Good Fathers Don’t Abandon Children

I have been a little reluctant to blog something that has been happening to me. Sometimes you think God is doing something for you, but he’s not. Then you tell people about it, and you find out you were wrong, and you have to retract it. I did not want that to happen.

Supposedly, a number of people “healed” by Benny Hinn later turned out to be mistaken. Is that because they were never healed, or is it because they were healed and then lost it? Search me.

Some Christians think any story that glorifies God is a good story, so preachers go around telling a lot of lies they’ve heard from other preachers. They don’t check. For example, as I think I’ve mentioned before, there is the tale of the 2 Moravian slaves.

Two white men from Moravia, wherever that is, found out about the slave trade in the Caribbean, so they wanted to evangelize the slaves. The only way to do it was to sell themselves as slaves, to be taken to the people they wanted to help. They stood on the dock, with the Vistavision cameras rolling and the Warner Brothers orchestra playing in the background, as they waved goodbye to their families, knowing they would never see them again. But it was okay, because they were going to be miserable slaves for Jesus. And the rest of us should feel really bad and do extremely unpleasant things in order to please God. Who promised that his yoke was easy and his burden was light (SHHH!).

Of course, it’s a lie. It was not possible for white men to become slaves in the Caribbean. And think about this: who would sell them? You can’t have a slave without an owner. If you sell yourself, aren’t you, based on your ownership status, a free man?

Anyway, it didn’t happen. Look it up. Two Moravian guys went to the Caribbean to preach, and both went home soon afterward. Yawn. How is this even a story? How many people take trips so they can preach? A whole lot.

Telling people ridiculous fables of superhuman devotion and suffering is a bad idea. It makes people think they’re not good enough to become Christians, which is an absurd notion, since a Christian, by definition, is a bad person who takes credit for the righteousness of Jesus. It makes Christianity sound painful and miserable, when in reality, the Christian life is more pleasant than the heathen life. It also makes people think Christianity is a lie. If a preacher will tell one lie, surely he’ll tell another, right? It’s like telling your kids Santa is real and then yanking the rug out from under them when they’re 7. “If Santa isn’t real, then what about Jesus?”

I won’t “help” God with myths and lies. For that reason, I don’t like to give a testimony unless I’m pretty sure it’s solid.

Here is the testimony.

I used to play stringed instruments. I went back to it a few years back. Several joints on my left hand swelled up and looked grotesque, and they hurt. I quit. I tried again. I quit. I tried again. I quit.

I was starting to play again before I moved away from the stinkhole known as Miami, but I got busy with other things, and I let it go.

Here in Marion County, I decided to get back on it. I have a nice big room where I can practice. I picked up the banjo again (sorry), and then I got back to the guitar. I play a dreadnought with medium-gauge strings and a hard pick. Not easy on the hands. Eventually, I decided to brave the mandolin, which is the least ergonomic instrument there is, unless you count playing the drums with your face.

The mandolin stresses the joints like crazy, because the fingerboard is cramped.

I took action in the supernatural. I spoke defeat to the joint issue and the spirits behind it. I commanded myself to be healed.

That was a month or more ago, and my fingers are fine. Sometimes I think they’re going to swell up and hurt, but they don’t. A healing can be hard to accept. Sometimes we’re afraid to have faith.

I have never had problems with my joints, except for a slight stiffness in my knees, which God healed during church services, and the finger thing, and some pain in my hands. I bounce around like a high school kid. I jump onto my truck. I jog up stairs. My hands were the only areas of concern. I had the guitar issue plus some other joint pains.

The other pains are leaving along with the guitar problems. I realized it this morning. I can do things that used to make my hands hurt. That’s very nice. Our hands are our main interface with the world. Lose your hands, and you become isolated from objects you need to manipulate.

I’m not going to promise you my hands will remain well. Just telling you what happened.

I can’t listen to teachers who have no testimony. Like the Pope. If you haven’t had a miracle, you’re doing Christianity wrong. You can have miracles and be a bad Christian, but you can’t be a good Christian without experiencing miracles. Why? Because God is not stingy with the children he loves, and because this world is a battlefield. God isn’t going to sit back and let us be annihilated without providing for us. He will let you lose if you’re ignorant, but if you have knowledge, you will receive help.

It’s funny; people dismiss the miraculous, saying we’re not supposed to follow signs. That’s not very smart. We are not supposed to follow signs, but signs always follow us. Jesus said they would, and he is not a liar. If you’re not seeing signs, you should be concerned. God is doing everything right, so you must be the problem.

If someone appears to work a miracle, and you assume he knows all about God because of it, you’re making a big mistake. Look at the millions of people Benny Hinn has messed up. On the other hand, if you blindly swallow everything you hear from a person who has never experienced a miracle, what are you thinking? If the cord is plugged in, the motor will run. That’s a fact. If the motor never runs, it’s not plugged in.

Testimony is better than teaching. Teaching is like gossip. It’s second-hand. Every person who repeats a rumor may distort it. The Bible praises witnesses more than teachers. A teacher tells what he heard. It’s hearsay. A witness tells you what he saw.

There is a reason the words “witness” and “testimony” appear in the Bible over and over.

The Bible doesn’t say we overcome by listening to teaching. It says we overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. Teaching is sometimes better than nothing, but it’s way overrated, and it’s very, very dangerous.

Here is what James said about teaching:

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, since you know that we will be judged more severely. For we all stumble in many ways; if someone does not stumble in what he says, he is a mature man who can bridle his whole body. If we put a bit into a horse’s mouth to make it obey us, we control its whole body as well. And think of a ship — although it is huge and is driven by strong winds, yet the pilot can steer it wherever he wants with just a small rudder. So too the tongue is a tiny part of the body, yet it boasts great things. See how a little fire sets a whole forest ablaze!

Our job isn’t to become sages who walk on air and make people kiss our feet as we pass. It’s to introduce others to the Holy Spirit, so he can teach them. Look what John said:

As for you, the Messianic anointing you received from the Father remains in you, so that you have no need for anyone to teach you. On the contrary, as his Messianic anointing continues to teach you about all things, and is true, not a counterfeit, so, just as he taught you, remain united with him.

And now, children, remain united with him; so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink back from him in shame at his coming.

Authority comes from time spent in the presence of God, not time spent in the presence of a rabbi, a preacher, or the greatest apostle.

Guess I’m digressing.

Anyway, my hands feel great.

Best Part: Feminist Heroine Named “Gal”

I am stuck here for a few minutes, so I will write some more. I will review the movie Wonder Woman.

My friend Mike came to visit, and he likes watching movies, so we rented a few things. Very shallow stuff. Jack Reacher, for example. You don’t want to watch Ingmar Bergman after a day of shooting and BBQ (or ever). Wonder Woman, a movie which got hysterical stellar reviews, made the list.

I was curious to see what the fuss was about. I still am.

When this movie came out, people acted like it was the greatest film ever made. They raved. They acted like they had never seen a female superhero in a movie before. They acted like the idea of a female superhero was a sudden blast of genius, like the invention of the nuclear reactor or even the couch-sized Snuggie. I wondered what I was missing. Maybe that’s why they call her Wonder Woman. Everyone wonders why the reviews are so great.

Here is what I saw: a thick-headed, uninformed, well-meaning exhibitionist “goddess” who belongs to an advanced civilization that has never invented the wheel or electricity and has somehow failed to conclude that people are bad.

What if I make a crazy suggestion? For the first time today, I mean? What if I suggest the media establishment has a sick anti-male, pro-woman bias, and their obsession with promoting their agenda is what’s driving the crazy reviews?

No. I won’t hear of it.

If you read a spoiler after this point, it’s on you.

An American spy serving the British (????) crashes a stolen German biplane near a giant, invisible island full of Amazons. It’s probably 1918. He has just escaped from a German fortress, in a hilly area which doesn’t appear to be anywhere close to water. He has not been gone long enough for the tiny gas tank in his biplane to be empty. Maybe 15 minutes? The Germans are right behind him, having caught up in…a battleship.

I’m not kidding. Watch it yourself. The plane probably does 50 knots, and it had a head start, but a big, wobbly battleship not only chased it successfully, but gained ground on it, implying the ship is actually faster.

Okay.

That must be some headwind.

The Amazons apparently have some kind of code which says they have to kill every man who shows up. Kind of like the Jenners. I’m not sure. Anyway, Wonder Genius does exactly what you would expect. She violates the Prime Anti-Toxic-Masculinity Directive, enraging Queen Allred the Gorgon, and saves the spy. A bunch of Germans chase them onto the beach, and there is a fight. Germans with rifles v. Amazons with arrows, spears, and little outfits that show their underwear every single time they move. Totally realistic battle dress.

Why do the Amazons fight with primitive weapons? Well, I’m not saying it’s because engineers invent weapons and women are bad at math. Whatever the answer is, I’m not saying that.

Predictably, the Amazons win, even though some get shot. What happens to the German ship? No idea. I guess the captain got bored and decided to go home. Because that would totally make sense.

My charitable guess: I was in the bathroom when the Amazons sunk the ship with their estrogen cannon.

Wonder Woman, who lives on an island full of full-time warriors, is very surprised to learn that human beings fight…wars. She will not have it. She won’t! She concludes that Aries (Mars, in other words) must be mesmerizing human beings to make them mean. Because living on an island completely populated by women, she has never seen anger, pettiness, unforgiveness, or spite.

Oh, no. That would not happen.

I guess someone must own the copyright to Mars, because it would have been a much better name. How many Americans know Aries is also the “god” of war? Probably four.

They must have given up negotiations with the Mars bar people, to rent the name. Think of the tie-ins they could have come up with. Fried Mars bars at movie concession stands. Bruno Mars singing the theme song.

The Amazons have a sword called “the god-killer.” I don’t remember much about it, but I think they had it made so they could kill Aries. Which they haven’t bothered to do. In order to make sure it was put to good use, they locked it in a tower and made a law saying no one could touch it. You think Wonder Badger cares about that? Wonder Badger don’t care. She wants the sword, she takes it.

She gets in a boat with Steve the Spy and sails to England, practically forcing him to sleep with her (actual sleep) along the way. He has to promise to take her to the front, where she can kill Mars and put a permanent end to all this nasty masculine war and make everyone read GOOP every day.

BY THE POWER OF OPRAH!!!!

They find a mean German general she thinks is Mars. She kills him, and the war goes on. Being extremely stupid, she is surprised.

He wasn’t Aries. His super powers came from snorting a primitive form of crystal meth. If he had lived, he would have moved his headquarters into a trailer and spent the rest of his days contesting restraining orders. He would have been the first Prussian officer to go into battle wearing a mullet. He would have missed key operations because his 1992 Trans Am full of squirrels was up on blocks.

Later on, it turns out an English lord is really Aries. Sure. She fights him. He disintegrates her sword. It turns out she, not the sword, is the god-killer. Merit scholar that he is, he tells her this.

She wins, after she does the deed with Steve the Spy. Steve blows himself up in a plane full of poison gas bombs. He has to, in order to rid the world of the gas. Personally, I would have flown it down the road aways, gotten out, and blown it up from a safe distance. Then he could have blamed the dog, if you get my drift. But Steve has his reasons. I’m sure.

That’s it. That’s the whole movie. I may have made some mistakes, but I don’t care.

I have some complaints.

1. The main character is dumber than a sack of unusually dumb rocks.

Maybe that’s my only complaint.

No, wait.

2. The male co-protagonist or whatever kills himself for no reason whatsoever.

3. Wonder Woman kills no end of German men, as if they were cockroaches, but when she has a chance to crush the lady who makes the poison gas that killed her BF and a whole village full of charming, illiterate peasants, she gets all holy and refuses.

4. The teleporting German battleship…where did it go? Maybe it sailed to Burbank and became the Love Boat. No, Der Liebe Boat. Stubing is a German name.

5. The jokes are bad. Or were they jokes? Maybe there were no jokes.

6. The 2 biggest female characters can’t do a foreign accent. Asterisk: they are both actual foreigners.

7. The plot makes no sense. Aries is dead, and we keep having wars, as far as I know. What was the point?

8. The Amazons spread their legs at the camera over and over. It’s like the director was standing behind the camera, yelling, “SPREAD! SPREAD!” People seem to think this movie was about proving women are strong and useful and not to be objectified sexually. Am I the only one who sees the inconsistency? It’s like watching Marie Curie lecture in a G-string and pasties with propellers on them. One red and one white. Like the Polish flag.

The movie is not clever or original. In fact, it’s very stupid and trite. It’s not moving, unless you’re a 9-year-old girl or a gay man who wants to be every woman who wears shiny things and gets attention. It doesn’t do anything new. No frontiers have been expanded. It’s not Brokeback Mountain for women. Why are people so in love with it?

From a Christian standpoint, I’m not thrilled with it. The notion that women are morally superior to men and ought to be in charge is a Satanic notion that goes back to Eden. If you think women are morally superior, you must not know many women.

I don’t like the implication that pantheism is correct, either. Would DC even dream of creating a Christian superhero who blasts people with God’s power? I don’t think so. I don’t think anything affirming God’s authority has been put into this type of movie since the Lost Ark melted Belloq’s face. So why the endorsement of pantheism? And what about the “god-killer”? A woman with supernatural powers, created to kill a masculine “god.” Not a wholesome idea.

It’s a very dumb movie. And no one seems to realize it! That makes me nervous. When people believe the absurd, the supernatural is generally at work. I wonder if this movie has some kind of dark purpose, apart from wasting people’s time and promoting lust.

Right now, people are swooning over Gal Gadot, the star of the movie. Some feminists are urging her to change her name to “Womyn Gadot,” but that’s beside the point. My prediction: this is where her career will peak. She’s Sacha Baron Cohen, and Borat just went to cable. She looks great, but she’s a very weak actress. She will be Wonder Woman for the rest of her life, after a few unsuccessful efforts to branch out. Buy a nice pen and get ready to make a living signing autographs at comic conventions. We saved James Doohan’s seat for you. Mind the Otis Spunkmeyer muffin crumbs.

This movie makes me feel like I’ve been manipulated. “You HAVE to love this movie.” No, I don’t. It’s bad. Compared to this, Jack Reacher was Prince Hamlet of Denmark.

It’s like when people tell you you have to love the Beatles. Okay, sure. “She Loves You Yeah Yeah Yeah” has just as much artistic merit as “Gimme Shelter” and “Paint it Black.” “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” makes Hoagie Carmichael cry in his grave. No question about it. That’s why so many artists have covered it. Stop talking to me now.

I guess my clothes are finally ready to come out of the dryer. I’m done.

Real Snipers Use Card Tables

I’m still excited about the results I got with the .17 HMR rifle the other day. I am now shooting 1 MOA or maybe 1.05 MOA, but anyway, close to 1 MOA. This is something I didn’t expect to happen so easily. Now that I know I am capable of shooting rifles pretty well, it’s time to think about plans for longer ranges and bigger calibers.

First thing…I believe I need to measure off 150 and 200 yards for the .17 HMR, and I need to get out my larger targets. The rifle I’m using is capable of shooting well at those ranges, provide I only shoot on calm days. I need to make the most of it. If what people are telling me is right, I should be able to go considerably farther. This gun shoots very cheap ammo, and it’s easy on the shoulder, so I need to get as much mileage as I can from it.

After that, I need to think about different calibers. I also need to learn about compensating for wind.

I have a .308, which I originally bought with the intention of turning it into a .260 Remington. In order to do that, I need a .260 barrel. DPMS, the lazy company that made the gun, quit making .260 barrels. That means spending more on a an aftermarket barrel. I never got around to buying one.

I still have a huge amount of cheap .308 ammo. I feel like I should try to shoot some of it before giving up on .308. Or maybe I shouldn’t. I should be able to sell it.

People say my ammunition (Radway Green) is not that accurate. It’s hard to get the truth on the Internet, because a guy who gets lucky and puts 2 shots through 1 hole will say it shoots 0 MOA, and then idiots will believe it and drive themselves crazy trying to equal his performance. Other guys will shoot 3 MOA and say that’s all the ammunition will do, but it will be because they don’t want to admit they can’t shoot. So you have to do the shooting for yourself in order to learn anything.

I have improved my technique, and I have learned about the evil effects of wind, so I should be able to evaluate the ammo for myself. I have to get that done.

Someone recommended shooting .223. He said it was cheaper than new .17, and it would be very accurate. I don’t have a .223 rifle or reloading dies, though. I don’t want an AR15. I don’t like them for self-defense, and they’re not as good as bolt guns for distance. That means I would need a .223 bolt gun and a scope. That would cost $600. The ammunition would run nearly 30 cents per round, if my math is right. That’s 1.5 times as expensive as .17 HMR, so I think the person who said .223 is cheap was wrong.

Anyway, it’s a low-recoil round which shoots well and is useful for killing fairly large things.

Another possibility: give up on .260 (which Remington has abandoned) and go for nearly identical 6.5mm Creedmoor. This might be the best move. It’s super-accurate, and you can hunt with it. Not just pigs and coyotes, but deer. I can’t recall why I wanted .260 instead of Creedmoor, but my understanding is that Creedmoor (someone will complain that I don’t always type 6.5mm) is very popular, and that means I will be able to find brass, dies, whatever, very easily.

I suppose I should be able to go up to 400 yards on this property without endangering anyone, if I do it right.

Right now, I shoot in the general direction of a road. Should I worry? Not unless I should also worry when I drive a 3-ton vehicle on that road, with nothing but lane stripes between me and cars full of innocent kids. It’s better to be hit by a rifle round than crushed by a pickup truck traveling at a relative speed of 130 mph. That’s how I see it, anyway. There is no way to be completely safe. There are people in every direction, just as there are people all around when you hunt on public land. The key is not to be a moron. I think I can manage that.

It’s legal, so nobody can do anything to prevent me from shooting.

I read an interesting article about modern rifles. Some guys took several random rifles right out of the box and started shooting, and every rifle shot under 1 MOA. The conclusion? Modern rifles are pretty good. You don’t have to spend your life savings to get accuracy. They all shot under 1 MOA for 5 initial shots, and they were all close to 1 MOA after 10 shots with no rest. Hot barrels. Cheap ammo. Makes you think twice about buying a great old gun built back in the good old days. New is better.

The sad thing about modern firearm accuracy is that it makes these rifles really good at killing…excuses. If the ammo isn’t total garbage, and the gun is new…it’s you, baby. Own it.

They fired from a sled, which is a vise that holds guns. A sled allows virtually no error, apart from the error of the gun and ammunition. I’ve seen people use these at the range. I don’t like them. I see how a sled would be useful for zeroing a gun before shooting it for yourself, but I have a feeling a lot of the guys I saw were sled addicts. I don’t think they shot on their own.

I was shooting near Miami, surrounded by people who were generally Cuban, and Latin men tend to be insecure about anything related to masculinity. Miami is a town where there are a lot of guys who drive blacked-out cars and trucks. There are a lot of guys (especially cops) on steroids. Lots of chest-puffing. Lots of domestic violence. You know what I mean. It would not surprise me to see shooters there rely on sleds all the time.

My own experience proves that a relatively unskilled shooter resting his gun on a folding table from Lowe’s can zero a gun pretty darned well. I can get down close to the gun’s limit of accuracy, at least at 100 yards. I don’t know if a sled would be worth the aggravation for me, barring an unexpected invitation to compete in the Olympics.

I feel like I should shoot the .308 a little, see what happens, and then look into 6.5mm Creedmoor. I have prayed about the decisions, and this seems right.

Over the next year, I should be able to develop the skill to shoot well at 400 yards, and that should be enough to make me happy. I have no use for this skill, but I want it anyway.

The Second Amendment is really something. When I Google for gun info, I get astounding information. There are zillions of guys out there, doing great things with guns. It’s not like living in England, where you only get to see rifles at the movies. Here in the US, you don’t have to be a cop or a soldier to be extremely, extremely dangerous. When things really get bad here, the devil’s people are going to have their work cut out for them. There are states where every county is full of folks who will be able to hide behind trees and drop the Beast’s jackbooted thugs like prairie dogs. They won’t be able to subdue us by going door to door with Glocks. They’ll need gunships, infrared cameras, and daisy cutters. And a lot of the people who know how to use those things will defect to our side, because snowflakes generally avoid military and police service.

God bless America. Out of all the world’s countries, this is the one where the thought of fighting guerrillas should make you wet your jammies the most. Getting your way in the end will be so painful, you will wish you had stayed home and surrendered.

If it weren’t for highly skilled private individuals, the cops and the military would have firearms technology and training straight out of 1920 (or maybe 1520). Liberals want private citizens to be separated from weapons technology, but we’re the people who create it and understand it best. Even the hydrogen bomb was created by civilians. A good sophist would say weapons don’t cause many problems until the cops and the military get ahold of them. The damage the rest of us do is very minor, in comparison.

I don’t see myself every getting involved in fighting the Beast’s minions. I think armed insurrection is carnal, and I am not brave, at least when it comes to having parts blown off or roasted. I think I would rather let them kill me so I could be free of this earth. But I can’t speak for the 20 or 30 million other guys out there who disagree with me.

Related: here is a link to an article challenging people who claim to shoot sub-MOA. The author says you need to produce 25 consecutive shots to qualify, which is more or less consistent with what I’ve been saying, although more rigorous.

I felt good about 5 adjoining shots (which were clearly not flukes), but I think you really need a 25-shot 1-MOA hole, perhaps with a few flyers, to prove you shoot sub-MOA. I wouldn’t expect anyone to stay inside a 1-inch circle 100% of the time, because things happen, but if you’re a sub-MOA guy, 90% is not too much to ask.

Rapture Yourself and Get Peace

This morning something disturbing happened. I was reading the news on the Internet, and I got so disgusted I decided to get rid of the bookmarks on my phone’s browser. I had been used to looking at Fox, CNN, and Drudge every morning, but it got to be too much.

Yesterday, the world learned that Donald Trump is in extraordinary health, just as he had claimed in the past. He proved it beyond all doubt, with an extensive medical exam. He even asked for a completely unnecessary dementia test, which he aced. He ordered his doctor to be as open about the results as possible, unlike Obama, who hid the fact that he continued smoking cigarettes in the White House. How did America respond? I’m sure a lot of people didn’t care, but as for the rest, half were happy about it, and the other half were so disappointed and angry, they lost their minds.

I looked at the comments on a Fox story about Trump. They were horrible. Leftists said all sorts of filthy things, and they made up facts. The doctor was wrong. The doctor was lying. The results were actually very bad, if you just looked at them the right way. And of course, offended conservatives said vile things in return.

Even worse, established leftist pundits were doing their best to “debunk” the exam results. CNN has a TV doctor named Sanjay Gupta, and he and Fox reject Alisyn Camerota appeared in a video under a remarkable headline that looked something like “Trump has Heart Disease.” They found one (and only one) heart test that had an unfavorable result, and they also pounced on the fact that Trump is on the fat side. This is what they harped on. Never mind the fact that they were discussing a 71-year-old man who only took two prescriptions for his health, ate whatever he wanted, never exercised, and had a strong heart and a blood pressure of 122/74.

They should have been asking what kind of miracle they were witnessing (and why their own gene pools couldn’t compare). Instead, they were gleefully looking at the results, like pagan priests poking around in bird guts, celebrating any sign that Trump might die soon.

How crazy can people get?

My dad is in very good shape, apart from dementia, and he takes eight prescribed medications per day. Eight. Used to be nine. And he’s not allowed to touch alcohol. If he quit taking blood pressure pills, his systolic pressure would probably be near 200. That’s what “good health” looks like in an elderly American. Trump is on a completely different level.

Hillary Clinton has been obese for a long time. She wears pants to hide the fat (and possibly edema) around her ankles. During the campaign, she had to be loaded into a special van after a collapse. Like a sack of flour. Her legs stopped working, and they held her up by her arms. She has some kind of foot injury that won’t heal. She wears a special boot. Her husband kept McDonald’s in business when he was in office, and he ate and smoked himself into a multiple bypass operation. We don’t hear about these things much. But give Trump an astonishing physical exam indicating freakish good health, and leftists take the day off from whatever real reporting they may still be doing, to look for a speck of morbid light at the end of the tunnel. “Maybe if we look real hard, we will find hope that President Trump will die in office.”

I saw material related to the Trump physical, and while I read, I saw a lot of other things that gave me pains in my heart. I was reading this excrement during a break in prayer. Prior to the break, I had felt pretty good. I had felt the presence of the Holy Spirit, and I was expecting good things to happen. After reading the news, I felt like I had swallowed a pint of gasoline.

I took Fox, CNN, Drudge, and Yahoo out of my browser. I am done. I may become ignorant, but at least my insides won’t be twisting like worms in a jar of lemon juice.

In 2016, I experienced a wonderful event I call “the Little Rapture.” I got fed up and deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts. I upset some people, but I didn’t care at all. I felt great, knowing I wasn’t going to be treading water in a sea of ignorance and carnality. People could get by without me. They weren’t listening to me anyway.

The churches I went to between 2008 and 2016 were ghetto churches. That means I know a lot of people with ghetto ideas corrupting their lives. They don’t accept responsibility for their problems. They feel like victims. Many of them really have it in for white people and Republicans. They are EXTREMELY proud and very unteachable. As Shakespeare himself noted in Twelfth Night, the poor are much more arrogant than successful people.

They have bad ideas about morality. Many of the girls and women post photos of themselves in their underwear or tiny bathing suits. Some go farther, posing naked or topless and covering up only what they have to. Pregnant wives often post photos of themselves in their underwear, with their bellies hanging out. They hire photographers to help them. You’ll see a prominent guy from church, kneeling on the beach with his older kids and his partially disrobed pregnant wife. Pastors and ushers and whatever will “like” the photos and gush over them. What? Seriously? What Bible do you read?

Many of the people I know love socialism. They want open borders. They are not loyal to the United States. They think of themselves as Puerto Ricans or Haitians or Hondurans (or whatever) first. When elections come, they get very militant about supporting candidates that love abortion, hate God, and hate Israel. You can’t tell them a damned thing. They complain about our godless country, and at the same time, they break their backs supporting the people who keep it that way. They’re responsible for gay marriage and the persecution of Christians, but they think they please Jesus by supporting forced handouts to poor people who don’t feel like working. They’re hard on minority friends and relatives who come around and see the light. They seem to think minorities own all their members, like slaves.

I’m not exaggerating at all. The proud hypocrisy of the American poor is a stronghold like no other.

I got tired of it. Eventually, you realize you’re hanging out with people who are never going to make it, and they wear you down and make you angry, which leads to self-righteousness and a lifestyle of persistent wrath. You have to make the healthy choice. God told me to bail out, and it was wonderful.

I’m glad I wasn’t around for the kneeling business. Colin Kaepernick is a spoiled fool who hates his own country. His own words prove it. But people who stand a better chance of being aborted by their own mothers or killed by their non-white neighbors than by the cops think he’s Jesus II, and you almost never see them complaining about the sick culture that puts them in danger to begin with.

Every culture has problems. The problems of the healthier culture in which I am now immersed are bad enough. I don’t need to look for something worse to waste my time. No one is going to fix our ghettos, any more than they are going to fix the white ghettos of Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia. Put me among people who have some chance of being reached, any day. I abandoned my own people, and I am certainly willing to abandon other people who are just like them.

My native culture is inferior, and I happily admit it. Eastern Kentucky isn’t poor because successful yankees took all the coal and didn’t give anything back. It’s poor because the people are foolish. Put people from, say, Iowa there, and the poverty will disappear forever. Want to fix Haiti? Move the people to their own resort in Montana and turn the Japanese loose in Haiti. Successful people succeed everywhere they go. Failures fail regardless of what you do for them.

The Rapture will be God, saying, “I am fed up. You are done abusing my patience and my children. You can’t learn from love and kindness, so we are leaving, and you can learn–maybe–from unspeakable pain.” It will be God, giving the stubborn their own way. It’s bad to abandon people before the appointed time, but when God blows the whistle, you need to GO. Very often, giving up on people is not merely okay, but mandatory. It happened over and over in the Bible.

When God got me off social media, it was a rapture. I was surrounded by people who thought they knew it all and could not listen. I was attacked for telling the truth. It was tiresome and unproductive. It was like watering plastic plants. Leaving brought me relief.

I love not being on Facebook. I don’t miss the discouraging social media posts of the doggedly misguided. I love being far from Miami; I wish such places did not exist. If I can sustain a practice of avoiding reading the news, I will love that, too. I don’t know how it will work. Maybe I’ll be allowed to read little bits here and there. I hope I will get as little exposure as possible. My reading the news doesn’t help the world, and I’m not sure it’s necessary to my own welfare.

We will find out.

I don’t think the blessings of getting away from Miami and backward people are wasted on me. I am grateful from one end to the other, all the time. I have absolutely nothing negative to say about the move, in spite of the considerable suffering I went through after I left. I wish the move had happened earlier. I hate Miami. I wish I had never been there; not for one second. I miss nothing, nothing, nothing, NOTHING. I wish my remaining connections were gone and had never existed. No pillar of salt here, believe me. When God decides to promote me out of Ocala to an even better place, I will hit the ground running. Thank you, God, thank you, God. Please continue what you’re doing.

In other news, I am wondering about a theological question: can you lose your salvation? We all know the answer is yes, for those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit. The Bible says that. But what about people who accept salvation and then turn away from God and continue in sin? In other words, what about 95% of the people who attend (and pastor) Trinity Church in Miami? Trinity is a rotten church. It’s a washing machine. Sin all week, come in on Sunday, get yourself scrubbed, pretend you care about God, feel justified, and get back out there to sin some more. Or sin right there at church. Kids used to have sex there, in the stairwells.

For a long time, I’ve believed that it was hard to lose salvation. When you’re saved, God forgives your sins, and if you think about it, turning away from God is a sin, so why wouldn’t it be covered? Every Christian continues to sin at least a little. Will God put you in hell for an occasional slip that you fail to acknowledge? Will he put you in hell for common “harmless” sins like gluttony and gossip? If he won’t punish a fat Christian with hell, why would he punish one who fornicates or takes drugs?

Can eating a large pizza all by yourself put you in hell?

Arguments for permanent salvation seem to make sense, but there are a lot of testimonies out there from Christians who say they died temporarily or had visions and learned they were headed for damnation. Some say they woke up in hell.

A lady named Mary K. Baxter wrote a book about her alleged visits to hell, and she said she saw a lot of Christians there. One damned woman fell away because she murdered her husband and the lady he had an affair with. She killed them and then killed herself. Before that, the murderer had been a hard core Christian, and even in hell, she supported Christianity while she burned. Baxter also says she saw a preacher who was confined to a coffin, and that demons marched around the coffin shoving spears through holes, into his heart. He had stolen from the church and taught bad doctrine.

Rich Wilkerson knowingly teaches false prosperity doctrine at Trinity Church in order to make money. He has been informed that the Steven Munsey prosperity fables he teaches are lies. If you can go to hell for persistently stealing from Christians, what will happen to him, especially given that 95% of his audience is dirt poor?

Baxter’s stories about hell, taken in their entirety, seem very credible, but what about the theology? What if weak preachers are sending millions of people into hell?

Also, what is the standard? If I’m doing okay, but then I see a woman walking down the street with a revealing top, and I turn around to look, and a meteor hits me, do I go to hell? Can one quick sin do you in? Does a sin have to be habitual in order to get your ticket canceled? Do you have to be unrepentant?

Many people say Christians can’t visit hell and come back. They say a Bible verse proves it. It is appointed to man once to die, and then the judgment. Okay, but Elijah never died. Some disagree about Enoch, but it certainly appears that he never died. Jesus raised dead people. So did Paul. It looks like there is no 100%-airtight rule saying you have to die or that you can’t return. Maybe Elijah and Enoch will return and then be killed (possibly to be the two witnesses of the Revelation), and that would support the rule that all have to die, but what about the dead who have been raised? They died twice.

Before Jesus showed up, John taught repentance. That was his big thing. It’s clearly important. And through Peter, God killed Ananias and Sapphira (believers) for lying. Would God kill someone in anger and then welcome that person into heaven?

In the Revelation, we are told people will be killed by unbelievers for refusing to renounce God, just as they were killed by Jews in Jesus’ time and are killed by Muslims today. Why? Why would Satan bother forcing Christians to recant? Why not just kill them immediately and get them off the playing field? By keeping them around while he coerces them, he will allow them to continue to work against him, as Stephen worked against him when he was stoned by unbelieving Jews. Can it be that a Christian who recants becomes his property and goes to hell? If so, the “once saved, always saved” doctrine is wrong.

Permanent salvation is an attractive notion. All of us know dead backsliders. Is your mom in hell right now? Your child? Your husband? Can you stand to consider it? No one wants to consider such things. That reluctance, all by itself, shapes our ideas about damnation.

I remember the movie Awakenings. People who were paralyzed by Parkinson’s disease were under consideration. They sat or lay in nursing homes for decades, unable to speak or move. A scientist proclaimed they were not conscious. When asked how he knew that, he said, “because the alternative is unthinkable.” Not logical, but completely typical of the way we come to conclusions.

We make a lot of theological decisions based on our desires, not the truth. We say God doesn’t work miracles, because the alternative is to admit we are bad Christians who can’t get miracles. We say homosexuality is okay, simply because we are tired of fighting about it (especially with our rebellious wives and girlfriends). We love religious tolerance–a concept abhorrent to Jesus–because without it, we have to have backbones and stand up for something.

We are always looking for ways to make hell seem less terrifying, and we don’t care if the truth itself has to be consigned to the flames.

One thing is pretty obvious: regardless of the rules, we should live as if we could lose our salvation at any moment. Many people choose to believe in permanent salvation because they love to sin and don’t want to stop. I know how that is, because I lived that way. “I’ll do this real quick and then ask for forgiveness.” If that works, aren’t we mocking God? The Bible says God is not mocked.

We shouldn’t be wondering if it’s necessary to stay repentant. The fact that we fight about it shows that we want to sin. We should be afraid to sin, even if we don’t expect consequences, and we should be very fast to repent. If you’re doing things right, which is not that hard, the whole discussion should be unimportant to you, at least as it impacts you.

How big a percentage of humanity goes to hell to burn forever? It’s a serious question; the most serious question I can imagine. What if our churches are pumping unsuspecting newcomers into the caverns of hell all day, every day?

We can’t do much about it, even if we know the truth and teach it. That’s a hard fact. Even if you do everything perfectly, most people won’t listen to you. Look how they treated Jesus. Look how they treat the Holy Spirit and God’s ministers right now. Knowing the answer, firmly, would not change the fact that most people go to hell. It would still be a very inconvenient truth. But it would help a substantial number, in absolute terms, avoid damnation.

I am trying to get understanding from God, so I will know the answer to the salvation question. In any case, I am more determined than before to behave myself. I shouldn’t have to worry about damnation in order to behave, but there it is.

Best Way to Get Yourself Killed by a Leftist: Tell him He’s not a Victim

I bought an interesting book. The author is Bryan Melvin, the guy who claims he died from cholera and had to visit hell. Amazon lists him as B.W. Melvin. The book is called A Land Unknown. I learned about Melvin from Youtube, and his book provides more detail on his experience.

I read most of the book yesterday. Fair warning: it’s a flawed book. I’m not saying that to insult the author, who surely did his best. I just want to prepare anyone who buys it. The first 60 or so pages are devoted to background material. Where he was born. What his life was like before the trip to hell. How he interacted with Christians and his doper buddies. He tries to recreate dialogue from the past, and it doesn’t work. It could make the book sound phony to a person who never gets past page 60. Once he gets to the cholera experience, things improve.

I don’t know if what he had was actually cholera. He said he and a buddy drank from a cooler mounted on a truck, and whatever was in it was foul. The cooler’s owner then told them his kids had used it as a portable toilet.

You can get pretty sick from ingesting sewage. I know. When I was a baby, I got a disease my mother later described as cholera. She said a neighbor’s septic tank overflowed on the grass, and that’s where she thought I got it. My fever went over 106, and they put me on IV fluids. For some reason, they used pins to attach my limbs to boards, presumably to keep me from thrashing and knocking the IV out. That sounds insane, but it’s what she told me. I don’t have any giant pin scars. Anyway, my understanding is that real cholera is caused by a bacterium called vibrios comma. I don’t know if it occurs in normal sewage, but I tend to doubt it, since it causes epidemics that kill great numbers of people. If all sewage caused cholera, it would be hard to dispose of safely.

A web source says there was only 1 cholera case in the US in 2015, so I think it’s safe to say that Bryan Melvin and I did not have cholera. It must have been e. coli or something.

I don’t understand how a bacterium found in normal excrement can be so deadly. After all, every human being is exposed to excrement ever day, and we don’t die.

To get back to the point, he got sick, toughed it out, and died, and at some point he was revived.

Melvin says a demon was forced to give him a tour of hell, and a lot of what he says happened sounds plausible to me.

A long time ago, God told me hell is not full of bad people; it’s full of people who don’t listen. Melvin’s story confirms this.

When I say hell isn’t full of bad people, I mean it’s not reserved for people who were nasty and mean on earth. It’s reserved for people who don’t accept salvation through faith in Jesus. You can be a very nice Buddhist, run an orphanage, donate organs to strangers, give everything you have to the poor, and still go to hell.

You don’t avoid hell by being nice. You avoid hell by confessing, believing in Jesus, repenting, and forgiving. If you do those things, you can make it, even if you’re a child molester. If you don’t do those things, you’re trying to get into heaven based on your own righteousness. Even if you’re very good by earth standards, the Bible says your own righteousness is like used menstrual rags in God’s sight. You can’t make it unless you accept the inheritance Jesus gave up for us. Essentially, you have to be a sort of identity thief. You have to appear before God with the righteousness of Jesus as your ID.

Sometimes (often, really) you have to look at Christianity like a lawyer. When we write laws, sometimes we have to do some funny things in order to shape the behavior of the public. Lawyers call this good “public policy.” For example, if you sue a company for negligence, you may not be allowed to introduce evidence of corrective measures in court. Say you slipped on a floor covered with a very slick brand of wax. If the company changes to another wax in order to prevent injuries, you may be unable to use it as evidence that they knew the wax you slipped on was dangerous. Why? Because it’s good public policy to encourage people to make the world safer. We don’t want companies avoiding making corrective measures because they think lawyers will use those measures in court against them.

Some people call Christian salvation “cheap grace.” The idea is that it makes no sense for a truly evil person to go to heaven simply by repenting and accepting Jesus and so on, in view of that person’s bad history. But look at it from a public policy standpoint. If evil people know they can’t be saved, what will they be motivated to do? They’ll do what Satan has done. They’ll go down in a blaze of rebellion. They’ll devote their lives to selfishness and hatred. They’ll do their best to offend God and hurt his children, because they have nothing to lose. On the other hand, if the option of salvation is always open to them while they’re alive, they will be motivated to change and join the team.

The idea that you can get to heaven by being good (and only by being good) is much worse than cheap grace, because even if you accept the erroneous idea that being good by human standards is enough, most of us can’t be good. We are bound by evil habits. Our free will is gone. Which universe would you prefer to live in? One in which Jeffrey Dahmer can change and enter heaven, or one in which a teenage drug addict and street criminal has already lost every hope of avoiding hell?

The Bible says God doesn’t want anyone to perish. He is looking for excuses to give us salvation. He’s not going to reserve it for a few superhuman sages. Most people go to hell as it is. That’s bad enough, without turning the quest for salvation into a sort of Jeopardy! tournament of champions.

You have to be extremely arrogant to think you’re so good you can get into heaven on your own feet. There is no room for humility in a scheme that requires self-salvation. If I can save myself, I don’t need God at all. I have no reason to acknowledge his existence.

Melvin’s book confirms that “good” people go to hell.

In the book, Melvin encounted a number of people who had been malevolent and sadistic on earth, but he also saw people who seemed nice. While he observed the people and demons around him, a voice gave him thoughts and words, explaining things to him. It repeatedly pointed out that people were there because they hadn’t listened.

The concept of reaping and sowing was also represented, but it seems to me that it came primarily through the evil spirits in hell, not the voice of God. The demon guide kept telling him people reaped what they sowed. Demons punished people with torments that reflected the evil they did on earth. For example, a man who was stingy was imprisoned in a barrel in a tight cave. Demons had things he could use to get free, and they put them just outside his reach. The book didn’t say this was God’s idea. The impression I got was that the demons came up with it.

It’s a brilliant punishment which I would never have come up with. When you give to the needy, you help them get out of life’s tight spots. Sometimes you can save someone from the destruction of their earthly life with a few hundred bucks, which is very little to most of us. I have seen that happen.

The system represented in the book makes complete sense. The Bible says the WAGES of sin is death, but it says the saved receive an INHERITANCE, which, by definition, can’t be earned. The demons were PAYING people what they had EARNED in life. In heaven, however, people INHERIT what JESUS EARNED.

I never ask God for what I deserve. I never ask for justice. I have stopped doing that. To ask for compensation or justice is to curse yourself. If I ask for those things, I ask for defeat and torment. Instead I ask for mercy. I ask to be a pampered heir, without pride or self-esteem. Hell is full of self-made men. You can’t put yourself in heaven, but you can definitely earn a spot in hell. You already have.

Bryan also says the spirits in hell criticized God constantly. They had a BLM/Antifa attitude. They pointed to the suffering people in hell, and they asked Bryan how God could be good if he permitted such things to happen. The voice of God came to him and explained that God is not responsible for the misuse of free will. It’s the same sound argument gun store owners make. If I sell you a pistol, and you shoot your family with it, it’s on you, not me. God also told him he refused to create a race of marionettes with no free will. The destruction of free will is Satan’s game and the game of misguided people. God doesn’t do it. He will let you damn yourself.

The things the voice told Bryan line up perfectly with what God has told me. Excuses are lethal. Blaming others for your sins is lethal. These things will put you in hell. You can have the sick pleasure of criticizing God and correcting his scheme for the rest of eternity, but you will do it in a flaming pit. Your whining won’t change the nature of the universe, no matter how much you want to be your own God.

The voice discussed the question of how God could create sinless beings who then went on to develop iniquity and to sin. The voice said the fact that iniquity was found in beings didn’t mean it had been placed there.

Here’s another interesting thing about the book: God and the demons described human beings as caretakers. The demon guide called Melvin “caretaker.” That’s completely consistent with what God has shown me about the system. God created the earth, and he put us in charge of it. We, not God, brought evil into it. We made evil grow, and we made righteousness wither. Why is there evil in the world? Because the caretakers are evil. God isn’t responsible.

The beings in hell, according to the book, are full of denial. They love excuses. They never discuss their own failures. They accuse God constantly. Good luck with that. Arguing with the one who creates the rules is idiotic. Many creatures prefer the pleasure of deflecting blame to the pleasure of release from hell and entry into heaven. They are getting exactly what they chose.

Melvin said he didn’t see children in hell. People there were old enough to be held accountable. He didn’t see retarded people. God didn’t impute blame to anyone who could not understand sin.

Melvin says he used to be a crabby atheist who argued with Christians all the time. He got off on it. In hell, all of his lame arguments were shot down. The demons handed Melvin the same arguments, which shows where those arguments come from. The voice of God obliterated them.

Fascinating stuff.

The more I know, the more I realize God is fundamentally conservative. He is a complete zealot about accountability. He hates whining and excuses. He derides those who devote their lives to blaming others. If there is one area in which he is not conservative, it’s the area of self-help. God wants us to be reasonably responsible, but he hates our ridiculous, haughty belief that we can be self-reliant and self-contained. We are expected to do what we should, but we are supposed to rely primarily on prayer and our other supernatural tools.

God doesn’t want you to go on welfare and suck your neighbor dry while blaming your neighbor for your self-inflicted poverty, but he also doesn’t want you to run around telling people you caused your own success through hard work and your own amazing brilliance. You have to make a contribution to your success, but most of it comes from him, and you have to admit that.

Poverty is self-inflicted, but a blessed life comes from God, not your hard work.

The more I understand, the more repulsed I am by modern American values. We hate God more every day. We sow curse after curse in our lives. We celebrate perversion, pride, cruelty, vanity, and fornication, giving demons more and more power over us. We plant land mines in our paths all day long. We’re spitting on God while he holds back the spirits that have the power to destroy us and give us what we deserve.

America has gone completely PC, and that means we are blaming everyone in sight, except for those who cause our problems. We blame white people, men, Christians, southerners, everyone who has a job, heterosexuals, and conservatives. I’m sorry to say it, but we’re blaming the people who bring us God’s help. We’re celebrating perverts, socialists, idolaters of every type, rebels, ignorant young people with too much power, sluts, ghetto musicians with the morals of rats, and revilers. We’re destroying those who bless us and empowering those who make us rot and fail.

We now have a culture in which the word “shame” has developed a stink. Shame saves us. Shame is realism. Shame allows us to see what needs to be fixed. It opens the door to God’s help. Instead, now we love pride, which is a granite wall that blocks God’s assistance.

Even Christians promote pride. That’s amazing. Have they ever read the Bible? Show me the verses that praise pride. Good luck with that. God hates pride, and the Bible says he actively opposes the proud. What could be worse than that? How can anyone want God to be his enemy? There is no enemy in existence whose power can compare. God is the most terrifying enemy conceivable.

The more I learn about the true nature of the world, the more I wish I could move somewhere else. America is the last major island in a rising sea of feces, and when we go down, there will be nowhere else to go.

I helped create this mess, though, so how can I expect to be rescued?

Today everyone is flipping out because the president supposedly used a curse word to describe Haiti and other miserable, filthy, backward countries. He should apologize for his language, but he’s right. I have one Haitian godchild and another who is one quarter Haitian, and I know lots of Haitians. I wish them the best, but I would not hesitate to call Haiti a hellhole in front of them, and if they were honest, they would agree, because they chose the USA over Haiti and most of them want their friends and families to be allowed to leave.

Haiti is a failed nation, period, and it stands out as exceptional even among failed nations. No sane person questions it. When they want foreign aid, everyone agrees they’re in trouble. When they want to come here and bring their cultural limitations, suddenly Haiti is a wonderful place.

Haiti is definitely a horrible place. How did that happen? Is there something in the rain or the soil that makes it bad? Do the animals and fish make it bad? Was it bad before people moved there? What if I make a crazy suggestion? What if I say Haiti has been screwed up by Haitians? What other explanation is there? People ruin their own countries, and that means they have cultural problems that can be detrimental to other countries when they emigrate.

Haiti is a mess, and Trump is merely putting America first (his job) when he questions the need for more immigrants from messed-up nations. Somehow, we have gotten the idea that we are supposed to be an unlimited sanctuary for people who have proven they are likely to cause problems when they get here. Other countries, such as Canada and Japan, look for immigrants who will help them. They look for the educated and the skilled. Typical Haitians, Mexicans, Hondurans, and so on have virtually no chance of being allowed to move to most top-tier nations. We, on the other hand, bring in criminals and the unskilled. We don’t look for doctors or engineers. We look for people who are willing to do the filthiest jobs we have, and who have the least potential to improve and advance.

The kerfuffle over Trump’s language is a great example of the way PC and the supernatural inversion of our thinking has turned us into self-destroyers. We could be luring productive, successful people. Instead, we are filling ghettos. That’s the simple truth. That’s where these people go as soon as they get here.

I remember joining Trinity Church in Miami, which is 80% Haitian. A pastor told me, “The girls go to college, and the boys go to jail.” Look at other countries Trump is concerned about. Central Americans have a horrific crime rate, in their home countries and in America. They pour in, helping Democrats build their voter bases. Meanwhile, a Ph.D. from New Delhi who tries the legal route will be shoved further down the list because of all the less-desirable immigrants (and illegals) in front of him.

I heard some nut on NPR saying the alleged Haiti remark was “clearly racist.” Hmm. When did Haitian become a race? Obviously, Trump is not concerned about race. He is concerned about the way immigrants from screwed up countries drain us. I think it’s safe to bet that he would be happy to welcome immigrants from mostly black Barbados, which is considered to be the most developed nation in the Caribbean and Central America. I’m sure he would be happy to welcome black Haitians who are successful and educated.

I think if you asked most Americans to describe the purpose of allowing immigration, they would say it was to allow poor people to move here and do better. That’s insane. The correct purpose is to build America up. But if you say that, may God protect you from the PC mafia.

Anyway, America is under a supernatural delusion, and our hysteria over Trump’s alleged harsh remark shows how we love accusing those who help us. Whatever Trump’s personal failings may be, he has done a great deal for Christians and Israel, and he has been used by God to make the country stronger. We should be making allowances for his strange personality, in view of his accomplishments and what appears to be a genuine Cyrus anointing. Instead, we pounce on relatively trivial failings and work to oust him in favor of a poisonous, God-hating socialist to be named later.

I’m going to try to focus on self-criticism, repentance, and improvement. I wish everyone in America would get on board, but they’re not going to, so I’ll do what I can to save myself and whoever will accompany me.

Correction

I just found out the bacterium that causes cholera is vibrio comma, not vibrios comma. I remembered it as vibrios because that was the way a college friend of mine pronounced it.

I have finished the book, and it says the author’s doctor told him he did, indeed, have cholera. The doctor said the bug that got him was vibrio cholerae, which is another name for vibrio comma.

God is Consistent

I like watching Christian testimonies on Youtube. I prefer testimony to teaching. Teachers tend to anoint themselves. They decide they want to teach, and then they make things up, or they look for other misguided people who have created “institutes,” “centers,” “schools,” or “seminaries.” They may look to people who have created Christian franchises, like Calvary Chapel or Hillsong, as if God were using the McDonald’s model. The ones who learn from others usually repeat nonsense, but they justify themselves with their references and impressive-looking logos. “Joe Jones the famous evangelist who gives 90% of his salary to blind orphans and started the Hol-E-Mart church chain says THIS…”

One of the weird things a preacher may do to impress people is to call himself “ministries.” It’s just him and his laptop and GoPro, but the name is “Harvey Anderson MINISTRIES.” It’s not just one ministry. It’s “ministries.” I live in an area where a lot of farms, including farms where no actual farming is done, have signs saying “Farms” on them. “Windy Ridge Farms,” with no wind, no ridge, one property, and no farming. Same thing.

Some teachers are angry as they can be, as though they themselves were God, coming to get us for our sins (without a lot of discussion of their own failings). A certain amount of annoyance is normal and unavoidable, but when you give people the impression they sinned against you, personally, instead of God, you have a self-righteousness issue, and you probably lack love. On the other side of the coin, some teachers are aggressively warm, while still managing to be condescending. They’ve mastered the weary, all-knowing smile. “Oh, little children. What am I going to do with you? Come bask in the glow of my patience and false humility while I tell you AGAIN how to be as holy as me.”

If I want to hear from someone who is better than I am, I’ll go to God, and if I want the weight of authority, again, I’ll go to God. I won’t look to some guy who had his video-game-playing kid use Photoshop to make him a big shiny logo. Apart from hearing from God, I would like to hear from honest, knowledgeable people who know they’re not better than the rest of us.

Here’s something funny: a lot of people think they’re anointed to teach because their parents or husbands are anointed. Hello? Did Moses’ wife run a ministry? Did the apostles automatically hand their ministries over to their sons? I don’t think so. You shouldn’t give your obnoxious, spoiled kid a ministry just because you’re afraid he’ll end up working for Uber if you don’t. It’s not fair to the people who trust you. You can pass your chain of shoe stores on to your kid. Ministries are not yours to give away.

People who testify are better than teachers. Things happen to them, and they tell us what happened. If they’re truthful and what they say is scripturally sound, they’re considerably more trustworthy than teachers.

Testifiers often get in trouble because their stories don’t line up with doctrine. To me, that’s a sign that they’re right. The world is full of bad doctrine generated by teachers. No meat on Fridays! Pray to dead people and call them saints! Mary never sinned! Baptize babies who have no idea what’s happening! Don’t eat pork! Give God huge cash offerings on Jewish holidays!

The people who disturb me are the ones whose testimony lines up with Catholicism, Mormonism, and so on. Those people are just looking for attention or money.

Yesterday and today I watched a video featuring a former atheist who says he died and visited hell. His testimony is really something. He keeps verifying things that have come to me by revelation. Over the years, through prayer in tongues, I’ve learned a lot of things directly from God, and they are things no preacher ever told me (Actually, they did a great job of keeping truth away from me). In his testimony, the former atheist, Bryan Melvin, goes through a whole bunch of revealed ideas. He says they were shown to him during his visit.

This confirms what God told me a long time ago: “Authority comes from time spent in the presence of God.” This man apparently spent time in God’s presence, and he came back with authoritative knowledge of things self-anointed teachers don’t know.

Here’s one thing that shocked me: he confirmed that heaven is guarded so the flesh can’t go there and screw it up. Months or years ago, God showed me that heaven is a long way from the earth, and he made me understand two things: God wants to bring the rule of the Holy Spirit into the earth, and Satan wants to bring the kingdom of the flesh into heaven.

Down here on earth, human beings are ruled by the flesh. The flesh is a worthless animal. When I talk to God, I call it “this meat sack.” It’s about like a pig, except it’s malevolent. There is no type of filth, moral or physical, that bothers it. It is completely selfish. It is lazy. It is cruel. It can come to love any type of sexual perversion. The flesh is the receptor Satan uses to control us. He wants us to remain under its power until we die and beyond. He, himself, has the character of the flesh, even though he’s a spirit. He wants to rule heaven and earth in his filthy state, and for that reason, he had to be cast out.

There is a hierarchy of authority in the universe, and evil inverts it. Spirits are supposed to rule over the flesh, but in lost people, the flesh rules the spirit. Inversion of authority can happen on earth, but isn’t permitted to stain heaven.

Inversion of authority is a real problem. Ever know someone who is ruled by a pet dog she carries around in a purse, and who forces those around her to be inconvenienced by the dog’s desires? Know a man whose wife makes the rules? Know any parents whose kids call the shots? I’ve seen it over and over. I’ve experienced it in my own body and mind, unfortunately. My flesh has gotten me to obey countless orders. But I digress.

A fulfilled Christian, though burdened by a meat sack and subject to a certain amount of error, is primarily ruled by the Holy Spirit. He is in tune with God, just like the people and other spirits in heaven. Once the meat sack drops off, he is completely clean, and he is fit to enter heaven. He will not disrupt. He will think, feel, and act in harmony with his brothers.

Take a look at Psalm 133, as presented in the Complete Jewish Bible:

Oh, how good, how pleasant it is
for brothers to live together in harmony.

It is like fragrant oil on the head
that runs down over the beard,
over the beard of Aharon,
and flows down on the collar of his robes.

It is like the dew of Hermon
that settles on the mountains of Tziyon.
For it was there that Adonai ordained
the blessing of everlasting life.

That’s not about holding hands and singing Joni Mitchell songs (while eating tofurkey, spitting on combat veterans, and celebrating sodomy). It’s about beings who are united internally, through God’s power. It’s a description of the way beings live in heaven.

The psalm expressly mentions anointing, which means God’s authorization. Literally, “anointing” means “applying ointment,” or pouring oil on a person. Oil symbolizes the authorizing presence of the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit is with you, you will do his will and speak his ideas instead of wandering off on your own and telling people (to pick an example of bad doctrine) they can pray their relatives out of purgatory.

Authority comes from time spent in God’s presence, and so does harmony. God is not double-minded. He does not argue with himself, and people who are guided by him don’t argue. They want the same things.

Liberals and other people who don’t know God love to praise debate and argument. They say they’re healthy. Discord is not healthy at all. It’s sick. It proves something is wrong. When two people disagree, at least one of them (often both) is in disagreement with God. When both agree with God, they agree with each other. A Spirit-filled Christian argues as little as possible. It’s a last resort. Paul said he didn’t come to us with men’s wisdom, but with demonstration of the Holy Spirit and God’s power. Most of the time, in a religious context, argument doesn’t work. You can’t tear down supernatural walls with carnal tools.

One of the huge mistakes theologians make is to encourage hard study and debate. If study were the answer, a higher percentage of Jews would have accepted Jesus. They’re the best religious scholars there are, and they got it wrong. The most respected Christian scholars are long-dead Catholics whose obvious errors turned the church into a bastion of veiled paganism.

Jesus didn’t devote his life to long debates. He told people the truth, briefly, and then he moved on, making zero accommodation for their stupid opinions. The Bible lists short exchanges in which he corrected the misguided, but we have no record of him engaging in the kind of protracted disputes that have taken place since he left. “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like him.”

Bryan Melvin says we mistreat God’s integrity. That’s a funny way to say we sin in spite of our beliefs, but it’s right. God’s integrity is the most important thing there is. If he stops being completely righteous, the universe loses its compass, and the pattern of hell becomes universal. It’s completely natural that God separates himself from the earth. He has to be holy and perfect. How can he do that if he’s down here on the ceiling of hell, surrounded by vile morons guided by terrified spirits who would do anything to knock God off his throne and avoid the lake of fire?

I read a fascinating apocryphal book called The Ascension of Isaiah. Whether it’s true, I don’t know. The book describes an experience in which Isaiah is lifted up to God’s throne, through the levels of heaven. Every level is so much better than the next, the last one seems worthless.

We know the heavens have levels because it’s in the Bible. Paul says he was lifted into the third heaven. It makes sense, because ordinary human beings can see some of the levels of creation. Hell is inside the earth, which we can see. That makes two levels. We can see the first heaven, which is the air above the earth. We can see the second heaven, which is space. There is no reason to doubt Paul when he says there is a third heaven, and if Isaiah is said to have seen a seventh heaven, I have no reason to dispute it.

Anyway, the impression you get from reading the book is that God has put layers of insulation between the holy and the profane. I see the logic. If God’s integrity is as important as it seems, then you would expect to see a great effort made to insulate him from the presence of idiots. To me, when Bryan Melvin refers to God’s integrity, it makes sense.

Melvin says there are levels in hell, which is consistent with the notion of levels in heaven. There is tremendous symmetry in the supernatural.

I decided to buy his book. I want to see what else he knows.

I don’t know everything, but I can tell you this: if you don’t have a supernatural testimony, or if you do, but it stops updating and progressing, something is deeply wrong. Christianity is supernatural. It’s not just going to church and trying to obey rules. It’s not about making sure you eat as many crackers and drink as much wine as possible. You should be seeing God’s hand in action all the time, mostly in your heart and mind.

I’ll post the video I watched. Maybe you’ll get something out of it.

Admit the Truth: God Already Knows it

The more time passes, the more I learn about how I screwed my life up.

I suppose that sounds negative, but it’s not. When you don’t know a problem exists, you don’t try to fix it. Worse, you may think it’s a blessing. You may try to strengthen it. When God shows me what’s wrong with me, it can only mean one of two things: 1) there is no hope for change, so he wants to condemn me; or 2) he is showing me so I can be transformed and repaired. Because God has not given up on me, I know the answer is 2), so his criticism is a huge blessing.

God teaches us not to believe in ourselves or in other people. He teaches us we are weak and dirty. He teaches us we can’t accomplish much. This is the complete opposite of what the world (including many Christian teachers) teaches us. The world tells us self-esteem is a panacea. It tells us we can do anything as long as we believe in ourselves and never give up. It tells us not to beat ourselves up. It says, “Bad things happen to good people,” which is an obscene lie.

The world teaches us egotism and denial. Only a small percentage of people get God’s help in any degree of fullness, and because so few of us get divine help, we are taught that it doesn’t exist. We are told God helps those who help themselves. We are told to believe in ourselves and pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. In a way, it makes sense. If you can’t figure out how to work a car’s ignition, you walk everywhere. If you can’t figure out how to work power tools, you use hand tools that break down your body and get little done. You use the best tools and weapons you can find. If you can’t find God, self-esteem and hard work look pretty good. They can’t compare to God’s help, but they do produce some results.

The Bible is nothing like self-help teaching. It says, “Lean not unto thine own understanding.” It says, “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit.” God sentenced Moses to die outside of Israel because he used a stick to do something God wanted to do with a miracle. Anthony Robbins and Richard Simmons tell you you can. God tells you you can’t. God says you are bad, weak, and small. And God is right.

The last two churches I belonged to taught people God would fix all their problems if they had faith and gave the preachers money. That’s more or less the sum of it. Trinity Church in Miami was worse than the other church. They refused to say anything negative about any type of behavior, except briefly and without sincerity. Gay boys on the worship team? No problem. Pregnant girls singing on stage? Fine. They were so blind, they let Richie Wilkerson do a video in drag. Richie did a promotion based on the filthy movie The Hangover, which would seem to suggest that he and the other people involved went to see it. It made it seem as though they approved of it.

Trinity had two slogans, and one was, “We’re gonna win.” Not, “God will give us victory.” Just, “We’re gonna win.” They encouraged people to live however they wanted, as long as they showed up, gave money, provided free work, and refrained from saying anything negative.

People at Trinity didn’t do well. They died young. They stayed poor while their preachers lived in luxury. They went to prison. No wonder. They were walking in circles in the wilderness, and the preachers had them convinced they were in the promised land.

Trinity and New Dawn Ministries did nothing to help me confront my iniquities. God had to teach me about it directly. That’s sad. People are supposed to pass knowledge and wisdom on to each other, so each generation doesn’t have to start from scratch. If your church doesn’t teach you, who will? You better hope God speaks to you.

I discovered the false gospel of self-esteem when I was a teenager. I had very low self-esteem, which is painful, so when I felt the positive sensation of increased self-esteem, and I saw how much easier it made my life, I thought I was onto something. I pursued it. I never developed great self-esteem, but I did develop a strong pattern of denial and an inability to perceive my faults clearly.

Because I lived in denial, I was able to sink further into sin. I became jaded. Things that should have disturbed me didn’t bother me. I participated in things I should have avoided. Over time, I wrapped chains around myself, and they got too thick for me to resist in any way.

About 10 years ago, I started to realize I had messed up, but even with God’s help, things that are built up slowly may take a long time to deconstruct. I tried and tried to confess and be honest with God, but my vision wasn’t good, so even when I looked for things to confess, I didn’t do a good job.

One of my problems is that I have been surrounded by vexatious people. More generally, I have been surrounded by people who tempt me. A vexatious person tempts you to be angry and strike back, just as a slutty woman tempts you to sin sexually. It’s all temptation of one kind or another. When I started to work to improve, it was very hard for me to feel anything but anger for the people who worked against God in my life. It was like being stung by clouds of flies. without rest. This is why I’m so glad to be out of Miami. Miami is full of obnoxious people and temptation.

I found it very hard to feel any warmth for those who were against me and against God. The pain and stress they caused me made it difficult to have any positive feelings about them. It’s hard enough to love people when they’re behaving. Loving them while they’re still driving the nails in is impossible without God’s help.

I’m not completely stupid. For years, I’ve been praying for God to help me love my enemies. The change hasn’t been instaneous, and I am not strong enough on my own to force it.

Yesterday I had issues with someone who tempts me. I woke up during the night and thought about it. I tried to put myself in this person’s shoes. I realized some things.

People who live in sin as a lifestyle, without remorse, are to be pitied. They never feel God’s love. They don’t know him. They don’t have prayer. There is no one to comfort them when life defeats them. They are absolutely alone, even in crowds. When they get sick, they have to hope primitive, expensive human medicine can fix them. When they have problems, they have no reason to think they will overcome them. They live with failure, hopelessness, and desperation all the time.

Godless people live in anxiety and darkness, and then they go to hell, where they are tormented by the hateful spirits they served all their lives. Whatever my challenges are, I live in victory. God has visited me personally. He tells me things. He heals me. He puts my enemies in their places. When I die, I will live with him in peace and joy forever.

God helped me to remember that my enemies are as human as I am, and that they are much worse off than I am. He helped me feel it. Most people who are against me have never heard from God, or they are so screwed up, they can’t accept it when he communicates with them. They deny it to themselves.

I am in a position of great wealth and complete security, and I am angry with people who are in complete poverty and destined for eternal agony.

God helped me focus less on the pain they cause me, which is fleeting and trivial, and more on the horrible circumstances in which they live. Because of that, I am now better able to forgive and pray for them, without anger.

He also helped me to admit that I am just like them, but for his intervention in his life. I am not a good person. My sins would take years to list. I am not a good person subjected to the company of bad people. I am a bad person who wasn’t brave enough or strong enough to resist God when he called. I got to know God largely because I’m not as strong as people who resist him.

Every Christian should realize he’s a bad person, but getting that knowledge into your heart is a job for God. Knowing it is not the same as having it be part of you.

I encourage people to sit down every day and ask God what’s wrong with them. Admit you’re not honest. Admit you’re blind and deaf, and that you made yourself that way. Don’t waste time with excuses. They slow the process down. If you’re restless and anxious, there is a reason. There is something you need to confront, and it won’t go away until you get it out. You may never have to confess it to people, but you definitely need to tell God and get help overcoming it.

A long time ago, God told me, “Peace lies on the other side of confrontation.” Feel-good preachers keep peace away from you, because they hate confrontation. They think it drives dollars out the door, so they tell us we’re great.

I feel much better today, and I expect my blessings to increase. This stuff does work. You just have to do it the right way, not the TBN way.

Eight Kids, Five Adults, Two Rib Roasts, and One Elderly Chihuahua

I hope everyone who reads this is having a great Christmas.

Yesterday I nearly killed myself and 12 other people with food. My friend Amanda showed up with her sons, and my friends and fellow Miami refugees Alonzo and Teri showed up with their 5 children. I made two standing rib roasts, a cheesecake, and brownies. I recruited Amanda to make Caesar salad from scratch, and I also made Texas trash, which is a snack made from Chex cereal and seasonings.

When I moved up here, I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing. I knew I hated Miami. I knew I would get out sooner or later, but I wondered if I was taking the right path at the right time. Maybe God wanted me to suffer a bit longer. I didn’t know if I’d have friends or anything to do. Ever since I’ve been here, friends have been showing up and helping me out. I have not lacked for a social life, and the people I’ve associated with have been good for me, unlike toxic South Florida riff-raff.

We had a real Christmas Eve dinner, and the house was full of kids running around and making noise. Some presents were opened. Alonzo’s kids ran around carrying Pumpkin, their new 12-year-old Chihuahua. It was much better than what I expected: two old men, watching TV in different rooms.

Alonzo and Teri used to go to Trinity Church in Miami, and when we all got disgusted with the pastors’ greedy slavemaster mentalities, we all moved to another church. I’ve been writing about a former pastor who got jailed for child molestation. He ran the second church.

I never saw anything weird about the man, but last night I learned that he had done something strange for one of Alonzo’s daughters. The daughter is the same age as the niece he is accused of abusing. At some point, the pastor gave Alonzo’s daughter a red Christmas ornament. The story is that he told her how pretty she was and that the ornament made him think of her. How about that? Terri says that when she heard about his arrest, they grabbed the ornament and threw it out.

The ornament story was disturbing, but it makes me very happy to know that Alonzo’s daughter was spared. She’s a terrific young lady. She started talking to me yesterday about her experiences as a high school freshman and her ideas for her future. This kid is going to be all right. Other girls her age are sending disturbing texts and pictures to boys all day, or sulking and whining. This one has a college picked out, and she’s trying to decide on a career.

I tried to give her whatever helpful tips I could. You never know when something you say will make a big difference in someone’s life. I am not great with kids, and being reasonably normal, I don’t want to hang out with them for long periods, but I see the need to make an effort once in a while. Dealing with kids for 2 or 3 hours can be rewarding. After that, I need to do something else.

I hate to think about how things would have played out, had this girl become a victim. I should be more disturbed about the niece. I can’t explain why I’m not. I feel more empathy for people I’m close to. I suppose that’s a flaw.

Maybe God is showing me I should not feel as badly as I do for the pastor. I feel sympathy for him, and his punishment makes me think about the sins in my past, but my strong impression, as it has been for a couple of years, is that God does not want me to spend time praying for him. Some people just aren’t good investments. He knows who can be helped and who can’t.

The reason God does not have me praying for him is not that his sins are worse than mine. The reason is that he is too stubborn to let God or anyone else change him. If you will listen, your sins can be worked with. If not, they will pull you under.

There are people who can’t be helped, because they won’t listen. That’s important for me to keep in mind, with regard to my own walk. When I was young, people thought I was a good kid, but in some important ways, I was a useless punk. That’s to be expected, when you’re fatherless. My dad didn’t make any effort to teach me anything, and I learned to think for myself. I relied on my own disastrous conclusions. By my teens, I was a hard person to counsel. When you’re used to getting no advice or stupid advice, you try to figure things out on your own, and you may develop a reflexive hostility toward other people’s suggestions. For the most part, the kids who were here yesterday are teachable. They are better off than I was. I’m old, and I behaved stupidly for decades, so now I’m like a tree that grew in the wrong direction. Reshaping me is a huge job only God can do.

I’m very glad I’m not beyond hope. The Bible compares stubborn people, including the damned, to clay jars that have been fired so their necks are stiff. You can’t change pottery once it’s fired. In ancient Jerusalem, they took misshapen pottery and threw it in the Potter’s Field, which was part of the city dump. That’s a picture of hell. My neck got pretty stiff, but I didn’t reach the point of no return. I’m not sure how close I came, but I think it was pretty close.

I don’t know why God started visiting me and calling to me when I was in my twenties. I never heard from him before that. Why he decided to make contact after I was an adult is a mystery. I didn’t do anything to merit a sudden change. I’m sure there are a lot of people in hell who have sinned much less than I have, and there are surely people who have done more good.

The church with the scandal was very messed up. We had a false prophet who got up and yelled for long periods, predicting things that never came true, and he was never held accountable no matter how often he was wrong. The pastors loved him and honored him because he always told them they were great, they were going to be rich, and that the church was going to grow. The pastors paid no attention to people who told the truth, i.e. that the prosperity gospel is a farce and that internal change is what God wants.

The pastors were odd people. They refused to eat non-starchy vegetables. They said they took vitamins instead. But they were happy to eat rice, bread, sugar, pork fat, and salt. Their attitude toward God was just like their attitude toward food. They only wanted the things that were pleasant on the way down.

When I turned back to God, I was mainly interested in the starch and sugar. I wanted to feel better, fast. He helped me understand that I needed the broccoli and and carrots even more. I don’t have a church now, but that’s a good thing. I don’t have people shoving plates full of Twizzlers and Moon Pies in my face when I show up asking for greens. Instead of a poisonous feel-good church, God gives me private sessions in which he helps me feel bad and clear the air with him. I would rather feel bad here with God than bounce up and down and snort glitter at a church full of boneheads hooked on false prophecy and fake joy.

Christmas Eve was great, and God is helping me be honest with him, so I expect the coming year to be much better than this one. I hope God gets in touch with every one of you and teaches you a thousand times as much as he has taught me.

Free 2-Day Shipping Takes a Week

Am I the only one who has noticed that Amazon Prime is a sham?

When I first signed up, I wanted free shipping. That was the thing. I knew I would save more than the cost of Prime. But I also liked the 2-day time frame. Amazon promised they would ship stuff to me for nothing, in 2 days. Obviously, there are exceptions. They’re not going to ship you a bulldozer in 2 days, and if you order at 9 p.m. on a Monday, you’re going to wait till Thursday. But generally, 2 days.

Now that I think about it, Bezos has a lot of nerve, putting things he can’t ship quickly on the Prime list. It’s dishonest. If you can’t ship a heavy item in 2 days, it’s not Prime, now, is it?

Anyway, at first things were great. I could order an Arduino board on a Friday and receive it on Sunday. I received things on Saturdays, too. The 2-day promise was no joke.

Over the last few months, I’ve seen a big change. Order on a Monday, receive on…Friday. Extra charges for weekend delivery, too.

Yesterday I ordered 2 Prime items. That was Wednesday. Now Amazon says they will arrive in a week. Is Amazon on Mars time? Maybe on Mars, 2 days equal 1 earth week.

I got no explanation. I didn’t get an email containing an apology. Just a notification on Amazon’s site, telling me I had to wait a week.

It’s interesting. It’s not surprising. To me, it’s consistent with the way evil works.

I think the Internet is basically evil. I use it, but I think the devil is using it to do us great harm. It has spread pornography to every corner of the world. It has helped hostility increase to levels no one could have predicted 30 years ago. It’s going to destroy cash, so the government will be able to control us by freezing and confiscating our money and by using our purchases to surveil us. It’s going to destroy free will by making us unable to do anything without being observed.

The Internet is a bad thing, and one of its evils is the destruction of retail businesses. Malls are closing because no one wants to get in the car any more. We are headed toward a state in which a few big companies hold all the inventory, and you won’t be able to get the things you need unless you deal with them electronically, leaving a trail of bread crumbs for Uncle Sam, who is stupid, cruel, and unfair.

About half of Americans have Amazon Prime now. That’s an astounding statistic. It’s very powerful. And 2-day shipping was a big part of the appeal. Now that we’re hooked, the shipping guarantee is dissolving. That’s completely typical of the way evil works. No drug dealer charges you for your first line of coke. He lets you develop a taste for it, and then you pay whatever he asks.

As we become more dependent on Amazon and other online companies, they will lose their motivation to provide good service. That’s what’s happening with Prime. They have half of America. They know you won’t quit now. Maybe technological advances will make Prime a real 2-day service, and maybe Amazon will tell us to shut up and accept delays. Either way, Amazon comes out on top.

Am I saying we should boycott Internet vendors? No. They already won. There is nothing we can do. Depriving yourself won’t fix the situation.

It doesn’t matter that much to me. I went without house shoes and a housecoat for most of my life. I can wait 6 more days. But I find it interesting, and I wonder why no one seems to be talking about it.

Amazon says it will refund your membership for a month if they deliver something late. At least that’s the Internet scuttlebutt. Something to look into, if your Christmas socks haven’t arrived yet.

He is God, and This is the Christmas Season

I was just reading about Kim Jong-Un, North Korea’s eccentric leader. The guy Obama and Bill Clinton allowed to build nuclear weapons. I should also add Bush, since he didn’t stop it.

Like all serious leftists, he has a bee in his bonnet about God. Socialism has always been about dethroning God and replacing him with an impossible messiah in the form of a benevolent mommy state.

Kim (I assume that’s his family name) has decided to attack Christmas. He has banned all gatherings involving singing combined with alcohol. If he ruled Ireland, he could simply have banned wakes.

My first thought was that Kim would fit in really well on America’s coasts. The leftist war on Christmas is very real. Bill O’Reilly was ridiculed for acknowledging it, but he was right. These days, a store employee who says “merry Christmas” is regarded as though he had said “Heil Hitler.” A crazy judge just issued a ruling in which he made the utterly fatuous claim that Christmas has a “secular half.” Look it up. He was being generous. These days, Christmas (the mass of Christ) has a secular 95%. We see a whole lot of reindeer and snowmen, and we hear the word “holidays” a lot, but we don’t hear a whole lot about Jesus.

Once again, I am reminded how much I hate Miami. Where I am now, things are very different. I don’t live near a mainstream city. After I moved here, I noticed something incredible. You can walk into a business belonging to a national chain here and hear Christian music playing in the background, and when you leave a store, they usually wish you a merry Christmas.

The first time I noticed the music, I marveled at the courage of the store manager. I was thrilled, but I also felt like we were getting away with something. I wondered if the manager would get in trouble.

It’s very sad that we have to pretend this isn’t the Christmas season. What other major holidays are there at the end of December? Atheists don’t have holidays, unless Festivus counts. Kwanzaa is a made-up holiday created by a white-hating black supremacist, and no one pays much attention to it. Chanukkah is real, but let’s face it: we didn’t start decorating our houses because of a holiday that applies to 3% of the population. Yom Kippur is much more important than Chanukkah, and you will notice there is no Yom Kippur season. We don’t even celebrate Purim, the fun Jewish holiday where everyone gets hammered.

This is the Christmas season, plain and simple. It always has been, at least since we stole December 25 from the pagans. Without Jesus Christ, the messiah, the sole incarnation of God, the “holiday” season would not exist. Tell me I’m wrong.

I don’t know what God thinks about the Christmas season, except that I’m sure he appreciates us acknowledging Jesus. We don’t know the correct date, and we adopted a lot of pagan nonsense when we created the holiday. We are extremely materialistic at this time of year. I’m so sick of it, I give very cheap presents these days. God may not be all that happy with the way we handle things, but I’m sure he is offended at the way leftists treat the name of Jesus. We censor it like a curse word, while promoting the open use of all actual curse words.

Cover your eyes, if you’re a leftist. I am about to blaspheme your god.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Merry, merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Have a great time, celebrating the birth of the only supreme messiah; God in the form of a man. Roast a reindeer for your family and tell your kids there is no Santa Claus.

Jesus is God. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. J-E-S-U-S. If I ever said “season’s greetings,” I now repent. Jesus allowed himself to be murdered in order to save me from myself. The least I can do is say his name.

Yesterday I saws the testimony of a converted Jew from Israel. His grandfather was a very rich rabbi and a member of the Sanhedrin. When this man told his grandfather he had accepted Jesus, his grandfather threw dishes at him and opened up his forehead, leaving a scar. He ran him off. When his grandfather died, he left him a fortune worth over $40 million, on the condition that the grandson renounce Jesus. The grandson rejected it. His family told him he was dead. His mother said he was worse than a terrorist. He had to go live in a tent and wash dishes for an Arab who hated Jews. Seven famous rabbis from the Sanhedrin invaded his tent and spat on him. He never gave up on Jesus.

But we don’t have the nerve to say “Jesus” or “Christmas” at Banana Republic, in a putatively Christian nation.

We’re so brave!

We’re being conditioned to hate and deny the name Jesus. In the future, leftists will have the power to kill us for our beliefs, right here in America, and we will be asked to renounce the Lord in order to save our lives. By then, we’ll be used to being embarrassed by the mention of his name. We’ll be used to hiding our beliefs, as though we were hiding pornography addictions. If you can’t say “merry Christmas” today, you may have a hard time standing up for Jesus when a government stooge tries to get you to renounce salvation in exchange for a few more years of life.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Get over it.

Never forget that this is the Christmas season. You can call a cat a chicken if you want, but the truth is the truth.

Plus More Testimony

I got a nice surprise today. My sliced country ham arrived, and it’s much better than I expected.

I ordered it from Gatton Farms in Kentucky. I quit using them a long time ago, because they sent me a ham that wasn’t smelly enough. A few days ago, I started looking for a new ham, and I decided to try buying a Gatton Farms ham (because the price isn’t bad) and letting it sit around for a week or two before refrigerating it, to see if it improved. When the ham arrived today, I couldn’t resist frying a couple of slices. The last country ham I had was from Cracker Barrel, and it was pretty bland.

The new ham looked promising right out of the box. The slices were vacuum-sealed in clear bags, and the color was dark and nasty-looking, the way it should be. I flopped a couple into a skillet and gave them about three minutes on a side, after adding two tablespoons of bacon grease for good thermal conduction.

When I took them out, I poured off the excess grease, added a little water to the skillet, and boiled it down to make redeye gravy. Some people call cream gravy redeye gravy, but it’s much simpler. Cream gravy is bechamel sauce made from pork grease and pepper, more or less. Redeye gravy is what you get when you deglaze a skillet with water and then reduce it. People will tell you to add coffee to it, but my grandmother never did.

I’m very impressed. The ham and gravy were nicely acidic, the way they should be. The meat wasn’t too dry. It was nice and salty. I didn’t add water to cut the salt.

I don’t know if they’ve improved their curing method or if the disappointing stuff they sent in the past was just bad luck.

My half-gallon container of sorghum molasses hasn’t made it here yet. I look forward to trying it. I want to make biscuits and eat them with ham, butter, and sorghum. I hope the sorghum is thick. I’ve had sorghum so thick it made me want to chew on it.

Things are going very, very well in my prayer life. God has been helping me to spend more time praying in tongues, in several sessions every day. I can’t tell you why, but when I do this, life just flows. Problems solve themselves. Stress disappears. When I don’t do it, problems pile up.

I got a phrase during prayer the other day. It was, “I know the answer.” It just means I need to quit asking God for new answers and start applying the answer he already gave me. In 1986, he told me I needed to pray in tongues for long periods every day. For a long time, I’ve known that it works, but I haven’t applied it enough.

I always say I would be the most boring preacher alive, because I would always say the same thing: get baptized with the Holy Spirit and pray in tongues as much as you can. I keep coming back to it. It never doesn’t work.

It’s a great message. Think of all the effort it obviates. Denominations are teaching people to slave away at unpleasant methods that do not work. They tell them to make pilgrimages on their knees, give all their money to grinning monkeys on TBN, go on long fasts, pray this canned prayer, pray that canned prayer, pray to this or that false “saint,” give up good food for Lent, avoid meat on Fridays, and a whole list of other useless tasks, when what people really need is to connect themselves to God’s power and let him do the work.

Yesterday I had a funny thought. Imagine you dig ditches for a living. One day your foreman comes up to you and tells you to dig a ditch of a certain size. You give yourselves blisters and make your back sore, digging the prettiest ditch in history. Then the foreman makes you and all the other workers assemble to praise him for the great job he did. “You’re so worthy. Look at this great ditch you gave us, o foreman. We thank thee for thy ditch.”

How would you feel about that guy? You’d think he was an parasite and a colossal jerk. But somehow, we expect to do all the work to straighten out our lives…AND praise God for it.

Is God a colossal jerk? Does he want credit for the things you do? If you have to do the work, what, exactly, are you supposed to praise him for?

God wants to do the work. We know this because he wants the praise. He doesn’t want you to praise him for what you do without his help. When you pray in tongues, he does the work. He gives you the words. He answers the prayers. You’re barely involved. It only makes sense that you would praise him when you see the results, because there is no way you can take credit. You had no idea what you were saying!

God fixes people’s problems, and he even wants to do the work of changing your character. Your catastrophically disordered and disabled character is too screwed up for you to fix. You already blew it. The damage is done. If you could repair it, you wouldn’t need Jesus. The crucifixion would have been a waste of time. It’s as if you spent your life mining sin, and while you were a thousand feet down, the mine collapsed on you. You can’t move the timbers and boulders. You’re pinned. God understands that, and when you keep trying to dig yourself out, your pride tries his patience. It proves you haven’t learned anything. It drives him to stop helping you.

We are heirs, not self-made men. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We’re supposed to sit back and let God give things to us. It’s humiliating, but then it should be. Humiliation just indicates that we finally understand what we are.

Here’s something I realized the other day: when God gave his stamp of approval to Jesus, he didn’t say he was proud of him. Remember? Jesus was baptized, and when he rose from the water, the Holy Spirit alighted on him, and God said, “Behold my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” Not, “of whom I am very proud.”

Sometimes when I accomplish something satisfying, I think about that. I feel like saying, “I’m proud of this,” but I know better than to do that. The correct thing to say is, “I am pleased that this is done.” We like to say we take pride in our work. That’s wrong. We should say we take pleasure in doing it well, and that we’re grateful God helped us. I think about that a lot. You don’t need pride. It’s a poison. You can be satisfied with what you have and what you do, without ruining everything by bringing pride into it.

God himself is not proud. That’s incredible. The Bible says it’s true, though. God himself, who has more reason to be proud than anyone, is humble. But somehow we, who offend God constantly and live on his mercy, think our asinine pride is a virtue.

I hope things continue to go well. I know from experience that I can always find a way to drop the ball.

I don’t care if anyone agrees with me or not. What I am doing was not my own idea, and it works. I can’t force anyone else to accept it. I wish they would. I’m not going to be disturbed if they tell me how offended they are by “cheap grace” and so on. Maybe they’re so great they can save themselves. I’m not, and clearly, I am not required to.

Self-Righteousness is Cancer

I decided to take down yesterday’s blog post and start over. I have more more important things to write about than the saga of Al Franken and Roy Moore.

God has been giving me a lot of help lately. He has been helping me to see how screwed up I am, and how far I am from the person he wants me to be. It really started to hit home after my former pastor was jailed for child molestation. We all plant the seeds of our own destruction, and even if we don’t end up facing public disgrace, those seeds need to be rooted out and replaced with seeds of blessing. They do harm, even if they don’t become full-blown disasters.

During the last century or so, Americans have taught themselves to love sin and pride. As a result, we no longer fear punishment, and worse, we are no longer able to perceive our baseness. When you don’t notice your symptoms, you don’t know you have a disease, so you don’t try to get healed.

Sometimes I watch old TV shows and movies. I see grown men and women using separate twin beds. I see well-made movies about mature topics, in which the dialogue is completely G-rated. Then I see modern entertainment. Performers on broadcast TV–not just cable–joke about oral sex. Sometimes we actually see them having sex. We see them naked. We hear all kinds of filthy language. This happened within the span of one lifetime. Surely that’s unprecedented.

If you had been born in 1750, in 1825, you would have found yourself in a world that had not changed much. Prices would not be much different. Technology would only be a little better. People’s manners would be about like they had been when you were born. Consider the last century. When I was born, there was no Internet. There were no personal computers. Most Americans attended church and owned homes. Women wore slips. The only really dirty movies were illegal stag films shot in cheap motels. You could make it to college before finding out what the word “condom” meant.

Now the world is a locker room patrolled by sex-crazed, pride-crazed bullies. The filth of society commands our attention. We used to look up to people who at least pretended to have morals. Now we make the Kardashians rich. We worship illiterate rappers who tell our kids they want to kill the police. Public nudity is legal in many of our cities, and if you don’t want your kids to see it, you can just stay home.

We are completely jaded. Our consciences are seared. We have absolutely no fear of God.

We go to church, and preachers don’t tell us to repent. They tell us God is all for homosexuality, and that he creates homosexuals just as they are. We are told pride is a good thing. We are told to relax and stop feeling guilty, because Jesus (if they admit he was real) carried all that on the cross. Just enjoy yourself, scrupulously avoid criticizing sin, and give preachers your life savings instead of paying your just debts.

Preachers are cowards and pinworms. They don’t have the guts to tell people things that will save them. They only care about money and fame. They do their damnedest, perhaps literally, to avoid saying anything that might cause even one paying person to walk out the door. God will hold them accountable. They represent him to people who need him desperately, and they lie and keep them from finding him.

I feel like I know a little bit about God, but I’m like a pair of socks that has only been through the prewash cycle. The wash and rinse haven’t even started. No one around me knows enough to teach me. I have to go to the source–the Holy Spirit–because preachers are slime. The very best preachers I know of are hopelessly inadequate.

Last night, I suddenly realized I had wronged someone, and once God showed it to me, I did not understand how I could have missed something so obvious. I still don’t understand. Spiritual blindness is supernatural. It defies explanation. I talked to God about it for a long time. I know there must be other obvious sins in my life, thriving under my defective radar. How did I let this blindness happen to me? I adopted the standards of a world which is literally the ceiling of hell instead of thinking about the standards of heaven, which is my real home.

Pride is not okay. Sexual sin is not okay. Cruelty is not okay. Name a habitual sin. It’s not okay. But our culture praises sin so highly, we actually compete to see who can be best at it. We spend our lives tying weights to ourselves, to drag us down toward hell. How shocking it must be for a modern American to die and stand in God’s presence. It must be overwhelming to see how wrong we are about everything, and how beautiful life is supposed to be.

If you want to ask God for something, ask him for correction. Ask him to fix your roots, not your leaves and fruit. The apparent things will heal, once the hidden things are put in order. Forgiveness is great, but as Paul put it, it’s not an occasion to the flesh. It’s not permission to sin. Repentance and clean living are important. You need to be set apart, not just after you die, but right now.

You also need to know that God expects to do the hard work for you. You can’t fix yourself. You can’t even diagnose yourself. You have to have his help, and he allowed himself to be tortured to death so he could give it to you. Don’t be ashamed to ask for handouts. You can’t earn anything. You are too wicked and weak. Accept the fact that you’re a criminal and a charity case, and be willing to be given the things you can’t provide for yourself.

Preachers tell us fear of the Lord isn’t really fear. They say it’s reverence or awe. That’s misleading. Read an interlinear Bible. The word translated “fear” means “terror.” No one wants to admit that God is dangerous, but he is. He is the most dangerous being there is. He, not Satan, created hell, and he is the one who puts them there to burn. He allows bad things to happen to sinners who don’t repent. His love is the best thing there is, but his enmity is a horror that defies description. There is no defeating it. There is nowhere to hide. There is no shelter. No one can hold him back. We have to be afraid to do evil, instead of seeing God as someone who changes our filthy diapers once a week and then sends us home to continue sinning.

The filthier you are, the more you will suffer as God’s enemies gain power in America. The disciples were stronger than common people, and Jesus was stronger than the disciples. You can’t complain if you don’t change, and then you find that you’re the tail and not the head. That’s how things are supposed to work. It doesn’t mean something went wrong. It doesn’t mean bad things happen to good people. You will have brought it on yourself, and accusing God of letting you down will just make it worse.

Ask for the ability to see what’s wrong with you, and don’t be a wimp about facing the discomfort. You can’t fix an abscess without ripping off the scab and cleaning out the rot. We put scabs on ourselves. We put thin skins of denial over our iniquities. It’s like shoveling dirt over a seed. They continue to grow. The demons that live in us keep getting more powerful. We need to confront our faults and our denial and have our inner illegal aliens torn out and driven off.

Repentance brings new power. Denial blocks God’s power. Don’t be discouraged by the need to repent, because it will open a channel to great strength and peace. You’re not beating yourself up for nothing.

This world is really nasty. Try to snap out of your trance before it destroys you.

It’s Good to Feel Bad

I am having a surprisingly good day, and the events surrounding my former pastor helped make it happen. I know that sounds bad.

I am tired of calling him “former pastor,” so I will give him a phony name. I will call him Eduardo.

Eduardo’s situation is hard for me to accept. In a very short time, he went from respected pastor to homeless, penniless outcast. It may turn out that he lost his entire future. He may be given a life sentence. If he gets convicted on the worst charges he faces, he will spend 25 years in prison. No parole. No time off. Presumably very few visits.

When I found out about it, I had a strange reaction. I felt as though I were the one in jail, awaiting trial. I felt as if I were the one who had been exposed. It drove me deeper in to self-examination, and that has paid off.

A long time ago, God showed me that Holy-Spirit-filled churches were wrong to talk about money and blessings all the time. The prosperity gospel doesn’t work; it makes people poor, and it prevents them from looking for the truth about God’s desires. God showed me that we should be focusing on getting ourselves rehabilitated. We need to have our characters changed supernaturally. That comes first. The other things are relatively unimportant.

I made some effort to get correction. I pray for it every day. I encourage my friends to pray for it. I cast things out of myself. I spoke defeat to the spirits I had allowed to enslave me. It did me a lot of good. I recommend you do these things, too. But the Eduardo scandal has moved me to go further.

I was making what I thought was a pretty good effort. I was patiently waiting for the fruit to grow. Over time, I became more and more honest with God. In prayer, I confessed to everything I could think of, as sincerely as I could. But there were still nagging issues. I still had bad habits that seized me once in a while. I didn’t feel as much love for God or human beings as I wanted. I didn’t pray enough. I was putting in at least three hours a day, and that sounds like a lot, but I needed more than that. I knew it and admitted it, but I couldn’t find the determination to do it consistently.

If the good things God promises aren’t coming through, you are doing something wrong. There is no other explanation.

What Eduardo did was absolutely disgusting. I am not saying that to condemn anyone. It’s necessary for me to mention it in order to talk about what I’m going through. What he did was not sex with a teenager, which would have been bad enough. It was pedophilia. Women may get angry at me for saying this, but it’s completely normal and unavoidable for a man to be attracted to a young girl who looks like a woman. Undeveloped children are another story. That’s a sickness.

I suppose I should try to head off female outrage, so I will say something about my past. The most attractive female I ever knew may well have been a 14-year-old I knew in Israel. I was working on a kibbutz. A woman who was a journalist in Finland worked as a volunteer, and she brought her troubled daughter, Anke. Anke was completely mature, physically. She could have passed for 25. Without makeup or retouching, she looked the way models looked in Playboy magazine. Stunning. She was also promiscuous. One night she came up to me and asked me if I wanted to make out. Even at 22, I was not totally stupid. I turned her down. And I was not exactly dripping with women! I got very few opportunities for sex and romance. I was not happy.

I was not willing to touch her. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t attracted to her. She was physically magnificent. I just knew it was wrong. I knew she was messed up, and I knew people took advantage. I did not want any part of that, and I certainly did not want to be exposed. Later on, I saw a friend of mine from New Zealand, rolling around on a bed with her with his lips pressed against hers. He was older than I was. Part of me was jealous, but I was also disappointed in him.

Anyway, male sexual attraction is unrelated to morality. It’s purely physical. A man doesn’t stop being attracted to a girl the second he sees the wrong year on her driver’s license. Anyone who expects us to find beautiful teens unattractive is living in a fantasy world. If you think a man–even a moral man who behaves himself–can’t find your daughter attractive because she’s in the 8th grade, you are ignorant.

Eduardo would be somewhat less disappointing if a stunning high school junior had thrown himself at him and gotten her way, but the victim was a little girl who probably weighed 80 pounds when the whole business started. The attraction itself is outside of normal male parameters. It’s like being attracted to another man or a pet. Also, the corruption is worse. Having sex with a round-heeled cheerleader would be very bad, but an 11-year-old? You’re introducing her to types of filth and evil she shouldn’t even be aware of.

So. That’s how I see his actions. I understand lust for females who have been through puberty. I can see how someone could slip under the right circumstances. I can’t relate to lust for little kids. How can the temptation exist?

I’ll say something else that may surprise women. Little boys are not that pure. Something to think about when you’re undressing in front of them or saying things you should not. When I was in the second grade, my favorite teacher left to get married. She took me aside to tell me she would miss me and that I should be nice to the new teacher. The whole time, I was looking down the front of her dress. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Second grade. Be careful around boys.

What Eduardo did is shocking, but I have done bad things, too. While I was praying last night, I dredged them back up in my mind and threw them out in front of God. I had done that a lot in the past, but I hadn’t felt the same level of shame and fear. Eduardo unlocked those things for me. I was able to feel more shame, as well as the fear of God.

Eduardo is where he is because God did not protect him. He got outside the realm of protection. He didn’t protect Eduardo from the girl, her mother, or the cops. Fear of God means fearing losing his protection. You really need to be on his good side, because if you’re not, he will let extremely ugly and humiliating things happen to you.

Tongue-talking preachers like to try to make us feel better. They get so excited about refraining from condemning people, they lead us to treat our sins as though they don’t matter. That’s a big mistake. Accepting shame and fear opened doors in me. I felt good about feeling bad, if you can understand that. I felt like I was letting pus out. I stopped trying to feel good about myself. I just wanted it all out of me.

God helped me to spend an adequate amount of time praying last night, and I put in two hours of prayer in tongues this morning. I was very serious. I was intent on getting it done. I had the motivation I had been lacking. I welcomed fear and shame. I knew that walls would be breached, and things that had been inhabiting me would be exposed and driven out.

When I was young, I thought self-esteem was a panacea. I had low self-esteem, and I thought high self-esteem would make me succeed in life. We hear this all the time from educators and TV shrinks. The problem is this: sometimes low self-esteem is healthy and appropriate. High self-esteem is unjustified. We go into ghettos and teach immoral future sociopaths they’re beautiful, talented, and good…when they’re not. We put lipstick on pigs and send them out into the world. It doesn’t work. We teach pride, and what does the Bible say God does to the proud? He fights them.

Eduardo is one of the proudest people you will ever meet, and his wife and son are just like him. Pride got him where he is. He was completely unable to listen and learn.

Today I believe it’s okay to feel bad about what I am. If it brings God’s help to me, it’s great. It’s not that painful, and it takes less effort than lying to myself all the time. I really want my inner self to change. If permitting myself to be ashamed is all it takes, it’s a bargain.

One nice thing about accepting and confessing shame is that you can’t invite exposure or a fall. No one will ever say, “You held yourself out as a rotten person, but here’s what you REALLY are!” That kind of thing only happens to the proud. Pride goes before a fall. If you’re already ashamed, where can you fall to?

I believe God will help me more now. It’s consistent with scripture. He has certainly been more helpful since I found out about Eduardo.

The path of divine improvement has plateaus. It’s like peeling an onion. Every time you reach a new plateau, it’s a good thing, but you have to keep going. You can’t say, “I’ll just stay here and be satisfied.” You grow or you rot. You can’t stay still.

I am better than I used to be, but I still need lots of work. Admitting it and feeling shame and remorse will help make it happen.

To get more information, look at Psalm 32. I think it will help. It says God will help a man who confesses, when the great waters rise. The great waters are the voices of the ungodly. They control this nation. Their filth is flooding us out. When things get even worse than they are, you will need God to lift you up.

Don’t let self-righteousness pull you under. At the mercy of these people (and the spirits they serve) is not where we want to be.

If You Want to Survive, Keep Improving

I am still upset about my former pastor’s molestation arrest.

Last night I woke up full of anxiety. It’s odd, but I felt as though I were the one who had committed the offenses. I felt as though I were the one who had to be concerned about punishment.

I kept having thoughts about my own sins and irresponsible acts. I have gotten away with a lot in this life. So far!

I suppose it’s harsh to compare myself with someone who is charged with molesting a girl under the age of 12, but I am not nearly what I should be. And it’s better to be too contrite than not contrite enough. If other people have to fall, I should try to benefit by observing their fate and trying to avoid it through confession and repentance. There isn’t much to be gained by patting myself on the back and telling myself I’m doing fine.

I thought about my past and the divine opportunities I’ve missed. I didn’t hear from God until I was about 22, so maybe I should get a little slack for my failures up to that point, but at 25, I was baptized with the Holy Spirit, and God had made it clear I was supposed to pray in tongues every day. I didn’t do it. I fell away. I got worse instead of better.

It’s funny, but it didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, and it wasn’t deliberate rebellion. I didn’t decide God wasn’t real. I didn’t doubt that prayer in tongues was important. I just wandered off. I was distracted and forgetful.

I don’t know why God was so distant when I was a kid. I heard from the devil all the time, and there were plenty of evil people around me to abuse me and mislead me, but I didn’t get visits from God, and I didn’t know any righteous people who could help me get to know him. I hear from God every day now. I don’t understand I why made it into my twenties without hearing from him once. It’s very strange, because it seems unlike him.

God is always right and good. I can’t criticize him just because his actions don’t always suit me. What he did was correct. And once I started hearing from him, I should have held on for dear life.

Heaven is very far away, and help here on earth is not automatic. We’re like egg cells. You know how that works. The body produces a lot of them, and very few get fertilized and become human beings. The rest get washed out of the body and die. A lot of people are born, but not many come to know God, and not many are saved.

The earth is a very bad place, much more like hell than heaven. We’re just too used to it to see the evil.

Often, I feel like I’m much better than I am. I feel that the overt things God has done in my life are some sort of stamp of approval. I know better, and it bothers me that I could feel that way. Sometimes I make myself think about the bad things I’ve done and thought, just so I can regain perspective. God fights the proud. I do not want God to fight me. Not over an idiotic misperception.

It disturbs me when people tell me I’m a good person. I feel like they’re driving nails in my coffin. I am a product of 20th-century America. I am a mess. If I succeed in concealing it, it doesn’t mean you should reward me for it. If God tells me things, it’s because I needed to be told, not because I was perfect.

God told me something interesting: if you’re 99% good and 1% bad, you’re bad. That’s the way it works in heaven. Being good by earthly standards is different. The standard is much lower. Heaven has quality control. Nothing imperfect gets through the door.

I’m not saying I’m only 1% bad. Just making a point.

I got up and paced the floor, and I thanked God for the correction. I asked him to send more. I asked him to help me to be judged privately by him, and I asked him to help me avoid being judged publicly. In the past, when I felt negative feelings, I worked with God with the intention of getting rid of them. Last night, I said I was fine with feeling bad. Sometimes you need to feel bad for a while.

Too many of us go to church to be helped to feel good in spite of our sins. We don’t have any intention of changing. We just want God to wink at us and tell us this week’s sins are forgiven, and then we want to go home and resume sinning. You can’t enter the kingdom of heaven that way. If you want power and help on this earth, you have to love correction. Christians die of cancer. They go bankrupt. Their wives cheat on them. They get killed in church by mass murderers. You need to get close to God if you want help. His help isn’t for rebellious Christians. It’s for the contrite.

While I was lying in bed praying, I thought about the pastor. At that very moment, he was lying in a jail 300 miles away, with no prospect of relief. As bad as things were at that moment, they were likely to get worse. Some of the charges carry a 25-year mandatory minimum. No parole until every day is served. No time off. And inmates do not like sex offenders. Guards look the other way when they are mistreated. Unless he catches a break from the prosecutor or judge, or there is a technical issue that helps him, he may die surrounded by evil people who live to torment him. He may have to put up with that for 40 years.

It’s too much to absorb.

I thought about a testimony I read. A lady named Mary Kay Baxter said Jesus had taken her through hell. The people there lived in flaming pits, with huge maggots chewing tunnels through their bones. The guards were huge fallen spirits that hated the damned. It sounds so much like prison. Prison is a picture of hell.

I would be happier had I learned the pastor had died. He would be better off.

I still don’t understand how it happened. I don’t think he has no conscience. Maybe he was unprotected because he was too proud to develop spiritually, and when a loathsome spirit came to him with a sick urge, he could not fight it off. This life is a war, not a pleasure cruise. We’re supposed to train for battle.

I don’t know the answer, though.

When I was done praying and exercising God’s authority, I went back to sleep and slept soundly and peacefully. That was nice.

I hope my distress improves me. I don’t think anything better can come of this.

Surprising News from Miami

This can’t be right. I got bored and Googled a few people I know in Miami, and it looks like a former pastor of mine has been arrested for child molestation. Eight counts.

The mugshot is on the web, and it sure looks like him. The name is correct. The age is different from the age on a people-finder site, but it’s off by less than a year.

He used to have a Facebook page with his wife. Now she has her own, and his doesn’t come up. The church’s website is down for “maintenance.”

This is a guy who was not good to me. He ran a cult, and he and his wife broke up friendships. He would not listen to anyone. He was too proud. Not my favorite person on earth. But this news is very upsetting. I would not wish this on anyone.

I have to wonder if it’s true. He is in jail in Miami. The judge denied bond for some of the counts. The inmate search page has domestic violence notes. If he got into it with his wife, maybe she accused him falsely. Women do things like that.

Then again, maybe I’m wrong to suggest she would do it.

For the record, I never saw the slightest hint that he was capable of this. It does not ring true. Maybe it is true, but it doesn’t sound right. I’ve known people who seemed creepy and perverted, and he is not one of them. I never heard him say anything libidinous. I never saw him put a hand on anyone. I never saw him stare at a child. He didn’t seem particularly involved with kids at the church. Many molesters become teachers, youth pastors, scoutmasters, and so on, so they can get close to kids. I never saw any of that.

The clerk’s site doesn’t mention child pornography. It would be odd for a pedophile in 2017 to lack pornography.

Sometimes when something bad happens to someone who is out of line, it’s hard not to feel satisfaction. Not this time. If he gets convicted, his life is over. Everyone on the outside will hate him, and so will all of the prison inmates he lives with.

Am I wrong to feel sympathy for the accused and nothing for the victim? I don’t know who he is alleged to have molested or what he is alleged to have done. I don’t know the first thing about it. If there are victims, those are the people I should feel bad for.

Maybe I feel sorry for him simply because I know him.

If there really is a victim, I may know that person, too.

This is staggering. I did not like the things he did, but I don’t want to see this happen to him. I suppose it didn’t “happen to him,” though. If he’s guilty, he himself made it happen, intentionally.

After I left the church, I used to ask God if I should pray for him and his wife, and I kept feeling that God was telling me not to, because they could not be corrected. Maybe I was right about that.

It may sound funny to say I didn’t pray for someone who mistreated me (and others), but I’ve found that effective prayer takes time, and you have to try not to waste that time on the wrong people. Some people who harm you can be changed. Others can’t, and the time you waste praying for them could be spent on people who would be improved by it. You can’t pray all day. Your prayer time and energy are limited. You have to choose your battles. More accurately, you need to get God to choose them for you.

America is going to go down the toilet, and a lot of people are going to waste their time praying for God to fix it. That’s a great example of misguided prayer. You can’t pray against prophecy. When my sister ruined her life, I felt that God didn’t want me to pray for her any more. There was no way to penetrate her self-righteousness and utter lack of honesty. I try to get God to help me pray for people who can change, so my time here on earth amounts to something.

Man, this is bad. And one of my best friends was counting on that church to provide a career. There were kids who went to that church without their useless parents, because they wanted to know God. People depended on that church.

I reserve judgment. I don’t know whether he’s guilty or not. Most arrestees are guilty of at least what they’re charged with, but you never know.

I reserve judgment. I don’t know whether he’s guilty or not. Most arrestees are guilty of at least what they’re charged with, but you never know.

Be careful whom you worship with, and don’t let your desire to see the best in people lead you to associate with the wrong individuals.

I’m glad God got me out of that place. At first, I thought the pastors were wonderful, but they kept hitting me over the head with their faults, and then they did something stupid that made it too awkward for me to continue attending.

I was a deacon. I’m glad I won’t be known as a deacon of a church with the molestation scandal.

A friend just confirmed it. He molested his niece. The niece told her mom. Her mom put it all over Facebook. He apologized to the church and stepped down. Terrible.

For a while after he left, my friend pastored the church. I guess that fell apart.

Confessing in front of the church was the right thing to do, I suppose, but it will all but guarantee a conviction.

Hope this is the most disturbing news I get this week.