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.

Plus Thoughts on Hunting

Hunting was challenging today.

I went out at 4:15, carrying the shotgun. I have received the scope for my air rifle, but I found that the gun is so heavy, the crosshairs jump around a lot at 25 yards. I can’t be sure of getting a clean shot. I am researching ways to fix this. Slings, better ways of holding the gun, and so on. In the meantime, I am using the shotgun. It’s the best combination of humanity and lethality.

Unfortunately, the humanity angle did not play out very well.

I walked around the property. I saw two squirrels on a tree a hundred yards from the house, but by the time I got to them, they were up the tree and out of sight. I could not shoot at them before they went up, because the tree was between me and a neighboring property. Too bad.

I walked down past the way-too-close neighbor’s house I’ve written about before, and of course, two squirrels were jumping around within easy reach. In the direction of the house. Nothing to do but keep walking.

I saw a couple more squirrels and chased them. I chased the first one from tree to tree. He would not stop moving, so I tried shooting when he slowed down. No luck. He eventually went into hiding, so I kept going. The next squirrel I saw was far away when I spotted him, and he had plenty of time to hide while I walked to his area.

On the way back to the house, I saw what may have been the first two squirrels, in the area where I saw squirrels on the way out. I walked to their tree, and of course, they went up and hid. I decided to try some of the tricks I had read about.

I threw a branch to the other side of the tree to scare them around to my side. It worked, but they went back to the other side before I could shoot. I scratched the side of the tree with a branch to make them think a predator was climbing after them, but they didn’t buy it.

Some guy on the web said it was smarter to sit under a tree and wait for squirrels to come out than to give up on them and hope to see new ones. I decided to do it his way. I sat under a tree 20 feet from the one with the squirrels, and I waited.

Eventually, they started climbing down, and I shot one. Hooray. It came down by the base, and I tried to shoot the other one, but it would not present itself. I saw the first one flop around a little, and I thought it was kicking its last. Then I realized it was just wounded. It was trying to climb to safety, but it couldn’t do it. I had to walk after it and shoot it in the head.

I should have finished the squirrel off sooner. I don’t feel good about what happened to it. Lesson learned. Unfortunately, the squirrel, not I, had to suffer in order for the knowledge to pass.

I am taking pains to be humane, but I suppose events like this are inevitable. I don’t like it, but you can’t hunt and expect everything to work perfectly. This is something hunters have to deal with. If you’re going to hunt, you have to accept the possibility that you will occasionally cause suffering.

When I cleaned the squirrel, I noticed it only had three feet. I thought I had shot its foot off, which was even more disturbing than leaving it wounded. I was wrong, though. The stump had healed. This squirrel had been shot before, or something had bitten its foot off. This was one hard luck squirrel. It climbed perfectly well, though.

I think a lot about the ethics of hunting, and I am developing some beliefs. I have realized hunting is important, and that a man should know how to hunt. It’s easy to rely on the grocery store and preach when life is good, but there are such things as hard times and catastrophes. You should be able to provide protein when the stores have been looted and burned. Also, hunting teaches you valuable skills which are useful in self-defense situations. A man should have some ability to defend himself and others. He should be able to defend his land. There may come times when it will be necessary to stop criminals yards away from our houses instead of waiting for them to enter.

During the LA riots, people had to stand on the roofs of their businesses holding guns. Here’s something disturbing a black friend told me: on Martin Luther King’s birthday, his dad guarded his house with a gun. People roam around on MLK Day in gangs, doing whatever they want, and the cops sit by and watch because they’re outnumbered. The newspapers ignore it, so white people don’t hear about it. Sometimes defending your property with firearms is necessary.

They say Southerners had one big advantage in the Civil War: they were hunters. Shooting Union soldiers was not that different from shooting deer and rabbits, so they moved smoothly and quickly into their roles as killers of men. They knew how to hide, stalk, shoot, and care for weapons. Yankees had to be told which end of the gun the bullets came out of. If things get weird in the future, people like me will be a step ahead of vegans and fruitarians from California and Boston.

People who live around me have great weapons. They even have camo, blinds, infrared cameras, and a lot of other stuff that can be used against human beings as easily as turkeys. They have gotten over their squeamishness about shooting living things. This is not an area where gangs of disgruntled Hillary voters can get out of cars, walk into houses, and rape, kill, and steal.

Some of the tasks associated with hunting are unpleasant and gruesome. Pulling the warm, smelly organs out of an innocent squirrel is a very nasty experience. But aren’t such things part of life as a human being? If I’m willing to pay Perdue and KFC to slice chickens open, tear out the guts, and give me the meat, shouldn’t I be honest enough to do these things for myself?

I don’t like killing other creatures, per se, and I don’t want to make them suffer, but this is what I am. I have to man up and accept my role in the world. I am a predator, from a race of predators. I live in a cursed world, and predation is part of it. I am not exempt, any more than God is. God kills and punishes all the time, and I believe he put us in a position where we sometimes have to kill or punish, so we would understand what he goes through. A person who is nice all the time can’t be a good Christian. If you never ruffle any feathers or cause any suffering, you’re shirking. Even Jesus beat people with a whip.

I have no patience with mushy, touchy-feely Christians who reject their obligation to be hard, and who criticize gun owners, the military, hunters, parents who spank, meat eaters, and so on. Their posture is not love. It’s self-righteousness. When you refuse to offend or harm, even when doing so is required, you make yourself out to be better than God, who burned people he loved with hot pitch and drowned the entire human race.

Repeatedly, the Bible says God is a god of love AND JUSTICE. It mentions mercy and justice together, to make a point. God has killed more people than Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, combined, and he will kill more in the future. He’s not going to let us sit back sucking our thumbs, saying we’re glad we’re not like him. Sometimes we have to do hard things to other creatures. We are not better than God.

God is love, according to the Bible. At the same time, the flames of hell are his anger at work. He created hell, and he puts people in it all day, every day.

Absalom was cursed, and he died in disgrace. He undermined his father, David, who had a hard job ruling Israel. He stood in the gate where business was transacted, and he sucked up to the people. He was nicer than David. He took up their causes to spare them dealing with David. Then he declared himself king, and then he had to be hunted like a pig and killed with darts.

He wasn’t better than David. He was morally inferior. He was conceited and manipulative.

When I think of the self-aggrandizing, praise-sucking, warm, fuzzy Christians out there criticizing the rest of us, I think of Absalom. They’re like divorced dads who curry favor with their kids by spoiling them with presents. You know the type. They steal their children’s hearts and make Mom out to be a witch, and then they dump the kids on Sunday and leave Mom to deal with rules and spankings.

Hunting has its ugly side, but on the whole, it’s very pleasant. You get to go outdoors. You turn off your phone. You forget the insane, doomed mess the world has become. When I hunt, I think about two things: hunting, and God. No business. No worries. Every time a squirrel falls, I feel great satisfaction. I’m doing something my grandfather tried to teach me to do, forty years ago, with his shotgun. I love succeeding at it.

There are certain things every American man wishes he could do. Welding, machining, and hunting and/or shooting well are probably the top three or four items. A big percentage of us never learn how to do these things. I already weld and machine, I am shooting rifles well for the first time in my life, and it looks like I’m a reasonably good squirrel hunter. Coyotes, turkeys, and deer are on the way. Nice.

It’s funny, but since I’ve been hunting, I’ve had strange experiences. You know the funny little patterns you see on the insides of your eyelids when you close your eyes at night? For most of my life, I’ve generally seen golden geometrical shapes, like mazes. Now I see trees against the sky. It’s like I’m looking for squirrels.

I really see trees. I don’t mean I see shapes that remind me of trees. I see actual trees, through a glowing golden fog. And if I fall asleep while I’m looking at the trees, they turn into full-blown dream trees against a blue sky.

That has to be supernatural.

God wants me to hunt. I don’t know why, but he does.

I don’t know if I can get the air rifle to work for squirrels, but I’m going to improve my standing rifle shooting. I will continue working on killing squirrels humanely, with precision. I’m going to look into turkey hunting and see what I can do here on the farm. After that, I’ll try to get pigs and coyotes until the fall game seasons start up.

I’ll have to get camo. Unlike squirrels, turkeys see in full color. Squirrels couldn’t give a crap.

No squirrel photo this time. This one was too gross to post. when I fry it, I may post a shot. Thanks, everyone who has given me hunting or shooting tips.

The Strongest Chains are Imaginary

Every so often God gives me a phrase or a sentence. These words turn out to be extremely useful to me. They serve as guidance, but they also have supernatural power. When I sit and repeat them to myself, I feel God’s presence and peace rise up in and around me. It’s actually a problem, because I tend to fall asleep, which interferes with prayer. Sometimes I’ll go down the list and repeat each phrase at least three times.

I save these phrases in digital form. Today it occurred to me that if they’re worth saving for myself, they are worth publishing for other people. Henceforth, I’ll make an effort to post them as they arrive.

Here is one from a few hours ago: “My parents abandoned me.”

That one disturbed me. I don’t feel any qualms about saying my dad abandoned me, because he was never around, and he took no interest in me or my sister. But my mom? She adored me, and she certainly made an effort to straighten me out. I didn’t listen to her as well as I should, and I’m sure I discouraged her.

Still, I realize it’s right to say my mother abandoned me. One reason I learned to cook is that she got up later than I did. I had to feed myself. She didn’t make a consistent effort to take me to church (or to go on her own). She didn’t teach me order or responsibility. I had no set homework hours, for example. She didn’t check to see if I was doing what I should. When I was in high school, I did almost all of my homework after I arrived on campus.

My mother didn’t teach me to bathe correctly! I didn’t know I had a problem. I was dirty, but I didn’t suffer because of it. Kids smell a lot less than adults, and they secrete less grease, so when you’re a kid, being dirty isn’t as unpleasant.

Kids don’t automatically figure out when and how to bathe, and they may not pick it up by having you do it for them when they’re very small. You have to say, “Turn on the water. Get a wet washcloth. Soap it up. Scrub your ENTIRE body. Rinse it off. Go back over anything that still feels oily or gritty. Use the shampoo.” You have to teach them how to tie their shoes. You have to sit them down and make them practice.

My mother didn’t teach me how to tie my shoes until I was in elementary school! She only taught me because she was tired of doing it herself. I should have known when I was four.

When I was old enough to be ashamed of being filthy, and to be responsible for cleaning myself, a Jewish lady in a department store gave me a much-needed clue. My mother had taken me to get pants, and I firmly believe this kind woman took notice of my filth and decided to try to help. Somehow she found a way to work a hygiene lesson into the conversation.

I can’t even remember what the excuse was. There was something we needed to finish. Maybe I objected to buying shirts and socks as well as pants. I hated shopping. The saleslady said, “What do you do when you bathe? You don’t just stand under the water. You go on and soap yourself off and get clean.”

Soap? Washcloths? Really? Every time?

This amazing information changed my life.

Standing under the water was pretty much what I was doing back then! Get in, let the water run over you, and get out. And shampoo…I’m not sure I ever used it without prompting until I was in my teens. Every once in a while, my mother would grab me and make me lie on the counter with my head in the sink, and she would shampoo the dirt out and let me go. For a kid way up in elementary school, it was a disgrace. But I didn’t know. Who was going to tell me?

My mother did a very bad job. I hate to say it. If I had a son with the kind of habits I had when I was a kid, I would be all over it. I would wear a switch out on his sorry behind every day, out of terror for his future. I would feel like the worst parent on earth for letting him slide. I would pray I got him fixed before other people found out.

I know a lady who has a huge, belligerent son. The pediatrician thinks he’s going to be six feet ten inches tall. When he was 5 or 6 years old, he didn’t know how to wipe his rear end. Someone always had to do it for him. You can’t expect kids to be civilized without instruction. That kid is going to be a monster if she doesn’t get him under control.

It’s bad to be too hard on your parents, but it’s just as bad to put them on pedestals and pretend they’re perfect.

Why did God tell me both parents had abandoned me? To make me blame my mother for my faults? No. I’m responsible for my faults. But the truth is important, and I have to know it in order to draw proper conclusions and make proper decisions. Besides, knowing my parents’ shortcomings helps me advise other people (especially kids). Also, the knowledge that both parents abandoned me helps me appreciate God, because as stubborn, uncooperative, and dismissive as I am, he is still working to change me every day. He is 100% consistent. He has perfect attendance. He is better than my parents. He is better than the best parents who ever lived.

Here’s something he told me a few minutes ago: “There is usually a barking dog outside a stronghold.”

That one really hit me. When I heard it, I was watching the testimony of a Jew who accepted Jesus. He quoted his mother’s reaction: “I will never believe in Jesus! I was born a Jew; I will die a Jew! How can you expect me to believe in a God in whose name my people have been killed? I don’t care if it’s true! I will never believe in Jesus!”

That’s some serious barking!

Strongholds aren’t complete without intimidation. They are composed of intimidation plus actual barriers. Let me think of an example.

Think of Brother Andrew, the famous Bible smuggler. He carried Bibles into leftist countries that would have imprisoned or killed him had be been caught. Those countries were strongholds. They had physical barriers in the form of gates, walls, fences, and armed soldiers. They also had barriers of intimidation. They publicized the way they intended to treat missionaries. They did their best to put fear into them so they wouldn’t ever get to the physical barriers. They would be so scared, they wouldn’t even try.

Disinformation is a powerful thing, because it makes your enemies do your work for you. Don’t tell people they’re going to be gassed. They’ll fight and run. You’ll have to kill them and carry them to the ovens, and stripping dead people is hard. Tell them they’re going to get showers. Then they’ll walk to the showers, strip naked in front of total strangers, and put their belongings in neat piles for you.

The talk about prison and execution was the barking of guard dogs. Fortunately, Andrew ignored it, and God blinded his enemies. He ended up driving through checkpoints with uncovered Bibles stacked in the passenger seat next to him. Guards looked right past them, saw nothing, and let him pass. Too funny. When it comes to making fools of people, God has no equal.

The mother of the convert in the Youtube video was barking. The enemy knew someone would come to her eventually and try to open her eyes, so he filled her with irrational rage in order to intimidate. The most obvious proof that her rage was irrational is this: “I don’t care if it’s true!” There is no possible way to rationalize that.

She ended up accepting Jesus at the age of 86. I suppose I should add that, because the question will naturally arise in people’s minds. God knows how to tame a guard dog.

There are some strongholds you should leave alone. God has told me to quit praying for some people. But you can’t assume a barking dog means anything. God has the authority to command you. A dog does not.

Can Anything Good Come Out of Youtube?

Youtube is either a poison or a medicine, depending on what you look for in it. I suppose that could be said of anything.

I found out about the many helpful Christian videos on Youtube, and I started watching. It’s a gigantic resource. The videos I like best are the testimonies. Most people who teach about religion don’t know anything, because they’re just passing on gossip they heard from rabbis or priests. People who testify know something. They talk about things they have witnessed.

The Bible was written by witnesses, not scholars.

A person who sits around reading about God all day, without encountering him, is ignorant and has very little useful information to pass on. They don’t know much which is useful, but they’re jam-packed with poisonous fairy tales and lies that can do me harm. Look at the pagan nonsense Augustine poured into the church. Devastating.

I know God. I can say that, even though I am not a good person or what Catholics would call a “saint.” It’s possible for a bad person to know God. If it were not, we would all be doomed. I know God because Jesus visited me twice, and because the Holy Spirit communicates with me every day, numerous times. However screwed up I still am, I am much better off knowing God than knowing ABOUT God. A proper relationship with God is closer than a marriage.

What kind of marriage would you have, if your husband or wife never talked to you?

Are we better than God? We insist on communicating on people we love. Doesn’t he want to communicate with us?

Many, many Christians know God personally.

I found a wonderful Youtube channel called One for Israel. The people who run it are Messianic Jews. They really have their work cut out for them, because they work in Israel. Israel is not America. You can’t build a church there and stand in front of it telling people Jesus is God and then expect things to go smoothly. Israel is full of two kinds of Jews: leftist atheists and religious Jews who absolutely hate Christianity. The resistance the One for Israel people encounter must be something to see.

One Israeli rabbi, in particular, has gone public with very negative remarks about Christianity and Messianics. He created a video in which he said Christianity would be exposed and destroyed, more or less, and that Jesus is in hell, boiling in feces. The latter pronouncement comes from the Talmud. I believe most religious Jews say the passage he refers to is not about Jesus. The angry rabbi is the first guy I’ve ever seen who openly states that Jesus is the subject.

A prominent anti-missionary group, Jews for Judaism, acknowledges that the person said to be boiling in excrement is “Yeshu,” which is an unflattering name many religious Jews insist on using for Jesus (instead of “Yeshua,” a form of “Yehoshua”), but they say it’s a different Yeshu.

The person who supposedly conjured “Yeshu” and found out about the excrement issue was the historical figure Onkelos, a Roman who converted to Judaism. He converted after summoning spirits of the dead to guide him, and “Yeshu” was one of them, along with Titus (destroyer of the temple) and Balaam. Onkelos was very respected, and it is believed he is responsible for one official translation of the Talmud.

I don’t know why a man who committed a great idolatrous sin in order to research Judaism would later be respected, but there is probably a rationale.

Onkelos lived just after the time of Jesus, so he would certainly have known who Jesus was, and he would have had a very negative opinion of him, consistent with the meaning of “Yeshu,” which means a person who led Jews into idolatry. During his time, Messianic Jews were running around the Mediterranean area, preaching in synagogues, trying to get other Jews to accept Jesus. He had to be aware of this, and he would not have been happy about it.

This is all I know. Nothing is certain.

The rabbi’s take is pretty impressive, as negativity goes. It sounds like something I would say about Satan. Hard to improve on it.

I don’t know what kind of reputation this man has in Israel. It may be that almost no one shares his views. Maybe Orthodox Jews think he’s a complete idiot. Judaism, like Christianity, is very fragmented and full of conflict among sects. In any case, it shows that Messianics have some heavy-duty detractors in Israel.

I love the One for Israel channel, for many reasons.

Christianity is largely about what Christians call “strongholds.” A stronghold is a sort of fortification, built to block and demoralize an enemy. A stronghold, from the viewpoint of someone outside it, is a structure which seems impossible to overcome.

There are all sorts of examples of strongholds. I’ll give you one. The Muslims used to believe that the Jewish Messiah, whom they hated, would enter Jerusalem through the Eastern Gate. In order to prevent it, they did two things. They filled the gate with stone, and they put a Muslim cemetery outside of it. Their rationale was that Elijah, presumably a priest, would have to preceded the Messiah when he entered. They believed a Jewish priest could not walk through the cemetery without becoming unclean.

This isn’t a very good stronghold. I’m not God, and I can think of all sorts of ways to get around it. Move the stones. Move the bodies. Enter on a hovercraft if you have to, so you don’t touch the ground. It’s not a great stronghold, but it’s an example. The presence of a mosque and a Muslim shrine on top of the Temple Mount, which rightly belongs to Jews, is a much better stronghold.

The purpose of obstructing the gate was to set up a barrier the Jews could not defeat. That’s the point.

Jericho is a great example of a Biblical stronghold. Its walls were considered invasion-proof. The Hebrews brought them down without lifting a finger. They marched around the walls over and over, and one day God leveled them and gave Jericho to them.

In our personal lives, there are a lot of strongholds. Drug addiction is a stronghold. It’s nearly impossible to beat. They say pedophilia is incurable. If so, that would be a stronghold. People who refuse to entertain the notion that Jesus is God live in strongholds. As strongholds go, the Jewish resistance to Jesus is one of the best. It is extremely discouraging.

God is a destroyer of Satan’s strongholds. Watching the One for Israel testimonies reminds me that no matter how tough a stronghold looks, God has the power to crush it.

Jews usually don’t draw attention to Jewish opinions about Jesus, but when one converts, look out! They can’t tell their stories without telling about the resistance they met from other Jews. One guy says his gentle old grandfather threw a dish at him the minute he came out, cutting his head open and leaving a scar. Another lady says her mom went into a church to get her, and she started beating her. She got home, and her dad joined in. Another person was told he was worse than Hitler. A family member asked if conversion meant the believer was going to become a Nazi.

The Nazism-Christianity connection in the mind of some Jews is extremely bizarre. Did some Christians join the Nazi party of fight for Hitler? Sure. Did many European Catholics, including priests, help Hitler kill Jews? Certainly. That doesn’t make Hitler a Christian, and it doesn’t make Nazism a Christian movement. Most American Catholics vote liberal. Does that make Christianity a leftist movement? Most Jews–something like 90%–vote liberal, and Karl Marx was Jewish. Is Marxism Jewish? Most American Jews are for the division of Israel. Is the division of Israel a Jewish cause? Of course not. You have to have some common sense in this world.

Catholicism has a rotten history. Catholics tortured Jews and American Indians and God knows who else, to persuade them to accept conversion. They raised armies and murdered unbelievers. Catholics are famous for bullying Jews, calling them “Christ-killers” and so on. An awful lot of the negative things Jews feel about Christianity come from their experiences with Catholics, and when Jews criticize Christianity, usually, they criticize things that apply mainly or solely to Catholicism. It’s as though they think all Christianity is Catholicism.

The Bible makes it pretty clear that every human being is a Christ-killer. If you don’t accept responsibility for his death, you’re not a Christian. And where would we be if he hadn’t been killed? The whole “Christ-killer” thing is beyond stupid. I am as responsible for the murder of Jesus as the soldiers who drove the nails.

One Jewish testimony I watched was almost funny. A rabbi converted, and he was rejected. He had to take a menial job, washing dishes for a Christian-hating Arab. He lived on a beach in Israel, in a tent. A bunch of rabbis, including one who is famous, came to visit him in his tent, imploring him to return to the fold. When he refused, they started cursing him and spitting all over him. With friends like that, who needs enemies? I have had people disagree with me, but they don’t make road trips to come to my house and spit on me. Yet.

It’s remarkable to see the things God does in order to reach Jews. For Americans of Christian background, receiving salvation is typically a little dull. You say the prayer, you feel peace, and you feel relieved because you’ve finally surrendered. For Jews, it is often more dramatic than that. They see visions. God works miracles in order to get their attention. They get delivered instantly from addictions. I almost feel envious. In comparision, to American gentiles, salvation seems almost boring.

Muslims and Arabs seem to get even wilder experiences. You can find their testimonies on other Youtube channels. Jesus appears to them. He comes to their bedrooms at night and lights them up. All sorts of things happen. Maybe the nature of Muslims and Arabs is such that they need a little more persuasion.

Speaking of Arabs, I saw an Arab testify on the One for Israel testimony. This guy came from a Christian family, yet he knew nearly nothing about God. He was violent. He killed a man in a fight. Even though he came from a Christian background, he had to encounter God and make a personal commitment in order to be changed. I think most American Christians are like that. They sit in church three times a year, but they don’t know God, they don’t make any effort to change, and they’re on the way to hell.

One of the funny things about Christianity is that it brings Jews and Arabs together in Israel. They worship side by side. They cut out the identity politics. I suppose their new attitude is that “us” is worshipers of Jesus, not Arabs, Muslims, or Jews. It’s an interesting thing. Human beings always talk about a solution to the conflict over Israel, and we discuss stupid ideas like the two-state solution. Christians who actually know God live in harmony with each other; people with conflicting religions do not. They are pitted against each other every day. The real answer to the Mideast problem is Christianity. Unfortunately, it’s not going to happen.

Here is Psalm 133:

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!

It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments;

As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.

This is not about the two-state solution. It’s about the one-state solution. People can only live in peace when all are ruled by the Holy Spirit. He tells everyone exactly the same thing. He never, ever makes his people disagree. After all, he’s the one who says a house divided against itself can’t stand, and he also said David’s house would last forever.

“Anointing,” the application of ointment, refers to pouring oil over a person as he is installed in an office and given authority. Oil runs DOWN. Authority runs downward from God (a single, undivided, unconflicted source) onto us. Authority can only exist when God commands us; without commands, authority means nothing. Psalm 133 says God’s commandments pour down over his children, from heaven, and that when we obey, we are in harmony, because we are all answering to the same commander.

Jesus calls himself the Prince of Peace. He really is. If we were listening to the Holy Sprit, we would be in alignment with each other, and we would have peace.

Right now we are having terrible racial discord in the US. Blacks and Latins are being pitted against white people. Minority churches have a real problem. They push Marxism and identity politics, and they reject the unity of the Holy Spirit. Most white churches reject the Holy Spirit altogether. If we listened to the Holy Spirit, we wouldn’t be hearing about BLM, La Raza, or the tiny groups of unsuccessful, resentful whites who agitate against minorities.

The answer to Israel’s problems is already available, but it’s going to stay on the shelf, because not enough people want it.

Here’s another thing that surprised me about the testimonies: many of the Jews who spoke said they originally believed ridiculous things about Jesus and the New Testament. For example, many thought Jesus was a Catholic god who had nothing to do with Yahweh. They also thought the New Testament was a Catholic book written by Catholic anti-Semites. Some thought it was a sort of instruction manual for “getting” Jews.

They were amazed to see that the entire New Testament was about Jews and Israel. They were shocked to learn that the disciples and apostles were Jews. Many were surprised to learn that Jesus was Jewish. How can anyone not know that Jesus was Jewish? His name was Yehoshua. I mean, come on. But I’m telling you what they say.

The church was originally Jewish. How can people not know that? The Jewish religious establishment sent people to find and murder early believers, hoping to stamp out the church. They couldn’t do that to gentiles. The Romans would have exterminated them. In the beginning, the conflict between the Jewish establishment and Christianity had nothing to do with gentiles. It was an intramural squabble between Jews who believed in Yahweh. Christianity didn’t become a gentile religion until after it spread among Jews, and the people who first spread it in Israel and abroad were Jewish. Any Jew who complains about Christianity is complaining about something his people started.

They also said they were shocked when they read Isaiah 53, because it seemed to them that Jesus was the only person it could apply to. It’s clearly about the Messiah, but it says he will be rejected and despised, not that he will be an honored king who leads Israel to victory. It says, “He was cut off from the land of the living.” That means the Messiah was killed.

They also talked about the emptiness of a religion that emphasizes rules and study, without the presence of God. Several of them talk about how strange it was to see Christians worship. The Christians they saw weren’t just talking about God or learning rules. They were talking to him directly and enjoying his presence.

I can relate to that, because most churches, especially the older ones like the Catholics and Episcopalians, run services in which smug, effeminate old men stand up front and lecture and perform rites, while the people in the pews grit their teeth and wait for it to be over. I hate church worse than just about anything, but for the presence of God.

We’re supposed to know God personally. The Bible calls his people “children.” What kind of father would let a child live 70 or 100 years without visiting? Come on. Think. Would you do that? You couldn’t. You would hate yourself. You would find it unbearable. You would be ostracized and reviled, even by atheists. Does that mean you’re a better parent than God? Is God a deadbeat dad? I don’t think so!

The Old Testament confirms that we are supposed to know God personally. Look at the Psalms. The writers pant and thirst for God. They beg him to show them his face. They say believers abide IN him. Intimacy, intimacy, intimacy; not rules and aloofness.

What does aloofness in a human parent mean? It means abandonment. It’s abuse, under the laws of every state. You can lose your children by refusing to spend time with them. Courts will literally remove them from your home and give them to other people. Refusing to spend time or be intimate with a spouse has always been considered grounds for divorce; it’s tantamount to adultery. Yet God is guilty of this? Come on. Wake up.

I remember Rich Wilkerson at Trinity Church in Miami, arguing with me, trying to tell me we don’t have to feel anything in our relationships with God. But then this is the same man who asked for an offering at a funeral.

I wonder if he knows what people said about him after that. I doubt it. He surrounds himself with sycophants who see him as a sort of milk cow that has to be managed and babied because it will one day give them money and success. They always smile and tell him what he wants to hear. They said plenty behind his back, however. I heard it!

It’s kind of neat when Jews accept Jesus, because they understand things we don’t. The New Testament is a Jewish book, and knowledge of Jewish culture and history are helpful in understanding it.

Remember Planet of the Apes? Taylor was walking around an archaeological site with the chimps Cornelius and Zira, and he was able to identify and explain artifacts the apes couldn’t understand. He had lived in the world of the people whose home became the site, so he recognized and understood things the apes had dug up. Messianic Jews are like that. Sometimes they understand things about Christianity which we have gotten wrong. For example, they know that baptism is really ritual immersion, which comes from Judaism. Sprinkling water on a baby’s head is not baptism.

I highly recommend the One for Israel channel. It will restore your hope. You will remember that God is still plucking people out of the flames, no matter how powerful Satan is getting.

Kill Pests Without Alerting Hillary Voters

I have decided to get me an air rifle.

My current squirrel weapons are a shotgun and two rimfires. The .22 is not suitable for a scope, and the long travel of the bullets limits the shots I can take. The .17 HMR is a joy in every way, but even those tiny rounds are of no use for any angle between zero and maybe 60 degrees from horizontal, unless a big tree trunk is behind the squirrel. I don’t think a 17-grain bullet fired in a woody area is very likely to damage anything or hurt anyone, but you never know. The shotgun is much safer than the rimfires, but I could still send pellets raining down on people. Not dangerous, but not a good way to greet the neighbors.

Air rifles are really complicated. They come in various types. At the lowest level, you can get a Crosman 760 pump BB gun, which is neither accurate nor powerful, although you should be able to hit squirrels within 50 feet. After that, you move up to expensive guns with rifled barrels. I wrote about this already.

I decided to get a Diana 54, also known as an Air King or an RWS 54. I don’t know why it has so many names. It’s a powerful gun that should kill anything I want to kill, within 50 yards.

The Air King has a weird barrel that slides to kill recoil, and unfortunately, this transmits recoil to the scope, if you have one. It will kill a scope if you aren’t careful to buy a model that can handle the shock. It looks like I’ll have to get a rifle scope, and that means $200-$300. Sounds insane, but that’s how it is.

Before I do that, I want to get a peep sight. I don’t like regular iron sights. I had a BB gun (don’t laugh) with a peep sight when I was a kid, and it was much more accurate than open sights, at the tiny distances over which BB guns work. A peep sight, also known as an aperture sight, requires you to look through a little hole, and…well, go look it up on Youtube. It’s hard to explain. Anyway, I like them, and I suspect a peep sight will be nearly as good as a scope, on a weapon that won’t shoot well past 75 yards.

If you’re wondering, there is a scope which is highly recommended for this gun. It’s the Vortex Optics Diamondback 4-12×40 AO Dead-Hold BDC Reticle, 1 Inch Tube (DBK-412B). A professional air rifle guy (seriously) named Hector Medina uses it with the Air King.

Surely I can get by with a 12-power scope. When it comes to squirrels, 4 is plenty.

The Air King is really expensive. I figured it was worth it. It should last a long time, and I will never have to upgrade. Living on a small farm, I have a legitimate need for a good air rifle. There are a lot of things here that will need killing, and I don’t want to have to buy a new gun every two years.

The pellets it fires weigh 18 grains, and they probably move at something like 800 fps. That will kill a squirrel as dead as Compuserve, and if it leaves my property, it will be much less dangerous than a rimfire round. I will still have to use common sense, but I won’t have to worry about shooting a car window out half a mile away.

The .17 HMR moves at well over 2000 fps, and a .22’s speed is something like 1300 fps. A .22 slug weighs around 40 grains, depending on which one you use.

The Air King should be much, much quieter than a rifle, so if it turns out I have self-righteous yankee neighbors who have stupid ideas about hunting, I will be able to shoot close to the property lines without them knowing about it.

I got a very good deal on the gun. I don’t know why. The price was too low to resist. I considered getting an RWS 34 in order to save money, but the price difference was not that great.

My squirrel call arrived yesterday. I can’t wait to see if it works. It makes the sound of a squirrel in trouble. Apparently, squirrels are like women, in that they love to see each other suffer. When you make a noise like a squirrel being torn up by a hawk, the other squirrels pop out to watch.

Can’t recall whether I mentioned this before, so I will say it: it looks like I have bears. I keep finding something that looks like cow manure, but it’s way too fresh to be from a cow. The last steer moved out of here in August. I looked at poop-ID sites, and it appears that the poo comes from bears.

Florida has lots of bears now, and they need to be hunted, but hippies and yankees keep protesting. They killed the 2016-2018 hunts. I don’t know why anyone listens to them. Bear attacks are surprisingly common here, and besides, bears are good to eat.

I had this idea that a bear wouldn’t cross a fence, but I am clearly wrong.

The bear and the air rifle are not related in any way. I am not likely to get a chance to shoot a bear here, and an air rifle would not be very useful for that task.

There is something disconcerting about having to use an air rifle in a rural area. In backward countries with limited firearm rights, air rifles are very popular. People think nothing of spending huge sums on them, and they’re very proud of them. I have rifles suitable for killing people 750 yards away, plus very nice semiautos with big magazines, and here I am, lowering myself to purchase a second-world weapon. I might as well start watching soccer and eating toad in the hole!

Due to my dad’s condition, I can’t go farther north than Marion County. At least I don’t think so. He needs a relatively warm place geared toward old people, and boy, is this it. But I keep thinking it would be neat to look for a place in Tennessee after he’s gone. A couple of hundred acres would be nice. The more woods, the better.

Georgia is way too liberal, and it keeps getting worse. Black people there will vote for anyone who tells them what they like to hear. South Carolina seems similar. North Carolina is too much like Eastern Kentucky, and it’s filling up with Miami Cubans. An undesirable culture is being augmented with a worse one. Maybe Tennessee is better.

The South is funny. There are many areas full of unsuccessful people who are trashy and can’t get it together, but there are also areas where people are more responsible and mature. If you look around, you can find places where the good parts of southern culture aren’t tainted by the bad.

I love the South, but we don’t have the most capable, smoothest-running culture in America. We are too emotional. I seriously believe people are more together in the center of the country. They seem to be less in touch with God, however.

This morning during prayer, I took a look at my cell phone. I took a notion to look up a Miami friend on Facebook. I looked at this person’s friends list, and I saw familiar faces from law school. I felt a little nauseated. I never want to see these people again. I’m so glad I have nothing to do with them. They didn’t treat me badly. They just live in a different world, and that world disgusts me. It’s a world with no future, full of cocky, grasping people who have no idea the iceberg underneath them is melting.

Supposedly, many people who have been in prison become obsessive about not going back, to the point where death seems preferable. That’s how I feel about Miami. Never, never, never, NEVER.

I don’t understand people who want to live in or near big cities. I usually have to drive 15-20 minutes to get to a decent restaurant, and I feel like I’m not far enough out. I don’t want to go to cocktail parties or meet “important” people; I want to stay out of the circle of butt-kissers and compromisers. I don’t want to drive a foreign car built by a company that made vehicles for the Nazis. I would rather hide in a tent than go to benefits and society events.

I will write about the Air King after I shoot it. Hope it works out. I plan to go out today and see how the squirrels like the squirrel call. Heh heh.

Rodent Genocide Continues

I nailed another squirrel today, right in my yard.

I went out at around 7:15 this morning. Yesterday, it was gloomy at that time. Today the sun was fairly bright. I think I should have been there before sunup. Anyway, I only saw one squirrel on my tour of the property, and it lost me.

I decided to try something a website suggested. I sat as still as possible for half an hour, hoping the squirrels would emerge from hiding. Absolutely nothing happened. There goes that idea.

On the way back to the house, I had a funny notion. I got out my phone and played squirrel noises on Youtube. No dice, but it was amusing.

When I got near the house, I heard a squirrel screaming at me. It was really giving me the business. There is something creepy about shooting animals 50 yards from home, but this thing was provoking me, and I had no bodies in my trash bag. I saw it about 10 feet up on a live oak. I walked around it to get an angle that would keep stray pellets away from the neighbors, and I blasted it from maybe 60 feet.

Taking a clue from a reader (and the same website that told me to sit still) I didn’t pick up the squirrel. I walked around, and sure enough, I heard another squirrel screaming from a nearby tree. That one refused to come out, so I picked up the dead one and headed for the house. I am getting blase about touching dead animals. As I was walking, I heard other squirrels yelling in the front yard. I wondered if the sight of their buddy hanging by her tail got them agitated.

I tried to locate the new noisemakers, but the only one I saw was across the fence on another property, so I went back in the house and cleaned the new squirrel.

I noticed a few things. I used #6 shot in the 16 gauge, and it didn’t mess the meat up much at all. I found a few pellets, but no major damage. Also, this squirrel really did not want to give up her fur coat. It was like it was glued on. I have to go watch some squirrel butchering videos.

I was less grossed out this time, although this squirrel smelled worse than the other one. I felt like shampooing it with dishwashing liquid, but I restrained myself. I skinned and halved it, and I put it in brine. Today I plan to fry 2 squirrels and make biscuits. We’ll see if they’re any good.

I think I should add baking soda to the brine from now on. It kills gaminess.

Sitting still does not impress the local squirrels. I think bait and getting up early will change things. I may get a bag of corn and start dumping it in the woods.

The shotgun is wonderful. I love the .17 HMR, but the results are not as good. It tears squirrels up, and it’s hard to get a good safe angle for shooting.

Should I feel bad about killing yard squirrels? In a word, no way Jose. It seems opportunistic and sort of mean, but the truth is, these are the squirrels I want to get rid of. They are not pets. I want to grow berries and things in my yard, and I don’t want squirrel vandalism in the buildings. If I leave the yard squirrels alone, I am responsible for whatever misery they cause in the future.

The squirrels out in the woods are not the ones I have to worry about. In truth, I should be killing the ones near the house first. The people who sold us the house put a bird feeder in out front, and it has a skirt on it for the purpose of keeping squirrels out. That tells you how intelligent people feel about squirrels in their yards.

Squirrels are cute and all that, but so are mice. Some rats are cute. They still have to go. Killing them takes some getting used to, but I have an obligation to do it. It’s the correct thing to do.

I plan to go out again tomorrow (every day I can, until the season ends on March 4), and I hope to dispatch more than one squirrel. I think I can do it, if I get up early.

What will I do when squirrel season ends? All is not lost. First of all, it’s legal to shoot nuisance animals all year on your own property, so if I have some berries and tomatoes growing in the yard, I will have every right to sit on the back porch and kill squirrels. I won’t be able to go out in the woods and shoot, but that just means I get to rest and keep a cooler beside me.

Second thing: squirrels aren’t the only targets.

As I mentioned, an animal dug up one of my blackberry plants and left a giant turd in its place. If my research is right, that animal was a coyote. Either that or someone collecting for Greenpeace. Guess what the restrictions on killing coyotes are? Basically, you’re not allowed to use nuclear weapons. That’s about it. You can kill them all day, every day, with no bag limit. You can use any weapon you like. Kill the puppies, too. Make interesting hats from the hides. Do as you please.

I am reading up on coyote hunting, and it should be doable. We will see.

A coyote serves no purpose here. They are not native. They cause all sorts of suffering. They tear up calves and kids, and they kill dogs.

There are also wild pigs in Florida. Again, no restrictions. Big ones. Little ones. Mommy pigs. Daddy pigs. They are all legal targets. I have not seen any pigs here, but I am told I will eventually run into them.

Coons are nuisance animals under the law, so you can kill them all year. Nothing is worse than a stinking coon. They throw garbage all over. They poop. They kill chickens. They spread rabies. I made the mistake of saving a little coon in the past, and I have even driven them to the Everglades and released them alive. No more. Like the comedian Robin Harris said in his routine about the death penalty, “Gotta go, gotta GO.”

Nuisance animals are bad news. They are extremely annoying. Anyone who kills them is doing the world a big favor. Relocating a nuisance animal just makes it someone else’s problem.

Coons are edible. Not sure I want to try that, but it could happen. My grandmother ate them. Coyotes, being related to dogs, probably taste good, but I am not hungry enough to try one.

Here’s a nice thing about killing nuisance animals: you don’t have to clean them. It’s perfectly okay to leave them for the buzzards. Coyote pelts and coon tails might be fun to take, but the carcasses can rot or go on the burn pile.

I pickled my squirrel tails in salt water. Why not? You never know when a squirrel tail will come in handy.

I have a very, very strong sense that God wants me to get good at hunting. Fine with me. Shooting targets is fun, but if you never take game or varmints, you never use guns for their proper purpose. Guns were not invented for shooting targets. Their purpose is to kill. A man should know how to kill pests and bring meat home, and it doesn’t hurt to have lethal skills that can be used against entitlement-minded looters who might want to visit rural Christians and conservatives if the economy tanks.

Times are good right now. We can’t predict the future. Your typical urban victimhood junkie knows nothing about firearms, except how to use them on weaker people at point-blank range. They would fare poorly against hunters. You should see the things people on Youtube are doing with night vision and scopes. I’ll post a video that will give you new respect for your rural friends.

Cleaning game may never become fun. I have a super-strong sense of smell, and dead animals are pretty fragrant. I washed thoroughly after cleaning today’s squirrel, and I cleaned the kitchen well. I still smell the squirrel on me. Luckily I haven’t showered yet. Soap and shampoo will kill the aroma.

I like hunting. A lot. Wish I had started sooner. I hope the squirrels fry up nice.

I have to go get this smell off me.