazy to lukewarm Christians. Most Christians have convinced themselves of some very stupid notions. They think Satan and evil spirits aren’t real and shouldn’t be discussed, which is remarkable, since Jesus is a spirit, and he cast out evil spirits here on earth. They think they can melt into the world’s culture and still please God. They see nothing wrong with exposing themselves to poisonous entertainment created by people who hate Christianity. They use drugs and fornicate and expect God to give them every blessing in the Bible.

The earth is a battleground, we are at war, and we live behind enemy lines. We’re surrounded. It’s very serious. A lax attitude brings greatly diminished results, and it can result in damnation, even if you think you’re a Christian and you’ve been baptized.

We sleep with our eyes open, every day, like Samson on the lap of Delilah. We cuddle up to our enemies and expect them and God to treat us well.

God is throwing many, many people into hell every day, and we act like everything is fine. Most people go to hell, and things are not fine.

I keep asking God what else I should get rid of. I look forward to more protection and help, as well as a closer relationship with him. I don’t care about the things I lose. They’re snares and stumbling blocks. I want the pearl of great price.

I find I don’t miss the things I discard. For example, I don’t miss my blues or jazz CD’s at all. I am very slightly unhappy about throwing out a collection that took so long and cost so much to put together, but it’s not a big deal. I wasn’t listening to the disks anyway, so what have I lost?

Getting rid of things can be very empowering. This week I took the tractor and ripped out a bunch of shrubs beside my house. They were old and tough and hard to deal with. I took ownership instead of continuing to defer to former owners who have zero authority here. I’ve installed smaller shrubs that will look better and be much easier to care for. I should have done it sooner. This is my house. It’s not their house. It’s not my dad’s house. I own 100% of it.

I’m strongly inclined to get rid of my mother’s crystal. She liked Waterford. As a heterosexual man, I don’t see much appeal in expensive crystal, and even if I did, Waterford is heavy and lacking in elegance. I feel like selling every piece, just so I won’t have to carry or wash it again.

I want to get rid of my mother’s china. She had two sets. My sister got the newer, nicer set, and I got the old set. It’s very tasteful, but when am I going to use china? She had two sets of silverware, and I got the Fifties-looking set that looks dated and a little tacky. I think it clashes with the china. I’d like to get rid of the silverware, too. I don’t like silver flatware. Polishing it is a nightmare.

My mother was a wonderful lady, but her taste was not everything it could have been. She grew up in Eastern Kentucky, and she never got completely past it. There were a lot of hits, but there were also a lot of misses.

I have a huge fruitwood china cabinet. It’s about 6 feet long, and it’s extremely heavy. I do not like it. It’s in a room–my unused dining room–where I should really put some tools and a bench. I’m contemplating putting it in a consignment store.

My grandmother had a lot of nice stuff, because she and my grandfather never divorced, and my grandfather, who was very well off, let her spend money on her house. My dad was extremely cheap with my mother. She bought things from estates and outlets, and it showed. Their marital problems led to losses. The only items of any quality that remain are the crystal, the china, some silver, a filthy Chippendale chair, and the china cabinet. It’s not worth curating, to put it mildly.

Dysfunctional families start over, again and again. They don’t build. Often, the things they pass on are not worth keeping. It’s better to dump this depressing stuff and start from scratch.

I don’t think spirits have attached themselves to my mother’s paltry collection of feminine treasures, but bad memories have. Also, I really believe I’m going to be living in Tennessee before very long, and I can’t stand the thought of paying movers to haul junk I don’t want.

You probably have toxic objects in your home. There are plenty of Christians out there who have testified to the importance of getting rid of them. I hope you’ll consider it. It’s not our imagination. The things you possess can ruin your life.

Quit Whining About Enemies You Feed and Arm

I’m enjoying my adventures with the propane grill and my new Coleman propane burner.

The first rib eye I prepared using the grill was very good, but I felt it needed more heat, and I also wanted to see if I could fry with the grill. I have been experimenting.

I bought myself a cast iron griddle from Walmart. I have cast iron skillets, but I prefer to have a dedicated piece of cookware for frying steaks, because they leave residue behind. I figured I would lay the griddle on the grill, turn the grill up, and see what happened.

The short version is this: the grill will not get hot enough to fry a steak. When you fry steak in butter, you need to be on the verge of burning the meat. When you get the heat right, it puts a dark brown crust on the steak, without ruining the inside. By “ruining,” I mean medium-well or better. Anything past medium is a catastrophe. The griddle I bought fits the grill like it was made for it, and it would do a bang-up job on a huge mess of eggs, but for meat, it won’t work, even when you remove the heat deflectors from above the burners.

It may be possible to lower the griddle farther if I remove the rack, but I haven’t tried it yet.

I also tried making the burners hotter.

My grill came with a propane regulator that’s not adjustable. You get the pressure you get. I looked around on the web, and I learned that there are adjustable regulators that improve grill performance in some cases. I went to Lowe’s and bought one. It’s a Loco-brand regulator, and you have to admit, that sounds promising. It’s for a turkey fryer. When I tried to use it on the grill, I found that the flames went out when I turned it up. I don’t know if leftists have somehow managed to rig grills up so they can’t be hacked, or what. It’s the kind of thing they love to do. Anyway, I haven’t managed to get more heat yet.

I also got a Coleman butane stove. This is a single burner the size of a phone book. You insert a tiny can of butane in it, and you get 7200 BTU’s. It’s very light. Maybe they realize people will put them in backpacks.

I had a hard time getting fuel. For some reason, Walmarts run out. I got around this by ordering it for pickup at a local Walmart. That way, they had to hold it for me. Today I tried it on a porterhouse. I couldn’t find a good deal on a rib eye.

Summary: it’s fantastic. It’s more than hot enough to put a good crust on a steak. Zero complaints. I need a small griddle so I can stop using my Griswold skillet, but other than that, I’m ready to go. The stove is a blast to use. You can carry it (and its fuel) in one hand. You can put it on any flat surface while you cook, because it won’t heat anything under it. It’s stupendous. Now I can fix steaks without cleaning the kitchen.

If you love frying meat on the stove, but you hate the mess, check the Coleman stove out. You won’t be sorry.

For under $150, I can barbecue as well as anyone, and I will never have to touch charcoal.

In other news, I threw some books out today. Nice segue, I know. God keeps showing me that I have opened doors for Satan, and one way I do this is by holding onto objects Satan likes. I threw out my blues CD’s a while back. I have since thrown out most of my jazz. Today I got rid of books that were unsavory.

Satan has a really neat way of getting us to approve filth. He tells us it’s culture. Example: the incredible obsession with nudity during the Renaissance. Most parents would have a problem with a son who put photographs of naked men on the wall in his room, but how many would complain about a picture of Michelangelo’s David? Right now, you can walk into a chapel in the Vatican–a Christian church–and see a vast array of naked figures on the walls and ceiling. Imagine going in there and trying to hold up a Playboy centerfold. They’d throw you in the street. Imagine trying to go in naked. The cognitive dissonance is thunderous, but no one seems to notice.

The word “renaissance” means “rebirth.” Europeans idolized the ancient Greeks, and they copied them slavishly. The Greeks loved dirty art, and Europeans revived their trashy passion. While rediscovering science and math, Europeans gave a new birth to some things that were better left dead.

Europeans revered Plato and Socrates, even though they were, by any reasonable standard, perverts and sexual predators. They revered Homer even though his work glorified paganism and kept its false gods before the public eye.

A couple of years ago, I decided to go back over some books I avoided reading in college. I took a course called Literature Humanities at Columbia University, and I didn’t do much of the reading. My professor thought I was an eccentric genius, so he didn’t fail me, but I did very little work, and I didn’t go to class. Another reason I didn’t fail: along with a huge percentage of my peers, I cheated on the final exam. Some of the instructors released the questions in advance, and naturally, people got together in groups and worked on the answers before taking the test.

I used to feel bad about cheating. I only recall one definite instance of cheating on tests in my life. I may also have cheated somewhat on Columbia’s Contemporary Civilazation final. I can’t recall. Through the irresponsibility of the instructors, many people had the test questions, so things happened.

I never cheated in order to do better than other people. I only cheated to avoid failing a course. Maybe that’s not as bad.

Anyway, I bought horrible books by people like Homer and Aeschylus, and I forced myself to read them. I bought Plato’s Symposium, which is about a bunch of homosexual predators getting together to see who can be the most pedantic. I bought a number of things. I bought Vergil.

God has been telling me not to expose myself to occult materials. He even told me to quit watching Marvel movies, because–let’s face it–characters that defy physics are using occult power, even if Stan Lee blamed gamma rays. I shouldn’t watch movies about occult phenomena. I should stay away from entertainment involving witchcraft, curses, and so on. A day or two ago, God asked me something: how are works by pantheists any different from movies about witches and vampires? They’re not. They celebrate false gods and magic.

I decided to get rid of Homer, Vergil, Aeschylus, Ovid, Euripides, and whatever else seemed problematic.

I have my dad’s old Great Books of the Western World set. This is a bunch of classic works, in a collection like an encyclopedia. I hated to pull Homer and Vergil out of it and put them in a trash bag and ruin the set, which had been preserved for 50 years, but I did it.

I felt some small twinges of misgiving about discarding the works themselves. It seemed strange for an educated, cultured person to throw out Homer and Plato. Satan had part of me convinced that it was somehow wrong for a person with a proper respect for humanity’s accumulated knowledge to throw out ancient books. I was right to throw them out, though. The fact that trash is thousands of years old doesn’t turn it into treasure.

Plato and his pals used to adopt kids and sodomize them repeatedly until they got too old to be attractive. The compensation was tutoring. This was considered okay in ancient Greece. I’m sure parents were ecstatic when they learned that great men wanted to use their sons like women. It must have been a tremendous honor. How can centuries of tradition turn such perverted, Satanic notions into things we should keep on our bookshelves in Christian homes in 2019?

It’s all at the dump now. No going back.

It’s very strange that we’re so comfortable with nude art. I’ll tell you something that may amaze you: it’s possible to create great art without nudity. It’s okay to paint a woman with her clothes on. It doesn’t make you less of an artist.

I’ve taken a number of figure-drawing classes. We used naked models. It wasn’t actually helpful for people to be naked before us. It’s not like clothing on a model will prevent you from learning. The body is very simple. Clothing is complex. We would have learned more from drawing clothed models. Drawing clothing takes skill. Leonardo used to do studies of fabrics so he would be prepared to paint clothed people. This type of art is called “drapery.” You can look it up.

Arty people sometimes claim nude art is somehow pure, and that it’s abnormal to be stimulated by it. Yeah, okay. And if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.

I recall reading Chuck Jones’s autobiography. He told a huge lie in it. He wrote about going to art school. He said he was very excited when he accidentally saw part of a girl’s upper leg outside of class, but he didn’t feel anything when he saw totally nude models. What a crock! Regardless of what men who have taken art classes may have told you, a naked woman is just as exciting to look at in a class as she would be in a bedroom. I’m pretty sure I was never late to a figure-drawing class, and it wasn’t because I was naturally punctual. I wanted to see who was going to show up naked for us. Whenever the model turned out to be a man, I was very unhappy.

The earth is a dirty place, and we are very used to uncleanness. Much of the time, we don’t even notice it until someone points it out to us.

Yesterday, I found a new Youtube creator. He’s a guy who was homeless for a long time. He was addicted to cough syrup, of all things. The active ingredient, dextromethorphan, causes hallucinations. That’s kind of sad, because it was supposed to be a harmless alternative to codeine. Anyway, he had a very, very hard time getting free, even though demons were cast out of him more than once.

He mentioned a problem he had with a poster. He was living in a Christian shelter by choice, to avoid temptation. One day he bought a Beatles poster in order to decorate his wall. He said his peace disappeared. He had to get rid of the poster.

He talked about a famous exorcist named Bob Larson. You can see this man on Youtube. I don’t endorse him, because he’s a showman and he makes money from exorcism, but he may still know a few things. According to the former cough syrup addict, Larson says demons draw power from objects. He says a man who was being exorcised kept looking at an object, and the demon told Larson it was because the object gave him power.

Whether Larson is generally sound or not, I can’t tell you, but he is probably right much of the time. Even the worst preachers are mostly right.

The man who made the video says you need to do an inventory of your house and get rid of anything that isn’t godly. How about that?

I had never thought of objects giving demons power. I think of them as things that stink and draw flies (as in “lord of the flies”), or as signs that advertise openings to demons, or as doors. I suppose it makes sense to see evil objects as sources of power for demons. A lease gives a tenant power to stay in an apartment, so if an object gives a demon the right to stay in you, it gives him a kind of power. Authority is power.

The Beatles, in case you didn’t know, were very evil. They promoted drugs and heathen religions while fighting Christianity and Christian morality. Rock and roll really is the devil’s music. It’s not just something ignorant people say.

You can’t have it. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Not unless you’re okay with very serious problems God refuses to solve for you. Grow up and get rid of it. Stop holding onto a dead lifestyle that won’t even exist in heaven. You’re never going to hear a Beatles song up there, so why hold onto them now?

I don’t want demons in my life. I don’t even like roaches, and roaches are much nicer than demons.

I expect to see an improvement in my life now that I’ve discarded the writings of perverts and pantheists. There has always been a conflict between Hellenism and Christianity. Christians are supposed to be holy, and “holy” means “belonging to God.” We can’t have everything defeated and lost people have. They can watch TV shows we can’t watch. They can smoke things we can’t smoke. They can go places we can’t go. That’s just how it is. They get to do these things because they’re going to hell.

To keep one foot in the world is to give your enemies power over you. We do this, and then we cry to God when things go wrong. “I’m a good person. Why did this happen to me?” Often, it happened because you invited it.

You may wonder why God doesn’t tell us about the dangers of forbidden objects, explicitly and repeatedly. That’s simple. We were supposed to be full of the Holy Spirit. Two thousand years ago, people knew this. They were supposed to pass it on. Each generation of Christians was supposed to be baptized with the Holy Spirit and pray in tongues every day, and God was supposed to teach every one of us through tongues and other gifts of the Spirit. Our forebears gave the Holy Spirit up, so we weren’t taught. This is why we’re ignorant. God held up his end of the bargain. He gave us the Holy Spirit, and he promised–look it up–that he would teach us all things. Human beings are the reason it didn’t pan out.

God doesn’t automatically fix everything we ruin. He has done enough for us already. He is 0% responsible for our problems. That’s something we really need to learn. No one is even a tiny bit responsible for what other beings choose to do. God is not obligated to run around behind us, saying, “You dropped this.” He already allowed himself to be tortured to death for us. That ought to be enough. It’s a wonder he does anything at all for us.

Look how most American Christians live. They listen to evil music. They fornicate. They watch filthy entertainment. They get drunk and high. They participate in astrology. They worship athletes and entertainers. They celebrate Halloween, which is tantamount to begging Satan to hurt your children. We put idols in our houses because we think they’re art. We carry good luck charms. We amass big collections of recordings by musicians who belong to Satan. Then we wonder why we get cancer. We wonder why our kids become addicts.

My sister is a drug addict, and she is as full of hate as anyone I have ever known. She has no impulse control. She is sadistic. She abuses other people. She is the worst liar I have ever known. Being around her is torture. Nonetheless, when bad things happen to her, such as losing her home or winding up in a homeless shelter, she feels like a victim and tries to find someone else to blame. Here’s what I say: “What’s happening is normal and right and to be expected. This is exactly what’s supposed to happen when you do these things.”

The other day I realized I would much rather see her die than be subjected to her abuse ever again. That’s really something. The family is unanimous. My mother, who was very kind, asked God to take my sister if she wouldn’t change, and my dad said it would be better for her to die than to go on as she was.

To some extent, virtually everyone is like my sister. We cause our own problems, and then we tell everyone we’re victims.

I am not a victim. I’m a bad person who has done stupid things, and I have suffered the natural and correct repercussions. I may have been a victim when I was very young, but that was a very long time ago, and it has no bearing on my guilt or innocence today.

Even if other beings have sinned against me, and they will be judged for those sins, I still deserved what they did. It doesn’t mean they didn’t sin. It just means I should have expected to be sinned against.

I should not say, “Why me?”, when things go wrong. I say it when things go well.

Anyhow, the Greek rapists of boys are no longer featured prominently in my library.

Maybe this will be helpful to you. If you have a curse you can’t get rid of, maybe you’re the one doing the cursing.

Pawn Shop Beauty Purrs Like a Kitten

Today has gone well.

A while back, I bought a Baldor 332B buffer with a Baldor G14 stand. I paid $250. You could probably buy this combination new for $1100, not including the safety switch that was bolted to the one I bought. I felt $250 was a very good deal.

When I got the buffer home and turned it on, it rumbled. It didn’t squeal, which is what I would have expected from bad bearings. It just seemed unbalanced, like it wanted to move in a circle in the plane of the wheels’ rotation.

I put a dial indicator on it and turned the shaft, and it showed less than a thousandth of runout. When I turned the motor on, the indicator went nuts, suggesting something was seriously wrong. A bearing that causes problems at 1800 RPM may work very nicely at 20.

I ordered myself some stuff from Caswell Plating, which is a magnificent website for anyone who wants to buff or plate things. I now have assorted good-quality compounds plus enough wheels to allow me to avoid mixing compounds on the same wheel. I also ordered some sealed NSK bearings.

Today I put the bearings in. As usual, I made mistakes which taught me new things.

Grinder and buffer bearings are pressed onto armature shafts. They aren’t held on by collars. Baldor will make a grinder shaft a certain size, and then they will install bearings, the internal diameters of which are actually smaller than the diameter of the shaft. The use presses to shove the bearings onto the shaft, and the inner races of the bearings have to stretch to get over it. This creates a tight fit.

I had to push the old bearings off and push the new ones on. I should have used my arbor press, which is a fairly sensitive tool, but it’s not on a stand right now, so I used a hydraulic press. It’s easier to put up a photo than explain.

The first time I tried to press a bearing off, I didn’t clean the shaft first, so the bearing got hung up on the rust and crud. That was a dumb mistake. I put it back in place and reinstalled the armature. Then I ran the buffer and used an old grinding belt to remove the rust. After that, I polished it with emery cloth.

I put the shiny new armature in the hydraulic press and put 3-in-One oil on the armature and let it run into the bearings. They came off with no problems. The reverse procedure shoved them right back on.

Everyone should have a hydraulic press. At $160 from Harbor Freight, they are too cheap NOT to buy.

By the way, that red thing is a plastic case for Taiwanese impact sockets. It’s what all top buffer mechanics use to hold their armatures. The dust is imported from Austria, and it has special protective qualities.

Putting the buffer back together was no problem, and now it runs very smoothly, without rumbling. The bearings were definitely bad.

I stuck a couple of wheels on the buffer for a photo op. Still trying to decide whether I should clean it up. I could remove the pins holding the nameplate on, give it a neat paint job, and put the plate back on.

Now I have to figure out what to do with it. The Baldor stand is not good by itself. I can use it as it is, and I’ll probably be fine, but it’s not a brilliant move. Buffers are extremely dangerous. Unbelievably dangerous, considering how tame they look. I need to have a stand that will provide some resistance to movement.

I am not willing to screw the stand to the shop floor. I don’t have a floor plan together, so I know I’ll be moving the buffer, and I don’t want a workshop floor full of holes. My plan is to make a heavy wheeled base from plywood. I also plan to put a foot switch on it so I can turn the buffer off in a big hurry without reaching toward the wheels. The current safety switch requires you to fumble around with your hand not far from the wheels.

I’m thinking I may also throw a rope over a truss and attach it to the buffer. That will keep it from going anywhere if it decides to ramble. Not ideal, but much better than nothing.

You educate yourself, you do what appears to be reasonable, and you live with the risk. That’s how life works when you have tools.

I read a fascinating safety analysis written by two engineers, and they focused entirely on things like guards. Apparently, buffer movement is way down on the list of dangers. They concluded that guards make buffers more dangerous, which is amazing. They did tests and found that an object tangled in a buffer wheel can go around the buffer several times in spite of guards. It can also reach a linear speed over 10 times that of the wheel, so 420+ miles per hour. The possibility that a buffer might fall over doesn’t seem nearly as scary.

While I was learning about buffers, I learned something disconcerting: it’s unsafe to buff the insides of things with bench buffers. It’s much easier for a buffer to catch something when you buff the inside. If you were to buff a metal hoop, for example, the buffer might take it out of your hands and start spinning it. Bench buffers speed up buffing certain things, but they’re not for every job. When you have things that aren’t safe for bench buffers, you have to look to handheld tools, even though they’re slower.

I only have one really good handheld buffing tool. It’s an air buffer, which is like a die grinder that holds buffing tools. When I say “really good,” I’m not telling the truth. My 17-CFM compressor, which is enormous by home shop standards, can’t keep up with it. You buff and stop and buff and stop. It looks like I need to get an electric die grinder. They’re actually superior. They don’t quit over and over, and they have more torque.

So. New tool. More wheels or buffs or whatever. It never stops.

In other news, something very exciting happened today. I performed a healing. I was alone, so I didn’t get to heal someone else, but still, it was great. I woke up, and my shoulder was sore. It’s a chronic thing. It doesn’t prevent me from doing anything, but it’s annoying. I think it’s referred pain from my gallbladder, which has had minor problems. I don’t think my shoulder has had a physical problem of its own. Gallbladder issues often cause shoulder and back pain.

Anyway, I have been watching all sorts of healing videos. This morning I told the pain to leave, and I put my hand on myself and so on. I felt my shoulder a few seconds later, and the pain was almost gone. I kept working at it. Sometimes when you get a divine healing, you only get part of it at first, and you have to go on. This happened to Jesus, so it’s not a sign of failure. Anyway, I can’t find the soreness now.

The Bible says God will perfect (complete) that which concerns me. That’s in a psalm. It’s true, so there is no reason to stop when a prayer is partially answered or a curse or blessing doesn’t come to pass in its entirety.

I’ve healed myself (sloppy language, since I’m just a conduit) many times, but this time, it was very dramatic and fast.

I keep hoping God will use me to heal other people. I really hate spirits that cause problems that seem incurable, and I hate the fact that most Christians think doctors are better than God.

Maybe tomorrow or Sunday I’ll work on a buffer stand base. I have some ideas.

Six or Seven Impossible Things After Breakfast

I got another breakthrough today.

I was praying this morning, and I felt something moving around inside me. I felt tension and worry, and I knew they weren’t mine.

Years ago, I was afraid to tell people I had seen or felt demons, but now I’m pretty open about it, because I don’t have much respect for the unfounded opinions of ignorant people who think demons don’t exist. This morning, I experienced feelings I knew did not come from me, and that always means a demon is present.

As I have said before, we all have demons, unless there is someone somewhere who has managed to get so completely delivered he never has to battle them. You may not know you have demons, but they are there. Maybe you have an addiction. Maybe you have a disease caused by a demon. Maybe you’re mentally ill. You’re not special; demons are like ticks on dogs, and they are in your life no matter how holy you think you are.

I started asking God to tell me what kind of spirit was churning my insides, and after a while, I started thinking about envy. I didn’t expect that.

It’s embarrassing to talk about envy. Some iniquities are not embarrassing to talk about. It’s easy to admit you’re stubborn or that you have a bad temper, but no one wants to own up to envy. I hate envy. I don’t just hate it in others; I hate it in myself. I would never knowingly let it influence me. I consider it disgusting and contemptible. Still, there is a difference between hating an iniquity and not having it. You can have an iniquity you control, caused by a demon that won’t leave in spite of its inability to rule you. For example, there are bisexual Christian men who have not been delivered yet are faithful to their wives.

“Envy” is a word that isn’t defined well. Many of us think it’s the same thing as jealousy. I’m not talking about jealousy. I’m talking about something hostile. A jealous person will want what you have. An envious person will feel malice toward you because you have it. An envious person is less concerned about having blessings like yours than in seeing you lose what you have.

Leftism is inherently envious. Leftists love the idea of taking good things away from people who are more successful than they are, even if they, themselves, don’t prosper from the taking.

My high school French teacher said there was a difference between a Frenchman and an American. He said an American who saw someone driving a nice car would think, “I’d love to have a car like that some day.” A Frenchman would think, “I’d love to pull him out of that car and make him walk.”

I don’t know if that’s a fair generalization, but it shows what “envy” means.

I felt that God had spoken to me, so I used my supernatural weapons and cursed envy with defeat and told it to leave. Afterward, I felt like a balloon that had been partially deflated. Except for one brief period during which someone tried to provoke me, I have felt very good since doing battle with the demon. I feel somewhat drained, as though I had been expecting a jail sentence and received an acquittal.

The primary thing I felt because of the spirit’s presence wasn’t envy. It was tension. It felt like my insides were being twisted. I couldn’t rest. After the spirit was defeated, that all left me.

After I went through this, a surprising number of good things happened. I got started on some important work involving cleaning up files. I got proof my alarm was monitored, for my home insurer. I went through a ledger for a condominium association, called their management company, resolved a longstanding problem, and put a check in the mail. I made arrangements with my fixed wireless company so I could try a new Internet cell tower. I called Florida’s revenue department and got rid of a $15,000 invoice they sent me because of an error. I contacted the probate division of the clerk of the court and got advice on proceeding with the administration of my dad’s estate. I researched some legal points to help me with the work.

My dad and I worked things out so he had virtually nothing in his estate when he died, and when you have that type of estate, you can avoid formal probate. There was one account, however, that threatened to cause a problem. My dad was in charge of it, and I needed to get him replaced in order to be able to avoid probate. I could not find the papers for the account anywhere. I didn’t think they existed.

I went through his awful files for quite a while, and I couldn’t find anything. I still got a blessing, because I threw out pounds of papers that were just taking up space. I don’t need his correspondence with his old college writing professor, for example. I didn’t need files regarding a union contract he negotiated for a crane and rigging company.

I found emails from a couple of women who tried to hook him after he was past 80. Surprising and disgraceful. I can understand why an old man with dementia would want companionship, but the women have no excuse. Clearly, God protected me from them and saved my dad’s estate for me.

I researched the law in order to find out what to do about the account. I contacted the institution that holds the account. I saw that I really needed the papers.

I took another look in the files, and suddenly, the papers appeared. I found a document naming my dad’s successor, in case he died. I was hoping he named me, because it would make things simpler. His first choice was an aunt of mine. Not a problem. She passed years ago, so she was no longer eligible. The document named her successor. Another aunt. She died this year, a month after my dad. Then I saw the third name: mine!

I’m amazed that he named me. He never told me at the time. This was over 30 years ago, and as far as I know, at the time, he thought I was an idiot. He put two housewives on the list in front of me, which is not flattering, but at least I was in there somewhere.

I was all set. I filled out the proper forms, gathered the required documents, and emailed the financial institution. Within a few days or weeks, the account will be out of my dad’s name, and I’ll be controlling it. As soon as I get notification, I can file for administration without probate, and my dad’s estate will close in a hurry.

If I had gotten the probate mess rolling right after my dad died, my aunt, who was demented, would have been alive, and there would have been problems. She has been gone for two months. The delays I experienced with other estate-related matters took me past the date of her death, and now I won’t have to involve her or her family.

It’s as if a dam broke. So many things that needed to be done got done today.

Here’s something they don’t teach you in church: there are reasons why you have problems you can’t defeat, and usually, you’re to blame. No one likes to hear that. We all want to hear that God will bless us silly no matter what we do, as long as we have faith. We don’t want to repent or confess. The Bible says a curse does not alight without a cause, and the Bible is the word of God.

You may be doing things you shouldn’t be doing, like adultery, yoga, or astrology. Maybe you celebrate Halloween. You may own things that should not be in your house, like occult movie disks, games of chance, erotic materials, good luck charms, or idols. You may be associating too closely with people who are children of darkness; you may be sleeping with one every night and telling yourself you’re going to save that person for God through shacking up. I don’t know what your situation is, but you are definitely blocking God’s blessings in your life, and you are holding doors open for Satan so he can afflict your family.

Unless you’re exceptional, you surely harbor spirits that need to be cast out.

When you fail to clean up your life, curses linger on you. Blockages stand between you and things like health, financial prosperity, peace, marriage, and reproduction. Other people will oppress you. They will control or take what you own. You will have enemies who win all the time, even though you pray.

Every time you cast out a demon or throw out something God hates, you will get a breakthrough. The more you work at cleaning your life up, the more strongholds will fall.

You’re like a ridge of snow, holding back your own avalanche of blessings.

This stuff works. People don’t know about it because most preachers are ignorant and weak.

The other day, I was reading Jude. It describes modern pastors perfectly. It calls leaders who spew fables “clouds without water.” In the Bible, the Hebrew children followed a cloud during the day. Water represents the Holy Spirit, who guides people through prophecy and prayer in tongues. Most preachers aren’t baptized with the Holy Spirit, and almost none of those who are speak in tongues enough to get guidance.

Jude also said such people were “carried about of winds.” We are supposed to be the head, not the tail. The head leads; it doesn’t follow. Most preachers blow with the wind. They let the untutored crowds lead, because the crowds pay their salaries. In the Bible, winds represent spirits.

Jude called such people “trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots.” In the Bible, trees are people. Psalm 1 says a righteous man is like a tree planted by the rivers of water (tongues and prophecy) which brings forth its fruit in its time. Jesus said, “Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” You may have heard that “fruit” means “works,” but it actually means people. Bad preachers bring forth bad fruit. “Twice dead” means bad preachers were dead before they were saved and that they gave up their new lives by going back to sin.

Jude uses the phrase “reefs at your feasts” to describe corrupt leaders. The King James Bible says they are “spots,” but it’s a mistranslation. The actual Greek word means “reefs.” It’s perfect. Think of the way a reef works. They don’t stand up out of the water and scare you into steering around them. When you approach a reef, you think everything is fine until it rips the hull out from under you. That’s how preachers like Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland are. They make people feel secure, and then those people crash on the rocks because their Christianity is a farce.

My old pastor, Rich Wilkerson, was a major reef. He would pat you on the back and tell you how great you were, while he knew you were destroying yourself. Useless. Worse than useless. A merely useless pastor can’t lead you to ruin.

You have to let the Holy Spirit clean you out. Faith is useless without obedience and holiness. You need real knowledge. You need to learn about demons and get free of them. You need to go through your house and throw a lot of things out. You need to think of all the people you associate with and start cutting people off.

I am very tired. I did a lot of things that were not enjoyable today, but it was a wonderful day of victory, nonetheless.

Today I was thinking about people I used to interact with as a political blogger. Almost none continue to be part of my life. I wonder how many laugh at me and think I’ve gone nuts. I also wonder how many of them are posting the kinds of things I post, saying their lives are beautiful and that things keep getting better. Precious few, I promise you. They’re still chasing their tails, calling liberals “asshats” and thinking posting memes and linking to diatribes will fix America. They’re going nowhere. America won’t be fixed, and the squabbling and vitriol will never cease.

Some people who say they’ve seen hell say the people there never stop fighting. It reminds me of the political fray. It never slows down, and there is never any real progress.

Thanks to God and his patience, I finally live in peace. I don’t punch a clock or go to an office. I don’t drive in traffic. I don’t get acid indigestion from reading the news, because I don’t read it. My financial needs are met, better than I expected them to be. I don’t have a single person in my life who has the power to make me miserable. I spend time in God’s presence every day, and he keeps making my life better.

You tell me who’s nuts.

I was insane to get caught up in politics and online verbal abuse. I was piling hot coals on myself. America is great, but it’s not where my joy, safety, or prosperity come from, and it’s definitely going to go down the toilet regardless of what we do. I depend on a source that never runs dry. I wish I had been smart enough to come around 25 years ago.

The people who are blogging about politics or taking sticks to rallies and having urine thrown on them by murderous Antifa punks aren’t doing anything worthwhile. They’re making things worse. They’re wasting their lives. None of that stuff has has any value. On the list of ways to waste your life doing something you think is important, it may even surpass working as an actor or professional athlete.

Conservatives and Christians come home from fights with Antifa bleeding and in pain. Seems like they always lose. It appears to me that the conservatives who are really defeating Antifa are at home enjoying God’s presence and his help. The best way to beat Antifa is to be a person they can’t touch, who continues to live a blessed life no matter what they’re throwing at people this week.

I expect to keep coming back and posting more stories of progress and increased blessing. You can get on the same track, any time you want.

Don’t wait as long as I did.