The Missing 75% of Christianity

I guess I’m in a rut. I keep watching healing videos on Youtube.

Years ago, God showed me there is symmetry in the supernatural. For example, demons inhabit and even control people; the Holy Spirit inhabits people and guides them. God sent Jesus. Satan will send his own messiah, the Antichrist. God has prophets. Satan has fortune tellers and so-called psychics. Before the flood, Satan had children here who were giants in the flesh but not the spirit. God’s children are nothing special in the flesh, but we are abnormally strong in the spirit. God sends faith, and so does Satan, but we call faith in Satan “worry.”

Before I knew much of anything about God, he showed me something about evil. The worst type of evil, which is very common, is to do great harm to others in order to get a slight benefit for yourself. Consider slavery and other types of human trafficking, for example. Consider meth dealing. A meth dealer might manage to gain an income comparable to that of a Walmart manager, but to get it, he has to ruin the lives of a lot of people.

The healing videos I’ve been watching show me that the type of evil I describe above has a counterpart. Sometimes you can do another person a great deal of good with almost no sacrifice. It makes sense. God says nothing is hard for him, and we ask him for help all the time. When God helps you, he doesn’t have to empty his bank account, strain his back, miss work, or risk injury. He sits in a big, comfortable chair and gives a command. It makes sense that we should usually be able to help people without suffering much. As far as we know, Jesus only had one bad day in his life, and we have no record of Jesus working hard, getting sick, lacking anything, being defeated, or, prior to his arrest, suffering any type of injury.

God never says, “My life is so hard. I do it all for you. I live in a cardboard box and deny myself so you can have what you want.” Over and over, he says nothing is hard for him. He sacrificed his flesh, one time. And he fasted once. That’s all the suffering we know of.

I read a book by a man who said he had been given a tour of hell. He said some people were punished in ways that reflected the evil they did on earth. One man he saw was stingy on earth. In hell, he was imprisoned in a claustrophobic barrel. It was very tight, and he could never get out. He was always very close to escaping, but he couldn’t make it. The idea behind the punishment was that there had been many people he could have helped out of tight places with very little effort, but he had chosen not to.

I’ve seen people who helped others greatly without much pain at all. I know someone who got in trouble for stealing from his place of work. He pawned some things he stole, expecting to redeem them and return them later. The pawnbroker broke his word and sold these things early. Then the employer noticed the things were missing, and the thief was told he had to make it right or face prosecution. It would have been a penitentiary offense.

Someone who was financially comfortable gave the thief around $2000 to settle things. The money meant nearly nothing to the giver. It would never make any difference in his lifestyle. It made a colossal difference to the thief. He was able to stay in college, where he had a full scholarship. He avoided a felony conviction, which would have cost him the right to vote, the right to own firearms and defend his house, and any possibility of finding work that paid more than minimum wage. A felony is a very big deal.

It was a bargain. One person lost something trivial, and the other got his life back.

I think about that when I watch healings. A guy shows up in a truck and gets out, having nothing better to do. He goes up to someone who has a medical problem with makes life miserable. Maybe the problem is incurable or terminal. The healer commands the problem to go. It takes two or three minutes. The person receiving the healing is made well, and the healer drives away to get a cheeseburger. No paperwork. No bill. No debt.

That’s a remarkable thing. No money changes hands. There is no hard work involved. No one is even inconvenienced. You don’t have to pay an insurance company. You don’t have to be stripped naked in front of strangers and have devices and cameras shoved up your genitals or your rear end. You don’t vomit from chemotherapy or void your bowels on the floor because you can’t make it to the toilet. You don’t have to get a fake limb because your illness required an amputation. You’re done, just like that.

God doesn’t remove lungs. He doesn’t give people barium enemas. He doesn’t amputate cancerous lower jaws and leave people looking like frogs. He doesn’t take out prostate glands and leave men impotent and incontinent. He doesn’t do hysterectomies on women who want to have kids.

God is not a hack.

No malpractice! That’s a big blessing. Doctors do some dumb things. They leave sponges inside patients. They amputate healthy legs and leave diseased ones in place. They gave Dana Carvey a coronary bypass and fixed the wrong arteries, leaving the crud in the obstructed ones. Medical people kill patients in droves every day.

There was a news story about a man who awoke from surgery to find he had been castrated. The surgeon took everything; every trace of genitalia. It was a mistake. God doesn’t do things like that.

I rarely go to doctors, because I hate everything about the experience, but even I have had a lot of problems with them. When I was a kid, they were cruel, especially when my parents weren’t around. They’ve charged too much. They’ve charged me for expensive treatments they knew I didn’t need. They’ve treated me for things I didn’t have. In my prayers, I call them “witch doctors,” and I beg God to keep me away from them.

I don’t mean any disrespect. I’m just giving them their due. Doctors do some things very well, and they are really bad at many others. They are dangerously wrong about things. Don’t believe me? Go back and look at what doctors believed in 1980. We thought they knew everything then, and they didn’t. We had very high opinions of them in 1960, 1940, 1920…go back as far as you want. Would you want to travel back to 1920 and be treated by the best doctors in the world? The very idea is frightening. Well, that’s how a person from 2080 would feel about being treated by a 2018 doctor.

Do you know what a cancerous tumor is is? It’s really a wart, or at least something which is like a wart. It’s a wartlike growth inside your body, that grows out of control and assumes complicated shapes that are impossible to cut out. It’s like a wart that grows and spreads. Millions of people are dying every year from growths that are like giant internal warts.

When you look at cancer that way, and you think about how hard it is to cure, you realize how weak medical science is.

Doctors are limited. God finds everything easy, and he never, ever does anything wrong.

What a different world it would be if we believed in healing and received it. Instead of sitting in waiting rooms full of pain and fully justified worry, we would lay hands on each other, repent, get rid of our sicknesses, and go about our lives praising God.

I have had a lot of divine healings. There is nothing like it. I’ll have an issue, and I’ll dread going to the doctor, or I’ll dread waiting for it to heal naturally. I’ll pray and do the other things I do, and first thing you know, I’ll find that the problem is gone or going away. It would be great if I could do this for other people. What a gift that would be. We spend our lives doing things we know are stupid and pointless. We sell securities. We sell real estate. We practice law. We wait tables. It’s all vain. It’s just a way to pass time and put food on the table. Imagine knowing a few hundred people were free from cancer, without medical treatment, because of you. You wouldn’t have to wonder why you were here.

My sister had to have her gallbladder cut out when she was about 23. They almost cut her in half. The scar is enormous. They didn’t have keyhole surgery. At my last church, the pastor’s wife had her gallbladder cut out. Another friend had his cut out after that. My gallbladder acted up, and I prayed. It hasn’t been right for maybe 15 years, and I can’t say I’ve had an instant healing, but it gets better all the time, and I have never had to have surgery. I’ve never mentioned it to a doctor. I don’t have attacks.

I was having attacks a few years ago, and I felt like God told me to eat fat. I went out and ate burgers and pizza. I had milkshakes. These things are supposed to be disastrous for gallbladder patients. I ate these things in front of other people who had gallbladder problems. Some of them ended up having surgery. Here I am, still functioning.

I’ve had a bunch of burns healed over the last year. That got to be routine.

I had a little warty growth on the side of my face. I thought I would have to get it burned off. It started going away. It’s nearly gone. I’ve had others that went away. I don’t bother going to a dermatologist because the growths can’t be trusted to be there when I’m examined.

God healed my knees in church. I felt a pulsating sensation around them, like two spirit hands were massaging them. Now they’re fine.

I had pain in my right shoulder for years. This week I realized it had disappeared.

I had pain in the joints in my hands. I hated it. It made me feel like my time as a capable person was ending. This month I realized it was gone.

Some problems are stubborn, possibly because I am stubborn, but I haven’t had to go to a doctor in…I can’t remember how long. I want life to be like that for everyone.

My great grandmother was a charismatic, and she refused to go to doctors. One day when she was 85, she got in bed and told her family she was going to die. My grandfather refused to come to her bedside. He said she had indigestion. She died. That’s how I want to go. Either that or a meteor. I don’t want to die screaming with poop in my hair because tumors are in my brain. I don’t want to rot away in a nursing home, unable to recognize the people who care for me or remember whether I had breakfast.

If we were showing people God’s compassion and power through healing, surely it would be easier to convert them. If people knew we could consistently cure homosexuality, it would be impossible to find enough people to have a gay pride parade in America, and the homosexuality-driven persecution we are enduring wouldn’t exist.

Right now people just see us as useless characters who tell them to obey unpleasant rules.

The supernatural is extremely important. Without it, Christianity is dead.

I’ll leave you with a video. You’ll see Tom Fischer healing a lifelong friend. The friend says he used to roll his eyes at Tom when he talked about God. Not any more!

Maybe some day I’ll be able to do things like that.

There is no Power Without Responsibility

I’m always disturbed when one of my friends starts to be a fanboi for a successful preacher. Suddenly, instead of hearing about his or her testimony–the astounding things God has done in his or her life–I start hearing about Lonnie Ray McCracken’s latest 3-hour sermon. Instead of my friend’s testimony, which is what I want to hear, I hear Lonnie Ray’s. Which may or may not be BS.

That makes complete sense, doesn’t it? I’m getting a revelation right now. It makes sense that focusing on a teacher would stunt your testimony. When you look at a man instead of God, the man blocks whatever God is trying to send you.

This blog post is changing direction, so I will let it happen.

The New Testament says there were times when a sick person would be healed by the shadow of a Christian. Tom Fischer, the no-jet-having, non-rich street evangelist I’ve been watching, has videos where he heals people by casting his shadow on their afflicted areas.

I watched these videos and received thoughts about eclipses as he cast his shadow. It was as if Satan were a star, shining destructive radiation on people, and Tom Fischer blocked it, like a moon coming between the sun and the earth.

I have often thought that God gave us the sun to symbolize himself and the moon to symbolize Satan. Unbelievers think it’s a coincidence that the sun’s apparent diameter is the same as the moon’s. That’s quite a coincidence. It’s so improbable, it’s hard to comprehend how it could happen. I think the moon appears to be the same size as the sun because God wanted to show us how Satan, who is small and generates no power of his own, can look just as big as God, who is far greater, simply by being closer to us.

The moon and planets are dark. They shine only with the sun’s light.

I believe we have eclipses to show us how a tiny, useless being can come between God and us and make himself seem strong and God weak.

When Tom Fischer stood between the sun and sick people, to me it seemed as if he were eclipsing Satan.

I know I’m using the sun to represent Satan, and I used it to represent God a few words back, but no analogy is perfect, and besides, Satan is the god of this world, according to Jesus.

When a person gets sucked up into celebrity worship and turns a preacher into a little god, it’s as if that preacher performs an eclipse. God is behind him, telling you things and sending you help, but whatever God sends is blocked by the preacher or bent and distorted as it goes around his edges.

Why am I saying this? Because Tom Fischer isn’t my god. I’ve been writing about him a lot, but he’s not my father, and I am not going to call him “pastor” or send him money.

Well. I might send a few bucks to support his street ministry. But I’m not sure about that.

I’m writing all this because I saw a neat Tom Fischer video today, and I wanted to be able to write about it without giving people the impression that I’ve attached myself to a new false god. I still go directly to the source, every day, all day. If Tom Fischer disagrees with the source, I will discard what Tom Fischer says.

I just watched a video in which Tom discusses the difficulty of healing Christians. That’s a great topic. He says it’s actually much easier to heal total heathens than Christians. Why? Because we are more accountable!

I guess I’ll pick on my old churches–Trinity Church and New Dawn Ministries–again. Why not? Trinity is a dangerous, destructive church, and New Dawn Ministries was obliterated and utterly disgraced because of pride and dishonesty. Might as well speak the truth when it can help people. I know there are individuals from these churches who have read my blog in the past, even though they don’t talk about it. The pastors have read it. Think they had the guts to talk to me about it? Come on! Never! If you took all the bone and tissue from the spines of the folks who run Trinity Church, you couldn’t build a backbone for a mouse.

Maybe things I write will get back to them, and it will help them, or maybe things I write will help people they enslave. I don’t know if anyone from these churches still comes here.

People said I criticized Trinity in “the wrong way.” I admit, I called the bigwigs there “idiots,” and I probably should have used a different word. But other than that, I have nothing to apologize for. I was much nicer than Jesus and Moses.

When you kick a rat’s den open and let the sunshine in, the rats will squeak. That’s life.

A friend of mine told me something God told her: if God tells you to tell someone something, you’re not responsible for what they do with it. You’re just carrying a package. Put it down and go on your merry way.

The folks who thought I was too harsh were brainwashed. They had become toadies. They needed to be slapped awake. They needed to see someone contradict their corrupt, uninformed leaders and throw cold water on them. They needed to know I could do that without being struck by fire from heaven. People said, “Touch not my anointed,” but in reality, I was anointed to criticize. Someone had to do it.

New Dawn dried up and died, disproving years of rosy “prophecies,” and Trinity is a financial and spiritual mess. Meanwhile, things are going very well for me, and I am experiencing something I have dreamed of for a long time: rural life far from Miami. I almost can’t believe I’m here. When people said I was disloyal and so on, I said something like, “May God judge between us,” and he did. I am not a good person, and I don’t deserve the good things I get. I’m not saying I’m a great guy or that God rewards me for being wonderful. I’m saying I did a better job of obeying, in this particular set of controversies, and I came out better than the people who were (are) in rebellion.

If you want to know who’s anointed and who’s not, look at the long term and see who remains on his feet.

What could be worse than reviling someone who is telling you what God wants you to hear? Shooting a friend because you’re drunk is very bad, but it can’t compare to sawing a prophet in half because he relays a word from God. I’m not saying I’m a prophet, but God did tell me a few things, and I got ostracized by ignorant people for passing them on.

The things God told these people could have been so helpful it would have amazed them. They turned a blessing into a curse.

I’m going to pick on these churches in ways I didn’t foresee when I said I was going to pick on them. I thought I would criticize them for ignoring the need for repentance, but I think I will also criticize them for doing evil when they knew better. It’s sort of the same thing, really.

The leaders at these churches knew they were wrong. Rich Wilkerson, for example, knew the money-in/money-out doctrine he learned from Steve Munsey was not true, and he knew he was taking money, without God’s permission, from poor people. People like me dropped off packages of truth, and the leaders let them sit outside the doors in the rain. As a result, these churches failed. They could not get healed. Trinity is still open, but it’s hollow and powerless. It’s filthy. New Dawn is gone completely, and several lives have been shattered by systematic sexual predation.

In the video I watched today, Tom Fischer says many Christians have physical problems that are the direct result of sin of which they refuse to repent. Like the preachers at these awful churches, people know they shouldn’t continue doing wrong. They shouldn’t smoke tobacco or fornicate or use drugs or whatever. They continue, and then when a healer shows up and prays with complete faith, nothing good happens. The sin people cling to eclipses the healing power. The devil puts out a “Do not Disturb” sign, and God respects it. Satan has rights.

Smoking tobacco is a sin, by the way. Nicotine is a drug, and cigarette smokers are hard core drug addicts. Every year, tobacco gives millions of people vile diseases and causes them to die, shriveled and incapacitated, before their time, in agony. That’s not the type of outcome which is associated with something that isn’t a sin.

Smoking has had a big impact in the south. I see the results here in Ocala when I take my dad to clinics and hospitals. People with blue skin stagger in, dragging tanks behind them, with tubes in their noses. There are a lot of them. I don’t see the cancer patients. They’re wasting away, and/or screaming in pain, in privacy.

It always amazes me that people are willing to smoke cigarettes. They don’t even get you high. I understand heroin addicts. I’d love to try heroin myself, if it weren’t a sin. Opiates feel wonderful. But to let someone cut your withered lung out so you can suck on a burning weed that does almost nothing for you? That decision is incomprehensible to me.

I used to smoke an occasional cigar. That was stupid, and I regret it. It was wrong. But cigarettes? They’re on a different level. They’re addictive. They are extremely likely to give you cancer. They are guaranteed to damage your lungs badly. Why not just jump off a building?

Other people’s sins always look stupid to me. Thank goodness I’m perfect.

At New Dawn Ministries, we had a head deacon named Ozzie. He had breast cancer. I knew him for a couple of years. During that time, he slowly shrank until he was a stick of a man. He was the former brother in law of the pastor’s wife, if memory serves. He was very close to the pastors. They used to put him in front of the church and call him “Ozzie healed of the Lord.” They tried to cast devils out of him. People fasted for him.

I prayed for him. I had tremendous faith that he would be healed. I felt supernatural faith, telling me it was a done deal. Ozzie was one of my projects.

During this time, God was teaching me about pride. I knew I had to get rid of my inquities, and pride was one of them. I saw that people at the church were very proud.

The pastor’s son, a drug enthusiast and possible dealer with a terrible attitude toward adults, was probably the proudest person there, even though he had much more to be ashamed of than a lot of people. He had absolutely nothing to be proud of. He couldn’t hold a fast food job. He had no money. He had no education. He had no discernible talents. His personality was off-putting. But he glowed with pride. He thought he was a genius. I think he smirked even in his sleep.

The pastors were proud. You could not tell them one single thing. If they had been on fire, and you had told them you needed to throw water on them, they would have burned to death while telling you they didn’t need your help.

These were not impressive people. They were uneducated. They were not particularly attractive or gifted. They hadn’t accomplished much in life. Their church was failing. It had gone from filling an entire building to occupying a tiny rented room in that same building. But they behaved like royalty.

Their “house prophet,” a guy named George, used to stand up and yell for long periods, telling everyone how thrilled God was with New Dawn. We were doing everything right. God was going to give us a big building and this and that. He told a lady I know she was going to have twins. He told me God was about to bring me a wonderful wife. He was always wrong. I came to understand that it was dangerous to let George prophesy over you, because it gave God incentive to prove him wrong.

George never said anything negative, and the pastors maintained that prophets were only supposed to say positive things.

They didn’t mind saying negative things about people, so you have to marvel at the cognitive dissonance.

Interesting story about George: he went to Africa with an older minister. They ministered to people they met. One man was very happy to hear about Jesus. He had lunch with George and the other man. To show George his love, he insisted on feeding him from his own hand. It was some kind of gross African custom.

George, like me, was a germophobe. He didn’t want anything dirty near him. He had to let a man put his nasty hand in food and shove it in his mouth. To me, that meant something. George had used his mouth to do a lot of damage, and God used his mouth to chastise him. Unclean things went out, so unclean things went in. Anyhow, I took it that way.

I told people what God had been telling me about pride and iniquity. He had been showing me I needed to deal with these things in myself, and I wanted other people to know, so they could share the benefit. I told them they needed to repent if they wanted their problems solved. I made them angry. No one listened. Especially Ozzie. “Everything is covered by the blood.” “Faith is all that matters.”

Ozzie dropped dead.

The tumors went to his brain, he went to a hospice, he started raving, and then he was gone.

Ozzie was just as proud as the pastors. This is odd, because he didn’t get excited about God until he was diagnosed. I can understand how a lifelong Christian with great knowledge and a good testimony could be proud, but that wasn’t Ozzie. Like me, he ran to God after a long time in rebellion, because things weren’t working out. He hadn’t led a good life. Adultery had been a major problem.

It was hard to talk laterally to Ozzie. You had to talk up, as though you were talking to someone on a throne. I say this as an older man he should have spoken to with a little honor. He treated me like a child. He was a nice guy, but he knew all the answers.

Ozzie’s death shook the church, and it shook me. I was not used to having great faith and seeing no results. It made me wonder what I could trust. It was like the earth started to crack under me.

Eventually, God told me this: the church had let Ozzie down by not helping him repent. People there got furious when repentance and humility were discussed. They said I was blaming people for their diseases, which is…TRUE. Jesus sometimes blamed people for their diseases, so I should, too.

We had prayed for Ozzie, and God had sent faith, but we had never warned Ozzie about his pride and denial. Actually, I made an effort, but it never caught on or went anywhere. In the end, pride and denial eclipsed God. They were in the way.

Hosea said people were destroyed for lack of knowledge, and it’s still true. And when God sends knowledge, people spit it back up.

To get back to the video I watched today, Ozzie was a classic case of a Christian who could not be healed because he was in rebellion.

In a way, he was destroyed for lack of knowledge. He had the knowledge that he needed to repent and work on pride, because he had heard it from me and maybe from others. He certainly should have seen it in the Bible. He rejected that knowledge, so it was as though he didn’t have it. It did him no good. In another way, he was destroyed because he had knowledge. He knew he was proud. He knew he needed to repent. He was held accountable for that knowledge. Because he knew and did nothing, he could not get healed.

The package was delivered, but Ozzie didn’t sign for it.

Christians are held to a higher standard than other people. If you know God at all, you have to snap out of your complacency and realize the consequences of your deliberate sins will be much worse than the consequences ignorant people face.

Here is why some of the Pharisees Jesus dealt with are burning in hell right now and will remain there forever:

Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.

In at least one case, Jesus equated healing with forgiveness. How can you forgive someone who is, at that moment, sinning with no plans to stop? What’s the point? It’s like trying to wash a car while you drive it through the mud.

He also said this:

And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.

But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.

A lot of my problems can be traced to this principle. God visited me personally in 1986 and told me what I needed to do, and I wandered off eventually and did whatever I wanted. I did not take him seriously.

Actually, all of my problems can be traced to this. When I got away from God, I stopped praying. God has since told me, “All of your problems are caused by lack of prayer.”

“All.”

I cause my own problems. Maybe you don’t, because you’re a victim and you’re incredibly holy. My hat is off to you. I don’t buy it, but anyway, hooray for you.

Here is the video I watched. I couldn’t find anything wrong with what he said, and I think it will benefit you.

To go off on a tangent, I had an extraordinary experience last night. It’s something I’ve been praying for. I really need this kind of thing.

I was tempted, and I started to fall into a sinful activity. I really did not want to do it. I am sick of sin.

I got close to sinning, but I didn’t feel sufficiently compelled to close the deal. In this life, I feel urges to do evil, and I feel countering urges to do good, and many, many times, the evil urges have been too strong to fight. Last night, I suddenly felt like the vote was 70/30 against sin, and that was plenty. Suddenly I just wasn’t up for sin. I thought of it the way I would ordinarily think of working on my taxes or cleaning the kitchen. I wanted to put it off and not think about it. I was very relieved.

I often see sin and righteousness the way I see the flow of money in a casino. To make money running a casino–to ruin people’s lives and destroy children’s inheritances–you don’t have to rig the games so people lose all the time. In fact, that will assure you of going out of business. No one will show up to play. What you do is rig the games so you have a very small edge. I don’t know what that edge is in any particular game, but my understanding is that the house’s advantage is generally under 10%.

A person can go into a casino and gamble for a very long time before losing all the money he brings with him. In the end, the result is the same as if he had blown everything on one hand of cards, but the loss can be very gradual.

When it comes to sin, I find that my heart and mind are divided. I want to do the right thing, but when it comes to sins I can’t get past, the urge to do the wrong thing has a small edge. If 55% of me wants to sin, and 45% wants me to do right, I will eventually break down and sin. It’s like I’m arm-wrestling someone stronger than me. I can resist for a while, but my arm will eventually go down. I can’t carry the load indefinitely by myself.

In order to be able to refrain from sinning, all I need is a tiny edge. That’s what I felt last night. It’s enough.

Wanting to sin isn’t sin. Being tempted isn’t sin. It’s normal to want money, things, sex, and so on. If you resist successfully, you’re blameless, even if you wanted to sin very badly. You may have an iniquity–an unnecessary and unhealthy urge–you need to get rid of. You may have demons that need to be cast out. But you haven’t committed a violation. A violation is worse than an urge, because it opens the door and gives the enemy more power over you.

God can put his righteousness in you. We don’t have to avoid sin purely through our own willpower. I know this because God has changed my desires before. It’s something to strive to get. I am really hoping to get more of this.

I don’t care at all about the credit. I am past that. I would be completely happy to have God send an angel to slap my face when I want to sin. I don’t care. I don’t care. I’ll be happy to go on national TV and tell the world I can’t stop sinning without supernatural intervention. I just want a clean life.

It’s better to avoid unnecessary sin in the first place than to indulge in sin and develop compelling habits–iniquities–and have to get God to remove them. Unfortunately, I’ve done what I’ve done, so I have things to deal with. If there’s any sin you haven’t tried yet, and you’re thinking of giving it a shot, take my advice and forget about it. You may feel like you’re picking up something very light right now, but eventually it will be very heavy, and you won’t be allowed to put it down.

2300 Words to Help You Pass the Time

I got up late today. A couple of months back, I fired my alarm clock. I hate alarm clocks. It doesn’t matter how nice the wake-up sound is. After a week, it will feel like someone shoving hot needles into your ear. I quit using the alarm, so sometimes I get up later than I want to. Daylight Saving Time just started (or ended; I never can remember how it works), so I suppose that makes my body think it’s early.

I’m a morning person now, which is all the miracle anyone needs in order to believe in God. I used to loathe mornings. My natural tendency was to wake up at noon, and when my clock went off at seven or whatever, I always felt like the world had ended. I couldn’t move. I felt like a magnet was sucking me down into the mattress. I just wanted to go back to sleep. I haven’t had that feeling in years. Mornings are just like any other time of day now. But the alarm sound…that, I still hate.

Today I woke up not long after eight, which is acceptable given my current lifestyle, but when I started to pray and get the day going, I conked out without realizing it, and I woke up at 9:45. Big disruption to my prayer life. I have to sit and pray now instead of doing other things.

When I fell asleep, I dreamed I had overslept. I thought I was in my favorite bedroom at my grandfather’s house, and I was trying to see what time it was. I was trying to read the alarm clock, but I couldn’t see clearly. For some reason, I was looking into it from the back. I could see the back of the display, but I couldn’t read anything.

Imagine dreaming you overslept, while you’re oversleeping. But it could be worse. The dream I really hate is the one where I dream I can’t sleep.

My dreams are so realistic, when I look back on them, I have a hard time distinguishing them from reality. Sometimes I think about a place I’ve been, and then I realize that place doesn’t exist. I dreamed I was there, and then the dream was stored in my memory. Sometimes I have to think for a while to determine conclusively whether a place in my memory is real or imaginary.

I have another weird thing that happens when I’m in bed. It generally happens during prayer, because if I’m lying in bed, I’m either praying or sleeping. I’ll fall asleep for an instant, and then I’ll wake up. During that instant, I’ll think about a person I just imagined. I’ll think that nonexistent person is real. That’s not the weird part. The weird part is that in the blink of an eye, I’ll create a complete history of that person. I may think of him or her as having a career and relatives and so on, and it will all seem real. When I wake up, I realize it’s imaginary, but I can’t understand how my mind can come up with all that background in a second or less.

Thank God I forget it. I would hate to have a head full of imaginary buddies, like fake names in Google Contacts.

I guess for a brief instant, my mind turns into Twitter. That’s a place inhabited by imaginary individuals. “Right on, Chrissy Teigen. Women should breastfeed EVERYWHERE, stark naked! And I’m not just saying that because your publicist pays me.”

I have issues with my imaginary people. I don’t just create them with no context. Maybe the person will owe me money, and I’m trying to get it back. Maybe I’m supposed to help the person paint his house. There will always be some kind of story that evaporates along with the character.

I wonder if the oversleeping dream came from God. Maybe looking into a clock from the back means I’m wasting time, trying to get too much detail from God about the supernatural and the way the world works. I’m not supposed to know everything. I can’t carry that.

Or maybe it’s just a stupid dream.

Now that I think about it, I believe the dream is about the natural world. I think I focus way too much on understanding and responding to events with my unaided mind. That makes a lot more sense. God would never tell us to stop trying to learn about him.

We can never understand all that much about what happens around us. We have the illusion that we know a lot and see a lot, but each one of us sees the world through a tiny pinhole. Anyone who tells you different is on a pathetic ego trip and will eventually be humbled pretty badly. People like that are destined to have Zaphod Beeblebrox Total Perspective Vortex moments, only without the hack that saved Zaphod.

Douglas Adams died an atheist, and he was younger than I am now. Terrible to think about. At this moment, he is having a Total Perspective Vortex experience that will never end.

It’s sad to see people you can relate to deny God. The director Joss Whedon is another one. I’ve enjoyed a lot of his work, but he uses the borrowed term “Sky Bully” to describe God. Not only does he reject God; he thinks doing so is a crucial part of maturation. Of the nonexistence of God, he said, “That’s a very important and necessary thing to learn.”

It’s hard to imagine how anything can be important or necessary in a universe where people simply go out, like the glow from a firefly’s tail (or the run of a canceled TV series). If nothing lasts, nothing has any importance. The greatest evil you can do won’t affect anyone for more than 120 or so years. That’s the upper limit of the human lifespan, and in a universe that lasts forever, it’s mathematically indistinguishable from nothing.

Maybe he means believing God doesn’t exist is important if you want to set yourself free to do all the fun things God is against. That’s probably it. It’s suitably trite, like all atheist platitudes.

It doesn’t take much to impress an atheist. No matter how tired their arguments are, they always think they’re fresh and ingenious.

These days, homosexuality tops the list of fun things God won’t let us embrace. We used to think homosexuality was a problem. Now we think God and Christians who are against homosexuality are the problem. It’s just like the notion that Israel, the only civilized nation in the Middle East, is the problem in that part of the world. Muslims (who torture and execute homosexuals, by the way) will love each other and live in joy once we let them kill the Jews. We know this because Muslims have always been so nice to each other. Yep.

Get rid of one set of combatants, and the war will end. That’s what the people who hate us think. Satan’s children don’t realize there will always be conflict. Kill all the Christians, and Satan’s children will eat each other in our absence. They will find reasons. Look how many atheists they murdered in the USSR and China.

Atheists and other unsaved people are the real fireflies. They may entertain us for while, but very, very soon their names will be blotted out forever, and their infantile works will disappear. They will be removed from our presence, and some say our thoughts, for eternity. There won’t be any gay pride marches or BLM or Antifa riots where we’re going. Everyone will be pro-life. Everyone will be pro-Israel. Everyone will love the God of the Jews.

I can’t imagine a world without conflict. I wish I could conceive of the sensation, so I could enjoy it in advance.

Living in Marion County is a little bit like moving to heaven. In Miami, everyone hates each other. Rudeness is normal. Cubans hate blacks. Blacks hate Cubans. White people are unwelcome, and we know it, so we sell our houses and leave.

Up here, people are so nice I still can’t get used to it. Doesn’t matter what their ethnicity is.

Heaven will be nicer yet.

I feel like I’m ascending. This, oddly, is a very Jewish idea. The real name of the Jordan River (“Yarden”) means “descend” in Hebrew, and Jews who leave Israel are “yardim,” or, “those who descend.” When you move to Israel, you make “aliyah,” which means you go up. When I applied to be a kibbutz volunteer, I went through an annoying agency called Kibbutz Aliyah.

Jerusalem is pretty high up, and the Bible describes Jews who went to Jerusalem to worship in God’s presence as “going up.”

Ocala is a monstrous step up from Miami. It’s like moving from the gutters of Calcutta to Beverly Hills, in spiritual terms. Miami is a rotting hole of carnality and ignorance. Ocala is wonderful, but I feel I have another upward step to take before I leave the earth. I seriously believe I’ll be in Tennessee soon. I hope so, because hunting has made me miss Appalachia like crazy.

Last night I went to Gander Outdoors (a sporting goods store) to buy more tools for hunting, and when I got to the register, the lady who rang me up joked with me like I was her cousin. I am not an extroverted person. In Miami, I have to repeat myself all the time because no one understands English, and I’m used to people being cold or hostile. I don’t automatically kid around with strangers. It’s strange to have cashiers and waitresses show me warmth and familiarity.

There is a way southerners talk to each other, and if you’re not a southerner, I can’t explain it, but it’s very welcoming and inclusive. Here, I can fall into it. In Miami, I might as well be talking to porcupines with inflamed hemorrhoids.

Puercoespins con hemorrhoides grandes.

I still have so much healing to do! It’s very hard to let people be nice to me. I can’t believe I was stupid enough to live in Miami. I was blind to what people were doing to me. I tried to make it work. I was descending, the whole time!

Funny thing; I’m from Eastern Kentucky, which is part of a southern state, and I can tell you, people there are not that nice. There is a streak of Celtic blackheartedness in them. Many people in the mountain areas ridicule their kids and spouses. They spit out little barbs all the time. They can’t say nice things to people. They have to find roundabout ways to do it. Up there, a person will say something nasty to you, facetiously, hoping you will see through it and understand they mean something nice. They’re afraid to say things like, “You look very pretty today,” or, “I’m very proud of you.” I have had this problem myself. These days, I feel very liberated when I say something nice to someone without putting a little hook in it.

There is a lot of Celtic blood in the mountains, and Celts are mean. Their tongues are like whips. Don’t let anyone tell you different. Everyone knows the Scots are mean, but the Irish are mean, too. They may hide it better, but there is a lot of hardness in them. They didn’t become the biggest terrorists in Europe because they’re warm and forgiving.

In this country, the Irish have great PR. You watch movies, and you see gentle, half-drunk people who smoke clay pipes and say poetic things. Totally unrealistic. The Irish are angry as hell!

Call me prejudiced. I don’t care. I’m old, and I’m going to die soon. I can say whatever I want. Go ahead and ban me from Aer Lingus. That will teach me.

Miami poisoned me, but when my family moved there, we brought ethnic poison of our own. I never thought about that until now. At least I don’t think so.

Mountain people in Kentucky and other states have problems, but people are nicer in other areas of the South.

I continue watching healing videos on Youtube. They make me wonder what purpose I serve here on earth. I see Christians going out and healing total strangers. What do I do? I blog and manage real estate. I have a strong prayer life, and that’s nothing to sneeze at, but it’s nice to see Christians getting out there and demonstrating God’s love.

I’ve been watching a guy named Tom Fischer. Through his videos, I found someone else. A young man named Troy. He only has a few videos. He heals people, too.

When he talks to people, his face shines. It makes you sense God’s love. That’s impressive. I’ll embed a video.

I can’t do this kind of thing. I have not been called or empowered to do it. Evangelists are salesmen, and as I often say, I couldn’t sell poop to flies. If you know a Christian you want to turn away from God, give me a call, and I’ll talk to him. He’ll be worshiping the devil in a week.

There are things you just shouldn’t try to do until God gives you power.

That’s what anointing is all about. “Anointing,” figuratively, means “authority.” A person with an anointing has a commission–an assignment–from God, and God will help him get it done. If you have an anointing, God will part the Red Sea for you. If not, you may lose your church and be imprisoned for something like fraud or pedophilia.

Tom Fischer goes up to Jews in yarmulkes and gets them to let him heal them in the name of Jesus. If you don’t know Jews, you don’t understand how crazy that is. It’s like selling pork in Mecca. But God helps him get away with it.

I can relate to the prophets, because no one listens to me. If I said something obvious which was so brilliant it could end all of the world’s problems in 5 minutes, people would chase me with pitchforks. My old pastors think I’m an idiot. My relatives think I’m an idiot. Many people I’ve gone to church with think I’m an idiot, and I’m talking about people who, in some cases, are nearly illiterate. People who can barely read and who know how educated I am feel completely entitled to lecture me. It’s something to see.

My dad started telling people I was smart…after he lost his mind. I have no words to discuss that! When I was winning the Miami spelling bee, getting crazy test scores, and doing graduate work in physics, I was still an idiot. But now I’m smart. If he goes into a coma, I’ll be a genius.

He says I’m smart, but he doesn’t think I’m bright enough to decide what to throw out. He takes things out of the garbage. When I really want to be sure I’m rid of something, I have to destroy it before I throw it out. Sometimes I’ll pour dishwashing liquid all over it. He says I’m smart, but people’s actions show what they really think.

Never pay any attention to what people say. Always look at their actions.

Don’t count on me being right about the people in the videos I watch. For all I know, they could be axe murderers. I only know what I see.

Romans 8:15

I feel like I should expound on the things I wrote yesterday.

I wrote about an extraordinarily vile cyst that appeared on my back. All physical ailments come from sin, whether it’s the sin of the person afflicted or the general curse on the world that comes from sin. There is no possibility of illness in heaven, because everyone there is forgiven and purified. I don’t consider it self-condemnation when I say I believe my physical problems are often related to my sins, and that the nature of the problems may tell me about the type of sin that led to their appearance.

A cyst has certain characteristics. It’s a container made of tissue. It’s walled off from the rest of the body. Cysts are full of things that need to be extracted. A cyst may be very stubborn. It may have a sort of opening with a layer of tissue over it that acts as a barrier that prevents the crap inside from being removed. Cysts protect their disgusting contents.

I know demons work in me. We are surrounded by demons in this world, and they whisper to us and prod us, just as God does. They work to modify our acts, thoughts, and emotions.

From past experience, I know that a demon can occupy space inside a person. I had some things cast out of me, and I can tell you I felt them in my abdomen, below the rib cage. I felt their presence there when they became afraid. They became cold. My hands turned cold.

Remember the scene in the first Alien movie, where the creature burst John Hurt’s chest wall and ran off? That’s what it’s like when a demon gets upset. I suppose you could compare it to feeling a baby kicking.

Night before last, I woke up while it was still dark, and I felt a lot of tension inside me. I had been battling anger and cruelty, to get rid of them, and when I woke up, I felt like a battle was going on in and around me.

I felt like a cyst that didn’t want to pop. Like there was only a thin wall between me and a breakthrough followed by peace.

Eventually, I felt some things leave me.

There are also barriers between us and good things. The flesh is a barrier between us and God. The veil in the Temple symbolized the flesh.

Here’s what happens when a spirit leaves me. Suddenly, my mind grows quiet. Usually, I have a nonstop flow of thoughts and words in my head. When something leaves me, it shuts down instantly, and I literally don’t know what to think. I sit and wait for the next thought.

Naturally, this brings peace, because peace is destroyed by thoughts. When you stop thinking, it’s like a fire has gone out.

I told God I had no idea who I was. If I ever get subsantially purified, I will be a person I don’t recognize from the inside. I don’t know what my personality would be like without the corruption and supernatural chatter. I think of the things that go on inside me as parts of me, but many of them are not, so what am I really like?

Secular thinkers tell us to embrace all the garbage inside us. Whatever it is, own it, say it’s natural, and refuse to condemn it. Homosexuality, lust…whatever it is, accept it. That’s not realism or healing. It’s defeat. It’s capitulation. It reminds me of the cessationist doctrine that poisons the body of Christ. “We can’t get miracles or prophecy, so we conclude they don’t exist any more.” Secular people can’t rid themselves of inner problems, so they tell us to love them.

That’s not for me. I’ve had divine deliverance, so I will never stop trying to get more of it. It’s extremely unfortunate that so many people can’t get help, but I’ve received it, and I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t happen. I’m not capitulating, ever. I will never stop trying to get free, because I know God is willing to make it happen.

Why doesn’t God do it right now, completely? That’s what people will ask. God isn’t my butler. He’s not my slave. His chief purpose in the universe isn’t to rush to my side whenever I suffer a little and take the problem away regardless of my attitude and my past. Sometimes he permits suffering to last a while, for reasons of his own. Usually, though, my own iniquity delays his help.

God isn’t a genie. The word “genie” comes from the Arabic “djinn,” which means “demon.” If you want a spirit that gives you whatever you want, whether or not you’re ready, get yourself a demon. You could be the next Tom Cruise.

I’m not going to blame God for anything. That’s a poisonous attitude. Anything he does for me is a gift. He’s not paying a debt or earning a wage. He doesn’t owe me. If he had put me in hell instead of saving me, no one in the universe could say it wasn’t fair and good.

A lot of people refuse to believe in God because he won’t be their slave. “If God is so good, why didn’t I make the cheerleading squad?” “If God is so good, why is my neighbor’s BMW better than mine?” I know a lot of people complain about more serious problems, like death and illness, but many of us are angry at God because he doesn’t fix our petty, disgraceful first-world gripes. We’re not grateful for anything. There are healthy young people who wake up in big houses in the United States of America and feel angry at God because things aren’t even nicer.

I used to be that way. These days I thank God when I get in the car. Have you ever thought about what a blessing it is to have a car? A little over a hundred years ago, you were very lucky to have an open carriage and a horse. That’s how it was for centuries. I can get into a car whenever I want, drive at 100 miles per hour if I don’t get caught, listen to a huge selection of the greatest musicians of the last century, and enjoy whatever air temperature suits me. I can flick a switch and heat or cool the seats. In 1875, this would have been beyond the dreams of sorcerers.

Cars are fantastic. Even crummy ones. Air conditioning is fantastic. Good food is fantastic. Hot water is fantastic. I have machines that wash clothes and dishes while I watch TV (which is fantastic). Have you ever washed a shirt by hand? It’s a nightmare. Think how many shirts you use in a week.

I can see. My back is straight and strong. My feet don’t hurt. I’m not bald. I live in the greatest country the world has ever known. I live in one of the best areas of that country. I know God personally. I don’t have to look at prices when I go to the grocery store. I can buy blueberries in the winter. I have a personal library that would have made Plato faint. By historical standards, I live better than most emperors. Croesus would cry if he could see how I live.

Anyway, the fact that God hasn’t fixed me instantly is the dumbest conceivable argument for atheism and cessationism. His own book doesn’t say he’ll make our lives perfect in a heartbeat.

I believe I’m the focus of a battle right now, more than ever. The things that have run me know their final eviction is close, so they’re raging and fussing. I just have to keep confessing and repenting. They have no chance of success.

I’m so glad I’ve cut back on reading the news. I need to cut back more. My need to know what’s going on is nothing compared to my need to be close to God. The news is a source of temptation. It tempts me to anger and even lust. These days, when you look at a news site, there’s a good chance you’ll see at least one semi-pornographic photo with a link below it. “Kim Kardashian was naked again today.” Wow. Thanks for keeping me in the loop, “JOURNALISTS.”

Bad things are happening in the world. Got it. But I don’t run the world all by myself. I’m not actually required to obsess on the news and pray about every article. God told me I’m “one of many.” I’m busy with something important, so if Christians have to read the news, let the others handle it for a while.

They can keep track of all the important updates from the Kardashians and Chrissy Teigen.

I can’t wait to live in a world where there are no people like that.

To change course, I got another revelation today. God showed me how I differ from most men. I have never, ever known what it was like to want a father.

When I was a kid, I was scared of my dad. When he entered a room, my sister and I tried to leave before trouble started. When he talked to us, we tried to say whatever would 1) prevent him from blowing up and 2) get us excused from his presence. I was always looking for ways to avoid being around him.

When he wasn’t around, my mother, my sister and I would talk about divorce. It’s terrible to say it, but we talked about how great our lives would be if she divorced him. My sister and I encouraged her. Once, when my sister was about three, she held a gun to my dad’s side and told my mother, “We don’t need him.” She wanted permission to shoot.

I’m not writing this to pick on my dad. I’m just sharing what has been going through my mind.

I think I had a bad attitude toward male authority figures, because I was scared of them. I remember two men who didn’t fit the pattern, though. Mr. Hubert, my fifth-grade science teacher, and Mr. Stallings, my eighth-grade English teacher.

I had never had a male teacher before Mr. Hubert. He made me prefer male teachers. He was great. He had all sorts of science stuff going on in the room. He rigged up a desk microphone and PA system to talk to us, even though he was five feet away. He had fish. He had live guinea pigs (donated by me) in a tank. He was gentle and fun to be around.

Oliver “Butch” Stallings. He hated that nickname, so of course, people used it behind his back all the time. Stallings was a 6’4″ blond Aryan who looked like a Calvin Klein model. He was a tyrant. We always had homework. If you didn’t do your homework, you had to write a note to your parents, make them sign it, and bring it back. He didn’t take any crap from anyone. He worked us. People said they hated him, but I don’t think they did. I thought he was great. He made us succeed. Female teachers never did that. They used guilt trips and cajoling, but they didn’t provide order.

Sometimes we loved our female teachers, but they accomplished very little compared to the men. It’s that simple.

Stallings could be a little jerky, but all of his demands served a purpose, and that purpose was to improve us.

Not all of my male teachers were positive role models. My seventh-grade math teacher, Mr. Bubrick, told me he was going to break my arm if I reached under my desk for a piece of paper. I think it was paper. Might have been a pencil. He said, “I don’t care who your father is.” He said he was completely serious. Not sure what that was about. And I believed him, so I don’t understand why he kept trying to convince me.

It wasn’t really necessary to threaten to cripple me. He could have said, “Don’t reach for that,” and I would have complied. I guess he was mentally ill.

We were supposed to write something down. Maybe he was giving us a quiz. I don’t recall, but I assume I failed, because you have to have a pencil and paper in order to write.

On the whole, Mr. Bubrick was not a very good teacher. I’m not sure which careers are best for sadists who threaten to break other people’s children’s bones.

Whatever my positive experiences with men were, I never had any desire for a father figure in my life. I wanted father figures to leave me alone. I didn’t like being cursed at. I didn’t like watching violence that couldn’t be defended against. I didn’t like the burden of racking my brain, trying to think of the right things to say to turn off the rage.

It’s tough dealing with abusive people. Sometimes you can postpone the abuse by saying or doing the right thing, but sometimes they’re determined to abuse, and nothing you can do will stop it, so you end up feeling helpless and unable to control your circumstances. It breeds passivity. You quit trying to fix things you can’t fix, and you focus on learning how to endure them. “Is it over now? No, he’s still going. I’ll hold on a little longer.”

It makes you feel like your face is a pair of wooden shutters you can lock up while a hurricane rages outside. It’s very strange. You lock them up and hope the wind doesn’t blow a tree into them. It’s the best you can do. You can’t control anything outside of you, so you retreat and control a reduced perimeter: your face.

I was talking to God today, and I told him I really wanted a father. At my advanced age, I was asking for one. I have never had a father. The lack of a father wrecked my life. I didn’t have a father to correct me, guide me, supply me adequately, or protect me, and I am damaged. Now I want a father to come in and undo the damage. I want the evil in my heart to be fixed. The fatherless tend to be insolent punks. I don’t want to be an embarrassing middle-aged punk, like Jimmy Kimmel or Sean Penn. I want to be told what to do, by someone who has my best interest at heart.

Churches have tried to teach me God primarily wants me to obey rules. Some churches have taught me God just wants me to give preachers money. It’s unusual for a church to teach people the truth: God wants children. A father knows his children personally, unless he’s a deadbeat dad. He works to raise them. He gives them advice and corrects them. He fights their enemies. He gives them wealth and the ability to get more wealth. He doesn’t sit on a cloud a trillion miles away and ignore them.

The Bible orders us to love God. How can you love someone who is completely uninvolved with you? It’s like telling you to love Prince Charles or Vladimir Putin. Strangers you’ve never been anywhere near.

It’s not enough for God to help me and correct me. I need him to be personally involved, out of love. I need him to exert authority over me very directly.

I can’t tell you how strange it is to want to be adopted and to have a father. It’s like waking up one day and wanting to eat liver (which I hate). I have never really wanted these things before. I have been 100% devoid of empathy for kids who wanted fathers. I could feel sorry for them, but I could not feel what they felt, because I had never felt it.

Sympathy isn’t empathy.

In my heart, I have never had the feeling that anyone wanted me as a son. Not men, I mean. My mother was crazy about me.

This experience makes me wonder just how damaged and abnormal I am. Like Yossarian said, you can’t see the flies in your eyes if you have flies in your eyes.

The natural male response to problems is to say, “I’m okay. Everything is fine.” This is why it’s better to rely on men than women in a crisis. Most women like crying, becoming hysterical, and magnifying their problems. They tend to make a crisis much worse. It’s manipulation. It’s their way of getting other people to take care of them. Men stop thinking about their problems so they can function and get things done.

It’s a carnal approach. It’s something we do because we don’t know how to get God’s help. It eventually shuts off our awareness of our problems. We become numb to them. I wonder how many crippling injuries I have that I’m unaware of. I know God now, so I can get help. I don’t have to shut down the alarms and go to backup systems.

I felt I should write about these things. Preachers have done their best to poison me and keep me ignorant, and they have done the same things to everyone else, so if I benefit from knowing the truth, presumably other people will benefit, too.

I am starting to hate churches. I don’t mean I want to go shoot them up, so please don’t come and take my guns just yet. I mean I have lost patience with them, and I find the idea of being overly attached to one distasteful. It would be like marrying an annoying, hysterical woman who runs her mouth all the time and doesn’t listen. That’s how it was before, now that I think about it. A lot of good things happened at my churches, but stubbornness, pride, and emotionalism stunted everyone. I know a lot of spiritual midgets.

My churches were matriarchal. Trinity was 80% black, and New Dawn was mostly Puerto Rican. Blacks and Latins have matriarchal societies. It’s unhealthy. Matriarchy fosters denial, emotionalism, and immaturity.

I’ll keep you updated on future developments. Hope you’re not too bored.

Too Heavy, and it Smells

This entry will contain what may well be TMI (Too Much Information) concerning a very disgusting physical issue, so don’t say you weren’t warned.

For years, I’ve known our iniquities (our evil inclinations, also known as habits) come between us and the power and love of God. I was talking about it in 2009 at Trinity Church in Miami, in my microscopic, illusory authority as an armorbearer. No one wanted to hear it, because Trinity is built around making people feel good just as they are, without improving them, in order to get them to give the greedy, crooked pastors irresponsibly large donations of money.

I knew about the problem of iniquity, and I worked on it personally, but somehow, there are different levels of knowing you have problems, and the level I was on at the beginning was not that deep.

Think of it this way. You know you’re fat. You don’t do much about it. Then one day–I will assume you’re a woman, here–you see yourself on video in a bikini, and you have to go in your bedroom and close the door and cry. You wish you could find every picture of you at your current weight and burn it. Then you don’t eat for 10 days. That’s a great example of different levels of knowing you have a problem.

I won’t say I didn’t work to change. I certainly did. I never stopped praying about it. But somehow my knowledge and motivation weren’t at the forefront in my heart and mind. I struggled to put them there, but results were slow in coming.

I didn’t feel an immediate need to avert catastrophe.

I think a Christian who turns away from God can get himself sentenced to years of wandering in the wilderness. You spend years filling yourself with filth, and then you turn around, and it takes time to get rid of it, even if you try.

I had a problem with anger and cruelty. When I turned back to God, I didn’t think of myself as a particularly angry or cruel person. I disliked angry and cruel people, and in my heart, I equated that feeling with not being angry or cruel. But I have learned that hating an iniquity is not the same thing as not having it. You may have an iniquity you resist successfully and never act on. It’s still there. You can’t say you don’t have it just because it never wins.

Generally, I was not cruel, but cruelty did leak out of the box from time to time, especially in ways that I thought were acceptable. I made mean jokes and told myself it was okay because I wasn’t serious. Usually I wasn’t serious, but why would I want to say those things, regardless? Why would I be comfortable with them, given that they were part of the realm of cruelty? How did they help the world?

One night several years ago, I drove to church to run security for the evening service, and I felt love descend on me. I felt God’s love for people. I loved everybody. It was great. I was very relieved. I hoped it would stay. It didn’t, however. It was a momentary thing. I didn’t know how to hold on.

I didn’t realize I lived in a way that kept love away.

I was working to get God’s improvement all the time, but I lacked knowledge, and you know what Hosea said about people who lack knowledge. They perish.

There was no one to teach me. There still isn’t, quite honestly. There are all sorts of preachers out there who will give you obvious, powerless advice. “Stop being bad.” “Don’t do that any more.” “Change.” But they are simpletons who don’t acknowledge the supernatural power of habit. They are useless guides who give people burdens they can’t carry. You can’t just change because you want to.

Being good and doing right involve more than choice. We put very real chains on ourselves. Tell a crack addict to knock it off, and see what happens. Even if he would rather kill himself than smoke again, he’s not going to quit just because he knows he should. Iniquities are strongholds. Before you build an iniquity, you have a choice. Anyone can put down his first cigarette and walk away from it. Once you have a habit, you are literally a slave to sin.

Drug rehab has a success rate of something like 2% or 10%, depending on whom you believe. That’s probably lower than the success rate of people who quit on their own. It’s very bad. Almost no one loses weight and stays thing. Anger management classes don’t work. Habits are stronger than the people who possess them. Anyone who says otherwise is ignorant, self-righteous, or unfeeling.

Anger is a habit. Depression is a habit. Anything you can’t quit is a habit.

I had no one to teach me, because Christianity, like Judaism, is about separating people from God. God raises up witnesses and prophets (and one great messiah), and they teach us useful things. Then the fable-writers and bureaucrats take over. They build big buildings for us to sit in. They put on absolutely ridiculous costumes. Have you seen the pope’s hat? It’s beyond comical. Can you imagine wearing that hat to the store?

They create pompous names for their offices. They tell us they’re holier than we are. They make up doctrine, or, like Augustine, they steal it from Satanic religions. Forget Astarte. Now you can pray to Mary!

Want to please God? Eat fish on Friday. Go to church on Saturday. Worship statues. Pray to dead people. Give all your money to a grinning white trash idiot who says he needs a jet. Don’t eat chicken with cheese on it. Shun technology and wear black clothes. Castrate yourself. Live in a monastery and never speak. Work really hard and quote Vince Lombardi, the noted man of God.

First thing you know, they’ve convinced us God doesn’t do miracles any more, and that we aren’t going to hear from him in our daily lives. No tongues. No prophecy. No healing. No help. Lots of duty, but not much love. And love is the reason God created the universe!

Satan? Oh, he’ll be with you all the time. He’s not as lazy as God. He’ll give you diseases, wreck your marriage, ruin your career, make you insane…he’s a hustler. But God won’t talk to you or do anything for you until you die. If he doesn’t talk to Father Garcia, who does such wonderful work with the boys’ dance team, why would he talk to you?

We are raised on other people’s excrement instead of the word of God.

God told me all sorts of stuff. He saved me from preachers. But he didn’t tell me everything at once. It unfolds, day by day. This is unfortunate, because I am mortal. It’s too late for me to have a good life as a young man. The bread is gone, so all I have to work with is the crust. I can forget about a normal family and grandchildren and so on. But I’m glad I’m getting what I’m getting. It’s better to have one good year before you die than to recant as a disgraceful coward on your deathbed.

What I’m getting is certainly preferable to what I deserve.

Lately, the knowledge that I have to get free of anger is pushing to the front of the auditorium. I am acutely aware of it.

The Bible says our righteousness is like filthy menstrual rags to God. If it says that, then it’s true. It is literally true. God isn’t exaggerating to make a point. He is saying we stink in his nostrils, and that the sight of us disgusts him. This is why Jesus had to be crucified in order for God to have a relationship with us. There had to be something put between God and our stink, so God could tolerate our presence.

For a long time, I’ve felt that I stank before God. I know what houses are like when filthy people live in them. In some cases, you can smell the feces, urine, mold, and rot from thirty feet out in the yard. In others, you may walk in the door and be hit instantly with the sharp smell of fermented urine, from bathrooms where no one ever lifts the seat or closes the door. You may smell rotten garbage because the bag in the kitchen is always full. I’ve felt like God was telling me, “I live in you, and I won’t leave you, but you have to stop making yourself stink.”

In the Bible, a body is a house. Things that happen to houses tell us about things that happen to bodies. In the Old Testament, a person who constantly spoke ill of others could develop a type of leprosy that infected the walls of his house. God didn’t do this to people because he had something against houses. He was telling them what they were like, to him.

If you think people can’t stink to God, think about this: prayers and sacrifices smell good to him. The Bible says so. Our prayers rise to heaven and perfume it. If that’s true, what do you think our iniquities and sins do? Look at part of Psalm 38.

For mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me.
My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness.
I am troubled; I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long.
For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease: and there is no soundness in my flesh.

That’s not about an unbeliever. It’s about one of God’s servants.

People think accepting salvation makes us perfect and clean in God’s eyes, forever. Really? Does salvation make God stupid or blind? You can sin after you’re saved, and God does not like it. You can even go to hell. You can renounce salvation if you feel like it.

There are naked Christian women on stripper poles right now. Does God see them as perfect?

God gets angry with believers. I used to think he didn’t, but I was misled.

In the book of Acts, a believer named Simon tried to buy supernatural gifts from the apostles. This was a man who believed and was baptized. Look what Peter said:

Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.

Peter wasn’t even sure Simon, a baptized believer, was forgiven.

At Trinity Church, Simon wouldn’t have been scolded at all. If he had come and donated a lot of money, they would have assigned armorbearers to park his car, follow him around, and usher him to a good seat, possibly next to Kim Kardashian or Luther Campbell. They would have said salvation lasts forever, and that God could not be angry at him, because he was saved.

The fact that God chooses to cover your faults does not mean he is no longer aware of them, or that they don’t make him angry. Not if the story of Simon is true.

I felt that my iniquities made me stink to God. They certainly make me stink to myself. I had to deal with my dad and my sister, who made houses stink, and I felt that God was telling me, “This is what it’s like for me to live in you.” I felt God was using my relatives as teaching tools.

Recently I got a disgusting cyst on my back. It became inflamed and swelled. I have had several of these during my life, probably because of a peculiarity of my skin. Anyway, these things are known for having contents that don’t smell great. But this one…it smelled so bad, I noticed it not just when it was being poked or examined, but at random times throughout the day.

This thing contained a substance that literally smelled like a pile of dead bums rotting in the sun. If you’ve ever been close to a hardcore bum, you know the smell I’m talking about. Fermented excretions and rotten meat. I hope you never have to be exposed to a cyst that expels anything like this, because it makes rotten fish smell like a flower shop. A spray that smelled like this would be effective in wars or in breaking up riots.

I’m physically clean, so this is not something you would ordinarily expect to deal with around me.

I prayed and so forth, and eventually the cyst yielded a huge quantity of seemingly radioactive contents and subsided. Finally, I could stop checking myself and changing shirts all the time.

TMI, I know, but there is a point. It made me think about the things inside me that needed to be cleared up. God will stay with me and keep helping me even if I don’t improve, but I will always have limited power and peace. Certain things won’t be healed. Certain situations won’t work out the way they should. I won’t receive certain good things God wants me to have.

The cyst was on my back, where I couldn’t see it. It was like the iniquities I hide from myself. It was hard to reach. It was hard to work on. It was like the inner issues I deny.

I make God live in a house full of poop and garbage. It’s like he has to go around wearing a bum’s pants. And he’s God! He should never have to deal with any type of filth.

No one ever gets really clean, as far as I know, but I should be doing better than this.

The other day I saw a helpful video related to my issues. Tom Fischer, the street healer, met a young woman who had a problem with one eye. She had accidentally poked herself at work. This girl had been a Christian all her life. He tried to heal her, and nothing happened. Then he asked her if she was angry at her employer. She said she was. She was also complacent in her walk with God.

If you’re complacent, you won’t try to get yourself improved. You won’t examine yourself and take your iniquities before God and get rid of them. Rot will grow in you, and demonic activity will increase in the house which is your body. That’s just common sense.

He talked to her about her spiritual issues, and she repented. Then he was able to heal her.

The video contains a long segment in which he says it’s harder to heal Christians than unbelievers. We are more accountable, because we know when we’re in the wrong.

It’s interesting that it was her eye that had the problem. Jesus said we should take the splinters out of our own eyes–we should confront and get rid of our own iniquities–before helping others with their iniquities.

I’ll embed the video here.

I am not promoting this man as the answer to your prayers. You need to hear from God, one on one. No man can be trusted, and besides, God wants contact with his children. But Tom Fischer can be helpful.

I’m going to keep working on confession and change. People will tell me I’m condemning myself. Well, Peter rebuked Jesus for predicting the crucifixion. We’re supposed to crucify the flesh. If I criticize myself before God, it’s not an execution. It’s a way to get more life. It’s like lancing a cyst. I don’t feel condemned at all. I feel more free.

Anger has weight. It makes me feel like Satan gave me heavy armor to wear, after taking it off a bum. Blech.

It’s true that people do bad things to provoke me, but if I use that to justify anger, I give them control of my heart. I put a valve in their hands, and they can turn it to shut off the flow of God’s help. That’s a double victory for them.

I would stay away from the feel-good preachers if I were you. They’re just putting dirty bandages on your sores, to make the infection increase. Eventually, these things come to crisis.

Time to Get Rid of the Revolving Door

There are certain sins I still fall into, and it’s really annoying. God gives me tools that work to keep me out of trouble, but every so often I slip. Humility is great, but nobody wants to have it forced on them by repeated failures.

I don’t worry too much, because God says, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.”

I don’t think “good,” as used in this passage, means “perfect.” I think it applies to anyone who is seriously on the path.

Hope that’s correct, because no one is good.

I feel like God is telling me I have to get away from the spirit of murder.

A few years back I was in church, and the Holy Spirit was working. I realized I had a spirit of murder, and I got it cast out. I was surprised. Imagine having God tell you you have a spirit of murder. I would have been shocked if it had been shoplifting. Murder is another level.

It doesn’t mean I was in danger of murdering people. In my case, it meant I stabbed at people with words. I have been mistreated a lot in life, which hardly makes me unique and does not excuse anything. One of the ways I responded to mistreatment was to develop the ability to use words with cruelty.

There are some benefits to a murderous tongue. Bullies will be repelled by it, just as they are repelled by physical force. The don’t like being humiliated in front of other people, especially when they don’t have the tools to fight back in kind. I drove a number of vicious people away with words. But it’s not God’s way. It’s necessary to say very harsh things sometimes, but to lash people and take pleasure in their pain and embarrassment is not good.

For a long time, I’ve felt that God wants me to abstain from ridicule. It’s hard to do, though. When you’re good at using a weapon, it’s not easy to make yourself put it down.

Your enemies won’t all stop just because you do. That’s for sure. When you stop ridiculing people, you disarm unilaterally.

There is some hope, I suppose. The Bible says that when a man’s ways please God, even his enemies will be at peace with him. It doesn’t mean no one will ever bother you again, but our sins call enemies who pop up suddenly from beneath the horizon, and reducing sin reduces the number of enemies you yourself attract proactively.

The spirit was cast out, but spirits come back in when you leave the door open and put a refrigerator full of snacks and beer beside it.

I have always been a fatherless person. This morning I was thinking about all the brilliant things I tell kids, and a realization stabbed me in the gut. This stuff is easy, and it’s extremely helpful, but I had no one to do it for me when I was young.

Forgive me for saying I say brilliant things to kids, but it’s true. Every adult who learns from experience and the Holy Spirit has brilliant things to say to kids. I didn’t say the ideas I pass on are unique to me or that I deserve credit for them, but they’re still brilliant. If I tell a young person he has to pray in tongues every day in order to grow, that’s brilliant, but no one will ever call me a sage because I said it. Lots of people say it.

I have been fatherless. No one gave me any wisdom to speak of. My dad was a coarse, scary person who came home every night and watched TV in his underwear in front of the whole family and whoever else came by. He had two kids and an IQ in the 140’s, but that was his life, apart from golf on the weekends. My mother didn’t know all that much, and she was stifled by my dad anyway. I grew like a weed, not a crop plant. I figured things out on my own, and I reached the wrong conclusions. I didn’t know anything of value.

I failed all the time, as a lifestyle. No wonder! I didn’t know anything at all about success. I went to school with people whose parents checked their homework, told them how to get ahead, told them how to deal with dating and marriage, and taught them about money. A lot of other students thought I was the smartest person in a class full of very bright people, but kids with much less ability sailed right past me. I didn’t know they had these advantages over me. How could I have known? I didn’t know why I couldn’t succeed.

Nobody taught me about the Holy Spirit, sanctification, prayer in tongues, hostile spirits, or the kingdom of God. I didn’t grow. I rotted. It’s very easy to tell people their sins sow a harvest of opposition and defeat, but no one around me knew it, and no one told me.

I’m telling you now, for what it’s worth. Maybe you’re fatherless, too. If you cast a spirit out through one door and then hold another door open through habitual sin, the spirit will come back, bringing your old shackles with it. Jesus said a spirit could bring seven worse spirits with it.

Dogs go back to their vomit, and pigs that are washed go back and lie down in feces.

Man, I wish I hadn’t been raised in the dark. I feel like a bonsai tree. What would I have been, with the proper management?

I was also fatherless at church. The pastors above me were all about cash and having their butts kissed. They were little men and women who served their egos, not their flocks.

No wonder the Bible says, “Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven,” and, “Stop relying on man, in whose nostrils is a mere breath — after all, he doesn’t count for much, does he?”

I remember watching the first Superman movie when I was a kid. Lex Luthor surprised me by saying something my mother always said, and with which the Bible agrees: “People are no damn good.” That saying is attributed to a cartoonist named William Steig, but I have a feeling it’s ancient.

Today I was watching a Tom Fischer video. He’s the guy I wrote about the other day. He does street ministry. He heals people on the spot. He started talking about healings that go away.

Anti-Christian activists love to “debunk” faith healing, pointing to individuals who thought they were healed and were later found to be ill. They don’t realize that even a carnival barker and disgraceful scoundrel like Benny Hinn may get people healed. The problem is that selfish preachers don’t teach people how to stay healed. They just want to use believers to promote themselves and bring money in.

Fischer said a spirit can return more than once, and that this is especially true if you keep sinning. He quoted Jesus, who healed a man and told him to straighten up or else something worse might come to him. I have had that experience. I wouldn’t say worse things have come to me, but things that have been driven off have returned.

One of the most famous exorcisms was performed by Lester Sumrall, in the Philippines. An occultist prostitute named Clarita Villanueva manifested bite marks all over her body. Sumrall cast her demons out and astounded the nation. But he had to do it more than once. The demons tried to undo the exorcism. I’ve heard preachers talk a lot about exorcism, but not many talk about the need for repeat engagements or post-exorcism repentance and sanctification.

This makes me think of Trinity Church and the other church I belonged to. They were extremely weak on repentance. The Wilkersons, who run Trinity, only care about money and getting their faces on TV. They were happy to teach about the things God does for people, but they worked in the ghetto, where sin and denial are gigantic strongholds, and they were afraid that if they taught repentance people would leave. They were probably right. Ghetto people love to scream and roll on the floor in church, but they will still work as strippers, whores, and drug dealers the rest of the week, and they do not like talking about hypocrisy.

Rich Wilkerson allowed Luther “Luke Skyywalker” Campbell to speak at the church. He made my armorbearer team give him a special seat and escort him around as a VIP. Wilkerson bragged on social media about the church’s relationship with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. Kim Kardashian is one of the world’s most famous and powerful unrepentant sluts! If you haven’t seen Kim Kardashian naked, you must live in an abandoned mine shaft.

Whores stick together, I suppose.

What good does it do you to cast something out and start rebuilding your life when you know your guest is coming back?

No pastor at any church taught these things to me, and I went to church faithfully for 7 years. I was a deacon when the pastor’s wife drove me out of my last church, and I had never seen a sermon about these ideas. Thankfully, God showed them to me without help from pastors.

Denouncing the feel-good gospel is what got me in trouble at church. Rich Wilkerson called me a divider because I criticized Steve Munsey’s money-raising fables, which Wilkerson knows to be untrue. At New Dawn Ministries, the pastor was lazy and emasculated, and his wife, who loved signs and goodies, wore the pants and did his PR. She got fed up with me and blocked me on social media.

The Bible says God is a father to the fatherless. How true that is, if (and only if) you have a strong habit of spending time with him.

Nearly any human being will let you down. You have to have someone you can depend on. You can’t put your complete trust in people who are close to you, and you have to be especially wary of Christian celebrities. You don’t need a megachurch. You need a microchurch, consisting of you and God. That’s the holy of holies. Everything outside of that is inferior and less clean.

I’m going to go back and watch a few more videos. I love watching God work in small groups. The world needs more micro churches. Once you get past 4 members, you need to split up.

Stay Away From Choke Points

As much fun as it is writing about my new fort and game camera, I feel like writing about God today. If I end up having a topic, it will probably be the upcoming decentralization of the church by the Holy Spirit.

A few days back I wrote about a man named Ken Peters. He had some long dreams about the future. He had these dreams in 1980. He was a “practicing Catholic” (his term) at the time, and he says that because he was a practicing Catholic, he didn’t know anything about prophecy or the Bible. His dreams line up well with what’s happening today and with what many Spirit-filled Christians expect to happen in the near future.

Here’s something I’ve been harping on for years: I believe God has been telling me the day of the bloated, pus-filled megachurch is ending. Is “pus-filled” harsh? I guess it is. Anyway, I think he has told me the day of the bloated, pus-filled megachurch is ending. I expect to see a true grassroots church rise up, connected and taught by the Holy Spirit, with no tithes or church-mandated offerings.

Everyone loves to say, “I hate organized religion.” I think God was the first to say it.

Ken Peters saw post-rapture grassroots revival in his dream. Here’s something he said:

It was almost like everybody was like Jesus walking around doing these works. You did not have to have a pulpit to stand behind to do this in this part of the dream. As a matter of fact I never saw anyone standing behind a pulpit. I think they finally understood the purpose of the ministry is equipping and releasing you to go out and be God’s superstars.

BAM! Am I too old to say that? I want to be cool so the “kids” will “dig” me. I want them to take photos with me with selfie sticks made from recycled materials. I want to wear skinny jeans and grow a beard that looks like Chaz Bono’s. Anyway, BAM!

I don’t really want any of that stuff. I’m just riffing on hip preachers. That includes anyone who inserts “dude” in a Bible verse.

I’m so sick of churches and denominations. I hate being told I have to give money to rich white trash. I’m tired of the idea that gasbag denomination bigwigs have to give God permission to do things. “Sorry, Father. We’re cessationists. Take your miracles outside.”

It just hit me…isn’t this exactly what the rabbinic Jews did to Jesus? He healed people on the Sabbath repeatedly, just to infuriate them, and it worked. Look at John 9:

They took the man who had been blind to the P’rushim. Now the day on which Yeshua had made the mud and opened his eyes was Shabbat. So the P’rushim asked him again how he had become able to see; and he told them, “He put mud on my eyes, then I washed, and now I can see.” At this, some of the P’rushim said, “This man is not from God, because he doesn’t keep Shabbat.” But others said, “How could a man who is a sinner do miracles like these?” And there was a split among them. So once more they spoke to the blind man: “Since you’re the one whose eyes he opened, what do you say about him?” He replied: “He is a prophet.”

“P’rushim” means “Pharisees.”

While I was looking that up, I came across a neat passage from Mark, which preceded a story about a healing. Maybe it’s the same healing (Bartimaeus) mentioned above. James (Ya’akov) and John (Yochanan) had been trying to get Jesus to give them the best seats in heaven, and Jesus set them straight:

When the other ten heard about this, they became outraged at Ya‘akov and Yochanan. But Yeshua called them to him and said to them, “You know that among the Goyim, those who are supposed to rule them become tyrants, and their superiors become dictators. But among you, it must not be like that! On the contrary, whoever among you wants to be a leader must be your servant; and whoever wants to be first among you must become everyone’s slave! For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve — and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

How apt is that? As soon as you build a church and call a man pastor, you begin setting one believer above another. People start to think they’re supposed to kiss up to God’s special little secretaries instead of talking to their father directly. The whole system falls apart.

I can’t imagine having to live by the claptrap that comes from the mind of a grandstanding socialist pope or his homosexual employees. And the nonsense that comes from greedy charismatics is beneath spitting on.

Churches will come under legal regulation, right here in the USA. Anything resembling guidance from the Holy Spirit will be banned. You wait and see. This is what will happen, if churches are allowed to exist at all. When that time comes, going to church won’t be much better than going to a whorehouse. Satan will be able to control and/or ban churches, just as he does in China and Saudi Arabia. But he will never be able to control individuals. At least not to the point where you can’t pass the message on before being turned in by Siri or Alexa.

Satan is weak and small. He needs human organizations to propagate his authority. God can work through trillions of people simultaneously if he feels like it, with no physical communication between them at all.

The argument that Peters is a prophet is bolstered by his prediction that individuals will spread the gospel in the future. If he had said the pope would do it, I would have quit reading him, possibly after throwing up.

While I was looking at testimonies on Youtube the other day, I found a guy named Tom Fischer. He calls his outfit “Cardboard Box Church.” My best guess is that he and his wife ARE the ministry. He has a blog, and I don’t see any sign of a big building or TV cameras.

This couple walks around talking to people. They ask if they’re in pain. They ask about other health problems. Then they pray for people, or they command illnesses to go. They tell people Jesus loves them. Nothing controversial. Well, his work isn’t controversial unless you belong to “the only church founded by Jesus” or a religion that calls Jesus “May his name be blotted out forever.”

The people in the videos say they’re healed. BANG (I got tired of “BAM!”)! Are they really healed? You will have to ask them. I don’t know everything. Anyway, they do things like lifting crutches up and walking on feet that had been sore minutes earlier.

This is what Christianity is supposed to be. You tell people about God. You tell them he, not you, is the healer. You do what the Bible says Christians are supposed to do, i.e., you get people healed. You don’t beg for money. You don’t say, “Man, I need a jet.” You don’t stand in front of your church, like my last pastor, and tell members they have to give money to you on your birthday, along with cash to honor your dope-dealer son.

You can do individual ministry outdoors. You can do it at the mall. You can do it in your living room. It’s free. No equipment is required. You can even do it by yourself. Prayer, blessing, and cursing are ministry.

Fischer and his wife have videos where they heal people in Israel. That takes guts. The Orthodox are very hard on Christians and Jewish believers who talk to Jews in Israel. You can catch a beating. You may have rocks thrown at you. Being spat on is almost obligatory. And when you accost any Jewish person, anywhere, and mention Jesus, you’re likely to be cursed and called a Nazi. Somehow Christianity has become associated with an anti-Christian political faction, and no amount of logic can shatter the delusion.

It probably doesn’t help that the Hebrew word for Christians is “Notzrim,” which sounds like “Nazi” but is a reference to Nazareth.

I can’t imagine making headway with ANY Jewish person, let alone an Israeli inside Israel. I’ve known tons of Jewish believers, but no unbelieving Jew has ever shown the slightest interest in Jesus around me. I’ve had lots of Jewish friends who didn’t believe, and I went to school with hundreds of Jews, and not one has ever demonstrated any inclination to consider accepting Jesus. I don’t deal with Jews here in northern Florida, but back when I saw them from time to time, I didn’t bother trying to give them what I had. It’s astonishing to see the Fischers pull it off.

Forget Jews; I can’t even talk to Christians about God. They get angry. They become uncomfortable. They tell me they know everything already. I am the least effective evangelist on earth. I am singular. Talking to Jews about Jesus is something I consider impossible.

I’m getting off the topic. To return, I like the kind of ministry the Fischers have, and I know it’s the Christianity of the future. It’s unstoppable. Stopping a church is like forcing a bus to stop. Easy. Stopping billions of Christians is like trying to catch every raindrop before it hits the ground.

I love the way these healings take place. There is no fasting. No one cries or screams. People don’t walk around in circles, begging God to help. Fischer says things like, “Pain, go now, in the name of Jesus,” and that’s it. Very nice.

Imagine how different unbelievers and backsliders would feel if this is what they thought of when they thought of Christians. They’d see us as powerful, helpful people, not fat, crap-spewing leeches who make TV pulpits stink like gangrene. The characters who go on TV and pour vomit into our ears were put there by Satan, not God. They work for Satan. They drive intelligent people away.

I saw a video in which Fischer talks about President Trump. Fischer sounds like a yankee, and his wife has a Jewish first name, so one would not assume he was conservative. His video startled me, because he spoke in support of Trump. He has the same kind of concerns other serious Christians have. He sees censorship increasing. He’s against gun control. He talks about martial law. It’s amazing how the Holy Spirit invariably makes people more conservative.

Conservatism isn’t God’s answer to our problems. When separated from God, it’s carnal. But you can’t be led by the Holy Spirit and be anything but conservative. Liberalism is based on hatred of God combined with covetousness and pride. Leftism tries to make our stupid, cruel, unfair, greedy, incompetent government the messiah. It’s worse than a golden calf. A golden calf can’t take your money or force your kids to sit and listen to homosexual and anti-Christian indoctrination.

I feel like I’m burying myself when I write blog entries like this. I’m giving the devil’s people nails to drive into my coffin.

Imagine what would happen if I ran for office. Imagine me being offered any position of power. The freaks and witches would find my blog and republish excerpts all over the world. They would call it hate. The SPLC, a true hate group, would give me official recognition, simply for believing the Bible.

Right now, it’s legal to say the things I say. That won’t always be true, and there is no legal guarantee that I won’t be punished in the future, for future laws I’m breaking today. As of this minute, our system has a powerful bias against enacting laws that punish people for prior acts, but there is no reason that can’t change. Funny how no one ever talks about that. Our pundits are very obtuse about things that should be obvious. Remember the real estate crash? How many investing geniuses thought it would never come? And we still listen to them.

When the Soviets, who served Satan, went after the Christian Czar and his family, they didn’t give them a trial or think about the legality of the things they had done. They put them in a basement and fired pistols into their brains. When the leftists in Cambodia executed people for crimes such as reading and wearing glasses, no one was interested in prior laws. The statists in Nazi Germany and Austria punished and murdered people who had not committed crimes, and they even did it outside their own borders, to citizens of other countries.

Satan’s people are very efficient. They don’t believe in a God who punishes evil, and they think people are just smart monkeys without enduring spirits. They will kill us here, just as they have killed tens of millions overseas. They will kill us just as we run chickens through mechanized slaughterhouses. They’ve done it before.

The people who will do it are here already. They are your neighbors, coworkers, and relatives. A lot of parents will be turned in or even murdered by their children. Remember when Obama told kids to spy on their parents? That idea didn’t come from his own confused little mind. He didn’t build that. His master gave him a prompt.

Sometimes I think about all the religious and conservative personalities who tussle and quarrel openly with their Satanic counterparts. They feel safe, not because they think God looks out for them, but because they expect our laws to protect them. Big mistake. One day the Internet Wayback Machine, which preserves all sorts of material from the web, will be used to regurgitate evidence to be used at trials. Wait and see. Things people said that were legal in 2005 may get them hanged in 2025.

Fischer says something interesting, and I agree with it. He says the path is becoming narrower. Decades ago, Christians here could get by without real sanctification. As he notes, we like to say, “I am a work in progress,” instead of cleaning our lives up. That won’t fly in the future. You will have to know God personally in order to get protection. I know what it’s like, getting action from God. I’ve done it many times. I know how to lay the groundwork. It takes a long time. You can’t do it the minute the Climate Change Denier Einsatzgruppe pulls into your driveway in a stretch Prius.

Describing churches full of weak believers, Jesus said. “What a terrible time it will be for pregnant women and nursing mothers!” My old church, Trinity in Miami, taught people to stay in sin and worship money. Most of the people at Trinity will join Satan because they never belongd to God in the first place. They’re on Facebook now, promoting BLM, which is a Satanic movement. Most of those who won’t join Satan will be trampled and crushed, because they are corrupt, empty-headed, and feeble.

If you don’t know God personally and communicate with him throughout the day, you are running naked through an electrical storm, and you are not going to make it.

I keep watching Fischer’s videos. I hope I’m right about him. So far, he checks out, but I have made mistakes before.

Fined and Dandy

I finished today’s first prayer session around an hour ago, the breakfast dishes are still with me, and I already have some testimony.

I’ll tell you about the problem I was facing down in Dade County.

I manage my dad’s properties. One is a warehouse. Years ago, someone who was in charge of it did some work. He submitted plans and got a permit, and then he did whatever he wanted. Last year, the fire inspector noticed this, and we were warned that we would eventually be cited. This problem applied to 6 units, so several other owners were on the hook.

I talked to the inspector, and I could not get straight answers out of her. She made it sound like she wasn’t even sure there would be a citation. I was told that the condo association was working on it, and that whoever was in charge of citations would issue a ruling some day.

This dragged on for a few months. That inspector left, and she was replaced with a lady who barely speaks English. I know that sounds incredible, but Dade Couny is like a foreign country. I really mean it’s like a foreign country. I’m not being cute or exaggerating.

I called her and spoke to her, and I didn’t understand her at all. I understood her to say a citation had been issued. We had received a confusing notice. She said to call a third inspector. I put that off for maybe three weeks because I was working with everyone to get the buildings fixed.

Last week the tenants flipped out because the third inspector told them they could have a problem with their occupational license. My realtor contacted me, and we went back and forth.

I had contacted the third inspector about paying the fine, and he had sent me a link to a site that allowed people to pay for inspections (not fines). I paid, and I didn’t see any fines listed. I assumed everything went through one site. I thought that was the end of it. Eventually, I learned that the fine had been multiplied by a large number, with no notice to me. And I had no idea how to pay it, even though I had been contacting the department and asking them.

This was not a catastrophic fine, but it was very, very high. I had received no notice that the fine was increasing, so I was very disturbed.

I believe the problem is that the department held the tenants responsible and sent them all the communications. I didn’t understand that until last week. Anyway, it seemed crazy for the department to pay for its new fleet and headquarters off of one minor violation, with no warning to the citizen being fined.

I should have paid immediately, but the misleading conversations I had with the inspectors led me to believe I could wait and settle up when the dust cleared. I didn’t realize the fine fell under the heading of code enforcement. I had a code issue a couple of years back, and the city threatened to fine my dad $150 per day over something. If I had understood that the fire people worked the same way, I would have kept them on the phone every day until I had gotten the fire fine fixed.

I sent the inspector a bunch of emails on Friday, and on my own, I found a second site where the fine was listed. I paid the original fine, minus the penalties, just to show good faith.

I was stressed out all weekend, in spite of the supernatural tools God has given me to fight worry. One of my shortcomings is that when God gives me weapons, I often won’t use them the way I should. I should have spent much more time in prayer this weekend. I did pretty well, but I should have done better. Every problem–I don’t care what it is–will eventually respond to prayer in tongues. I learned that a long time ago, but I still slack off.

While I was praying this weekend, I thanked God over and over for the ordeal I was going through. Things like this always improve me. I do not enjoy them, but they never fail to produce a harvest.

Last night my friend Amanda said she would pray about the problem. She didn’t know any details. I was glad to hear she was praying. She gets very good results. In particular, she keeps getting burns healed.

Today after prayer, I found I had a voicemail. The inspector, who had been so hard to get information out of in the past, had left me a message. He said I needed to pay the initial fine (he hadn’t checked), and that they would work with me on the penalty.

Case dismissed. Back to Defcon 5. Whatever they end up charging us won’t be anything like what they threatened us with.

God does what he says he will do, and he fixes problems we create and exacerbate.

I can’t tell you how many times things like this have happened to me. I should know better than to get upset. I do know better. That doesn’t always stop me.

God has given me several words concerning worry. They have come to me over the years. One is, “Worry is the voice of Satan.” Another is, “There is nothing good about worry.” A lot of people think worrying makes them righteous, but the Bible says faith is accounted unto us as righteousness, and we know faith kills worry, so how can worry make you righteous? It’s a sick idea.

Today I got another one: “Worry is not allowed in here.” The word “here” refers to my mind and heart. That was helpful.

To understand how these phrases work, you have to repeat them to yourself several times during prayer. They make supernatural energy well up in me. I can feel it. If you just read them on a screen, they look stupid. If they don’t impress you, it’s because you haven’t put them to work.

I got another interesting word today, and I’m sure it won’t impress: “I am a living thing.” What this means is that I am always changing. I never remain the same. I improve or I rot. I can’t stand still. This is a very Biblical idea. Think of manna. If you eat it the same day you receive it, it’s good. If you try to save it and eat it the next day, you find it’s full of worms. You’re not supposed to stay in the same place and cling to the same solutions all the time. You have to grow and increase and receive new things.

I can’t remember how this applies to the situation I’ve been dealing with. Sorry about that.

I wish I could offer a testimony about how I did everything right because God had made me a great person, instead of one about him fixing my screwups, but I am still not perfect yet. Check back with me in a month. Surely it won’t take any longer than that.

In other news, my hunting knife is supposed to arrive today. Squirrel season ended yesterday. I hear tiny high-pitched giggles coming from the front yard.

I found some nice squirrel feeders on Amazon, so the giggling should come to an abrupt stop when squirrel season starts in October. In the meantime I have to figure turkeys out.

Soon the HAL 9000 Will be Picking Out Your Ties

Lots to think about today. It’s generally God-related, so you can’t say you weren’t warned.

First off, I keep feeling a pressing need to confess and criticize myself. I keep having prayer sessions in which I struggle very hard to dig up the worst dirt on myself I can remember. It’s a little nauseating. It makes me wonder if other people are as bad as I am. Part of me hopes they are, which is perverse.

Every person has areas of sin in his life. It’s not hard to put names on them. Lust. Greed. Dishonesty. They’re all bad, but for me, some are harder to think about than others. I don’t know how other people see sin, but for me, sins of cowardice and cruelty are the most embarrassing. They are hard to discuss with God, even though I know he knows all about them before I speak, and they are hard for me to think about.

Between cowardice and cruelty, cruelty is harder to confront. I’m not a serial killer, but I have done some really evil things during my life. They stand out like beacons in the landscape of my past. Like arrest warrants with sirens and flashing lights.

I’ve always known that people, including me, were evil, but I tried not to dive into my personal muck too deeply, and I felt that I was okay, at least by human standards. When I have these sessions with God, though, I wonder how he can want to save me. If I saw someone else doing certain things I’ve done, I would be appalled.

I suppose I would not consider them unworthy of the effort it would take to change them. I know that’s true, because I know people who have done terrible things. I don’t marvel that God would want to save them. I would tell them it doesn’t matter what they’ve done. Murder, child molestation, animal cruelty…I would tell them God is ready to accept anyone who applies. That must be true for me, too.

I know Christians–even those baptized with the Holy Spirit–have demons. Living in a flesh body is a little like driving a school bus full of brats. You have to exercise authority while continuously being challenged and told what to do. When you accept the baptism with the Holy Spirit, he boards the bus, but he doesn’t necessarily ride alone.

I believe that when you refuse to confront your iniquities–your evil inclinations–and tell God about them, you give demons passes. They can say, “We’re allowed to be here. The driver says it’s okay.” I believe it’s important to go through the deworming process. Otherwise, the Holy Spirit sits in the back and lets you and your demons do what you want. I believe it limits his participation in your life.

I have less peace than I want. I think it’s because God showed me how to succeed, and I turned away. Thirty years ago, he told me I needed to pray in tongues a lot every day, and I let it go. I didn’t have the full understanding of it, but that doesn’t excuse me. You’re not supposed to base your obedience on consequences. You obey, whether you understand the consequences or not. If you know you’re supposed to do something, and you don’t do it, you’re guilty. God isn’t obligated to give you an explanatory brochure every time he gives you counsel.

I should have spent these years getting cleaned up, but I spent about 17 of them doing as I pleased. I rarely prayed in tongues. I went entire days without praying at all. I think I tried to be “good” by the world’s standards. I tried not to do things that made other people suffer. I didn’t do a great job. Living by the world’s rules doesn’t make you a moral, disciplined person.

My best guess is that during my time away, I was collecting spirits and feeding them. I was holding the shackles steady while they welded them shut. Now I’m going through a long regurgitation process which would have been much shorter and easier had I listened in the first place.

Some people say that God will eventually show every second of our lives to everyone who has ever existed. Could you stand that? I wonder if anyone would still want to speak with me if everyone knew everything I’ve done, thought, and felt.

Here is what Psalm 32 says:

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

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

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

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

America is full of feel-good churches that teach people to ignore their iniquities. How can you be healed if you don’t let the doctor look at the pus? Why are we so afraid of accepting responsibility? We already know God will forgive us, so why not get it over with?

The answer is that preachers are terrified of losing their audience. They love money. Some want to impress their superiors and keep their jobs. Some measure themselves by attendance figures. They look for ways to rationalize flattery and denial. It’s not a mystery.

There is a martial art called aikido. One of the principles is that it’s good to use your opponent’s momentum against him. It can be difficult to stop a hostile person’s movements, but if you can find a way to direct those movements so they cause your opponent to fall or whatever, you can save a lot of energy and effort. The devil uses the same approach. If he can’t lure you to do something new, he can always find the bad things you’re already doing and remove the obstacles.

Flattery is poison. Look what happens to celebrities. Look at Elvis and Michael Jackson. They probably never heard the word “no” after they turned 20. They ended up dressing in costumes, like superheroes. They became completely disconnected from reality. They behaved like spoiled gods. Like Will Smith’s son.

Flattery destroyed them, and it can destroy you, too. The devil saw what these men wanted to do, and he gave them the power to do it. He took away wise counsel and surrounded them with yes-men. After that, he didn’t have to do much at all.

I wonder what my life will be like after I endure most of the major cleaning that has to be done. I assume there will be more peace. It’s hard to imagine that while you’re in the middle of the process.

Let’s change the topic. Here’s something else: I read a strange testimony from a guy named Ken Peters. I am not endorsing him. I don’t know enough about him to do that. In 1980, he had a couple of long, detailed dreams about the end of the world. You can read a transcript of his remarks about them. It’s sobering.

Before I get to the details of his dreams, I want to write about his background. He said he didn’t know the Bible very well, that he knew nothing about prophecy, and that he had not accepted Jesus personally…because he was a “practicing Catholic.” Is that really how it works? I know Catholicism is a mess, but he makes it sound worse than I thought.

Here’s an excerpt:

At the time I received this dream I was not even a believer in Jesus Christ. I was raised in the Catholic Church but had never personally invited the Lord Jesus to come into my heart to be my Lord. As a practicing Catholic, I had no knowledge of what the Bible said about the tribulation period or any of the events of the last days.

Chilling. The Catholic Church is very, very big.

He said his exposure to the Bible was mainly composed of little passages that were read aloud in church services. Apparently, no one shoved a Bible into his hands and told him to read it. Can that be true? Even the worst charismatic preacher will tell you to read the Bible. This is fundamental. The notion of a Christian who doesn’t read the Bible is unthinkable in charismatic churches. I would guess that most Protestants outside of the Episcopal church have the same attitude.

If you aren’t familiar with the Bible, you are a zero as a Christian. You don’t know what you believe. You don’t know whom you believe in. You don’t know where you came from. You have no idea what’s going to happen in the future. You’re probably going to hell, because a valid decision to accept salvation is an informed decision. You can’t tell God you accepted Jesus because Mom said you had to.

Talking to Christians who don’t read the Bible is like talking to foreign spies pretending to be Americans. Imagine a spy who speaks English perfectly but doesn’t know our laws or our customs. When you mention Biblical ideas to such Christians, you get one blank look after another.

I hope Peters was exaggerating.

As for not knowing Jesus on any personal level, I don’t think it’s possible to be saved and not know him. How can you give your heart to him sincerely if you don’t feel he’s there?

Christianity is a relationship with a living God who communicates with you. If you don’t have that, you need to ask God for it, because you’re in trouble. He didn’t just dump us here, like unwanted toddlers in day care, and say he would send a Salvadoran nanny to pick us up. He is right here with us. He said he would never leave or forsake us. His presence is always available.

You can be baptized and go to hell. You can think you’re a Christian and go to hell. Look at the Mormons. You better be careful not to trust your church’s authorities too much. God won’t listen when you try to blame them for your lack of salvation.

A lot of people who say they’ve had visions of hell say it’s full of Christians. That is true. I know it’s true, because there are entire churches full of unrepentant homosexuals. There are gay churches. You can’t get salvation while deliberately building your life around a sin.

Ken Peters, who did not know what the rapture was or what the book of Revelation said, told a disturbing story.

First, he said a horn blew, certain graves flew open, and people ascended into the air and disappeared. That would be unnerving, especially for the people who witness it and realize they’ve made the wrong choices.

He also said there was a two-week period during which everything was disrupted. Broadcasting was disrupted, for example. He didn’t see living people rise into the air, but if all the strong Christians involved in broadcasting, transportation, and so on vanished, a hiatus of chaos is exactly what you would expect to see.

He said he saw an old man who was evangelizing. This man had screwed up as a Christian, but he had repented after the horn blew, and he was helping others. Peters accepted real salvation, not a fake version endorsed by a blind church, and started following him. Side note: Peters is a real Christian today, and he pastors a church.

A new global government formed under a mesmerizing leader. Eventually, the government captured Peters, his wife, the evangelist, and various Christians. At first, they used gentle persuasion to push them to renounce Jesus. When Peters and his wife refused, they were fastened to a table and beheaded with a sword. They preached until the end. The man with the sword put it down and said he was done killing Christians. That happened at the end of the dream.

If you know the Bible at all, you know the Revelation mentions Christians who have been beheaded for their testimony. It’s not something Ken Peters invented. He said the sword looked like the swords on Shriners fezzes. In other words, a sword like those used by Muslims. He dreamed this in 1980, when Islam was not the huge threat that it is today.

As I understand it, in the Bible, the end of the current age works like this:

1. The rapture occurs. Serious Christians are taken, and the rest are left here.
2. Suffering and catastrophe increase in the world.
3. Salvation will still be available, but if you receive it, you will be killed unless you renounce it.

Of course, there are a lot of other details. But as far as avoiding hell goes, that’s the important stuff. My understanding is that it’s much better to get on board now than to be left behind and face increased persecution.

My own dream of the rapture was shorter, and it was symbolic, not literal. I was sitting in my grandparents’ living room, on the floor with my legs crossed. In front of me on the floor was a small dish of poisoned rat bait pellets. My mother was sitting in a recliner in the corner. She was wearing jeans. Work clothing. As far as I know, she never owned clothes like that as an adult. No one else was there.

Our family no longer owns the house, and my grandparents and my mother are dead. This is why I say the dream was not literal. I believe what happened to us in the dream is what will happen to people during the rapture, but obviously, my mother and I won’t be in that room on that day.

I heard a horn. The pitch was low but well within the range of human hearing. It made the entire earth vibrate. I knew with certainty that it could be heard everywhere in the world. I knew the horn itself was thousands of miles away. I felt it was behind me. Given my position, that would have been to the northwest.

I wasn’t afraid, but I felt completely sobered. I knew what was happening was as serious as anything could be.

Three things started to rise: me, the dish of rat bait, and my mother. We were buoyed up toward the ceiling, and we were on our way through it when I woke up.

I was glad the world, in its current state, was over. I felt a great sense of adventure. I felt relief. I also felt that it was an event of global moment, and that there would be astounding consequences for mankind.

Peters mentioned some strange things in his dream.

He said televisions would watch people for the government. In 1980, that was impossible, but it’s happening today. Some TV’s are connected directly to the web. Some have cameras, which is ridiculous.

My TV has an LED screen. Your TV probably uses LED’s too. An LED is a light-emitting diode. Run current through one, and it lights up. Interesting thing: an LED also senses light. You can use them to detect it. I’m not great with electronics, but even I know that it should be easy to make a camera using a grid of LED’s and a lens. For all I know, that’s what’s inside a smartphone camera.

One wonders what kind of visual information an LED TV could gather if it were programmed the right way.

Peters said the government kept track of the locations of all vehicles in his dream. Light posts had cameras mounted on them. We already have that. The government puts some of them out there where we can see them, making no effort to hide them. Other sensors have been put in place quietly, with no explanation.

I think the government knows where most vehicles are, all the time. There are too many sensors and cameras, and there aren’t that many roads. You can’t make your own road. Wherever you go, you have to drive by equipment installed by the government. I think that when a crime occurs and the cops really need to find someone, government nerds know where that person is, and they look for ways to get the info to the cops without letting the public know the capability exists.

He said the government would be able to find us whenever it wanted. That day is almost here, and the technology is focusing on us even when we’re just walking around. You can put a few cameras in a mall or stadium, connect them to computers with facial-recognition software, and make lists of the people who show up.

The government is too stupid and cruel to have this much information.

I don’t know if Peters is a flake or a prophet, but I thought people might want to know about him and read what he said.

I believe the end is right around the corner. Technology is destroying free will. When you can’t do anything without being discovered, you have no free will. Without free will, there is no sin, and there is no righteousness. We will live under coercion.

That’s not God’s style. He needs free will in order for his system to work. Free will is so important, he prefers putting people in hell and roasting them to taking free will away. He could fix is so we never sin, but he doesn’t. The concept of sin makes no sense without free will. Measuring the righteousness of people who can’t sin is like putting an altimeter in a car.

When free will is gone, there will be no reason for the world to go on existing, so the end will come quickly.

I don’t see how it could take even 10 years. I see that as an outside limit. That’s not prophecy. That’s just me, not being totally obtuse.

It would be nice if it were true (from my standpoint), because I don’t like aging. I am not in a hurry to get cataracts, wear diapers, and be unable to carry my own groceries. I like having teeth, too.

Leftists want to do away with free will. They want to be free to take drugs, indulge in obscenity, and have whatever kind of sex they like, but other than that, they are happy to plug into the Matrix and be told what to do. Strange people.

How can anyone trust the government that much? I don’t know a single human being I would trust as much as leftists trust the government. They trust the government far more than Christians trust God.

Do you ever think about how awful the future could be, when you watch sci-fi shows? Think about TNG.

In TNG, there is no money. Okay; how do you get things you want? Obviously, you must have to ask for it. So everyone in the future is a beggar. Mommy, can we buy this cereal? Mommy, can I have these LED shoes? Yeah, that would feel great, for an adult.

Whom do you ask? What if they say no? What if some crooked person persuades them to give stuff to them instead of you?

What if you want to buy a house? What if you want to travel to another galaxy?

Are you allowed to buy and sell? How can you do that without money? What if you want to Craigslist a couch? What if you want to teach piano and charge for it? Do you have to barter? Would you require students to bring you groceries instead of money?

In TNG, it’s very hard for people to hide. They have scanners to find you. If you work for Star Fleet, you have to wear a doodad that broadcasts your location and acts as a phone. What if you’re fed up and you need a few hours by yourself? Do you have to ask permission? What if they say no?

In TNG, they used to beam people up and down without permission. Know what the law calls that? “Kidnapping.” It’s a major felony. In Florida, if you try to kidnap me, I’m allowed to blow your brains out. It’s bad. Imagine living in a world where the government can reach out and suck you out of your beach chair and into jury duty, while simultaneously extracting a fine from “your” bank account.

Gene Roddenberry was a feckless atheist leftist, so naturally, he never thought about the unintended consequences of creating his utopian society. He should have read Orwell.

When I was in grad school trying to become a physicist, I knew a guy whose students called him “Fridge.” He was a very serious guy, but likeable. A little weird. He had no furniture. He said he did his copious homework standing up with his back against a wall, holding a clipboard.

Fridge left the Navy to study physics. He had to struggle to get out. Evidently, the Navy doesn’t have to let you go just because you ask. If you do a good job, like Fridge, they will reward you by holding onto you with a death grip. I asked him how he did it. He said, “I enforced the rules.”

He was in a position sort of like a quartermaster. When things had to be obtained or shipped, papers landed on his desk. Before he decided to leave the Navy, he would work to get things through. The rules were idiotic and restrictive, so he had to bend them all the time in order to make the system work. When the Navy refused to let him go, he stopped bending the rules. He observed them to the point of madness. “This has to be in blue ballpoint. Send it back.” “This has to be in triplicate, not duplicate. Send it back. It’s 5:01. My shift ended one minute ago. Talk to me on Monday.” You can imagine.

The system crashed. Things didn’t go where they were needed. Everyone hated him. They wanted his guts on a stick. He got his discharge. It’s a hilarious story.

It shows what will happen when free will disappears entirely. If we couldn’t break the rules, the world would jam up like a lawnmower with 5-minute epoxy in the engine.

I know another guy, an electrical engineer, who got out of the Navy by pretending to be an alcoholic. Now he’s a lawyer. He told the Bar what he did, and they let him in anyway.

Not relevant, but interesting.

I think things are drawing to a close. It makes me wonder what I should do. Should I still think about moving farther north? Is there any point in ever talking to a woman again, given that we could be raptured the day after I propose? Should I invest?

I’ll put those things in God’s hands, because I have no idea what to do.

I love it here, but I would like to have a year in Appalachia before the curtain falls.

Final thing: God told me something interesting today. When people give you things voluntarily, there are only two explanations. They’re being generous, or they want something from you. Disturbing.

I had a lot to think about when I got up, and now that I’ve written about all of it, it’s your problem. Enjoy the rest of the day.

Overstuffed Preachers Exceed Their Authority

Yesterday I found out I made an error managing one of my dad’s properties, and it’s going to cost some money. Not happy about that. I felt tense about it when I went to bed, and I woke up early in the morning and started praying.

I used to pray for God to make me feel better at times like that, but these days, I ask him to let me feel what I need to feel, and I ask him to change me so I don’t have these problems in the future. It’s better to be housetrained than to wear a diaper.

As wonderful as prayer is when you feel God’s presence, sometimes you feel like doing something else for a spell. I got out my phone and looked around to see if there was anything uplifting to read. I came up against a brick wall.

I looked at a couple of websites run by preachers. I used to find them comforting and illuminating. This time, I could tell there was nothing there for me. I felt like I was looking at the locked doors of unfriendly houses.

One site was Perry Stone’s. He has received a vast amount of knowledge from God, and he shares it all the time. It’s good stuff for any Christian to listen to. For example, he does an exceptional job, connecting the Old Testament and the New Testament. I’m underselling him here. You would have to watch his videos and read his books to understand.

I’ve benefited a lot from Perry Stone’s teaching, but I don’t pay much attention to him now. He has some blind spots. He teamed up with Steve Munsey, my favorite seedy prosperity preacher. Munsey teaches all sorts of garbage in order to get people to give him money. Seeing Perry Stone promote his filth was saddening, because it exposed a big hole in Stone’s discernment.

I took a look at Andrew Wommack’s site. He has a lot of insights that seem to come from God. On the other hand, he says you can’t be blessed financially unless you support the teaching of the gospel with your money. That simply isn’t true. It’s self-serving prosperity preaching, and it comes from a source that has nothing to do with God.

I gave up. I have realized there is nobody out there I want to listen to any more.

Is this a bad thing? Does it mean I’ve turned into one of those nutty Christians who refuse to go to church because they think they alone have all the answers? Not really. I do not have all the answers. My problem with preachers comes from the fact that I’ve gotten used to learning straight from God. When you graduate from something pretty good to something excellent, you don’t have much enthusiasm for what you left behind.

It’s not that I have all the answers. It’s that I’m tired of swallowing wrong answers provided by other people.

It’s a good thing. I know it’s good, because the Bible says so. John told us we did not need men to teach us. James said God would give us wisdom if we asked for it. Paul learned directly from God. He went off into the wilderness for several years. He didn’t go back to his rabbis. God does teach people.

It’s a good thing, but it serves to underscore the poor condition of modern Christianity. Most churches teach complete nonsense, and even good churches aren’t very good.

Christians love Christian celebrities. We look here and there, and we find preachers who seem to have it all together. Then we make the mistake of depending on them. We start quoting them to other people, as though adding “Benny Hinn says” to a sentence gives it divine authority. We put them on pedestals, and then when they make mistakes, those mistakes are propagated downward and laterally through us, sometimes to hundreds of millions of people. We don’t have enough Christians dealing directly with God, to fact-check the rock stars.

Look what Paul said:

For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?

For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal?

Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man?

I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase.

So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.

Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour.

For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.

According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.

For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble;

Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.

If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.

If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.

And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.

Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are your’s;

Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are your’s;

And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.

Satan uses celebrities like the Pope and Joyce Meyer as augers, to drill holes in people’s heads to pour hogwash through. If 10 million people listen to T.D. Jakes and believe him without reservation, in order to spread a toxic heresy, all Satan has to do is convince one man: Jakes himself. Celebrity is a big labor-saver for the devil.

You don’t have to be a big-time celebrity to be dangerous. It works with small groups, too. About 150 people attended my last church, and it was a bona fide cult.

It’s good to know God personally and to have no need of the rock stars, but I do miss learning from preachers.

I still benefit from hearing from other believers. I’ve watched dozens of testimonies this week. Testimonies and teaching are different. Testimony is more factual, and teaching contains more opinion and guesswork. Testimony tends to break down denominational errors of doctrine. It tends to unite people. I would rather hear from a random guy who met Jesus than a pinch-faced old rogue who has five degrees and scolds people for praying in tongues.

There is some nutty testimony out there, but I still prefer testimony to teaching.

I am going to make mistakes. Everyone but Jesus is going to make mistakes. Peter himself, who was supposedly the first infallible Pope, made mistakes and had to be corrected publicly by Paul. If you listen to me or anyone else too long, you are going to run into problems. You have to go to the horse’s mouth. I can tell a beginner a lot of useful things, but the proper function of a witness is to connect people with the perfect source. If you’re still following a preacher or even a friend five years after you started, that person has failed you. Teachers are supposed to be matchmakers, not husbands.

Nobody listens to God. Preachers think, “This is how I want things to be. Is that how they are, God? OF COURSE IT IS. Thanks. I’ll go tell everyone else.” This is how Creflo Dollar ended up believing he needed a jet.

Last night I spent a long time going over my numerous defects with God. It was like digging around in an abscess with a sharp stick. It was very unpleasant, but it was rewarding and important.

I know I’ll have more sessions like that. It’s a daunting prospect, but I have to be enthusiastic about it. A parent who loves you corrects you, and correction brings peace and power in the long run.

I don’t like thinking about what I am. I’m okay by earth standards, but earth standards are very low. Other people see the facade. I stand behind it, where I see what holds it up.

If I were still listening to preachers, I would be trying to apply remedies that actually make things worse. Denial tops the list. “God loves you as you are, so you don’t have to feel guilt. He sees you as perfect, so you don’t need to change.” What? Where does the Bible say that? Of course we have to change. We have to confess. God didn’t put us down here to fester and collapse.

Examining your faults isn’t counterproductive self-condemnation. It’s a diagnostic test, like an X-ray. Before a doctor heals, he examines. The idea that we shouldn’t feel shame or ask God to improve us is lethal. It’s like putting a used, pus-covered bandage on a carbuncle.

Equating self-examination with self-condemnation is immature. God’s purpose isn’t to cheer us up and tie balloon animals for us. He’s a healer, and one of the prices of healing is humility. Denial puts a protective wall around the projects Satan builds inside you, including tumors and God knows what else.

It’s funny; secular therapists understand the importance of honesty and catharsis, but charismatic Christians seem obsessed with covering things up.

As long as I’m here, I’ll mention a word God gave me today. It may not bowl you over. Here it is: “I believe.” My faith was being attacked, and I started repeating this. It turned out to have supernatural power.

I guess I’ll pray some more and check out more testimonies.

Put Down the World and Take a Break

I said I would write about the little phrases God gives me, and I got one today, so here I am.

I was watching a Marvel movie: Captain America: Civil War. Unlike the clumsy and intelligence-insulting Wonder Woman, this is actually a well-written, entertaining film. The idea is that the Avengers get in trouble for running around the world and getting into destructive battles that kill a lot of extras, so they do what no intelligent person would ever do: they agree to be overseen and commanded by an international body. Yeah, that’ll work. You want to replace 6 or 8 smart people with relatively good judgment (neglecting Tony Stark) and replace them with a bunch of idiots from Botswana and Pakistan. Good luck with that.

Anyway, superhero movies draw us because superheroes are false messiahs. Jesus was an extremely special person with extraordinary powers and a unique and vital mission. We don’t like Jesus all that much, so we create little carnal messiahs who have power and special status without the annoying, unglamorous humility and obedience.

Superheroes are proud and full of what my dad calls…okay, I will paraphrase…urine and vinegar. They are energetic people who feel great senses of purpose. They get all sorts of admiration because they’re special. We watch them and experience their strange, special lives vicariously.

People who are anointed by God can get superhero complexes. The word “messiah” means “anointed.” If God works through you, you may start to feel a little too special. You may not even want it. You may realize it’s ridiculous, wrong, and something to be embarrassed about. That doesn’t mean you can shake it.

Elijah appears to have had an issue with the superhero complex. He told God this:

I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts: because the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.

God responded as follows:

Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.

Depending on your mindset, you could take this as a rebuke if God said it to you, but to me, it would be a comfort. Nobody who has any understanding of the importance of humility wants to feel too special. It’s good to sit down and hand the ball off to someone else. It reminds you of your real place in the world. It shows you you’re not alone.

I was watching this movie full of fictional special people (played by professional pretenders running around in silly costumes), and I thought about the things God had been doing for me lately. I have had times of real supernatural joy because of the things God has been showing me about the power and deliverance that are coming to me. Sometimes I feel a little special; it’s a delusion. Today I heard a new phrase from God, and it came back to me during the movie: “One of many.”

It will probably be impossible for people to understand, but that made me feel great. IF God is doing big things in me, it doesn’t mean I have to carry a unique burden that sets me apart. I am one of many. I don’t have to be weighed down with pride, which is always heavy. If I’m just one of many, then I’m fine the way I am. I don’t have to carry too much. I have limited responsibility. I have all sorts of allies out there, working around the clock, each in his turn.

I can’t explain it any better than that.

I can relax and join the crowd of God’s children. I don’t have to be conspicuous.

The devil is “special,” and he hasn’t had a vacation in 6,000 years. He’s the father of all snowflakes. He picked up the crown. Now let him carry it in misery.

Every time I think, “one of many,” I feel like weight is falling off my shoulders.

We have a lot of preachers who feel “just a little bit superior,” as the Church Lady used to put it. The late Eddie Long let a nut named Ralph Messer wrap him in a Torah scroll, put him on a throne, and have him carried around while proclaiming him king. Denny Duron, the preacher I wrote about earlier this week, wrote a whole book saying the rest of us were just Abishais.

We should be content to be unrewarded redshirts, like the short-lived ensigns on old Star Trek episodes, while mighty, holy, rich characters like his lordship the messiah Duron and his exceedingly ordinary kids get the attention and cash.

It was clearly his attempt at excusing his money-centered, attention-centered ministry of foolishness.

Jewish sages are probably the most “special” people outside of Christian TV. You should see how young Orthodox Jews speak about them. So brilliant. So righteous. God should be grateful they’re willing to talk to him.

Isaiah said man’s righteousness is like used menstrual rags. He was right.

If you have problems fighting pride, remember this: “one of many.” It will make you feel much better.

Maybe They do, but I Don’t

It finally happened. A neighbor spoke to me about shooting guns on my own property.

Today I got the .17 HMR out. I decided to go look for squirrels. I took the .17 HMR even though I knew it would limit the types of shots I could take.

I like the .17 HMR.

I went behind the house and set up a board at squirrel distance, and I shot five rounds into it. I was using FMJ ammo instead of the rodent-exploding kind, and the scope was set for 100 yards and plastic bullets, so I wanted to adjust the elevation. I shot. I walked to the board. I shot. I walked to the board. Et cetera.

I have very little respect for the micrometers. I turned the top one 16 clicks this way, shot, turned it 6 the other way, and so on, and after the last shot, I turned it 4 clicks and didn’t bother checking whether I was right. I knew I was just about on the money. At 25 yards or so, you don’t have to be Werner von Braun to know where the bullets will go.

Maybe 10 minutes later, I took off for the woods. I heard a noise to my right. It was a lady on another farm, calling to me. There is my fence, then there is a strip of land maybe 25 feet wide (half of which I own), and then there is her fence. She wanted to chat.

She asked if I was shooting. I said yes. She asked which direction I was shooting in. No, I was not shooting over her farm, into her barn, at her horses. That’s not exactly what she asked, but she implied that she thought I could be shooting over her farm, and she was very inquisitive. She pressed for details. She should have asked, “Is anything you shoot going over someone else’s land?”, and let it go. That’s all she can complain about, under the law.

She said her horses were going crazy, and that she had had to put them in the barn. This I very much doubt. They were a hundred yards away, with their view of me blocked, and I was shooting a pretty quiet rifle with about 90 seconds between shots. And like I said, five rounds.

Someone else on another property was also shooting. Lots of rounds. No idea where. It didn’t occur to me to ask if that was the shooting she was asking about. But no horse is going to flip out over someone shooting a 30.06 a thousand feet away. That’s not credible. Any horse that acts like that has a mental problem and needs to be medicated or put down. You don’t change your way of life over a defective animal.

I didn’t apologize. You bought a farm, you live in the country, and you WILL have to put up with the lifestyle. In Miami I had to deal with obnoxious salsa parties at 1 a.m. Things can’t always go your way.

I told her I was shooting to sight in the pea shooter for squirrels, and that I didn’t want to cause any one any trouble.

She seemed okay with that. Off I went, to kill squirrels. I didn’t see any, which was okay, because I just wanted to get out and walk around.

After I “hunted,” meaning after I wandered around and then sat on the ground under a tree looking at my phone, someone to the north fired a high-powered rifle three times, rapidly. I wondered if the horse lady thought it was me.

I am going to keep shooting and hunting on my land, because Florida law says I can. There is no such thing as a local gun ordinance in this state. An official who passes one can be fined $5000 and removed from office, which is pretty cool. I can’t be forced to stop. Still, I do not want to be aggravated by ignorant flower children who want to control their neighbors’ farms as well as their own. I do not want to have to talk to this woman every week. I don’t know if she’s an ignorant flower child with a leftist control problem. Maybe she’s a wonderful Republican who prays in tongues. I hope so, because having to bicker with a provincial, intolerant, supercilious flake would ruin this place for me.

If this lady tried to cause a problem, she would be SOL. A rabid liberal named Dziak sued a neighbor over gun-spooked horses in 2014 and got nowhere. Her lawyer fumes about it on his website. Sorry, bud. Welcome to Not New York.

I feel like it’s a message. Tennessee is in my future. If not Tennessee, some place in Appalachia where I can have 300 acres and tell everyone around me to kiss off.

Maybe it would be worth it to move to Eastern Kentucky and put up with the racism. Land is cheaper there than in Tennessee. I put up with complete idiots in Miami, and I survived. I don’t have to hang out with the racists.

Acreage is addictive, at least to me. Some people thought I would miss human beings when I got away from them, but exactly the opposite happened. I wish I had gone farther out and farther north. I would give a kidney to live on 5,000 acres.

No, not a kidney. But I would really like it. If I could get Internet access.

I might give an earlobe.

My family still has 752 acres to get rid of, 15 years after my grandmother’s death. I think the biggest piece is 300 acres. It’s up on a hill next to a national park. I want to go up there, lie on my face, and dig my fingers into the ground.

Perhaps this desire is excessive. I realize that.

Christians are supposed to love people, and you can’t interact with them and serve God if you never see them. On the other hand, you don’t have to have them in your face every day.

Jewish legend says Enoch got to where he only saw people once a year. I wonder if that’s true. Elijah was apparently solitary. John the Baptist lived in the desert. Maybe I’m not completely crazy.

Jesus didn’t spend his whole life in crowds, letting people spit on him and tell him off. He went off by himself and left them to fend for themselves. He left areas where people got on his nerves or threatened him. He eventually got out of here completely, apart from occasional visitations in spirit form. He only had to spend 33 years with this taxing species.

I can see how God might want me to move farther out and see less of humanity. People drag me backward in my walk with him. The vast majority of people I interact with are not positive influences. Let me put it this way: compared to being alone with God, almost no one is a positive influence. That’s a high standard to meet. I’m not strong enough or rooted enough to be immune to temptation and provocation. Maybe more isolation is what I need. I certainly want it. I love my friends, and I want to see them from time to time, but even good Christian friends take my attention off God.

It’s great when good friends visit, and it’s also great when they leave, as long as the visit isn’t too short.

I can tell this is a done deal. I can feel it in my heart. It may be three years from now, but I will be moving on.

I’m going to sit around and look at property, just like I used to do before we moved up here. It will be fun. It will give me something to dream about. This area is wonderful. I thank God for it every day. But something even better may be coming up.

Prosperity Preachers are Demented Wrecks

Interesting stuff is happening in my relationship with God.

I watch a lot of Youtube now. I have to have something to do during meals. Eating with a demented person is something you can only do so often, so I usually eat alone. I also need something to amuse me while I take the birds out. Finally, I am too lazy to go through the ordeal of picking up a book, opening it, and reading. I need to work on that.

I also watch old movies on the Turner channel, plus one TV show, but this doesn’t amount to much in terms of time. I’m very out of touch with current celebrities, and I thank God for that. I read that Ryan Seacrest is in trouble for groping somebody, and it was nice to realize I didn’t know who he was. I knew his name and that he was on TV, but if he walked in here right now, I wouldn’t recognize him or be able to say anything about his work.

When you fall behind on celebrity worship, celebrities start to look funny to you. You’ll see a hysterical news article with a breathless headline about how Kim Zolciak has a problem, and it will be like reading about a random person out of the phone book. “Herbert Loomis Suffers Major Swimsuit Malfunction at Elks Picnic!” “Edna Fanucci SHUTS DOWN Trump’s Latest Tweet!” Who? What?

I don’t know who Kim Zolciak is. I deliberately poked through celebrity names on the web and picked one that sounded utterly obscure.

I’ve been watching a lot of stuff on the One for Israel channel. The link goes to their website, not Youtube. I have not read the site. They’re Messianic Jews. They post all sorts of videos featuring Jews who have accepted Yeshua (not “Yeshu,” which means, “May his name be blotted out forever”). I highly recoomend their videos. They also post videos of Muslim converts.

One message I took from the Muslim videos is that I have let myself get way too angry at Muslims. Islam is a Satanic cult, and the hate it has managed to create in Muslims the world over is remarkable. Many of us think the hate only comes from a few extremists, but ordinary Muslims who convert will tell you different. They will talk about their former hatred of Jews and Christians, and they will even say they enjoyed hearing about terrorism and persecution.

Islam is bad. Much worse than most of us realize. But I had hostile feelings about Arabs and Muslims, generally. I had forgotten that many could be reached, and that many had the potential to be spectacular people. For that matter, there are millions of bad Muslims–the backsliders of Islam–who are not hateful at all.

I watched a video (not from One for Israel) about a Muslim girl named Chaima. She became a Christian. She was a real sweetheart. After God fixed her, I mean. She had been planning to join ISIS and kill Jews and/or Christians, but something changed her. Her mother gave her a bunch of used books, and Chaima found a Bible among them. She started reading it, hoping to prove Christianity was wrong, and instead, the love that fills the New Testament touched her heart, and she became a Christian. Her family rejected her, of course, and now she has no home. She runs around with Christian missionaries, praying for people and participating in healings. She comes across as a sweet-natured girl anyone would want to know. Even someone like me who is fed up with terrorism and the persecution of Christians and Jews.

To digress, I have to say I’m amazed to learn how many Jews know nothing about the New Testament. They say they thought it was about Catholics. They say they were amazed to find out it’s all about Jews, and that it was written by Jews. How can they not know that? Don’t the rabbis tell them anything? Some of them say they didn’t know Jesus was Jewish. I don’t know what to say about that. How can anyone not know?

You can see Chaima’s baptism online. They put her in a kiddie pool, and even though she was all for it, she began screaming and trying to get out. The people baptizing her held her down and prayed in tongues. She says the anger and screaming weren’t hers. It was something else. Makes you wonder how many terrorists could be cured by baptism and casting out demons. But 90% of Christians don’t believe in demons, so I guess the demons are safe.

I should have remembered this: God shops at the dump. That’s where he found me. He doesn’t go to yeshivas and monasteries and look for perfect people who have proven themselves worthy. He goes to the landfill which is the earth and picks out broken, decomposing people who can be repaired. That’s the best he can do, because we are all severely damaged. The super-holy people in the religious institutions are sometimes the worst of all, because their conviction that they’re righteous makes them immune to criticism and improvement.

One for Israel has a neat video featuring a former Muslim in something resembling a burqa. It shows her eyes, so I guess it’s not the full-blown burqa, which comes with a windshield. Anyway, she talked about her hate-filled past. She lived in Kuwait, and she was taught not just that Jews were bad, but that their existence was bad. She was taught that Jews should not exist. This is a commonly held belief among the world’s Muslims, and it’s something American liberals never acknowledge. Leftists (who hate every demanding religion except Islam) say Jews and Christians are just like Muslims; just as bad. But we’re not interested in genocide. Muslims are. This is the difference leftists try to hide. Anyway, she didn’t know any Jews, but she hated them just the same.

She visited a church. She accepted Jesus. How does she feel about Jews and Christians now? Completely different. The nonsense she was taught in Islam is gone.

She seems like she would be a wonderful person to know. I have to remember God can reach into any country and any segment of society, take a person out, and turn that person into my brother or sister.

Jewish testimonies are wonderful, but testimonies from former Muslims can be even more impressive. God does sensational things to reach them. Jesus appears to them. He gives them miracles. I suppose it’s because the barriers between them and him are so high. Often, converts from Islam live under death sentences, even here in the US. We have honor killings right here, under the noses of our quiet liberal press. If they can do it here, imagine what it’s like for converts in Iran, Kuwait, Gaza, and so on.

The covered convert in the Youtube video lives in America, yet she doesn’t show her face. That should disturb people.

We always argue about the solution to Israel’s problems. Most people believe in the “two-state solution,” i.e. the “cut Israel in half and wait for the Jews to be exterminated” solution. Boy, when those Jews are killed, things will be great. The crisis will finally be over. The Muslims will finally be happy, and they won’t bother the rest of us at all, because Islam is the Religion of Peace, and Muslims have no interest in conquering the world and establishing a global caliphate.

Yeah.

We argue all the time about political answers, but the only thing that really works is Christianity. When Israeli Jews and Muslims convert, they start going to church together. They intermarry. Suddenly “us” means followers of Yeshua, not Jews or Muslims. I’ve seen this here in the US, with people from different races. You go to church with black people, and suddenly everyone is on the same team, more or less. It depends on how much the church yields to the Holy Spirit. Anyway, worshiping together destroys boundaries. Everyone in the world is supposed to worship Jesus and be guided by the Holy Spirit, and all of our discord results from rejecting Jesus.

The notion that different religions can coexist in peace is facially absurd. Islam teaches genocide and forced conversion. Christianity says everyone who is not for Jesus is against God, and it teaches that proselytizing is mandatory. Religious Jews absolutely hate Jesus and Christianity, many equating it with Nazism, and they treat converts very, very badly. As long as we have religious division, the best we can hope for is a cold war, and cold wars are like dormant volcanoes. They eventually heat up.

I think the thing that strikes me most about the conversion testimonies is the huge difference between religions in which God is distant (and even cruel) and a religion in which God is very close to you and very concerned about your problems. I feel God’s presence many times every day, and I am no saint. I think nothing of asking God to tell me which restaurant to go to for lunch or which item to take off the shelf at Home Depot. What matters to me matters to him. God is not a far-off intergalactic warlord who is too limited, cold, and busy to talk to me. That’s Satan. He is small, overworked, busy, weak, and cruel, because he is not a god. Satan is Allah, not Yahweh. God is a father to me, with the ability and desire to spend time with me as though I were the only son he had. Testimonies from Jews and former Muslims commonly talk about the amazement people feel when they finally sense God within and around them.

The people who presented Chaima’s story have other videos. They go around praying for people and healing them. They’re charismatics. Their brand of Christianity is very different from the Joyce Meyer/Benny Hinn/Joel Osteen/T.D. Jakes/Kenneth Copeland hogwash we love here in America. They don’t talk about money all the time, the way we do. They go up to people, ask if they can pray for them, heal them, tell them God did the work, and help them accept Jesus. How original! Where did they come up with that? Someone should get a Nobel Prize.

Obviously, I’m being sarcastic. Mainstream American charismatic Christianity has syphilis. It is rotten and demented. How did we jump the gulf and leave the land of love and faith and alight in the region of greed and white trash ostentation?

I say “white trash” because that’s what it makes me think of. Give a white trash family a fortune, and the first thing you know, there’s a helipad in the yard and a gold-plated pickup truck with sable seats, painted in Clemson’s team colors even though no one in the family can get into college. But black preachers are just as bad.

When did Christianity become so expensive? The Apostles got up in the morning, walked outside, and introduced people to God, without light shows, jets, or megachurches the size of airports. Now you have to get dressed up, go to church, be scolded into handing over a minimum of 10% of your income, and listen to a complete fool who seriously maintains you’re obligated to fund his personal 727.

One of the Jewish testimonies I watched contained a story about healing. A family asked a rabbi to come pray for a sick person. The rabbi refused to come unless he was paid a huge amount of money. Thousands of dollars. Apparently, his god charges ransom. “Pay up, or the kid gets it.”

Christians prayed free of charge, and the sick person was healed. I was disgusted with the rabbi, but how are we any better? Yes, Christians prayed for this particular person without being paid, but here in America, thousands of people go to Steve Munsey’s ridiculous church/personal zoo, where he tells them God sells blessings for huge cash offerings. And Munsey is one of many.

My pastor at Trinity Church in Miami was Rich Wilkerson. His son Richie is the hipster who married Kanye West. Richie’s wife Dawnchere is the daughter of Denny Duron, a prosperity preacher who teaches some truly disturbing nonsense. Duron says you have to “manage blessings” by giving donations.

Let’s say you get a raise at work. God will want his cut. Duron believes you are obligated to reward God with a large donation. Better give God a grand before he sends his boys to lean on you.

Of course, if you’re in Duron’s church, Duron, not God himself, will collect the money. The prosperity gospel won’t work for you, but it has worked wonders for Duron and his daughter. It’s amazing how well it works for pastors, in view of the fact that it makes everyone else poor.

Duron also published The Abishai Anointing, a pamphlet which I burned in my backyard. The idea is that God sets special people, like Denny and Dawnchere, apart to be rich and admired, and the rest of us are supposed to be happy as obscure servants who do all the grunt work.

Funny how that pamphlet was written by one of the haves, not a have-not.

Duron is a rabid football fanatic, and he loves using football as a model when he teaches about Christianity. That should tell you how ignorant he is.

What if we were to shut up about money and focus on prayer and love? The prosperity gospel doesn’t work, anyway. We would have more money to spend, and we would have a huge increase in salvations. Our country would be better off. There would be more of us, aligned in God’s will, and the people who are against God would be weakened and stifled, as they used to be.

There is no point in hoping for a healed America, because that bus has left the terminal, but we can certainly hope to help more people and find more power and peace in our own lives. While America’s walls are down and the barbarians are running amok, God can still build a little wall around every child he has.

I don’t know when I’m going back to church. I have almost no desire to return. When I do, I will flatly tell them they can forget about getting a tithe from me, and I will also refuse to serve in any capacity whatsoever. I will give them $25 per week and sit in the back, and my only goal will be to be around other Christians. I don’t want to be part of another misguided volunteer ministry run by someone whose only qualification is that he is more aggressive than I am or that he or she is related to the pastor. I don’t want to hear about how God needs my silly, insignificant talents and skills.

When you show up to serve God, human beings run up to put chains on you.

Instead of “pastor,” American charismatics should say “master.”

The overbearing wife of my last master made the mistake of setting me free, and now that I’m on the lam, when the patrols come by looking for me, I am not going to raise my head out of the bushes and ask to be recaptured. Remember what happened to Dred Scott.

I think the worst thing about slavery is belonging to another human being. Human beings are unfit to rule each other. It’s a wonder God allows us to raise children.

I have to have a better attitude about Arabs and Muslims, and charismatic Christianity is still a very good thing, when you take the money out of it. I suppose that’s the synopsis here. It would be nice to show up and say God told me I was doing everything right, but it looks like that won’t be happening this week.

What Could be Worse Than Gossiping About God?

I had a funny experience last night, if “funny” means “inconvenient and extremely aggravating.”

I was going to sit down and blog again. I had already blogged once, but I felt like doing it again. God is giving me great breakthroughs, and I felt stupendous, so I was going to write about it. But I had to give my dad his pills first.

I went in his bedroom to make the delivery, and then I smelled it. Smoke. I knew right away what it was. The enormous quantity of leaves I had dumped on our burn pile had caught fire. And it was after 9 p.m. For some reason I could smell it from the bedroom.

I looked out a window and saw an infuriating orange glow about 500 feet away. I had to get in the golf cart and ride to the pile to fix it. I must have sprayed 200 gallons of water on it. In the middle of the performance, I went back and got a hoe so I could turn the leaves over and spray the hot stuff under them.

You would not believe how hard it is to put burning leaves out. For some reason, they burn from underneath, not from the top. The top of the pile looks swell, but under it, there’s an inferno going on. You can jam a hose into a pile of burning leaves and let it go for 5 minutes and accomplish almost nothing.

I hadn’t lit the leaves. I burned on Thursday, and I put stuff on the pile on Saturday. Somewhere in there, something was still burning, and it got the leaves going again.

I haven’t looked, but I’ll bet the leaves are gone. They were completely soaked when I left, but knowing leaves, I’ll bet they burned up anyway.

Needless to say, blogging was postponed.

I’m exaggerating the annoyance. I wasn’t happy the leaves were burning, but it wasn’t a major crisis. Just a fine lesson in farm management.

At the moment, nothing important is on fire, so I can write. I just wanted to say this has been a great weekend. Things are going very well. Prayers are being answered. Barriers are being shattered.

At some point during the week, I started feeling a new level of faith, and the message I got was that I was now officially one with God. This is something I’ve been praying for. It doesn’t mean my feet don’t smell or that I’m suddenly a great person. It certainly doesn’t mean I’m God. Somehow I am more closely identified with him now, and that means more authority and relief. Authority and accomplishment come from God alone. Anything you get without his authority is worthless, illusory, or temporary.

If I ran Christianity, people would be transformed instantly when they accepted Jesus. Some people say this happens to them. Hooray for them, but it didn’t work that way for me. It has been a very slow process. I turned back to God decisively in 2007, about 11 years ago.

A long time ago, I had a dream in which I traveled up a filthy canal in Miami. Blind canals collect garbage, grass, and dead and sick fish. This one was no exception. It was full of floating junk. The message I got was that I had spent a long time traveling up a blind canal in my life, and that I had collected a lot of garbage and problems. I was going to have to pass all of them again on the way back out. That’s what happened after the dream, so I think it came from God. I didn’t move instantly into a life of joy and success. I revisited my faults and failures and kept moving past them, in God’s direction.

God’s way of running things is better than the way I would choose, because it’s God’s. I can’t run Christianity. I have bad ideas God doesn’t have, because I lack his knowledge, power, and virtue. My thoughts are below his thoughts, as the earth is below the clouds!

I haven’t always felt joy or peace, even after being given a very strong and consistent prayer life. I have had to fight worry. I have been tormented my people who should have been under my feet. Things haven’t been perfect. But they improve in steps, and I just moved up a notch.

The other day I said I was going to publish phrases God had given me. I will post one now. I can’t recall if I’ve posted it before, but the message will be familiar: “I know the secret.”

Broken record that I am, I will provide an explanation that reiterates that which I continually reiterate: life will eventually work properly if you pray in tongues. That’s the secret. It’s not meditation. It’s not volunteering at church. It’s not yoga or “eating clean,” whatever that is. It’s not garcinia cambogia, St. John’s wort, weed, kratom, kale, Prozac, or coffee enemas. It’s not the false messiah of Marxism or the fake godliness of following rules and hard work. The secret is praying in tongues.

Preachers love to offer us solutions that do not work, usually in exchange for attendance and/or money. It’s like clickbait. Wondering how to get our kids off drugs? Say three “Our Fathers” every morning and throw salt over your left shoulder. Want to end your money problems? Give your mortgage payments to Benny Hinn, so he can get an even bigger yacht, and watch the money roll in. Pray this prayer. Pray that prayer. Wear this or that saint’s medal. One guy says you have to visualize yourself as an unborn baby and forgive yourself in the womb. What?

The man-made gimmicks usually disappoint. They’re like rabbit’s feet and santeria charms.

Prayer in tongues works. Count on it. It may take time, but it works. And it doesn’t cost a dime.

You need authority, because it makes things work. Pardon my language, but authority is what kicks asses and takes names. “Authority comes from time spent in the presence of God.” I put that in quotation marks because it’s another phrase I received. When you pray in tongues, God within you is praying, so of course you are in the presence of God. He does what a person in authority does. He explains. He corrects. He aligns. He defends. You’re like Moses, up on the mountain with God. When Moses came down, he had fresh authority. It wasn’t until after he spent time with God that he had the power and knowledge to rule.

In two cases, that authority was given physical form, in tablets bearing God’s laws. If he had stayed with the people, he would have had a different experience. He would have been soaked in idolatry and whining. The false prophets Israel honored and enriched didn’t have God’s presence. They weren’t the head; they were the tail. They were led by the blind instead of leading them. They were led by human beings. Moses knew God personally, and God himself led him. That’s why Moses had authority and power. He didn’t get his strength from sitting around reading the Torah and the Talmud. The Torah and the Talmud didn’t exist! He didn’t get it by reading the prophets. The Jewish prophets (excluding patriarchs) hadn’t been born yet.

I heard a funny testimony from a Messianic Jew. He said he went to the synagogue and could not find God’s presence to save his life. He had never felt it. He decided to fast on Yom Kippur, and he went to the synagogue to do whatever Jews do on that day. He felt nothing. He asked a rabbi what was wrong. The rabbi said it was his shoes. He was wearing leather shoes, which was against the Yom Kippur rules. The man later accepted Jesus and felt God’s presence. In his testimony, he said, “Really? This is what knowing God is about? You gotta do this, you gotta do this, you gotta do this. You gotta wear the right shoes. That’s what God is concerned about?”

We Christians think we’re better than Jews. We think we don’t make the mistakes they make, but we do all the same things. We make up all sorts of dumb strategies to get God to help us, and of course they don’t work, because they didn’t come from God. God had a lot of strange rules under the old covenant, and they mattered, but things are different now, and your shoes (and wrongheaded Christian rituals and superstitions) aren’t that big a deal.

I am not a good person, but I feel God’s presence every day, many times. It’s available. You can have it. You don’t have to be scholar or an ascetic, either. Those lifestyles are generally for egomaniacs.

Christian and Jewish scholars are like people who write tourism books without going anywhere. “I hear Venice is like this. I hear the subways in Paris are like that.” If you haven’t been there, shut up. Your ridiculous fables are not helping. Who do you think puts them in your heads? Not God. Someone who wants to keep you and God apart.

I’m not making things up. I’ve been there, and you can go, too. Right now. Wear any shoes you like.

If you’re not feeling God’s presence, you’re doing something wrong. We’re not supposed to require signs or chase them, but God’s presence is not a sign, in that sense. It just means he’s there. You should feel it from time to time. It’s not reserved for imaginary “saints” and super-rabbis.

You’re special. You’re as special as Paul and Maimonides.

You can render tongues powerless if you want. You can pray in tongues and then refuse to listen to God. But if you have any desire at all to cooperate, it will work. It will never not work. God told me, “Prayer in tongues never doesn’t work.” I love that.

Think of the thin lines sailors have used to pass heavy objects between ships. If you want to move a refrigerator between two ships, you can’t throw it, and you can’t throw a line heavy enough to carry it. You throw a thin line with a bigger line tied to the end, and the people on the other ship pull it in. They use the thin line to bring them the big line. You can keep doing this to bring larger and larger lines across until you have a line big enough to move the fridge. Tongues work sort of like that. The tongues themselves aren’t everything you need, but they will bring you what you need to get the things you need.

Praying in tongues got me here, and it will get me to much better places in the future. It wasn’t instantaneous, but it worked. The Bible says God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him, so obviously, we should not be surprised if some changes take time. The word “diligence” makes no sense if you apply it to something that happens in an instant. Diligence means repeated application.

It’s kind of unfortunate that English Bibles use the word “rewarder,” because it makes it sound like we earn what we get. Obviously, we do not. We earn death, failure, and terrible suffering. But God does respond to diligent prayer, whether you call it a reward or not.

Human language is imprecise and ambiguous, even at its very best. The Bible is ambiguous. It can’t be perfect as long as it’s an earthly document. It was never meant to be our primary guidance. It was meant to be a guidepost; a temporary help to get us into God’s presence. Once you know God, the Bible has to be interpreted in light of what he tells you directly. When that happens, you can resolve the ambiguities and fill in the blanks.

The law said not to eat the showbread in the temple, but David ate it and didn’t sin. Why? Because he was a prophet. He heard God tell him to eat it, and God’s authority was above the law. Googling, I see that Jesus mentioned that. No surprise.

Now people will say I’m attacking the Bible or adding to the gospel. No. Not at all. But trying to defend myself will make it worse, so I’ll leave it there.

It was a good week. This year will be better than last year. The year after will be better still. As long as God chooses to not to cut me loose, I am all set. I don’t give any money at all to preachers. I don’t pray to “saints.” I wear the leather shoes every day. I eat as much pork as humanly possible. I have never visualized myself as an unborn baby. I get healings. I get victories. I get correction. I get faith and joy. If it works for me, it will work for you.

Shoo, Squirrels

Every time I hunt, I learn something new. Today I learned that you don’t always want to bag anything.

I have live oak trees, and they never stop dropping leaves. I bought a lawn sweeper to remove them. Live oak leaves are highly resistant to lawn sweepers because they are heavy and flat. They suck on the ground when the brushes of the sweeper pass over them. Also, for some reason my yard contains a lot of Spanish moss. I mean the grass itself, not the trees, contains Spanish moss. It winds around the sweeper’s axle and stops the wheels, and every so often I have to stop the garden tractor and hack at the moss with a knife. I tried removing it with a torch, but it bursts into flame.

Anyway, it takes about three minutes to fill the sweeper with leaves. This removes about 0.001% of the leaves in the yard. I then have to drive to the burn pile in the pasture, dump the leaves, and return. Today I made about eight trips, and I would say I dumped 400 pounds of leaves.

When it was over, I was tired, but it was mostly from aggravation, not exertion. The tractor does most of the work. I wanted to get some exercise, so I picked up the shotgun and headed out.

I kept thinking about the stench and effort of cleaning squirrels, and I realized I would probably be happier if I didn’t kill any. I needed a shower. I had some butchered squirrels I needed to cook later, to keep them from spoiling. I wasn’t all that eager to spend half an hour pulling out squirrel guts.

At first, things went the way they usually do. I saw two squirrels very close to the neighboring house which is three millimeters from my land. I don’t want to be the guy who shoots a shotgun outside their house every day, so I kept walking.

After I had looped back toward the house, I heard a bark, so I started toward it. Ten steps. Stop. Listen. Ten steps. Stop. Listen. I had taken my ear plugs out so I could hear squirrel activity. The barking squirrel wised up and shut his piehole, so I turned to continue toward home. There in front of me, three feet off the ground, 20 yards away, staring at me, was an enormous squirrel.

I had two choices: shoot without hearing protection or take a chance on losing him while I fumbled with ear plugs. I chose the latter course, and he ran up the tree as soon as I was ready to shoot.

I know how to deal with squirrels hiding in trees, so I sat down to wait him out. I didn’t see him again, but a bunch of new squirrels started leaping their way toward me like the Flying Wallendas trying to make a dramatic entrance. They ended up nearly overhead. I could have shot one without getting up. But the angle was such that it was conceivable that some of the pellets would have ended up on someone else’s land, so I let them go. Man, I hate a squirrel.

Up side: no butchering. No funky squirrel smell on my hands and cutting board.

I went in the house and fried the squirrels that were waiting in the fridge. I think I know how to do it now. I put together a likely mixture of flour, salt, pepper, chipotle, sage, and garlic powder. I wet the squirrels down with buttermilk. I coat them with the mixture and fry them in half an inch of fat. It seems to work.

Treating them with baking soda (my prescription for gamy meat) must work, because now they taste exactly like a chicken leg. They’re not quite as tender as chicken, but they’re okay.

The frustration I have with shooting angles makes me feel like I will need more land in the future. I keep thinking about Tennessee. Ocala is wonderful. Compared to Miami, it’s like heaven. But I can see a neighbor’s house from my front porch, and I can’t hunt without worrying about where the projectiles go. If I could find 300 acres in Appalachia, I would be in business.

I could live here the rest of my life and be very happy, but now that I’m hunting, I know I’d be missing out on a few things.

First, the trees here are all live oaks. Literally 90% are either live oaks or some other kind of trashy oak which is even worse. They’re rotten inside and full of huge roaches. The wood is worthless. They don’t produce nuts. I remember the neat trees in Appalachia. White oaks, red oaks, black oaks, chestnut oaks, hickories, locusts, black walnuts, dogwoods, redbuds, cedars, poplars, plums, maples…you name it. If you have your own woods up there, you can cut trees and dry the wood for woodworking. You can eat walnuts, apples, peaches, plums, and cherries. And you don’t have to worry about every fourth tree on your property falling over if the wind blows.

Second, the dirt up there is real dirt. Here, it’s grey sand. In some places it’s white, like the beach. It’s not very productive. The grass in my yard and pastures is Bahia, which is very long and thin. I thought I would be able to have it baled and sell it, but I found out it’s not worth baling. My grandfather had a farm in Kentucky that produced beautiful bales of hay so heavy it was tough to throw them up onto a wagon. A guy I know entered one in the state fair and won a prize. I don’t think you can grow anything like that here.

Third, it’s hotter than I expected. It was in the high 80’s today, in February. In Tennessee, it was in the 60’s.

Fourth, and this is related to the heat: this area has a major mosquito problem, and any day now, three months before I expected it, they will be back in full force. When you go outside in bug season here, you have to wear repellant all the time. I don’t mean when you go to the mall, but on my property, you will get eaten alive. We also have tons of spiders in Marion County, and they build gigantic webs in the woods. You can’t walk 50 feet without getting wrapped in a web containing a spider the size of a grape. In Appalachia, they have ticks, yellowjackets, and hornets. That’s about it.

Fifth, people…keep…moving…to…Florida. Yankees, as always, and since Irma, Puerto Ricans. Florida is now considered a purple state. Our conservatism is fading. I can hear traffic noises when I walk in my woods. I expect it to get worse, and I’m afraid a lot of the new traffic will be cars full of people who vote for socialism, perversion, and authoritarianism.

Sixth, the game here is not that great. If I really tried, I could bring home 20 squirrels a week, but they’re smaller than squirrels up north. You have to be very determined in order to eat them. I haven’t seen a single deer or hog. I heard one turkey call, but I’m afraid it was a neighbor getting ready for the season. We have bears, but the freaks and hippies won’t let us hunt them, because they’re cute.

I sound like I’m knocking this place. I love it here. But I might love it more somewhere else.

I am starting to miss Appalachia badly. I have learned I can live in the sticks and be happy. I don’t miss people or cities at all. I don’t have to have the Guggenheim Museum or the Helen Hayes Theatre five minutes away. I could enjoy Appalachia. I miss the scenery. I miss the waterfalls and creeks, which are things you can’t have in Florida. I mean, yes, we have creeks, but they’re actually sluggish warm streams. Not like the beautiful creeks in Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Kentucky.

I almost wish I had my grandfather’s old farm near Rogers, Kentucky. It was big enough to get lost in, and the back side was high cliffs overlooking the Red River Gorge. But I could never live in Eastern Kentucky again, because of the Defcon 1 racism and the widespread aversion to self-improvement. When I think about that, I always remember my cousin Byrd, who was a judge and an erudite individual. He said, “Just once I’d like to use a three-syllable word.”

Also, people would know me there. They know my family. For that matter, I still have relatives there. My family has never respected me at all, for reason I can’t fathom. I’m the most educated person in my family, by far, and I’m the closest thing my family has produced to a sophisticated person. Nonetheless, they never pay any attention to anything I say. I’ve changed a lot; I’m not the same person they used to know, with the same willingness to put up with nonsense. When you change, and then you go back to people who knew you before you changed, they pressure you to accept the treatment they used to give you, and you may give in and revert. I’m not doing that.

Here’s a story. My family owned a piece of land, by inheritance. We owned it in common. We sold it to another family. Political friends of my late grandfather. They found a problem with it, and they wanted to rescind the sale. I’m an attorney, and I don’t mean an attorney who practiced in the woods in Eastern Kentucky, against people who charge $75 an hour. I practiced with some of the sharpest people in a major market. I practiced intellectual property law, which is the most difficult field. I don’t have any lawyer relatives who are qualified to do that. I told my relatives to take the property back.

We had sold it for $40,000, which is not much money, and it would have been relatively inexpensive to take it back and auction it again. I thought our defense was weak. We would have kept our friends, and we would have moved on. They wanted to hire a lawyer and go to court. Over what probably amounted to $4000!

Guess what they did? They hired the lawyer, and we ended up paying him. My relatives kept quiet about the final result. When I finally got them to tell me what happened, they said we lost the case. Of course we did! Hello? Who predicted that? So we paid the lawyer’s fee, we gave back the money, and we wasted a ton of time. We also alienated people who had always been in our corner. This is an example of how my advice goes over up there.

It’s fine that they disagreed with me, but they didn’t even consider my advice. I was 100% correct, and they could not have been more wrong, and they didn’t have the background I had. They could at least have thought my advice over.

Here’s another story. Kentucky condemned part of a piece of property that belonged to us, to build a highway ramp. When this happens, you need an attorney to negotiate. At the time, my dad was a top-notch lawyer. He was sharp enough to be on the Supreme Court. He told the family he would handle the job for nothing. I said I would work with him for nothing. They turned us down and hired my cousin. He charged a 33% contingency fee. Contingency fees are for poor people, not people who can pay. Anyway, I forget the figure, but I believe he got over $100,000 for an easy job. It’s almost as if they thought it was worth paying six figures in order to avoid trusting my judgment.

I will never understand that.

Anyway, you can tell I am greatly respected.

I suppose there is a good chance I’ll run into racism in a place like Tennessee or Georgia, but I would hope it wouldn’t be as bad as it was in Eastern Kentucky, where it seemed like every tenth word was “nigger.” Even if it was, at least I would be around fresh people. I love my relatives. Don’t get me wrong. But I had a dysfunctional upbringing, my relatives were peripherally involved, if only as witnesses. There is a certain stubborn dynamic among us, and I am not going back.

Visiting? Fine. I hope I eventually get to visit them again, and I like talking to them on the phone. But living in the area where my mother grew up and dealing with certain expectations people have of me and my family…I’m not doing it. I’ll tell you something else. My family has enemies up there, and I don’t even know who they are. For all I know, some of them hate us for good reason. Now that I think about it, the ones my sister alienated have plenty of reason to dislike us. I’d rather go somewhere new and make my own enemies.

I was talking to a friend about this last night, and I put it this way: when you work for a company and get a promotion, they don’t let you stay where you are and boss your old friends around. They move you across the state to boss new people around. Why? Because of the existing dynamic between you and your pals. Your buddies won’t respect you or produce for you, and you won’t assert yourself. If you do assert yourself, they’ll tear you down. People function best where they’re respected and appreciated. I can’t imagine being respected or appreciated in Wolfe County or Powell County Kentucky.

It sounds nuts to talk about moving, right after leaving Miami, but it’s not as crazy as it sounds. I don’t want to be morbid, but my dad is 86, and he has a condition which has a certain expected end, within a period of time doctors say is short. It won’t be long until it’s just me here, and when that happens, my life will be very different. I won’t be a caregiver any more. I won’t need hot winters or a city geared to the care of old people. I won’t have to hire a sitter if I decide to travel and look at land. If I move, I’ll just hire movers, watch them pack, and drive to the new place. I won’t have to do all that while looking after someone who can’t drive, take his pills correctly, shop for food, or be left alone.

It would be nice if I had a wife to move with me, because moving is a chore, but I haven’t made any friends here or met much of anyone. No prospects whatsoever. But I can’t predict the future. Maybe someone will fall from the sky next week.

I haven’t written about it, but God has made real changes in my life over the last week. This will sound weird, but I feel he is telling me I’m finally one with him. It doesn’t mean I’m suddenly a good person. I just feel that I am more closely identified with him now. I am getting faith like nothing I’ve had before. Before I developed supernatural faith, I would try to believe, quit, and fail. After I got faith through prayer in tongues, I felt something in me pushing and holding my faith up, and I believed pretty well. Now I feel insistent faith that doesn’t come from me, and I feel like responding, “ALL RIGHT! I GIVE UP! YOU’RE RIGHT! YOU’RE RIGHT!”

I believe things that weren’t possible before are going to start happening now, so I’m not afraid to think about a final destination north of here.

This farm is great, but I now think I would be better off with less cleared land and more woods. Cleared land requires maintenance. I would love to have 300 acres, including 10 acres or less of pasture, without fancy fencing. Just barbed wire.

Here, the woods require maintenance, but this is a special situation. I’m in a hurricane zone (another issue I would like to leave behind). A rare storm came through and knocked over dozens of big trees. I think they’re still falling. My memory isn’t good enough to recall every tree, but it sure seems like I find more horizontal trees every month. Maybe Irma weakened them, and I’m still seeing the effects. I have the world’s only self-clearing agricultural tract.

Anyway, GENERALLY, woods require no maintenance at all. You just walk in once in a while, shoot some things, and walk out.

A little place in the Blue Ridge region would be really sweet, if I could just find an area where the people were okay.

I’m going to make the best of it here. When my dad’s situation changes, I’ll sell and leave. Then I’ll stay wherever I am until I die and leave this wretched world behind. At the moment, this is my plan.

Life here is really good, so I can’t complain while I’m waiting.

Wish me luck with turkey season. It’s right around the corner, and I have no idea what I’m doing.