High Hopes for December

I am still looking forward to seeing The Last Restoration in action at an upcoming event. In case you haven’t been following my blog, TLR is a charismatic group that provides people with proper baptisms and helps them to operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They don’t just pray for you and give you advice; they expect you to do the same things for others. If you get healed at a TLR event, they will expect you to turn around and get someone else healed.

One of the big problems with modern charismatic Christianity is selfishness. We don’t go to church to serve God. We go to help ourselves. We want to be forgiven. We want to be healed physically. We want God to give us money, spouses, and houses. We want to feel better. We want to be saved from hell.

That’s not how it’s supposed to work.

The other day, I saw a link to a TLR video criticizing the sinner’s prayer. I was amazed. I wondered what they could possibly have found wrong with it. It’s the prayer people say in order to receive salvation.

I took a look, and it turned out they had a point. The sinner’s prayer is about salvation. You confess, forgive, say you believe, and ask for forgiveness and salvation. You do not beg God to help him give your life to him. If you don’t ask Jesus to help you follow him, praying the sinner’s prayer is selfish!

We don’t want people to go to hell, so we run around making them say the prayer. We think this is the most important thing we can do, but is it? Jesus said he would return after the gospel of the kingdom was preached to all peoples, but we are focusing way too much on the gospel of salvation, which is not the same thing. A pimp can pray the sinner’s prayer and get back in his fancy car and go back to work. We’re supposed to repent and have the Holy Spirit put the kingdom of God inside us.

I felt selfish when I thought about the video, but then I remembered something. When I turned back to God in 2007 and started going to Trinity Church in Miami, I wanted to serve.

Twice in my life, I have decided to start attending church. Both times, I expected to be helped and guided by people who knew what they were doing and could put me on the right path. Both times, I was wrong.

When I joined Trinity, I became an armorbearer. I joined the prison ministry. I joined the prayer team. I drove buses to homeless shelters to bring people to services. I cooked. I showed up to help them build a set for a drama production. I did lots of stuff.

As an armorbearer, I was walled off, the way an oyster walls off an irritating piece of sand in its shell. The prison ministry went nowhere and did nothing at all, and the supervising pastor ran off because he realized the church was jerking him around. The church quit supporting the buses. They drove me out of the kitchen. I gave up on the drama team because they dropped part of a set on me and nearly killed me. They were unsafe and inept, and they would not listen to correction.

When I moved to New Dawn Ministries, things went well at first, and then I got walled off again.

I have also made outreaches in other very significant ways.

I had some selfish desires when I was at Trinity; no doubt about it. On the other hand, I tried very hard to serve. Sometimes they made it impossible, and other times, they merely made it unpleasant and pointless. Same goes for New Dawn.

After I left New Dawn, I felt that God did not want me to join any more churches or serve any more pastors. I still believe these things. Pastors do a tremendous amount of harm. They are very effective obstacles.

I have been somewhat too hard on myself, remembering the selfish desires very well and forgetting my sincere efforts to serve.

I feel that over the last couple of years, I have forgotten about service, or at least I have put it on the back burner. Jesus didn’t go to the cross so I could have a big house and hide from the world every day. He wanted me to help him reach others. The Bible says this is the reason why we don’t drop dead and go to heaven as soon as we ask for salvation. It makes sense. What other reason could God have for leaving us in this filthy place, surrounded by hate?

The driving reason that makes me want to see TLR at work is a desire to get my baptism done correctly and obtain whatever supernatural freedom and power I was supposed to get the first time around. That’s fine, but without more, it’s selfish. The video about the sinner’s prayer reminded me that there was a price. I’m going to have to have some involvement in evangelism.

I don’t look forward to standing on the sidewalk with grinning Danish people, trying to get random individuals to submit to prayer. I am way too shy to accost strangers, and in Florida, there is always the possibility of a shooting. Still, I have to reach people in some way or other, or I am wasting my time here on earth.

God’s power is like electricity, and electricity won’t flow well without a completed circuit to ground. The people we help are the ground.

I think TLR is the real deal. I don’t think they have every piece of the puzzle, but they seem to be right about what they’re right about, and they appear to heal people.

I saw an interesting video the other day. They were in an airport in Russia. A young man had a disgusting hand problem. A bone in his hand was loose, and it could be seen pushing up the skin when he manipulated it. Torben Sondergaard prayed for him briefly, and the bone stopped moving. That was really something.

TLR coaches Christians who have already spent a lot of time praying for the sick. Their disciples say they generally failed to get healings in the past, but after the TLR training, they get them quickly and often. That interests me. I find I have to push a lot to get healed. I have to pray and then spend a lot of time praising and thanking. It seems I’m doing something wrong. I’m working too hard.

I don’t know how well their methods work on longtime Christians. Another healer reports that it’s easier to get unbelievers healed than Christians. He says we stay in our sins, and it blocks our healing. You can see this in Isaiah 59. He believes God gives unbelievers more slack, because they don’t know what they’re doing wrong. Does TLR have the same problem? I’ll bet they do. We’ll find out.

I’m the world’s worst evangelist. Unless you count my dad’s questionable request for salvation, I have never gotten a single person to accept Jesus. I’m tired of having a terrible sales presentation.

One of my oldest friends is homosexual and solicits masochist partners on perverted websites, and I can’t tell him for a fact that I can set him free. I know other people who need help, and I can’t promise fast relief. It would be nice to have something stronger and faster to offer.

We have to give our whole lives to Jesus. That’s a fact. We have the idea that if we move a few inches closer to him, our lives will go smoothly. In truth, it invites attack without preparing us to deal with it. A lot of our defeats are caused by our refusal to jump into the deep end.

Derek Prince said something interesting in one of his books. People think the baptism with the Holy Spirit will end their problems, but he said you don’t how what spiritual warfare is until you get the baptism. It’s a provocation. Unless you follow up, it’s like putting on an army uniform, insisting on living behind enemy lines, and turning down weapons.

I’ve learned there are additional things I have to get rid of. I call it “anger porn.”

Ever watch a Steven Seagal movie? How about Jack Reacher? How about violent Marvel movies? Ever watch people shoot criminals on Youtube? This stuff feeds self-pity and anger.

Anger porn movies often follow a common plot. A very, very bad person does something extremely cruel to someone the hero cares about, like John Wick’s ridiculous puppy. The hero finds out, and then he spends the rest of the movie working up to the scene where he doles out incredible cruelty to the villain. How many times have you seen it? The villain gets burned alive, crushed to death, slowly torn in half…something that would be a horror to watch, but for the earlier scenes in which he provoked extreme anger.

Moviemakers and TV people set us up to enjoy cruelty. They even make torture acceptable. How many times have you seen someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger torture someone? Americans are supposedly kind people who find torture repugnant, but at the movies, we root for it, and it makes us feel satisfied.

I have a self-pity problem. I know it. Without realizing it, I have used it to excuse all sorts of things. I overeat in order to comfort myself, because somewhere in my heart, I feel that life has been unfair to me. I say harsh things in order to punish people. I have cruel thoughts. I do things I should not, because I feel that past mistreatment makes them justified.

If you knew me, you wouldn’t think I was like that. I try to be nice to people and treat them fairly. These negative things are all very muted, and I fight them. Nonetheless, the drives are still there.

Self-pity and cruelty are siblings. If you pity yourself, you feel that cruelty is not only permissible but virtuous. You tell yourself rage is “righteous anger.” You make lots of excuses for yourself. BLM and Antifa are self-pity movements, and the small number of conservatives who are reacting with racism and hate are also motivated by self-pity.

Self-pity leads to jealousy. It leads to taking pleasure in the suffering of people who have things you think you have been cheated out of. It leads to stealing and vandalism. It’s a big deal. Rioters riot because of self-pity. They want to “get even” with far-off, faceless Caucasians or Jews or Asian storeowners who keep them down and seem to own everything.

Self-pity interferes with confession and repentance, which are gateways to peace, love, and freedom. Self-pity walls demons in and gives them job security. It’s like tenure.

I am all done with superhero movies, which are stuffed to bursting with egregious cruelty. I don’t care what Thanos or Lex Luthor has done. It’s not helpful to me to applaud while either of them is dismembered or boiled or whatever.

If you keep a door open, you can’t complain about the rats in your house.

I just threw out the only remaining DVDs I considered problematic, from the standpoint of cruelty and anger. One was an old James Caan movie called Thief. I also found a The Family Guy DVD set hiding in a box. I believe I bought it while my cable was out due to a hurricane. Sick stuff. I found a The Twilight Zone box set, which I also threw out. Too much occult content.

Derek Prince pointed out something interesting. God told the Jews to get rid of cursed objects in order to avoid being destroyed along with them. Fine with me. Anything is better than being on God’s bad side. God himself tried to kill Moses for failing to circumcise his son, and I don’t think I’m a bigger favorite than Moses.

I’m glad I don’t have tattoos God hates! You can’t just throw those out.

Christianity doesn’t work very well for most of us, but on the other hand, we do so many things wrong, there is no way we can blame the faith itself. It reminds me of what I say about recipes. If I give you a recipe, and you make changes when you cook it, you have no business coming back to me later and complaining about it. You didn’t really use my recipe, so you don’t know what it’s actually like. If you make up your own recipe for Christianity, you can’t comment on the validity of the faith.

I would like to continue getting rid of the things I mixed into Christianity, and I would like to keep gathering things I’m leaving out. I believe getting rid of cursed objects and practices is powerful, and I expect to get good results from outreach, too.

Maybe one day we’ll start doing Christianity nearly right, and then Jesus will be able to return for a spotless bride, as the Bible predicts.

If you read Ephesians 5, I think you will find confirmation that what I’m saying is right.

Fresh Threshold Crossed

This is an interesting day. My dad has forgotten how to make breakfast, and he has also forgotten what he usually eats.

For years, he has been getting up and making himself scrambled fake eggs, turkey “bacon,” and toast. He has a special stainless skillet. He can’t use Teflon because if he burns it accidentally, the fumes can kill my pets. He has been handling his own breakfast needs one way or another ever since I was a kid, and now, at least for today, he can’t do it. Maybe tomorrow he’ll remember again.

I have to adjust. Cooking real food for him would be time-consuming, and I have other things I have to deal with in the mornings. For example, I now have to go in the bathroom while he showers and prevent certain problems from arising. I am also wiping kitchen surfaces with a weak bleach solution and bringing him the clothes he is supposed to wear every day. If I simply hang clothes in his closet, he will wear them multiple times without putting them in the laundry.

I’m going to get some sort of prepared frozen stuff we can throw in the microwave. It will do for now. Maybe I can come up with something better later.

Another problem with cooking for him is that he would expect me to eat with him, and that’s something I want to limit. His manners have never been great, and things have gotten worse. It may seem like a little thing to a person who has never looked after a demented person, but looking at chewed food and enduring other unmentionable issues during meals takes a toll on you if you do it every day.

I can imagine indignant people telling me I need to get up at 5 a.m. and make him fresh, healthy, delicious food every day. Here’s the thing: his diet is not going to be great from now on, and I’m okay with it. His diet has never been good, it was his own choice, and the damage is already done. As long as he enjoys what he eats, his diet is fine. He will be gone in a couple of years no matter what he eats.

You have to ration out the time you spend working with demented people unless you want to end up in a mental home, and all time spent with a demented person is work. The repetition, the insults, the gaslighting, and the mess and filth wear you down, and human beings can only take so much without rest.

Other people will try to make you feel bad about refusing to turn yourself into a slave, and your patient is likely to be chief among them, but you can’t pay any attention. Your life is more important than an aging parent’s. The natural and divine orders agree: the old are supposed to sacrifice themselves for the young, and doing it the other way around is a malignant aberration.

Imagine what would have happened had Isaac Newton given up his career to look after his mother. No, I’m not Isaac Newton, but everyone has a life and a purpose.

In more encouraging news, my dad is suddenly taking a better attitude toward assisted living.

While we were discussing his breakfast problem, he asked me if he was senile. He realized being unable to fix breakfast was not normal. I discussed his dementia with him again, and I brought up assisted living. I told him his care was starting to put demands on me which I could not meet. He tried to tell me I didn’t do much for him, so I reminded him of the things I do. I said the ALF I was considering was a short distance away, and that I could take him out for lunch several times a week. I reminded him that we had an appointment to visit the place tomorrow.

He was surprisingly agreeable. He said he would do what I thought was best. Of course, he won’t remember that later today. His behavior tomorrow will depend on how he feels then. We’ll have to take up the subject all over again, de novo, as appellate courts put it.

What made the difference? I think it was prayer. The last few days were very hard, and yesterday I did what God always tells me to do. He says, “Do what you already know to do, before complaining and asking for more.” I used the power of blessing and cursing, and I prayed for God to do specific things. After I prayed, I thanked and praised God for a very long time. This is a very strong tactic, and most of us don’t do it.

I was so weary, I was thinking of fasting until tomorrow morning. No food or water. I asked God about it, and he seemed to be against it, so I had breakfast. I got good results, so I think I did the right thing.

Nothing is worse than being tied to someone who is against God. That’s the big lesson I’ve learned. I didn’t choose my parents, but I chose to stay close to my dad after I knew what he was, and after that, every bad thing that happened between us was my fault. I know people who turned to God after marrying awful spouses. They suffer like crazy. Many people have abusive friends and bosses. We’re not supposed to start down these roads. It can be extremely costly.

Tomorrow we will visit the ALF, and we will see what happens. He will be staying there temporarily week after next, so that will give him another chance to get used to it.

I was thinking of putting him in a ritzier place farther away, but the people at the closer facility seem nicer, and it will be more convenient if I have to go get him for errands and outings. If it turns out to be a bad fit, I can move him to the other one.

If I had to choose, I would prefer to drop dead at 70 instead of putting my child through what I go through. Of course, I don’t have a child, so I don’t have to worry about that. My nonexistent wife and kids have been spared, so I will have to carry my own weight if something goes wrong.

I can say this: if anyone ends up caring for me, they won’t have to worry about being abused or gaslighted. I don’t have a perfect record, but basically, I am not like that. I don’t think I would compound the fun of changing diapers and mopping walls with insults and guilt trips. I hope not.

After several years of caregiving, I can’t imagine what it will be like to be free. I’ll be able to travel. I’ll have a clean house. I won’t have to hide upstairs when I eat. I will miss my dad sometimes, even though I will see him often, but on the whole, it will be like getting out of jail.

Looking into Respite Care

I have resumed looking into assisted living options for my dad.

We have started having hygiene issues which are too hard for me to cope with. There are some things a person can’t tolerate. I no longer believe in-home care will work. I can’t predict when he will have another problem, and he will not tell me when one occurs. By the time I find out about the next event, I’ll have a Herculean cleaning and disposal job ahead of me. Kiss a day and a half goodbye. I can’t afford that kind of time drain, and I haven’t mentioned the health risk to me or the misery of living with filth.

It’s very hard to figure out what to do with a person who has vascular dementia. The disease progresses quickly compared to Alzheimer’s, so what works one month may not work the next. I have been trying to choose among in-home options as well as assisted living.

My dad doesn’t have a temporary or trivial problem. My dad is dying. His condition is fatal, incurable, and irreversible. That has to be a fundamental premise all his care providers have to acknowledge. Doctors have a tendency to avoid talk of death until a patient burdens them, personally. Up until that time, they treat, treat, treat, wasting money, wearing down caregivers, and putting off important decisions until everyone involved is rushed.

Doctors like money, and they don’t like helping people make decisions. A friend of mine interned in a hospital when I was in college, on his way to becoming a very unhappy radiologist. He said he listened to the doctors when he rode the elevators. The young doctors talked about medicine, and the older doctors talked about money.

When I talk to a doctor about my dad’s care, I’m thinking about doing the right thing. I’m sure the doctor thinks about that, too, but he also thinks about the money he will make by ordering additional treatments which he knows have no potential to help. I have to be willing to be assertive with doctors.

If you’re in denial about death, you may find that a doctor will take advantage and agree to charge you for treatments you don’t need. You have to be aware of this unless you want to be milked like a cow before you die.

It’s not just the money. Medical treatment brings other problems. Say my dad gets a back operation and can’t move for six weeks. I’ll have to hire someone to come and deal with him every day. I’ll have to be in charge of whatever regimen he is given while he recuperates. I’ll have to go out and buy new things he needs. I’ll have to wrestle with him every day and make him cooperate with measures the purpose of which he does not remember. That’s not acceptable.

What if his cardiologist tries to give him a quadruple bypass? Guess who will be looking after him while he heals. I’ll get even more behind in my other responsibilities, which are very important. Then he’ll still die in a year or two, from dementia. The doctors would make money. The drug companies would make money. My dad and I would be left holding the bag.

You can’t just accept every treatment doctors offer you. Treatment often makes things much worse. Look at Kanye West’s mother.

My dad is dying, dying, dying. I refuse to pretend it’s not happening, and I hate it when people other people soft-soap me about it. It’s not helpful. He probably has less than two years left. During his remaining time, he will get worse in sudden steps. He will forget more and more people, including me. He may lose the ability to talk. He is already losing the ability to walk, and he will probably become unable to get out of bed. Someone else will have to bathe him and change his diapers while he waits for the end.

I can’t slap him in a facility and expect things to be fine and dandy until he dies. He is losing the capacity to live in his home without major problems, and he will also reach a point where the slight demands of assisted living will be too much for him.

If he deteriorates over a long period, I will have to make a lot of difficult adjustments. If he dies suddenly, whatever arrangements I have made up to that point will suffice, and I will be spared further confusion and effort. I don’t know which of these two alternatives I’m facing.

Last week, he was open to assisted living. He now says he will kill himself if he has to go. Not helpful. It’s not true, either. He would never harm himself. Some people are incapable of that kind of thing, and my dad is one of them. Still, it means he will not do the mature thing, and it means he will make me suffer until he adjusts to his fate.

My current plan is to put him in assisted living for a few days. It’s called respite care. I’ll take him to a nearby facility, which I have already called, and I’ll leave him there while I visit a Christian conference in another city. I don’t know if he’ll like it or not, but that’s not something that has to be considered. Fate doesn’t always give you choices. He has to do this.

I think once he’s there, he’ll realize it’s better than living at home. He’ll have people to talk to and boss around. He won’t have as many challenges as he has here. He’ll be overfed, which he likes.

As always, the resources available to me are very poor. When I Google, I get thinly disguised ads. When I contact people, I get mobbed with sales calls and spam. My dad’s doctors are probably good at treating the sick, but they are not helpful in dealing with patients who will soon be dead from dementia.

I joined an online support forum, but the people there were so obnoxious and self-righteous, I quit.

Even Yelp and Angie’s List don’t help.

On Friday, we will be visiting the place where my dad will be staying while I’m gone. I hope the visit isn’t a circus, but I won’t let his selfishness deter me. I’m going to that conference, and he is going to submit to respite care whether he likes it or not.

I hate to say it, but I look forward to the days when I no longer have to do this. The hardest things to take are the abuse, the lack of gratitude, and the filth, in that order. He called on God for salvation back in September, and things got very peaceful for a while, but since then he has denied his faith, and tension has returned. I think the cause is supernatural. Satan wants me to be angry and forget about love.

Christians are supposed to flee temptation. A person who has had problems with gluttony shouldn’t keep bowls of candy in his house. Abusive people are just like bowls of candy. They tempt. My dad tempts me to be angry. Even if it’s my fault when I give in, it’s still a bad idea for me to be exposed to such a person more than is necessary.

It shows why we’re not supposed to have unequal yokings. I will never have another one unless it is forced on me.

Restoration Threatens the God of This World

I have been watching videos from The Last Reformation during breakfast.

I have written about The Last Reformation already. It’s a movement that started in Denmark, of all places. Europe gave up on God a long time ago, and the Scandinavians are generally not interested in him. They are known for arrogance, hard work, socialism, and sexual sin. It’s strange to see Scandinavians being used to do a major work for God.

TLR promotes proper water baptism. That’s interesting to me, because in today’s Christian church, almost no one knows the purpose of baptism. The Catholic-penumbra churches are especially ignorant. They don’t baptize at all. They sprinkle babies with water. Baptism means complete immersion; it comes from Jewish ritual immersion, and the Jews go under. You can’t baptize a baby, because baptism requires a conscious decision to serve God.

If you were sprinkled when you were a baby, and that’s all you have, you have not been baptized.

Most churches that immerse are wrong, too. They think baptism is a sort of initiation rite, like a college graduation. They think it means you acknowledge Jesus before men, and that’s it.

Torben Sondergaard, the big figure in TLR, says baptism isn’t just a symbol or a way to become a member of a church. It’s for remission of sin.

Why is that interesting? Because it’s what John the Baptist (the Complete Jewish Bible calls him “John the Immerser”) said. He called people to be baptized in repentance. Once his ministry got going, Jesus came for the first time.

Now we have a group pushing baptism combined with real repentance. If they’re doing things correctly, aren’t they doing the work of John the Baptist? If that’s true, then could it be that they are preparing the world for the return of Jesus? Perhaps this is their purpose.

The Bible says Jesus will return after the “gospel of the kingdom” has been taught to all peoples. Most churches aren’t teaching the gospel of the kingdom. They teach the gospels of salvation, hard work, positive thinking, licentiousness, greed, anger, and so on. Some of the gospels they teach are true, and many are wrong. In any case, most churches aren’t teaching people about establishing the kingdom of God inside themselves.

Remember, Jesus said the kingdom of God was within us. The disciples expected him to conquer the Romans and establish the kingdom on earth, but he left the Romans in charge and focused on changing people internally.

There is a difference between teaching about Jesus and teaching the gospel of the kingdom of God.

TLR is teaching total repentance. They are teaching the baptism with the Holy Spirit and prayer in tongues. They expect the people they minister to to become ministers themselves, immediately. If that isn’t the kingdom of God in operation, it’s certainly much closer to it that what you will see on TBN and Daystar, and it’s light years ahead of what the Pope teaches.

In Acts 2, at Pentecost, Peter told the Jews they needed to be baptized for the forgiveness of sin, and that if they did, they would be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Jesus himself was baptized with the Holy Spirit when he was immersed. The Holy Spirit manifests at TLR baptisms all the time. People begin speaking in tongues while they’re still in the tanks, and demons leave them.

I received things out of order. I got the baptism with the Holy Spirit before I was (badly) baptized with water. I want to get everything corrected. I still have problems with demons, and I want them to end.

Generally, we don’t teach people to become ministers. We aren’t really interested in becoming pro-active and serving God wholeheartedly. We go to church as a matter of duty and fear, hoping to be protected and helped without giving too much of ourselves to God in return. We are satisfied with treading water when we should be walking on it.

Peter taught that the flood, which drowned beings that later became demons, was a shadow of New Testament baptism. That can’t be a coincidence.

When you watch TLR at work, you have to ask: is Elijah finally here?

In the Old Testament, Elijah was one man. In the New Testament, John, who continued his ministry, was only one man. Elijah and John lived under the old covenant. Under the new covenant, things are different. It’s about reproduction and multiplication. Just as Israel was a man and a nation of men, Jesus is God and a nation of men. He has a body made of of many people. One of the main purposes of his coming was to allow him to generate countless powerful replicas of himself to carry on his work. If Jesus has a body, can’t the work of Elijah also be carried out by many people?

It’s as if Jesus were Ulysses and the church were Penelope, beset by crass, selfish suitors while her husband makes his way back to her. The important components of Christianity are like axe heads that have to be lined up before Jesus can shoot his arrow through them and take his authority back. Proper baptism is an axe head.

I hope TLR is evidence that the Elijah anointing is back, because it would mean this tawdry, cruel world was coming to a permanent end, to be replaced by something much better.

God has taught me a great deal, but there are still a lot of holes in my knowledge. They should not be there. I let myself down by giving up on prayer many years ago, and churches let me down by replacing sound knowledge with paganism and self-help nonsense. I suppose churches have been useless since the beginning of the Middle Ages. It’s very sad. But how can I condemn when I made myself useless? God would have taught me a lot more by now, had I held onto what he showed me and put it to use consistently.

I am looking forward to seeing TLR in person. I fully expect Satan to come up with all sorts of obstacles to keep me away, so I am praying for a clear path. My young friend Travis is trying to get free to go. I hope he makes it. He has the same concerns I do. I’ve told a bunch of friends about it, but only one really seems motivated.

Unexpected Present Arrives

If you don’t want to hear about moderately gross medical stuff, this would be a good time to head on over to Youtube and watch some cat videos.

I have had kidney stone issues this fall. I thought I had only been having them for a couple of weeks, but my memory failed me. I just checked, and I started having trouble in September.

I went to doctors for my first two stones (over a decade ago), but after that, I got used to receiving sudden healings after prayer, so I quit relying on doctors. I believe I passed two stones at one church and a couple at another. I no longer remember for sure. When I had problems this fall, I figured I would rely on God again.

I drank a lot of water and beer, and a stone came out in late September. I figured I was done. Hooray! Then last month, more stones came out. I passed several in one day. I did not know what to make of it.

I have felt a little weird since then, and I had some more symptoms. I didn’t think I still had stones. I figured I might have a lingering infection caused by the stones.

This morning I was surprised by the unexpected launch of yet another stone, and it was a lulu. I think it’s a personal best. I’m going to say it’s 4 millimeters long, although I haven’t measured it. I did save it, just so I could marvel at it. Also, if I have more problems, a doctor may want it. And it makes a nice paperweight.

I’ll tell you something weird. When a stone which has been driving you nuts for a long time comes out of your body, it will somehow seem precious to you. I feel like having mine set in a ring.

Here’s something weirder. Now that it’s out, things in that general area are working better than they have in years, not weeks. What’s up with that? I’m wondering if I had bladder stones for years and didn’t know it.

A small kidney stone can become a bladder stone if you don’t blow it out of your bladder. Then it can grow and cause annoying symptoms. When I was dealing with my long parade of stones over the years, it never occurred to me that they could end up my bladder. I’m not a doctor. What do I know? I knew I was getting old, so if the system didn’t run quite as smoothly as it did when I was in high school, I chalked it up to age and did not worry about it.

I have been reading about bladder stones today. Usually–not occasionally–they have to be removed by some horrible mechanical process. They use a device made by the same people who make those crane arcade machines that pick up stuffed animals. I’m pretty sure.

I’m not saying it’s EXACTLY like the crane machines. I believe they put a little oil on it before they use it. If the Obamacare death panel agrees to spring for it.

Evidently, if I were not among the blessed, I would have been in for a very unpleasant and, probably, expensive procedure.

I must have had a bunch of stones for quite a while. I thought I was drinking tea (causes kidney stones) and getting away with it, but I was mistaken.

If things really are as they seem, then not only am I healed of various stones; other common problems I had assumed were developing are not. That would be nice. My dad is a prostate cancer survivor, and I do not wish to have any problems with that particular bit of the anatomy. Some men do, and some men don’t, and I want to be in the latter group.

Man, I hope I’m right. It would be like Christmas in December.

Okay, EARLY December.

Sometimes I’ve wondered what I would do if I had this or that disease. In the case of prostate cancer, I have always felt like I should go for palliative care without trying to cure the cancer. Take dilaudid, watch TV, arrange my estate, and wait for the end.

I’m a Christian, and I don’t believe in suicide, but I’ve never heard anyone say it’s a sin to decline treatment. That loophole has helped a lot of people who could not find divine healing.

Prostate cancer treatment is unbelievably humiliating. You end up in diapers, perhaps permanently, and you lose all sexual function. It’s like my Great Aunt Berthy once said about being hooked up to machines and tubes to stay alive: “It’s not worth it. Not to stay here.”

She made it to 98, and she kept a big garden well into her eighties. I mean like half an acre, with hand implements. She had a root cellar sort of a structure behind her house, built into a hill. She kept it full of things she canned, plus her famous liniment, which burned like lye. She also kept bees. Big lady. Looked like she was 6 feet tall to me. She once shot a guy for bothering her chickens.

I am not overly attached to this life. The more I learn about God and heaven, the more horrified I am to be here at all. This is a very rough place. Injuries. Aging. Disease. Death. Income tax preparation. Jury duty. Killer bees. Paper cuts. Liver. The worst.

When I realize there is a place like heaven, I can’t believe I live on hell’s roof in a body which is nothing but a sack of vulnerable, malfunctioning, unrefrigerated meat.

I suppose that almost sounds pessimistic.

I’ve seen movies about angels and divine beings that have decided to become human for some unbelievably stupid reason or other. The second Superman movie! Remember that? Christopher Reeve gave up his superpowers. What a moron. What was the first thing that happened to him afterward? A middle-aged truck driver who was smaller than he was beat him bloody with one cheap shot. He bled all over the floor at a diner. First time he ever felt pain.

He brought that on himself. At least he was smart enough not to stick it out. Think how he would have felt, buying reading glasses at 40 or rupturing a disk at 70 while lifting a grocery bag full of prune juice.

He would have loved Obamacare. Shelling out $800 per month to be treated like a lab specimen.

Think how he would have felt, 30 years after Lois ran off with Jimmy Olson and took the Fortress of Solitude with her, lying in a doctor’s office with a bulky camera on a greased stalk invading his formerly immortal person. Imagine the regret. DOH!

No, no, no. If you have a choice, inside a flesh body is not the place to be.

I am extremely happy about the way things turned out. I did not expect to come out of this better off than I was before I got sick.

In what may be related news, I got a serious blessing last night.

For some time, I have been trying to get more love to flow through me. I had health issues that involved blockages, and I felt that they were God’s way of showing me how I blocked the fruit of the Spirit from flowing through me. I knew from past experience that God was able to open me up and make love flow normally, so I prayed for it a lot. I was tired of being provoked. I was tired of hostile emotions, including things like envy and malice.

Last night during prayer I started focusing on loving God and people. I sort of pushed from the inside and tried to hold the channel open. I know that sounds weird. I made myself think of the most infuriating people I knew of, and I forced myself to feel warmth toward them.

Since then, I’ve been doing pretty well with it. I have been choking the negative things off before they can get a grip. I know God is helping me, because I have tried this before, and it didn’t work.

I have had problems with worry. The Bible says, “Completed love casts out fear.” Jesus has visited me twice, and I felt love radiating from him like heat from a fire. While his love was bathing me, I could not feel fear. The desire to be rid of worry was one of my main motivations for trying to open up to love. I don’t know why love erases fear. It’s not intuitive. It’s true, however.

I do not want worry or fear. I don’t want their sibling, doubt. I do want love. We’re supposed to be little replicas of Jesus, and when people interact with me, God’s love should flow through me toward them.

God once told me he created the universe for love. That’s really something. Who else would create a universe for love? Others might create it for power or entertainment or fun. God made love the top priority. In heaven, we are going to be irradiated with each other’s love all the time. How strange that will be. Down here, we’re so busy putting out fires, being reactive, we don’t have that much time to think about love. That’s even true in churches, where we focus a lot on duty or the things we hope God will do for us.

If God’s love flows through you, your circumstances won’t be able to make you worried or afraid. That’s something very few preachers teach, and it’s not something we commonly think of as a goal.

It must have been love that enabled Jesus to face the cross. It seems that way, based on John 3:16. A parent will fight a tiger to save a child, and God is no different, except in degree.

I had a spiritual breakthrough last night, a kidney stone I didn’t know I had flew out the next morning, and afterward, I was in better shape than I had been in years. Is it a coincidence? It doesn’t look like it.

I plan to keep at it. I am determined not to be an angry or worried person for the rest of my life. I can’t make God happy and succeed for him if I’m nothing like him in my heart and mind.

I hope this is helpful to people, and I hope they get to read it. A hacker screwed up my site last night, and I had to do some work to fix it. I don’t know what other tricks he has up his sleeve, and I’m not willing to put a huge amount of work or money into making the site totally secure. If it goes down, it goes down. I’ll get over it.

I’m not sure why I attracted the attack. Maybe it was random, or maybe someone out there has a problem with Jesus.

I believe I’ll go drink more water now. I want EVERYTHING to flow.

Additional Obstacles to Holiness Revealed

I’m sitting here watching Youtube videos from The Last Reformation, and I just had a weird experience. I realized my mother received a word from a false prophet, and I needed to renounce it.

In around 1990, I went to the Bahamas. My dad and I took his boat over. We went to Harbour Island, which is just off Eleuthera.

My mother never liked the boat, but she showed up for a time. She flew back to Miami on her own.

The airport at Eleuthera is a few miles away from Harbour Island. You have to take a water taxi to get there. I went with my mother and helped her with her luggage and so on. Then I left.

When my mother and I were reunited, she had a strange story to tell me. Before I left the airport, I saw a female janitor. She was an older lady with a rag wrapped around her head. She was mopping and so on. After I left, she approached my mother. She said, “Where’s Stephen?” My mother didn’t know what to say. She told her I was gone. The lady said, “Stephen is a good boy.” Then she went back to cleaning.

Obviously, the cleaning lady at North Eleuthera Airport did not know me or my mother.

God says things to me from time to time, and a couple of years ago, he gave me this: “I am not the good boy.”

I never put these things together until today. God told me the opposite of what the cleaning lady told my mother.

Today I renounced what the cleaning lady said. I used to have a vague idea that maybe her words meant something. Maybe they meant I would be used by God. For all I knew, she was a Spirit-led Christian. Now I know better. God doesn’t tell people they’re good, because they are not. He may say he is pleased with you, but he will never say you’re a good person or that he is proud of you. He’s not even proud of himself. When he praised Jesus, he didn’t say he was proud. He said he was pleased.

Bahamians practice obeah, which is voodoo. Like all voodoo, it comes from Africa.

I don’t know what the cleaning lady was into, but it looks like she had a spirit of divination, and these spirits always cause problems. They never willingly do anything that will help people. Even when their messages seem helpful, they come from white-hot hate and sadism, and they are designed to do damage.

It’s funny, but even though the Bahamas are full of witchcraft, Christianity is also big there. They’re more open about it than we are. We hide our Christianity in America, because we want to be cool, and because we have a pathological fear of promoting Christianity in public forums. It’s like we think it’s a crime, like housing discrimination.

I just Googled to learn about Bahamian witchcraft, and I found a neat article in The Freeport News. This is a major newspaper. The title of the article: “Is your relationship bound by witchcraft?”

I suppose people who are very used to seeing the supernatural at work through witchcraft are less likely to be ashamed of their beliefs when they become Christians. It’s too bad Americans don’t have that mindset. We’re very ashamed of Jesus. In the Bahamas, a city’s main newspapers can have a column by a serious minister of the gospel. In America, printing such a column would provoke the same reaction as publishing articles promoting Nazism.

In other news, I just found out I have more things to get rid of. I have two flamenco CD’s by a prominent artist I will not name. I don’t want people to run out and buy his music because I praised his talent. He’s very, very good. I had been under the impression that his work had no supernatural significance, but I just learned that he is considered a New Age artist.

As I have pointed out before, “New Age” is Hinduism, which isn’t “new” at all. It’s demon worship. There is more to it than Hinduism, but Hinduism is a big part of it.

Satan loves to repackage his moldy, infected crap and tell us it’s new.

More CD’s for the dump. I can’t have this excrement around me. Anything that opens the wrong doors has to go.

I haven’t gone through my jazz albums yet, but I think some of them need to go. Nina Simone was not a good influence for anyone. Neither was Miles Davis. John Coltrane was a mystic who blended things like Buddhism and Hinduism, and he apparently had a demonic revelation that gave him the entire theme and structure of the album A Love Supreme instantaneously. That album was dedicated to his eclectic false religion.

Whatever. Small sacrifices to make, in exchange for a better relationship with God.

It’s astounding, how so many poisonous things in my life escaped my notice. Supernatural blindness is really something.

Australian Preacher Has MSM Success

Today I am thinking about an Australian man who heals people in the name of Jesus.

I know God works miracles. He has done it for me, and I don’t just mean he has done unlikely things; he has done physically impossible things right in front of me. I also know that there are a lot of criminals out there pretending to heal people. As a person who witnesses the supernatural from time to time, I am always looking for others like me, and I view them with skepticism because many who claim to fit the bill are liars.

The situation is more complicated than that. There are terrible preachers who sometimes get people healed. Also, there are people who get healed temporarily. A person might throw his back brace away at a meeting and then collapse a few hours later. We need to be set free from charlatans. We need healing. We need the healing to last. Finally, we need to be born again so we don’t continue to be attacked and harmed.

Supposedly, people have been healed at Benny Hinn appearances, at least temporarily. Benny Hinn is a greedy, twisted man who teaches the false prosperity gospel, and the damage his teachings do is far greater than the good that accrues from any healings that take place. It doesn’t do you a lot of good to have your slipped disk fixed if you go on to live in heresy and never receive Holy Spirit correction and restoration.

You will lose your body eventually, so having it repaired is a limited benefit. Your heart and mind are different. They will be with you in heaven or hell. You need to have them repaired. That’s the big priority.

I look for people who carry out God’s commission. We have been told we are supposed to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and cast out demons, so if anyone is out there doing these things, I want to know about it. I want to be part of it. This world is a rotten place, and almost all of us live cursed lives of defeat and hopelessness. I would like to see people win for a change.

There are a lot of healing videos on Youtube, but the healings aren’t documented all that well. Were they real? If so, did they last? It would be nice to see more healings that have survived real scrutiny.

The Australian healer I watched is named John Mellor. He’s a remarkable case. He says he drives an old Holden, which is a GM car about like a Chevrolet. He says he doesn’t own his own house. He says the offerings he has received haven’t been sufficient to offset what he has spent. It looks like he’s not a typical TV profiteer. On top of all this, secular journalists in Australia have done stories on him, and they bear out the claims of healing.

How about that? Close-minded people masquerading as reasonable skeptics always say that if healing were real, it would be documented. Here’s a guy who passes that test, but skeptics still attack him.

I’ll embed a video you might like. A journalist from Australia’s A Current Affair went to see Mellor. He had a neck problem, and he decided to let Mellor take a whack at it. Mellor prayed for him, and in his narration, the reporter said, “A warm, tingling sensation spreads across the top of my spine.” His pain left, and he said, “It is real. I can feel it.” A later broadcast said the reporter’s healing had persisted.

Mellor also prayed for a little boy who was hydrocephalic. He couldn’t walk or talk. Nothing happened when he prayed, but a couple of weeks later, the boy improved, and now he walks and talks. I’ll embed that video, too.

In a third case, Mellor prayed for a boy who was mentally abnormal due to a chromosome problem. The boy didn’t receive a healing, but his father did. His father had been afflicted with arthritis for decades, but after Mellor prayed for him, he was able to run again.

Anyone can put up a video and claim somebody got healed. How many healers can get the secular, anti-Christian press to confirm their successes?

Naturally, Mellor has not won the approval of every journalist. A crippled preacher teamed up with the BBC to “debunk” his healings. According to Mellor, the BBC edited the video dishonestly. He cites facts the BBC concealed. I’m not going to sit through a long TV show in order to do a in-depth analysis, but I can say this: if you have ANY documented long-term healings, you can’t be debunked.

Generally, healing preachers are quiet about their failures. When healings are undone, you generally don’t see TV preachers devote air time to them. Mellor appears to be different. He admits he doesn’t always succeed, and the coverage shows one person who was healed temporarily and then relapsed almost immediately.

I’m impressed. You can make a ton of money healing people, and Mellor hasn’t done it. You can protect a profitable healing ministry by covering up failures. It appears that Mellor isn’t doing that. He’s a hard man to criticize with any credibility.

I would love to do what he does. I hate physical and mental problems. I hate knowing that we are subjugated by demons who are supposed to be under our feet. I hate the powerlessness of the church. If we were doing what we were commissioned to do, we would be bringing a lot more people to Christ. Imagine how different things would be if homosexuals knew they could be changed in one prayer session. Instead, we send them away to find their own toxic solutions.

There are two things the church should be working on. The first is getting people healed and delivered. We do those things very poorly.

Charismatics have more success than anyone, but we’re not that good. For example, most terminal cancer patients we try to help, die.

If you go to the Catholics or other dead churches, you can pretty much forget about being helped. They think miracles are rare or that they don’t happen at all.

The second thing we need to work on is getting people born again. That means getting them saved, filled with the Holy Spirit, and purged of iniquity. We need them to be sanctified so their problems don’t return or increase.

The fact that you’ve been healed or delivered from demons doesn’t mean you’re fine. If you have sickness or demonic problems, it means doors were opened. You need to close those doors. You have to confess and repent, over and over. You need to take communion. You need to go through your house and throw dangerous things out. What good is a healing if the sickness returns or you go to hell?

God is about love and justice (see Psalm 101). When you focus too much on love and forget justice, you leave doors open. Many Christians are so excited about warm, fuzzy feelings, they refuse to judge sin. They enable. They do things for sinful people in order to make themselves feel good, and they leave the sinners wallowing in their filth, open to attack.

Jesus was a very rude person, because he needed to be. He told people exactly what they needed to hear. He did not worry about their precious feelings. What did he tell people he helped? “Go and sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.” If we get people delivered, and we don’t let them know they’re still in danger, we do Christianity a disservice. Their problems may return or increase, and then they’ll testify against God.

I wish preachers had had the guts to tell me the truth. I needed it, and they handed me lollipops instead. They were afraid I’d quit giving them money and free work. They could have shortened my captivity and weakness.

God keeps showing me things I need to change. I keep throwing things out. I can’t expect God to bless me if I hold onto garbage that offends him. Most preachers keep quiet about this issue.

I have thrown out all my blues and rock CD’s. I threw out all my music materials related to the blues and rock, as well as other anti-Christian music. As of yesterday, I still had a few things buried in boxes. I got up last night, dug them out, and put them in the trash.

When I was going to feel-good churches, I thought it was okay to have worldly entertainment. As recently as a few weeks ago, I was okay with Marvel movies, which feature a lot of witchcraft. I was blinded.

I had a pair of “four vices” cufflinks. They are menswear classics. They feature four pictures. One is a racing horse, another is a hand of cards, the third is a slutty woman, and the fourth is a bottle. They celebrate gambling on horses, gambling at cards, fornication, and drunkenness. I thought they were cute. Last night I put them in the trash. I was paying tribute to dangerous sins. I was insulting God by owning these, but at the same time, I was asking him to heal me and help me.

There are a lot of blockages in my life. I have had kidney stones, gallstones, nasal allergies, and so on. I believe God is showing me what I do to him by holding onto anti-Christian items. I block him, so I am blocked. These things may seem innocent, but they’re not. They’re a big deal.

It’s not okay to own recordings of people like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, singing songs about women’s bodies. Holiness matters. Can you imagine Paul listening to that junk between meetings? Never. It’s inconceivable. Yet we listen to the blues and worse, and we expect God to think it’s fine.

Many people testify that God gave them sudden help when they got rid of pagan carvings and artwork. It’s not uncommon for people to have little African figurines. In Miami, Haitian paintings related to voodoo are common in the homes of educated white people. Items associated with idolatry are little openings, like cat flaps, that let demons enter your house and you. You have to be willing to dump these things. You can’t serve two masters.

My dad went to Europe with my mother and a couple of other relatives a long time ago. In Florence, they saw a statue of a fat naked man riding a tortoise. My mother thought it looked like my dad. She bought him a little copy. He still has it. I’m planning to throw it out. Why would a Christian want a thing like that in his house? The souvenir value doesn’t justify it. The artistic and historical value don’t justify it. Nothing is worth opening yourself to a relationship with demons.

Oh, boy. I just looked the statue up. It’s from the gardens at the Pitti Palace. It represents Bacchus, a violent, drunken “god” from the ancient pantheon! Great. I have an idol in my house. Out it goes, ASAP.

My grandmother’s father wouldn’t allow playing cards to come into his house. When I was a kid, I thought that was weird. He knew something I didn’t. He was even afraid to let his daughters cut their hair. Maybe that comes from the verse that says a woman’s hair is her crowning glory. My grandmother’s hair wasn’t cut until after he died, and she was about 18.

I still have some bad music stored on devices I don’t use. I need to get rid of it.

Last night, I threw out my Firefly DVD set, as well as my old copy of the book Serenity. Joss Whedon is in a pit of delusion. He is filled with burning rage all the time. I used to watch his shows. I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I watched Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. until it deteriorated to the point where it became unwatchable. I have watched some of his Marvel movies. No more. He is completely controlled by hostile spirits, and I don’t want to share in it.

I threw out my copy of Hannibal, the book the movie was based on. The whole Lecter universe is evil. Author Thomas Harris must live in a very dark world.

Because I moved last year, I have an inventory of all the books I owned before leaving Miami. It has been helpful, because I can look at the list and pick out the things that need to go. I had a Toni Morrison book. Sick stuff. It’s in the trash. She’s the woman who wrote Beloved, which is a novel about a demonized Reconstruction-Era black girl who is murdered by her mother and then returns from hell.

I’m glad I don’t have any Alice Walker novels. She’s a witch and a raging Israel-hater.

Man, this world is dark. Jesus was not kidding when he said Satan was the god of this world. Look at the people who make it in the arts. Whedon. Walker. Morrison. J.K. Rowling. The Beatles. Rihanna. When I was writing books, I never had a chance, and I didn’t know it. The available seats were reserved for the family. It’s too bad I didn’t understand the rules.

I hope John Mellor is the real thing. I would love to do what he does. If God used me like that, I would want to work it out so I never took an offering. When you accept money for working for God, you open yourself up to slander. It’s not that easy to attack a preacher who works for nothing. The enemy’s children would still try, though.

Can you imagine driving cancer out of another person or making a lost leg grow back? Imagine what it was like to be an apostle. They raised the dead so they got new chances at life. They fixed cripples. They filled people with the Holy Spirit and helped them become as powerful as they were. It must be the most satisfying thing imaginable. It has to be worth throwing out a few unimportant midbrow books written by people who were ignorant about the most important thing in life.

As liberating as the message of sanctification is, it’s sad to think about it, because I know 95% of Christians will reject it. They want their cigarettes and weed. They want their ungodly entertainment. They want to live in sin with boyfriends and girlfriends. They want to fit in. People who talk about sanctification will be marginalized as kooks and legalists.

Maybe you’ll like the Mellor videos. If there are bad things about him I don’t know, maybe you can tell me about them. In any event, I like his line of work.

Atheist Missionary Reviles Fallen Rival

I have been reading about John Chau, the man who tried to evangelize North Sentinel Island in the Indian Ocean. If you haven’t heard about him, the story is brief. There are a few dozen or maybe a few hundred tiny black people on the island. They are completely backward. They don’t wear clothing, they have no technology, they can’t make fire, they are illiterate as far as anyone knows, and they are extremely xenophobic. With some exceptions, they try to kill anyone who lands on the island, and their success rate is high.

In Mark 13:10, Jesus said the end of this age would come after the “gospel of the kingdom” had been preached to all peoples. The word I translate as “peoples” supposedly means “peoples joined by practicing similar customs or common culture,” so it may not be synonymous with “nations.”

I put “gospel of the kingdom” in quotation marks, because I don’t believe the gospel of salvation is the same as the gospel of the kingdom. We’re supposed to inherit the kingdom of God here on earth; it’s inside us. A lot of people preach salvation, tell their converts they are permanently saved no matter what they do, and never go on to teaching about the kingdom. I think most missionaries don’t know what the kingdom is.

Chau belonged to All Nations, a charismatic group which is trying to see to it that all peoples are reached.

The story says he made several approaches to the Sentinelese. The first time, he brought gifts for them and proclaimed his love for them. They ran him off, firing arrows at him. He made more attempts, and a boy shot an arrow at him, piercing the waterproof Bible he carried. He eventually had himself dropped on the island with no way off, and he was killed.

Nice people.

It is illegal to visit North Sentinel Island because it is believed the natives have no immunity to common pathogens the rest of us carry. Indian anthropologists visited successfully some years ago and threw coconuts to the natives, and the news stories don’t say it caused an epidemic, but in an unrelated incident, natives on another island supposedly died after drinking from a plastic jug that washed ashore.

I don’t know if Chau was supposed to visit the island. I don’t think he was. Ordinarily, when people who are Spirit-led evangelize, God sends them to people who are receptive. It’s a crazy thing to watch. Even hard core Jews and Muslims have been known to accept Jesus quickly. When you choose your own mission, you’re not likely to get as much support from God.

We’re not supposed to go wherever we want and try to evangelize. We’re supposed to wait for God to send us. Paul was not allowed to go into Asia to preach. A carnal Christian might get angry at a person who refused to preach in a certain area, but we’re supposed to obey God, not our egos.

Carnal Christians are always burdening us with jobs God doesn’t want us to do. “Crawl a mile on your knees with a cross on your back.” “Flail yourself on Easter until you bleed profusely.” “Tithe.” They waste our energy, and because God doesn’t help us with the things they tell us to do, we fail and become discouraged and bitter.

God shows evangelists where to cast their nets. In the Bible, the lake of Galilee represents the earth, and fish represent people. The disciples were fishermen, and on one occasion, they fished all night and caught nothing. Jesus then told them where to cast their nets, and they got more fish than they knew what to do with. Jesus did this so future evangelists would know they were supposed to wait for his orders.

Maybe God told Chau to preach on the island, but it does not look that way.

The public reaction to his trip has been disturbing. People are ridiculing him. Many are glad he died. Many are demanding that the Sentinelese be left in their ignorance and squalor. Some cite the danger of disease, but others are just furious at Christianity and white people, even though Chau was not white.

Boston Globe columnist Renee Graham wrote a scathing piece about Chau. It’s shocking. The title: “Missionary didn’t die from tribesmen’s arrows. He was killed by his own arrogance.” That may be true, but it could be put more kindly, and a non-Christian who doesn’t hear from God is not really in a position to draw the conclusion anyway.

Here are her last two paragraphs:

Some Christian compatriots have already anointed Chau as “a martyr.” He’s not. He did not die in defense of his religion. Instead he made a fatal miscalculation in deciding that his way and his God were the only acceptable path. He cared more for his flawed ideas about saving souls than about respecting lives.

Chau died trying to force on others his way of life; the Sentinelese did what they deemed necessary to protect theirs.

“Flawed ideas.”

Graham is a missionary, too. She is a missionary for atheism or whatever it is that she believes. She is against Christianity, and she takes Chau to task for believing and evangelizing.

That’s pure antichrist. People who belong to the Beast come up with all sorts of rationales for preventing evangelism, which is the sole reason God allows Christians to remain on earth after receiving salvation.

Her blatant persecution is really something. I’ll bet she would get in trouble with her editors if she called Islam or Hinduism false religions based on “flawed ideas.”

The Boston Globe is now, openly, an instrument of evangelism for atheists. What a strange development.

Atheists have always been ardent evangelists for their faith. They can be very shrill and pushy. Well, it goes farther than that. They have murdered, imprisoned, and enslaved countless people in socialist countries, trying to stamp out Judaism and Christianity.

How can you be angry at a man who tried to share the love of God with others, even if you think God doesn’t exist? How can you have no respect for his good intentions? It’s not a reasonable stance; it comes from demons. I can understand being angry at a person who risks infecting primitive people with diseases, but most of Chau’s critics are angry about his evangelism, not his microbes.

Incidentally, the disease argument is not very strong. The highest estimate for the population of the island is in the hundreds. These people have been there for thousands of years, and their numbers don’t increase. What does that mean? High infant mortality and short lifespans. The Sentinelese have been suffering a critical health crisis for as long as they’ve existed. They are a failed people. There are ways to reach them and improve their lives, without spreading disease.

The world is filling up with hatred of Christians, and we’re acting like the frog in the mythical story of the pan on the stove. Most of us will be sitting complacently when the water starts to boil, because we don’t listen to God. In the past, the hatred was more covert, but now it’s blatant and pervasive, and it’s going to get much worse, very soon.

Most of us will be like Jews who waited to long to leave Hitler’s Europe. Most Christians ridicule those who say we’re in for persecution resembling that which Hitler inflicted on the Jews. In time, they will see that we were right.

The Sentinelese make me wonder how many peoples have not been reached. I read something interesting: according to some Bible translations, Peter said Christians were “expecting and hastening” the end of this age, suggesting we could speed up the return of Jesus. Maybe we’re supposed to be praying for God to help missionaries get the job done.

Talk about a worthy objective for prayer. This world is like a full diaper. I’m for anything that expedites the termination of the project. The sooner this age ends, the sooner the messianic age begins.

I’m not sure Peter was understood correctly, though. He may have meant “hurrying toward” instead of “hastening.” There is some evidence that God planned for Jesus to return after 2000 years, and if that’s true, can we make any difference? Maybe we can shift things a few, or a few hundred, years. That would certainly be worth praying for.

It’s strange seeing leftists stand up for squalor, ignorance, poverty, xenophobia, violence, and a high death rate. They’re always trying to control others, forcing them to accept their odd culture in its entirety. In the case of the Sentinelese, they are striving to keep “little brown people”–the people they always say they’re trying to help–in a position of weakness and failure.

For all we know, the Sentinelese have a patriarchal society in which women and girls are slaves. They may kill homosexuals. Maybe they’re trying to kill off certain species on their island. They hunt and eat meat. They may have all sorts of customs leftists would hate. You would think leftists would be trampling each other, trying to get to the island to correct the natives.

The Sentinelese are kept isolated by a demonic stronghold. Satan wants to prevent Jesus from returning, so he walls people off. That’s what’s really happening. Sooner or later, the Sentinelese will be reached, or they will disappear. You can’t stop prophecy with a few arrows. My own ancestors probably killed missionaries with primitive weapons. If so, it didn’t stop them.

Wow. Where would I be if leftists had stopped missionaries and educators in 100 AD? I would be illiterate. My most impressive piece of technology would probably be a simple iron knife or axe. I’d worship ridiculous false gods. I’d live in a society where many women died in childbirth and most kids died in infancy. Most people I knew would be dead by 35. Thank goodness no one had the common sense to preserve my ancestral culture. It was inferior and toxic.

Where did we get the backward idea that primitive cultures are as good as, or better than, advanced cultures? I know Montaigne put the general notion forth in a silly essay about “cannibals.” What are the odds that he actually knew anything about “cannibals”? Slim. He lived in France.

Interesting thing: overwhelmingly, when presented with a choice, primitive people choose Western culture over whatever it is they have to begin with. They learn to read and buy TV’s. It’s pretty unusual for people from sophisticated cultures to go the other way. Liberals from Cambridge, Massachusetts aren’t knocking themselves out trying to move to huts in New Guinea.

Maybe if things keep getting crazier, leftists will start refusing to teach their kids to read. As it is, many of them are against vaccinations.

I hope some of the Sentinelese get to know God. It’s a shame to see their lives amount to so little. I don’t think they go to hell, because the Bible says that where there is no law, there is no sin. That doesn’t mean it’s okay for them to have no relationship with God here on earth. Every human being is supposed to know God and receive salvation and sanctification.

The attacks on John Chau are sick. I hope Christians are taking notice of them. Many of the people who are celebrating his death today would gladly take life from the rest of us if they could.

Temporary Resource Pops Up Nearby

I am considering leaving The Compound and going to a Christian conference.

Years ago, God told me the age of big churches was over. They disgrace themselves over and over, and they turn people into pastor-worshipers. They invent bad doctrine in order to extract money from people. When a man who runs a church of 2000 people gets his doctrine wrong, 2000 people lap it up and catch the disease from him.

I’ve been expecting to see a different kind of church, composed of unpaid individuals who minister one-on-one. Christians always assume God needs TV cameras to reach people, but it’s a lie Satan uses to steer people into the arms of liars. The apostles converted half of the world on foot, before electricity, in a very short time.

I think I’m seeing God’s plan materialize. If you go to Youtube, you can find many videos from obscure preachers who go out and heal and cast out demons. They’re not connected to TV networks. They are not rich. They don’t charge. They don’t herd people into auditoriums and try to harness them to work for silly carnal campaigns and projects.

The last two churches I belonged to were big on projects. One of them had a huge campaign to help Haiti after the earthquake. The pastor said, “We’re in Haiti for the long haul.” Then the project quietly evaporated. He had another project: the 2020 Vision. He made it seem like it was his idea. Turned out zillions of preachers had already used the same gimmick. The church was going to convert a certain number of people by 2020. The campaign pooped out quickly, and everyone forgot about it.

Church projects sound great, but they don’t work unless God himself starts them. Usually, that is not the case.

If Satan can get church members to waste their time and money on church projects, he can divert them from useful ministry.

The Youtube guys are likely to end up running big organizations if they don’t watch out, and they, too, will end up turning people into servants instead of brothers and sisters. For now, though, they’re doing a lot of good work. They show up in public places, pray for people, cast out demons, heal the sick, and move on. It’s easy to resist a pastor who tries to persuade you with a reheated sermon one of his buddies wrote, but miracles get people’s attention.

Satan spreads iniquity the same way he spreads plagues. Individuals make contact, and contagion is accomplished. Christianity is supposed to be spread the same way. Instead, we focus on stadiums and big buildings. Every one of us is supposed to be a powerful ambassador of God, fully capable of reaching people, but to a great extent, we give up our power and leave the work to a few individuals who live in front of cameras.

One of the Youtube preachers is named Torben Søndergaard. I had to use “copy” to get that funny O that looks like Saturn. He’s from Denmark, which is not a very godly place. He runs an outfit called The Last Reformation. They go all over the world, doing their thing.

They baptize people with water and the Holy Spirit. Sometimes they do both at once. Sometimes demons manifest during baptism and depart.

They have events called “kickstarters.” They show up in various places and teach. I would like to see it in person. I don’t have any illusions. Every big Christian movement eventually becomes corrupt, and I don’t put my trust in men. Nonetheless, they seem to be doing good things now.

I found out Søndergaard is having a kickstarter in December, about eighty miles from me. Imagine that.

I would like to be baptized again. I don’t know if that’s permitted, but I don’t see why not. Baptism is ritual immersion, and Jews immerse themselves many times.

I have already been baptized twice, and I think it was done improperly both times.

The first time I was baptized, I was in Europe with my family. We were in an old church somewhere. I don’t take this baptism seriously. My mother reached into a font and put water on my forehead. She always had a strange attraction to the Catholic church. Women are drawn to the pageantry and the emasculated, feminine, nonthreatening priests. She hadn’t done a good job of teaching me about God, and she was worried about me, so she made this powerless gesture.

The second time I was baptized, I belonged to a little charismatic church south of Miami. Some of us gathered by a pond near some condos, and one of the elders put me under. I don’t recall hearing anything about repentance or cleansing. When I came up, he asked me if I had anything I wanted to say. I will never forget what I said. Here it is: “I think something’s biting my foot.”

Baptism is supposed to be an event of supernatural power. I didn’t know that. It should be about cleansing and deliverance, as well as the public proclamation that you belong to Jesus. Many people experience supernatural things during baptism. I did not, and I suspect I should have.

I don’t know if Søndergaard’s crew will be baptizing, but they will surely have useful information about it.

Hmm…just found a video about it.

It’s neat to see Christians DOING Christianity. Generally, we go to church and then go home, thinking only of ourselves. The apostles went out and raised the dead. They prophesied. Most of us are like medical students who never practice.

It’s difficult to get away and do things like this. I will have to have someone watch my dad. This may be a good opportunity to try Visiting Angels.

My dad’s problems are limiting my life now, and his hygiene issues are getting to be so bad I can’t take it without building myself a separate kitchen, so I am working on finding solutions. He has finally accepted the fact that he will have to have a CNA or move into an assisted living facility. I don’t want to put him in a home, but there is a limit to what I can do for him.

A home will cost a fortune. Over $70,000 per year. I can get daily CNA help for him for a fraction of that. A CNA in this area probably earns less than $30,000 per year. Maybe that’s the way to go.

It will be nice to get away and spend a few hours among people whose beliefs are like mine. I hope they help me to improve.

Church Visit Goes Poorly

I visited a new church today. The pastor talked about people coming to his church and then going home and rating them on the Internet. Well, here I am.

I went to Kingdom Revival Church in Ocala. It occupies a strange building which may have been a movie theater at one time. It’s set up very well for a church. Lots of room, a stage, and real auditorium seating that rises toward the back.

I had high hopes for this place, because it looked good on Youtube. They believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and they’re serious about praise and worship.

Today’s experience was odd. The music team did a good job, considering the fact that there were no musicians. There were instruments set up, but no one played. All they had were vocalists. Don’t know what that’s all about.

The music was a little too loud, but it wasn’t clearly unsafe. I decided not to use my ear plugs.

The music people praised and prayed and did all they could to help us enter the presence of God, and then the pastor came out. He got on his knees in the middle of the stage and called out to God and so on.

It was nice to see Christians trying to get close to God instead of putting on a slick show that didn’t help anyone.

Things looked pretty good, but when the pastor started talking, it was obvious that something was restraining the presence of God. The air felt dry. I felt like the pastor was talking to himself or trying to wake people up. Even though some people were hollering in response, I felt like the message was bouncing off the congregation.

For some reason, I got the feeling that hypocrisy was walling them off from God. I don’t know any of the people in the church, and they didn’t do anything that looked out of the ordinary, but I kept feeling that hypocrisy was their problem.

Maybe that’s correct. The church is mostly black. I am a veteran of minority churches, and hypocrisy is a huge issue they face.

White people do not like church. A white person who has no use for God will generally stay home on Sundays. There isn’t much else at church that we like. Minorities, especially black people, are different. Black people love church whether they like God or not. It’s a place to socialize. Black strippers to go church. Black drug dealers go to church. Black people who aren’t Christians go to church. I can name names. I’m not making it up.

Beyonce, Luther Campbell, and Kanye West are way out of God’s will, but they go to church. Lady Gaga, Eminem, and Justin Timberlake probably don’t go. Just a guess.

I’ve known black people who went to church and even took on major roles in spite of a total lack of interest in knowing God. Some preached. Some pretended to be under the influence of the Holy Spirit. At home, and even in the parking lot, they were different people. They lived pretty much like people who didn’t go to church.

Maybe Kingdom Revival Church has this problem. The pastor might not be aware of it, because he wouldn’t get to see the way the hypocrites behaved out of his presence. He would only get to see the acting and fawning.

Sure, white churches have hypocrites, but black churches expect and tolerate hypocrisy. They’re used to it. They know they have a lot of people who are just playing roles, and they live with it.

Whatever the fundamental cause was, God’s presence was limited, and I don’t want to deal with that every time I visit. I probably won’t go back.

Rethinking Holiday Gorging

I’m sitting here with Marv while he enjoys his time out of the cage. I’ve been watching Youtube, looking for videos that will be helpful in my efforts to be sanctified and corrected.

I started looking at a Derek Prince video about laziness, but since I am currently caught up in a holiday which has become a celebration of overeating, and because I am not completely happy about it, I changed my mind and started looking for material on gluttony.

I got completely delivered from gluttony in 2009. Then one day I went to Sonny’s Barbecue with my friend Mike, and we had the all-you-can-eat ribs. It seems like ever since then, the victory has been tempered.

Before my deliverance, I used to stuff myself routinely. It’s pretty unusual for me to do that now, but I do eat more than I should. When I moved to this farm, I worked outside a lot, and I lost weight no matter what I ate. Then the work slowed down, and I was in the habit of eating more than I had before, so I picked up some pounds.

I have been thinking about my strange talent for cooking, and I have been considering its negative effects. I can cook a lot of things I really enjoy eating, and that presents a problem. Because I have a long list of recipes, I can always cook something I haven’t had in a long time and tell myself it’s okay to eat it because it’s a rare treat. That might be okay if you can only cook 4 things, but when you can cook dozens, you can have a rare treat several times a week. Every dish is “special.”

I thought about that, and then I asked myself what I’m trying to do when I eat something “special.” There had to be a root iniquity that paved the way for gluttony. I realized I was trying to reward myself. “I worked all day with the chainsaw and tractor, so now it’s okay to have a pint of ice cream.” “I spent 5 hours dealing with a mess my dad made, so now it’s okay to have a big bowl of pasta.”

Why would I do that? Why would I feel like I needed a reward? The answer is self-pity. I allow myself to overeat sometimes because I’ve convinced myself I’m a victim. I feel that I’m owed.

I don’t think of myself as a self-pitying person. When I have a problem, I don’t ask God why it hit such a wonderful person. I assume I’m doing something wrong. I ask for correction. I try to attack the problem. I don’t like self-pity. Nonetheless, it looks like I have it. I may have a flavor that’s different from the ones I recognize, but it’s still self-pity.

Here’s another strange question I asked myself: I can’t do anything sinful to reward myself…so what do I do? Other people get drunk or high on Saturday night. They indulge in sexual sin. They gluttonize. I can’t think of anything I can do, as a Christian.

I don’t know if people are supposed to be able to reward themselves, but we do. Tonight I’m thinking about that, so it’s only natural that I would wonder if there are any rewards I can give myself.

I can turn off the phone and read a good book. I can go for a walk in the woods. I can watch a movie I like. Those things aren’t all that rewarding, though. Not like a pint of ice cream, a line of coke, or a night of fornication. No one ever says, “I’m going to go crazy and spoil myself tonight with a nice walk.”

This is really weird. Maybe we’re not supposed to give ourselves rewards. If not, what are we supposed to do when we’re tired or upset? Do we just take the hit and walk it off? Maybe that’s the actual answer.

It’s not a pleasant prospect. I don’t want to go through life sucking it up and enduring. It would be sort of like going through life holding your breath. Eventually you want to exhale.

Unpleasant things happen to us all the time. Life on earth is like being outdoors in a hailstorm that never stops. You keep getting whacked. One would think God would occasionally provide pleasant experiences to counterbalance the whacks. Surely there must be something.

I’ll have to ask God for the answer. Whatever the situation is, I want to know and accept it.

When you’re a worldly person, you don’t expect to deprive your flesh all the time. You look for cheat days and so on. Christianity doesn’t work like that. You never get a free day to sin. There are no vacations.

I’m always glad to find out I have a character problem, because the information is an open door to freedom. Character problems cause failure and suffering, so when you find out you have a character problem, you suddenly have a way to improve your life. Fix your character, and you will definitely be freed from certain things.

I am not a victim. I like to say that to myself. It’s a little bit like taking a bad-tasting medicine, but it’s a good thing to say. It’s true. People and spirits have done terrible things to me, but that doesn’t mean I’m a victim. My sins and iniquities more than justify every bad thing that has happened. If I admit I’m part of the problem, I claim that in the past, I’ve changed my life for the worse. If I can change it for the worse, I can also make it better. God told me that when I deny an excuse, I take my power back.

I used to drive my sister crazy by saying, “You’re not a victim.” I was angry when I said it, so maybe I should have refrained. It made her furious. It enraged her to be told she wasn’t a victim. False victimhood was a treasure to her; she built her life around it. She truly loved it. She used it as justification to treat people horribly, and she didn’t want it taken away.

I don’t get furious when I say it to myself, but it’s sobering.

When I was young, I was sure I was a victim. I was raised in a house of hatred and abuse. All sorts of misfortune came to me, for no apparent reason. People mistreated me. Maybe I had a point when I was very young, but once I became an adult, I should have knocked off the victim nonsense and taken responsibility.

Interesting stuff.

I really don’t want to stuff myself on holidays any more, and I hate the effort of cooking elaborate meals. Maybe I’ll blow off Christmas dinner entirely. I’m souring on the whole concept of feasts.

What kind of holiday is it if you have to eat yourself sick in order to feel like you celebrated?

Cooking Hints of Dubious Value

Another Thanksgiving dinner is behind me. I learned some things.

For the first time, I did exactly what I wanted to do, instead of making the cranberry sauce and gross oyster dressing my dad used to insist on. It was the right idea. The food was phenomenal, and he didn’t complain once.

When you listen to other people, your food will generally suffer badly. My big talent is not the ability to cook anything you throw at me and make it taste good; it’s the ability to write recipes. People who can’t cook have no idea how that works. It means this: if you ask me to cook for you, don’t tell me what to do, and don’t ask me to change my recipes. There is absolutely no point in letting me cook if you’re going to add your really bad ideas. You can cook your own bad food without my help. If I listen to you, you’ll moan about how bad the food is, and then you’ll tell people I can’t cook.

“Oh, can you use margarine instead of butter? Oh, have you tried turkey instead of pork?”

No; I can’t. If you want Weight Watchers food, go buy it in a Weight Watchers box like everyone else.

I made a pizza for a vegan friend once. It’s surprising she was willing to eat the cheese, since some poor cow’s teats had to suffer multiple microaggressions in the name of capitalism. I bought the plastic sausage my friend requested. It tasted like formaldehyde. And I am not using the word “formaldehyde” in order to be funny. That’s really what it tasted like.

Thank God she was used to the taste, so she didn’t run around afterward telling everyone my pizza tasted like formaldehyde.

I’ll tell you how most people approach cooking. They decide they want to cook something. They open a book or go to the web and pick a recipe. They assume the recipe is good without really knowing. They cook. They feel like their work is done. Most people have no palate, so they don’t know whether their food is good or not. They figure it must be good if they followed a recipe.

That’s not how a good cook does things. A good cook always creates his own recipes. He may start with someone else’s recipe, but that’s just a way to get the project going. He will always make changes later. A good cook isn’t satisfied with a recipe until he, himself, is stunned by the result.

If you’ve put in the time creating a great recipe, and then someone who can’t cook asks you to take out the cream and use skim milk, the correct response is, “Let’s go to Burger King instead.” If you don’t want the recipe, you don’t want the cook, even if you don’t realize it.

This year, I learned fresh turkey is the way to go when you bone your birds. If you thaw a turkey, you’ll probably run into ice when you bone it, and that makes your hands numb and causes problems. I used a fresh turkey this time, and I had no difficulties.

I sewed up the bird with dental floss, and it worked fine, but I should have used dental tape. It’s easier to work with, and it seems to be easier to pull out when the bird is done.

It’s pretty hard to over-salt a turkey. I boned my turkey, opened it up, salted it hard on the inside and outside, and then applied a seasoning mix that contained salt. In all likelihood, it had already been injected with salt at the turkey factory or whatever. It was great. Most turkeys don’t get enough salt.

Seasoning a turkey is really simple. I crushed 9 beef bouillon cubes and mixed them with melted butter, sage, Korbel brut, salt, and pepper. I could also have added garlic, but I forgot. I made around 8 ounces of this stuff, and I slathered it on the inside of the bird before I sewed it up. When the bird was stuffed and ready to go in the oven, I covered the outside with the seasoning mix. When you use what I use, the turkey will taste exactly the way a classic roasted turkey should taste but usually does not.

The stuffing was magnificent. I made cornbread with bacon grease, and I used it as the foundation. I sauteed 4 Aidell’s andouille sausages in butter and stirred them in, along with the sage, butter, eggs, beef broth, Korbel, and so on. I thought my dad would blow a gasket because of the sausage chunks, but he threw it right down and said it was excellent.

The turkey was fantastic, but I think it would have been even better had I cooked it at 200 instead of 275. Low temperature cooking makes a turkey juicier. I like to pray in the morning, so I didn’t get the turkey in the oven until almost noon. I had to jack up the temperature a little in order to have dinner in the afternoon.

There is nothing unsafe about cooking a turkey at 200. As long as you get the stuffing up to 165 at the end, you’re fine. I turned the heat up to 400 when I was getting close, to brown the skin.

I think people worry about turkey germs too much. Have you ever known anyone to get sick from Thanksgiving dinner? I haven’t. The government (famous for making great food) used to tell people to bring turkey to 185. Ridiculous. That’s at least 20 degrees past done, and it turns the turkey into rubber.

The government says to cook beef to an internal temperature of 145. Come on! That ruins it. I go 120 and call it done.

I came up with a good way to get the right amount of potato jacket in your mashed potatoes without choking your potato ricer. I peeled stripes off the potatoes before I boiled them. The remaining skin wasn’t enough to bother the ricer. After every potato chunk went through, I knocked the peel off the perforated plate and into my potatoes. Very easy.

I think potato ricers are overrated. I’ve used mine for a number of years, and it’s not noticeably better than a masher. The potatoes look really fluffy when they come out of it, but then you have to stir butter, milk or cream, salt, pepper, and garlic into them. After that, the result is a lot like what a masher provides.

I’ve had very good mashed potatoes at expensive restaurants, and they never looked like they were prepared with a ricer. Maybe I should dump that thing.

The beans were intoxicating. I found big green beans at the store. I broke them and simmered them for several hours yesterday. I seasoned them with a smoked ham hock, salt, pepper, a tiny bit of sugar, and some butter. The hock meat fell apart into the beans. I left the beans in the fridge overnight to let the flavors mingle. Today they were superb.

To get any flavor out of green beans or greens, you have to boil them until the texture starts to give way. It would be nice if you could have firm beans AND flavor, but you can forget it, because it doesn’t happen. If you’ve always eaten your green beans firm, you have no idea how good beans can taste.

Yankees criticize southerners for boiling vegetables until they turn into mush. I think they get the idea that we can’t cook from going to restaurants in the south where the food is bad. If you go to a Morrison’s cafeteria (a southern chain), and the beans are mushy and flavorless, the problem is this: you went to Morrison’s, where nearly everything is bad. If you ever tried my beans, you would understand why I cook them for three hours.

My gravy came out really well this year. I made it a little thinner and browner this time. I saved grease from the bottom of the turkey pan so I can make more later.

I learned pecan pie tastes even better if you screw up and triple the vanilla. I also added a little sorghum, because I was afraid I had left too much Karo in the bottle. I wanted to make up the difference. The sorghum improved the flavor. I also added a little whiskey, as always. I usually use Jack Daniel’s, which is a poor drinking whiskey that makes an excellent seasoning. This year, I did something awful. I had a nearly empty Knob Creek bottle, and I used it. Knob Creek is very good whiskey. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it, but JD would have cost me $19, and who knows when I would have used it again.

I think things worked out well. My dad was happy, the workload was not too bad, and I got a decent meal.

I still have a lot of food. I plan to get rid of it no later than Saturday. I don’t want this stuff sitting around tempting me. Thanksgiving is over. Time to move on. I could have a debauched weekend of reheated turkey and stuffing with gravy. All of these things get better after a day in the fridge. I’m not going to do it. It’s a sick American tradition that needs to go.

It’s kind of sad, seeing food this good go to the dump. I have never had holiday food that comes anywhere close to what I can cook for myself. I don’t care. It has to go, go, GO.

Christmas will be a lean operation. Prime rib, potatoes, salad, and maybe cheesecake. Much easier than what I just did. Then I’ll throw the leftovers out again.

I rarely cook anything good these days. It’s no longer a hobby. I try to make things that are quick and reasonably healthy. Holiday foods are aberrations.

This may be my dad’s last Thanksgiving, so I’m glad he enjoyed it. A friend congratulated me on my dad’s “first” Thanksgiving, meaning his first since he asked God for salvation. That was nice, but I’m not sure my dad is saved at the moment.

I don’t know if he understood what he was doing when he asked for salvation. I’m not even sure why he agreed to do it. Since then, he has said things indicating he doesn’t really believe.

I don’t believe in the doctrine of “eternal security.” I just learned the proper name for it a few days ago. I used to believe it. It means you can never lose your salvation. I’ve seen all sorts of testimonies from Christians who believe they went to hell, and I read a convincing book by a lady who said she was taken to hell and saw Christians there. I think at least some of these people are telling the truth.

Some people will point to verses like, “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Here’s a problem:

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

It certainly appears that Jesus was describing Christians who had called on him.

If calling on the Lord, all by itself, will bring salvation, why can’t renouncing God later, through words or actions, remove it?

Revelation 14 says people who renounce Jesus during the tribulation will go to hell. I don’t see why things should be any different now. I believe fear of hell is one of the main reasons the martyrs of the past were willing to be tortured and killed rather than repent.

Here’s what Revelation 14 says:

And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.

You have to be careful about focusing on one verse and forgetting the rest. Peter said this:

For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning.

Did the disciples receive salvation when they believed in Jesus before he was crucified? Many would say yes, but if that’s true, what about Judas? The Bible describes him as “lost,” and he committed suicide in a place that symbolizes hell. It sure looks like he went to hell, but if he believed before he died, and he could not lose his salvation, what’s going on?

If my dad can’t lose his salvation, then I should never have bothered talking to him about God, because he went to Sunday school when he was a kid, before becoming an atheist. If calling on God in 1938 solved all of his problems, then I have been spinning my wheels over nothing.

I hope I’m mistaken, because it would mean most people I care about would be in heaven or on their way there, but I think salvation can be lost pretty easily.

Am I worried about my dad? No, because God keeps telling me he will be saved. My expectation has always been that my dad will give up for real when death looks him in the face. That can still happen. Maybe what happened in September, when he asked for salvation the last time, was just a rehearsal.

I want to get this right. My own salvation, I mean. I don’t want to die and find out I’m on the wrong path.

Tomorrow I plan to eat normal food again. I almost dread Christmas dinner. I do not understand why I have a talent for cooking, since it causes more trouble than it’s worth. Today I wondered if it might have come from Satan instead of God. Maybe when I cook, demons are telling me how much butter to use and which spice to add. I hope not.

Derek Prince cautioned people to avoid the martial arts, because they tend to be entangled with eastern religion. He said he cast demons out of a karate expert, and afterward, the man couldn’t do a kick he used to do. Supposedly, demons had been helping him kick.

Maybe the stories about Robert Johnson are true. Maybe you really can sell your soul to Satan in exchange for the ability to play the guitar.

I would hate to get in trouble with God just so I could make coconut flan.

Anyway, Thanksgiving is over. Now I can relax.

Icebergs Ahead

I am working on Thanksgiving dinner for two.

I have a great tip for anyone who drinks eggnog. I’m too lazy to make my own, so I buy the store stuff and doctor it if necessary. Adding more vanilla and nutmeg can help. That’s not the tip.

I have put several different spirits in eggnog. Bourbon. Brandy. Probably rum. This week I tried something new, and it turned out to be better than anything else I had tried. I had to pick up some Grand Marnier for my cranberry relish, and it was sitting on the counter while I poured myself an eggnog. The wheels turned.

It’s excellent. I filled a mug halfway, added Grand Marnier, and filled it the rest of the way. I dusted the top with nutmeg. I can’t recommend it highly enough. My guess is that an XO brandy would be even better, but to spend $200 per bottle for something you put in eggnog is to meddle with the primal forces of nature.

Grand Marnier is one of those things that doesn’t fit in just everywhere. You certainly wouldn’t want to drink it straight. It’s good for things like injecting orange sections or strawberries you intend to dip in chocolate. It’s also an ingredient of crepes Suzette. Now I know of one more use for it.

I hope the relish comes out good, because I had a little incident with the pecan pies. I misread the list on the Karo bottle, and I put in three times as much vanilla as I was supposed to. I have a feeling it will be better this way, but I’m still kicking myself [Note: it was wonderful.].

In other news, I called my dad’s doctor today and said I wanted information about hospice evaluations. I also called a hospice that was recommended. My friend Mike is a hospice exec, and he told me I needed to get on this now, before things really get crazy. He kept pushing me to do it. I think he’s used to hearing about people who were in denial and kept putting it off. That’s not me. Half of my family is dead, and I accept death as part of life, so I don’t shy away from death-related responsibilities.

When you get old and need a lot of assistance, you eventually become eligible for hospice care. They have a bunch of criteria. Can you walk? Can you communicate? They look you over and make a decision. If you fail, you get hospice care, and Medicare pays for it. That’s the test I’m trying to get for my dad.

I have always thought of hospice care as something you receive in a hospice, but there is more to it than that. You can receive hospice care in your own home. That’s what I’m shooting for right now. They’ll move equipment in and send people to help you bathe and so on.

Mike thinks my dad is ready. I’m not so sure. Some sources say you can get hospice care if there is a good possibility you will die during the next 6 months. Others say you get it if you’re expected to die during that time. My dad could die during the next 6 months. I have a feeling he will. But he could make it another 5 years, and no physician has flatly stated he is likely to go within 6 months.

I called the hospice Mike recommended, and they told me they wanted a referral from my dad’s doctor, so I left a message at the doctor’s office. Maybe we can get an appointment or phone consultation next week.

Mike says doctors hate to recommend hospice care. He says they hate to talk about death. I think that’s true. I don’t think any doctor ever told my mother she was terminal.

I don’t know why they won’t talk about death. I hate to think it’s because they make so much money on futile efforts to prolong life. Maybe they just don’t want to be involved in the discussion, because they don’t want responsibility. If that’s the case, they should man up. When you get a medical license, you agree to deal with every aspect of your job.

Maybe they don’t talk about death because they’re afraid of it, and they assume everyone else is, too. Solid Christians tend to have little fear of death. Most people scared and repelled by it. Most doctors aren’t solid Christians.

It would be nice to have people come every day and deal with my dad. He doesn’t have the kind of respect for me that he has for strangers, so they would be able to get a lot more done than I can.

His mobility is not what it was two months ago. At some point within the next three months or so, I expect him to start requiring so much help getting around, sitting, and standing, that we have to come up with a new solution. Will it be new devices? Assisted living? A move to a hospice? I don’t know. I know I can’t carry him around, and I’m not going to start helping him in the shower or on the toilet. That’s too much. You do those things if you live in India or Sudan, on ten dollars a month. Here, you look for professional help.

Some people seem to think changing a parent’s diapers or washing their private parts is a beautiful bonding experience. Not me. I think an ordeal like that is an insult from Satan. I’ve already seen way more than I want to.

My friend Amanda has offered to stay with him if I need to travel to Miami. Today I realized that’s off the table. He is starting to have problems that go beyond what you can allow a friend to deal with. The next time I travel, it will have to be Visiting Angels or some other business.

The more I think about it, the more I think physical illness is better than dementia.

When a relative dies from cancer, at least you can still interact with him. You can still have conversations. The patient can help you plan and react. He can understand what’s happening to him. He can grow. He can atone.

With dementia, it’s like half of the person has departed for good, and you’re left with the other half. It’s like the executives have left the building, and you get to talk to the janitors and the answering service. Once it really sets in, you can’t discuss the problem with him in any meaningful way. That’s especially true when the patient is a master of denial, like my dad. He sees a dementia diagnosis as a slander to be vigorously refuted.

If my dad had cancer, we could still talk. He could help me with his care. Spending time with him wouldn’t be work. I wouldn’t have to get away every day and be alone in order to get over dealing with him. At the end, we would be able to say important things to each other. Vascular dementia may leave him with the mind of an infant, so when he dies, he may not be able to communicate or understand at all. That’s how his sister went.

If I get any useful results from my hospice inquiries, I’ll write about it. Maybe I can help other people prepare better than I did.

Everybody Else Gets Tested

One of the neatest things God has taught me is that there is no substitute…for God.

I turned back to God for real in about 2007. I joined a church in Miami. Eventually, I learned that the pastors were wrong about many things. I learned that they were liars; they taught things they knew were not true, because their false doctrine moved people to give them money. I learned that they were ignorant about many things; they couldn’t even get themselves blessed, but they were teaching other people.

These things are true, but I got a lot of benefit from the church at first. Some things they or their guest speakers taught were true and useful.

I joined another church, and the same thing happened. The church disappeared in a puff of pride and anger, but I learned a lot of good things there. The pastor was an active pedophile, but he still managed to teach me things that were worth holding onto.

What’s the big lesson here? It’s this: don’t trust people to teach you about God; not forever, anyway. Learn to hear from the Holy Spirit himself. This is how Christianity is supposed to work.

In all likelihood, if you turn to God right now and accept Jesus, and you tell God you only want to learn from him, you will have problems. I don’t know of anyone who instantly developed a reliable channel of communication with God. You will probably have to find teachers. Nonetheless, you have to go beyond them eventually, because every Christian makes mistakes.

My last two pastors taught me some good things, and they also taught me some toxic garbage. Human beings didn’t expose the errors to me; they defended and reinforced them. Human beings could not be trusted to refute false doctrine for me. The Holy Spirit himself woke me up and showed me what was wrong with the churches. No one else is reliable.

You have to rely on men a little bit, but if you’re still breastfeeding from your pastor 5 years into your walk, you’re doing Christianity wrong. God didn’t save you and fill you with the Holy Spirit so you could hang on every word from Andrew Wommack or Jentezen Franklin. He did it so you could know him personally and receive his instruction directly.

Teachers are like human parents. It’s fine if your mom changes your diapers when you’re 6 months old. If she’s still doing it when you’re 40, something is amiss.

Lately I’ve been listening to Derek Prince a lot. He has done some wonderful teaching. I’ve benefited a great deal from listening to him. These things are true, but I’m already spotting his errors, and some of them are pretty bad. Derek Prince is not Jesus. He made mistakes.

I’ll tell you about the first error I noticed. Prince has a long history of casting out demons. He has teachings in which he discusses things demons told him. For example, a woman he helped had a demon that claimed it had followed Prince from Africa. Prince asked it a lot of questions, and it answered him. Prince was pleased to get the information and pass it on.

Problem: demons are liars. The demon didn’t tell him the truth. It told him things that would hurt his ministry and the people who listened to his teachings. Do I know which things it said were lies? No. I don’t have to. I have common sense, so I know it lied.

What do you think a demon is going to do when you ask it questions? Do you seriously think it’s going to be truthful and try to help you? The Bible doesn’t say that. It says Satan is a liar and the father of lies. Most of Satan’s power comes from lying. MOST.

Lying is much easier than working. It makes your enemies do your work for you.

Satan is like a woman. He is very feminine, which is why he chooses to manifest as “goddesses.” A man will try to destroy you by beating you to death. A woman will simply lie about you until you dry up and die.

Prince himself says Jesus told demons, “Be muzzled,” when he cast them out. Jesus didn’t have long conversations with demons. The longest interaction we know of consisted of Jesus agreeing to let some demons go into a herd of pigs. He didn’t ask for their life stories. When he spoke with Satan himself, he kept it brief.

Think about it: why should we go to demons for instruction? The very idea is insane. How is it different from idolatry? It’s an effort to get, from another spirit, what God himself isn’t giving us.

The Bible says they who trust in God will lack no good thing. If God won’t give you something, it’s not a good thing, and you shouldn’t have it.

There are a lot of preachers on Youtube, shooting the breeze with people who are supposedly letting demons speak through them. How can anyone think the demons aren’t using these conversations as opportunities to spread poison? It’s their job! If I were a demon, it’s exactly what I’d do. Am I smarter than Satan? Have I come up with a strategy he never heard of until today? Bet I haven’t.

Here is the second error: Prince endorses the law of tithing, for Christians.

I can’t say it enough: we are not under the Jewish law. We can eat rabbits and oysters. We can wear poly/cotton shirts. We can eat toast during Passover. Tithing, as a required practice, comes from the Jewish law.

Preachers love to claim Abraham’s tithe to Melchizedek proves we have to tithe, and Prince is no exception. Yes, Abraham tithed before the law existed, but he only did it once as far as we know, and we have no record of him requiring other believers to do it, as he forced them to be circumcised.

There is no record of Christians tithing in the New Testament. There is absolutely no record of the prosperity gospel.

If you have to tithe, you have to obey all of the laws of ritual giving. If you grow crops, you can’t harvest the corners of the fields; you have to invite the poor to come and glean. If you have a pear tree, you have to take 10% of the pears to church (tithes went to the temple, not the church, but still). You’re not allowed to tithe until you pay all your bills. The Jewish law is very complex, and Prince didn’t know much about it. He taught people to obey a law, but he taught a very incomplete and, therefore, invalid version of the law.

Here’s what Paul said about legalism in Galatians:

For everyone who depends on legalistic observance of Torah commands lives under a curse, since it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not keep on doing everything written in the Scroll of the Torah.”

Now it is evident that no one comes to be declared righteous by God through legalism, since “The person who is righteous will attain life by trusting and being faithful.”

Furthermore, legalism is not based on trusting and being faithful, but on the text that says, “Anyone who does these things will attain life through them.”

The Messiah redeemed us from the curse pronounced in the Torah by becoming cursed on our behalf; for the Tanakh says, “Everyone who hangs from a stake comes under a curse.”

Yeshua the Messiah did this so that in union with him the Gentiles might receive the blessing announced to Avraham, so that through trusting and being faithful, we might receive what was promised, namely, the Spirit.

Paul began Galatians 3, addressing their legalism, this way:

You stupid Galatians! Who has put you under a spell?

Don’t dismiss the word “spell” as though a modern American had said it without sincerity. Paul meant what he said. He knew witchcraft and demons were real. He was being literal. He used a Greek word which referred to witchcraft. He knew legalism sometimes resulted from spells cast by witches, and he believed the Galatians should be aware that they might be under such a spell.

Prince himself cast out a religious demon that told people not to eat pork.

I’m not going to count my grapes and take 10% to a church. Forget it. I have a huge rosemary bush. Do you seriously think I’m going to drive to the property where it grows, cut 10% off, and take it to a preacher? Come on! The law requires those things.

The law is very hard. One of its purposes was to show people they could not be righteous through their own efforts. Jesus freed us from the burden of the law by fulfilling it on the cross. If you pick the burden up again, you’re making a mistake, and you can’t expect God to back you up.

I went to Middlebrook Church here in Ocala about 4 times. Maybe 5. I didn’t give them a cent. I’m glad I didn’t, because during the last service I attended, the pastor taught New Age idolatry. If the Holy Spirit had wanted me to give, I would have given. I’m not going to support idolatry just because Abraham gave a bunch of sheep and chickens to Melchizedek. I believe God would hold me responsible if I gave stupidly. I believe he has done it in the past.

It’s strange that idolaters use the term “New Age.” All of what they teach is very old. There is nothing new about it.

You can’t serve two masters. Jesus made that clear. The law is one master, and the Holy Spirit is another.

You really have to get to know the Holy Spirit. You can’t trust human beings all your life. You can’t trust Derek Prince, the pope, me, or anyone else. Try to pick out the things that are true, get yourself baptized with the Holy Spirit, pray in tongues a great deal every day, and listen to God. He is the only truly trustworthy being there is. Everyone else, without exception, can fail. There are people in hell who gave some good teaching as pastors while they were alive.

By the way, I will mention this again: I heard a teaching that said the ability to pray in tongues could be blocked by unforgiveness and unconfessed sin, so if you’re still stuck, think about it. From personal experience, I can tell you that even when you think you’ve confessed everything, you will probably turn out to be wrong. Ask God to show you what you still have to get out of yourself.

Don’t think of confession, repentance, sanctification, and having demons cast out as one-time things. It’s like taking out the garbage. You have to keep it up. You wouldn’t take your garbage out in January and forget about it for the rest of the year because it was already done.

God told me this: “I am a living thing.” He also said, “Things get better, or they get worse.” We are always improving or deteriorating. Demons, sicknesses, and iniquities can come back, so keep doing what you’re supposed to do. Improve or deteriorate. There is no third choice.

I won’t let myself get frustrated with Prince. He’s not a failure, as far as I can tell. He’s just imperfect, like the rest of us. He did a lot of great work, and I will still listen to him sometimes. If I get disgusted because of his little errors, I’m condemning and discarding every preacher who ever lived, and I’m certainly condemning myself.

Then Just Keep Running

Yesterday I went shopping for Thanksgiving food. I’m afraid I was not as thankful as I should have been.

When I was a kid, Thanksgiving was not my problem. My mother cooked everything, or we ate at my grandparents’ house, and that meant the cooking was divided up among a bunch of relatives. Now, it’s all me. Shopping. Cleaning up before the meal. Cooking. Running around frantically during the meal to make sure my dad doesn’t defile anything and ruin it for everyone else. Dishes. Cleaning up after the meal. It’s a drag.

I was reluctant to cook at all this year. I don’t know if my dad would care. By Friday, he will be thinking of other things. In the past, he has suggested going out for Thanksgiving, but that’s depressing. I feel like I have to do something here at the house.

I decided to cut the menu down. My dad likes oyster dressing, which I find disgusting. I don’t know how to make oyster dressing, so I make cornbread dressing and shove oysters into it. It’s probably wrong, but he eats it. I’m all done with it. It won’t hurt him to eat normal dressing like everyone else. I’m thinking of stuffing the turkey with cornbread stuffing containing chunks of sauteed andouille.

He can’t smell anything, and that means his sense of taste is very limited. He doesn’t really taste oysters. He will enjoy my stuffing as much as he would the nasty oyster mess. He just wants oysters because his mother used to use them. Some traditions are well worth killing.

No yams this year. I used to make a dish which was basically yams mashed up with pineapples, brown sugar and spices, topped with pecans fried in brown sugar and butter. Forget that. Takes too much time.

There will be no pumpkin pies. I don’t particularly care for pumpkin pie. I don’t think anyone really likes it. Try comparing it to apple, cherry, or peach pie, and you have to admit, it comes in second every time. I’m making two pecan pies, using crusts from the store. Good enough.

Pecan prices have gone nuts, to use an appropriate adjective. I paid $18 for my pecans. There must be a blight.

My dad insists on cranberry sauce, which is a very weak dish. It’s cranberries, sugar, and water. I’m all done with it. This year, it will be relish alone. Everyone gets relish, and they will danged well like it. I’m tired of making sauce AND relish.

I won’t make fruit salad (or any type of salad), and there will be no rolls. No snacks. No cookies. It will be turkey, beans, potatoes, cranberry relish, and pecan pie. I think I cut four hours of work out of my life.

I have learned to love small turkeys. The store was full of birds the size of toddlers, but I dug out a 12-pounder. I am going to bone it and stuff it. It’s a lot of work, but once you’ve had a boned turkey, all other turkeys are disgusting.

You know the big, dried-out turkey cadaver you end up with every year? You struggle to fit it on a platter, and then you try to cover it with foil, but people never put the foil back correctly, so everything turns into leather? You don’t get that with a boned turkey. You get a solid loaf of pure food you can slice and put in Tupperware. The bones go in the trash on Thursday, not Monday, or you can use them for gravy.

If you don’t know how big your turkey should be, you can find the information on the web. If the raw weight in pounds is 1.5 times the number of diners, you’re good. If you want a lot of leftovers, maybe you need to go bigger. I do not want leftovers. Sharing leftover food with a dementia patient is a bad experience. You go to the fridge hoping to make a turkey sandwich, and then you see that someone else has handled the meat with his fingers. That kind of thing happens.

My dad was never a great person to share leftovers with. He would eat the best stuff right away, and the more there was, the more he ate. No one else got very much. He’s an unusual person. I take him to restaurants for big lunches, and then when he gets home, he eats ice cream out of the carton.

I’ll be throwing out any remaining leftovers on Saturday. My dad hates that, but I hate dealing with the mess. Turkey bits on the counter. Cranberry sauce on the floor. As long as I’m the sole member of the cleaning crew, I make the rules. On Saturday, out it goes.

When I finally gritted my teeth and decided to cook, I invited my friend Amanda over. She has three sons and an elderly parent (not demented). Like me, she has no help whatsoever. None. Nada. I figured things would be easier on both of us if we teamed up. Also, if she wants, she can fill in with items I refuse to cook. I am hoping both of us will do a lot less work than we would have had to do with two separate operations.

My attitude toward the whole affair is not all that positive. I suppose I should think of Amanda’s sons. Thanksgiving was a big deal to me when I was a kid. Maybe if I think of this as a chance to help patch up their childhoods, I’ll feel more motivated. I should focus on that, because feeding my dad is not all that rewarding.

I don’t see the holiday as an opportunity to give thanks. I give thanks like crazy every day. I’m not sure jamming yourself full of food is a good way to express gratitude. I’m also unexcited about the idea of going somewhere and feeding the poor. If you’re only good to other people on holidays, I suppose working at a homeless shelter two days a year is better than nothing, but I want no part of it. I’m not sure how people who do it manage to put any food on their own tables. I expect to be cooking from 9 a.m. until at least 2 p.m., not including the things I’ll do tomorrow and Wednesday. There is no conceivable way I could produce edible food AND spend three hours virtue signaling and posting selfies of myself hugging the poor while trying not to get too dirty.

If you want to freak the poor out, go feed them two weeks after Thanksgiving, and stay all day. Or feed them in March, giving up a vacation day. That will make an impression. Much better than hopping out of your Range Rover and slapping instant mashed potatoes on trays for 45 minutes.

If I cook anything at all for Christmas, it will be rib roast, baked potatoes, and cheesecake. Maybe a Caesar salad. I would fix these things on Thursday if I could get away with it. The cheesecake takes a little effort, but the other things are as easy to prepare as toast. It’s also a much better meal than turkey and dressing.

It looks like the best strategy is to think of the kids. That gives me a little enthusiasm, or at least it makes me feel some obligation. My dad and Amanda’s mom–I think Amanda will forgive me–are not the sort of seniors who make you want to cook special stuff for them in order to thank them for being so wonderful.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll get amped up and cook yams.

No pumpkin pie. No way. I hate fads, and for the last couple of years, we’ve been seeing way too much “pumpkin spice.” Pumpkin spice cookies. Pumpkin spice cappuccino. Pumpkin spice pork rinds. Pumpkin spice Preparation H. No; someone must rage against the machine, and as Dean Vernon Wormer said, that foot is me.

Try that boned turkey. You don’t know what you’re missing.