God is Better Than I am

I don’t know what to say. A few minutes ago, before 8 a.m., I summoned the strength to check the news. It hit me so hard, I lost my composure for a moment.

Yesterday I was very honest about my inner struggle, and I’m going to be honest again. My emotional moment was not caused by concern about America; not primarily. I don’t have high hopes for America, and my concerns were more selfish. I was primarily concerned about my own relationship with God.

For weeks, I have been praying for Hillary to lose (not so much for Trump to win), and I have been speaking defeat to Hillary. I kept feeling faith surge through me, saying Trump was going to take it. It was the same faith I had felt in other battles, before emerging on top. I got miraculous healings with this faith. I got help for friends in trouble with this faith. I got victory over nasty people with this faith. But it was telling me a man who was behind in crucial battleground states was going to win the presidency, and I could not make myself rest in it.

This is a great thing to write about, because it separates God’s glory from my glory. I had the faith–the Holy Spirit spoke to me again and again–but it was hard for me to listen to it, because my mind is not that strong. This will sound strange to someone who doesn’t have supernatural faith, but I was afraid to believe my faith. I failed, but God was strong.

I went to bed before 10 p.m., because I was determined not to get caught up in the nail-biting. No matter what I felt, I kept thanking God for defeating Hillary. I woke up in the middle of the night, and I didn’t want to check the news. I thanked God for defeating Hillary. I spoke defeat to her. I spoke victory to Donald Trump and the Spirit-led people of America.

Even while I was telling God I was worried about my relationship with him, because the polls were telling me the thing I was building my life around–revelation–was an illusion, I continued to thank God for doing what my faith had said he would do.

Where would I be if Hillary had won? America would be about the same. We would be moving to the bottom more quickly, but that’s about it. The ship, which is sinking anyway, would go down faster. Unlike America, I would have been affected profoundly. I would have had to start over with God. I would have had to re-evaluate everything he had taught me since I turned back to him. My world would have had no foundation.

I can’t go back to the secular life. It’s dead to me. Without God, I would have nothing at all.

That’s why I was disturbed yesterday. America was a secondary consideration. I can’t be married to the fate of America. I can’t do that much about it, and I know the end is going to be bad.

When you look at the supernatural, you always have to look at both sides of the coin. If Trump had lost, I would have endured a spiritual crisis. Because he won, I suppose I have a great personal victory. I’ve been thinking so much about defeat, I didn’t think about victory until just now.

The more times your faith is rewarded, the stronger your trust in God will be. That’s my payoff. The next time I’m stuck at the edge of the Red Sea with the Egyptians behind me, I’ll remember Trump. I won’t have to hole up and regroup. I won’t have to conduct a personal audit. I’ll be able to go forward with confidence in the only thing anyone should trust: the goodness of God.

I can’t describe the relief.

I’ve been praying for God to help Christians behave correctly. I’ve asked him to help us not to gloat or spout abuse. I know a lot of people will do that. If the left had won, the filth coming from their mouths would be unbearable right now, and many of us are no better than they are.

The Bible says that if you gloat over your enemy, God may take his hand off of him and take away your victory. We need to keep that in mind.

I’ve been praying for God to help us see this as what it was: a narrow escape we don’t deserve. Christians did more than unbelievers to put Obama and Hillary in power. We turned from God. We didn’t pray. We didn’t submit. We’re the most powerful people on earth. Unbelievers don’t have the ability to change the world the way we do. Their rebellion is bad, but they’re at the mercy of fate. We’re the ones who decide what happens. We decided to give our enemies success. I’ve been praying God will help us, during this short respite, to turn to him and increase his harvest of souls. I’ve been asking him to help us prepare for the Rapture.

I admit, I’m looking around to see what’s happening on the left. I’m checking CNN. The Fox people look like they just won the lottery. They’re all smiles. Over at CNN, everyone seems to be trying to figure out what went “wrong.” How did the American people make such a huge mistake?

I’m wondering what will happen now. I expected people to riot if Trump won. The entitlement-minded people who supported Hillary felt Republicans had no right to speak, vote, or even exist. They were violent and profane. They were unethical, cruel, and ruthless. They’re not going to see a loss as the just result of a reasonably fair election. They’re going to think they were cheated out of their right to take over America. I don’t expect them to handle it with maturity.

This will be a good week to keep an eye on Drudge. He always finds these things. If white people are beaten on the streets or Muslims go on rampages shouting about Allah, he’ll tell us.

The big thing I want for America is a conservative judiciary. Trump may fail in other regards, but he will probably appoint judges, including one or more Supreme Court justices, who see things correctly. The unborn will get more support, and so will Christians and gun owners. The lunacy of the Obama years may be curbed to some extent. That will be nice.

It’s a mistake to expect too much. I always criticize the left for making government their God, but we do the same thing. If we expect Trump to crush our enemies and make life perfect for us, we’re going to be disappointed. He’s better than Hillary, but he’s still Donald Trump.

By the way, we learned a lot about Republican politicians. We should have known it already. Human nature never changes. Many Republican politicians do not care about America; they proved they care only about their own careers. They put their ambitions and the GOP’s power above the welfare of the United States. They refused to back Trump, and some–including Bush I, Bush II, and Jeb Bush–even opposed him. To oppose the Republican nominee is to oppose a conservative judiciary. To be against Trump is to be for an extreme-leftist Supreme Court. George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, and the rest of the backstabbers showed they care less about America than they do about their own success. Disgraceful. It should be remembered.

Because Trump won, we kept TWO branches of government. The Bushes tried to take both away from us.

I see Hillary hasn’t given her speech of even conceded via Twitter. That’s just the kind of pettiness you would expect from the corrupt Clinton regime. We’ve seen it before.

This is a wonderful morning. My faith is intact. My relationship with God is strengthened, not shaken. From here I have nowhere to go but up. Eschatological double entendre possibly intended.

Sign the Papers and Don’t Look too Close

This is an interesting day for me.

Right now, the American public is doing its best to offend God by electing a candidate who loves abortion, homosexuality, the destruction of Israel, and the persecution of Christians. The other choice is an adulterer and blowhard who will probably support Christian causes only because Christians vote for him.

It’s not a great choice. Satan and Satan Lite. For that matter, even the “good” GOP candidates weren’t prizes. Ted Cruz appears to belong to a wacky dominionist cult. Jeb Bush is a RINO who probably doesn’t care about conservative goals. I don’t think any of these people compare to Joshua or Moses. They’re just secular self-promoters; blown-up versions of the annoying, narcissistic kids who ran for class president when you were eight years old.

If we voted with our hearts, Hillary would probably win. We love having the government force other people to give us their money. We love sexual sin. We love abortion. We want the government to be our daddy, because the alternative is God, and God will expect us to change. The Democrats represent the flesh, and we’re all about the flesh. I think it’s fair to call Hillary the people’s candidate.

What are the people? The Beast.

Today we’ll see if God can persuade us to accept the lesser of two evils. If he can, then we’ll get four years of conservative federal judges and a certain amount of protection from government-sponsored persecution. That would be nice.

That’s today, in a nutshell. What makes it interesting to me is that when I pray, I keep feeling that Trump is going to win. I feel faith moving through me. What if it doesn’t happen? Then I may have a major adjustment to make.

The polls don’t look good. The big states that matter are particularly disturbing. Then again, when I look at polls, I’m walking by sight, not faith. Moses had to march to the side of the Red Sea in front of millions of people who trusted him and then wait for it to part. That’s faith. He had more than polls to worry about.

Over the years, I’ve invested a tremendous amount of time in prayer. I have given my life completely to God. I don’t mean I do nothing but serve him, but I gave up worldly ambition, and I quit holding back. I don’t focus on asking him for favors. I ask him to help me give everything to him, without reservation.

I have developed a mindset and a spiritual skill set which I believe to be gifts from God. Supernatural faith is part of that. If the faith doesn’t pay off, what do I do? I can’t go back to the worldly way of life. It’s disgusting. I don’t want it. The world is revolting. I can’t be part of it. It won’t even have me!

It’s very unusual for me to feel this kind of faith about something and then turn out to be wrong. When it happens, it’s a serious blow.

Back when I was at my last church, we had a member who had cancer, and we prayed for him all the time. More than once, I felt huge surges of faith that he would be healed. Then one day I got a text from a friend. The man was dead. The church rolled right past this IED as though it weren’t important, but it bothered me a great deal. When you get a major alert from God, telling you you did something wrong, you don’t just pretend it never happened.

When I talked to God about it, the impression I got was that the man died because of his pride. He was popular; everyone liked him. But he was very proud. You couldn’t tell him anything. He argued with revelation as though it were opinion.

Unconfessed iniquity gives the enemy a foothold. Paul said people died because they took communion without examining themselves. I think my friend died because he believed God approved of him in every way. He wasn’t interested in change. He was primarily after God’s blessings. When I tried to talk to this man or the pastors about the need for repentance and confession, they blew it off. They thought faith was everything. Obedience wasn’t necessary. They left a door open, and I think he died because of it.

Will that explanation fit, if America chooses Hillary? I don’t think so. We are proud and filthy; no doubt about it. But I’m not asking for God to turn us into obedient children. I’m just asking him to sway an election.

America is finished. We have abandoned God, and his protection is disappearing, like sunlight moving away from a country as its planet rotates away from the sun. I have no illusions about a restoration of America. The only question is how quickly the ship will sink. It would be a big help if God delayed it and helped us to get aligned with him before the Rapture; that’s all I want.

Because I know America is washed up, I’m not that bound up in the results of the election per se. Even if Hillary wins, I should be able to get by during my remaining years. They’re not going to drag me out of the house and burn me the day after the inauguration. If Trump wins, we’ll be ruled by a liberal Republican who will almost certainly support homosexuality against us, so things won’t be that great. I’m just concerned about my faith and the mountain of revelation I’ve received since I turned back to God. If that is damaged, it will be a big setback.

Maybe it’s a mistake to yoke myself to America by praying for the nation.

I had a dream last night. I dreamed my dad brought a restored car to my house. It was a 1970 Buick Electra 225 convertible, like the one I had in the 1980’s. It was on a trailer.

I’ve wanted that car back for years. It broke down, and I had to leave it in a barn. Then the barn burned. To me, that car represents all the good things I’ve lost in life. I feel that way about it.

In the dream, some parts of the car looked really good. The restoration work seemed top-notch. Then a couple of brackets on the rear leaf springs bent, and the car sagged. I started seeing paint problems. My Electra was gold, and so was the one in the dream. I started seeing places where blue paint showed through; blue is the color of states that vote for Democrats. I saw big scrapes in the paint which were caused by carelessness in aligning the parts. Then the left fender fell off.

When I woke up, I was very disturbed. I was afraid the car represented my faith and revelation. Maybe God was telling me I had been deceived, and that I was relying on something that couldn’t help me. Recently, I had a dream in which prosperity preachers were depicted as clowns who sold restored cars. The dream I had last night made me wonder: have I bought too much of their product? Even with the help God has given me, am I too close to their beliefs to be blessed?

I prayed for a long time, and now I believe the car represents Donald Trump and his leadership.

Trump loves gold. He puts it on his buildings. He had a yacht with gold plumbing fixtures. Gold means wealth. In the Bible, it also means excellence.

Christians are hoping Trump will be a vehicle which will carry them over the problems we face in America. But the car’s suspension was broken. I wasn’t even sure I could drive it back to the restoration shop to be repaired. If we put too much weight on Trump, he will let us down. He’ll be helpful to us, but he’s not one of us, and he can’t be trusted very much. He’s not the answer to our problems.

The paint shows that he’s not solid. There is a thin coat of excellence on him, but underneath, he’s just a trader. He’s in it for Trump. He will never be a statesman.

I think this is correct, but I won’t say I’m sure. I don’t call myself a prophet. The prophets didn’t make mistakes. I’ve made several in this area.

I think I’ll go look at Youtube and see what Christians are saying this week. Maybe someone reliable has a revelation.

I keep speaking defeat to Hillary and thanking God for preventing her from winning. We’ll see what happens.

I’m trying to be honest about this, and I’m writing about it before the election results come out, because it would be too easy to wait until the dust settles. I’m out here on a limb, hoping nothing snaps.

Assange gets Podesta’s Goat

In Greek mythology, the daughter of the king of Troy was cursed. She was a prophet, and she was always right, but no one believed her. She went through life telling people about their mistakes and the pain they would cause, but they never listened, so she had to stand by and watch while they did the lemming mambo off various cliffs.

Her name was Cassandra. That was her other curse. Sounds like a girl who wins 4-H prizes for being able to lift a heifer without assistance.

I can relate to Cassandra. I am not always right, but I’ve been right a whole bunch of times, and most people haven’t listened to me. People don’t have much respect for me. I suppose that’s fair, because I don’t respect them much, either.

Most prophets are unpopular. Cassandra’s situation was very realistic.

Just about anyone who tells the truth will be unpopular.

Today I read something which confirms something I always say. I tell people the Democratic Party belongs to Satan. No one listens; they say Republicans are evil because they don’t want everyone in the world to come here and get welfare money and the right to vote, without any vetting. They say we’re evil because we support the right to carry arms. It doesn’t faze them that the vast majority of violent criminals, drug dealers, and career thieves are leftists. It doesn’t bother them to see the Democrats restricting the First Amendment rights of preachers or using the courts to close Christian businesses over wedding cakes. Occultists almost invariably support liberal candidates and policies, but no one listens. They’re as blind as bats.

This morning the news says John Podesta’s brother invited him to a Satanic ritual hosted by a wacky performance “artist”. It doesn’t say he attended, but it’s clear from the email that Podesta’s brother has no problem with the event, and it’s also clear that he knows the “artist” well. It appears that Podesta’s brother, who presumably knows him well, has reason to feel that Podesta will not be offended by the invitation.

If you don’t think this says something about the Democrats, try to picture a prominent Republican in the same position. Try to picture Sarah Palin’s sister sending her the same email. It could never happen. Not unless she had a crazy sister who liked provoking her.

The notion of a powerful Democrat attending a Satanic ritual isn’t jarring at all. It’s perfectly consistent with what we know of them. They love abortion. They hate the church. They love drugs. They love arrogance and disrespect. They’re a lot like their dear old dad.

It will be interesting to see if John Podesta attended the revolting ceremony. I assume he’s huddling with spin doctors, trying to figure out whether he should address the leak. Maybe we’ll never know what happened.

When I tell liberal Christians (oxymoron) the Democratic Party belongs to the devil, they start criticizing Republicans. Trump is an adulterer, Mitt Romney is rich…I’m struggling to think of examples of the issues they cite, because there aren’t many solid criticisms. Anyway, they try to suggest Republicans are just as bad. My response? The GOP is not a religious organization, and there are plenty of worldly, godless people in it, but the Democrats belong to the devil and make no bones about it. They openly serve all sorts of evil goals. The comparison is ridiculous. It’s sort of like saying Christians are just as likely as Muslims to commit acts of terrorism in the US…wait; that sounds sort of familiar.

There’s a big difference between serving evil willfully and proudly and serving good very badly.

Obvious?

All over the world, pagan nuts are cursing Trump every day. Read about it on the web. Do you seriously think an equal number are cursing Hillary? Of course not. She supports just about every cause they love.

This election isn’t Hillary versus Trump. It’s Satan versus God, and the candidates are just proxies. Hillary will bring a more rapid descent into chaos and suffering. Trump will delay it. That sums it up.

I believe the things I’ve just written, but I’m also disgusted with Christians who have decided Trump is a devout believer. Come on. He’s a weak Christian who does pretty much what he wants. He loves admiration. He loves wealth. He likes to bicker. His sexual sins are so numerous, he’s probably 10% as bad as Bill Clinton. His daughter, raised with his values, left the church and converted to Judaism. He is not a holy man. Let’s admit it. Why should we destroy our credibility, pretending Trump is something he is not?

Denial is not supposed to be part of the Christian makeup. Excuses and spin make God angry, and they cut us off from his help. Christians who claim Trump is one of us are not pleasing God. They’re just giving ammunition to God’s enemies and driving people away. No unbeliever with any common sense believes Trump cares about God.

You don’t have to be a good Christian to be a friend of the church. I see Trump as a borderline unbeliever God can use to protect us for a while. That’s all I expect from him.

It’s not hypocriticial to vote for Trump. We only have two viable candidates. We can’t vote for the holy candidate, because there isn’t one. It therefore makes sense to vote for the one who will harm us the least.

I’m amazed that there are people voting for Gary Johnson. Fine, he’s a wonderful human being, and libertarians are right about 90% of the time. It doesn’t matter. He will never be President, and neither will any other libertarian. Libertarians love to vote spitefully; if they can’t have a perfect president, they deliberately render their votes ineffective, to put on a defiant display no one even notices. Instead of voting booths, libertarians should have special areas where they can use government-supplied knives to cut their noses off.

If you’re a libertarian, life will be better for you under Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton. You can choose the best life currently available or the worst our system has to offer. It really is that simple.

The libertarians should have a slogan: “Letting the perfect be the enemy of the good since 1972.”

If libertarians had been dumped in the water during the sinking of the Titanic, they would have drowned while criticizing the seating arrangements on the lifeboats.

They wouldn’t have suffered much, though, because libertarians are usually high on weed.

What is it with libertarians and weed? They adore it. If you want to have fun with a group of libertarians, make an offhand remark about how everyone who smokes weed is a loser. Their faces will turn bright red, and their eyes (red already) will bug out. It’s amazing how many of them love dope. It’s a major issue with them. It may be the single most important issue separating them from Republicans. Sometimes I wonder.

I’ve tried weed. I didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t good enough to turn me into a user or drive me to flush my votes down the toilet.

I wonder if Gary Johnson is high right now.

“Vote libertarian! Let’s send a message!”

Yeah. To each other.

Pagans are cursing Trump every day. I curse the Clinton campaign every day. I think I outweigh a considerable number of pagans, because my god really is God, and their gods are a bunch of loser spirits who are terrified of him. I hope so.

I can’t wait for this mess to be over with. I’m glad I’m not as emotionally invested in it as I used to be. I used to think we could save America. Now I know America is lost, so I’m just hoping Christians can do as well as possible and achieve as much as possible for God in our remaining time. If Hillary wins, I’ll be okay with it, because America deserves her, and because my protection doesn’t come from Washington.

Get out there and vote. If you’re libertarian, just open the window and yell “Johnson!” It will do just as much good, and you will save yourself a drive.

My Telephone Circle Becomes Less Diverse

I guess I’ll sound giddy and foolish for saying this at my advanced age, but here I go: I’m in love.

I just upgraded from DSL to cable Internet access.

For years, Comcast bugged me to get rid of my old landline/DSL provider and add their service to my cable package. I told them to get lost, because I knew that traditional phone lines were way more reliable after hurricanes. The cable people used to take forever to get back on their feet, but the phone company either stayed in service or recovered fast.

I’m working to get out of this area now, so I don’t think I’ll be here for the next hurricane season. I don’t care if the lines come down. I moved over to Comcast, and I’ll be saving a pile.

It had to be done. I was getting like 4,000 telemarketer calls every day. I didn’t actually count them, but it definitely felt like 4,000. “Hello? You need diaper? You diabetic? We have supply for you!” It was killing me.

Internet and wireless companies are great about squashing telemarketers. A genius who was tired of robocalls invented a system that routes all of a person’s voice calls through a screening system that checks them against a blacklist. He named his company Nomorobo. If a caller is on the list, the call doesn’t go through. Unfortunately, landline companies aren’t that great about working with Nomorobo. I had to make a switch in order to be eligible for the service.

I talked to a phone company rep, and she didn’t even know what robocalls were. My best guess: she has no landline. She and I live in different universes.

I don’t really understand the no-landline crowd. Cell phones are unreliable. They drop calls. You can’t have extensions, so you have to carry the phone everywhere you go. You have to keep your phone on all the time in case of emergencies. The timing of cell calls is messed up; when you talk to people, you step on each other’s words. I have to have a landline. The cell is just for moving around.

Anyway, when I changed my phone service, I had to change my Internet service as well. The speed difference is incredible.

I didn’t know I needed more speed until I had it. Sales people used to call me all the time, bragging about their Internet speeds. I didn’t care. I don’t steal movies or music, I think video games are for metrosexual punks with saggy pants, and I don’t like Netflix, so why would I need fast Internet? I was happy in my Slowsky world. But these days, websites are packed full of truly worthless garbage that makes them slow to load. They’re no better than the websites we had five years ago; they’re just bulkier and noisier. Whatever. I was starting to be annoyed with waiting.

On top of that, I made some Youtube videos, and it was taking me eight hours to upload each one. No, no, no. Not acceptable.

It’s nice to see Drudge load almost instantly instead of taking an interminable 20 seconds.

I used to try to avoid loading Drudge too often, because I knew Breitbart worked for Drudge, and Breitbart didn’t like me. I was afraid he would get some of the pennies generated from the ethically questionable automatic page reloads. Now that he’s gone, I let it reload at will. I figure his widow and kids can use the money.

I’m still working the kinks out of the system. I can’t use my email server, and the most convenient cable line in my house won’t work with the modem, but I guess I’ll be okay. I can’t wait until the phone lines move over.

The telemarketers have been a real challenge. I work on reducing my anger all the time, and telemarketers are incessant provocations I do not need. The other day one called and asked if I was “one of the diabetics” in the house. I said, “We’re all diabetics here. We also have constipation, flat feet, and leprosy. Like your mother.”

I guess that’s funny, but I was not happy with myself. Now that Nomorobo is in my future, maybe I’ll get a break from my tormentors so I can continue working on my character.

I’ve made all sorts of progress cutting out profanity, too, but just when I seem to have forgotten a really choice expression, a telemarketer calls, and I remember it.

Most of my phone calls are telemarketers. Not some. Most.

I wish I had their home numbers.

No I don’t. Forget that thought.

I feel like ranting about the ridiculous overstuffing of websites, but I will try not to. I hate having videos come on without my involvement (in spite of my add-ons and browswer settings), and I really don’t need to see animated GIF’s all over the screen when I’m trying to read a news story. If your site has music that comes on automatically, or it has an introduction video, you should be dropped in a hole in a glacier. That’s just how I feel.

Okay, okay. I repent.

I’m pooped. I’ve been on the phone with tech support for about a century today. I had to write to release the pressure.

I hope the Nomorobo tip helps a few people. It works for cell phones, too. It’s too bad they can’t fix it so it sends electric shocks to the callers.

I repent.

My Vote is in the Hands of People who Actually Admire Barack Obama

My ballot is in the mail. I can’t quite believe I voted for Donald Trump. Who’s next? Simon Cowell? John McAfee? Will annoying tycoons be standard fare for future voters?

I suppose they’re no worse than the corrupt, egotistical people who usually run for office.

I voted by mail today. I kind of wonder what will happen to the ballot. The lady who carries my mail is black, and I happen to know her family is not conservative. One of my best friends is her nephew. Maybe I should have put a Hillary sticker on the envelope.

Funny things happen in and around Miami. Democrat operatives walk into black polling places openly and yell at people, pushing them to support Democrats. No one does anything about it, because apparently, acknowledging the very existence of black people is now considered racist.

Now that I think about it, a lot of nutty stuff goes on in black neighborhoods. It’s as if there’s a special exemption from normal behavior.

The friend I mentioned above told me about Martin Luther King Day. Many people in Liberty City and the other black areas look forward to this day, because it’s a day of wild drunkenness, dope-smoking, theft, fornication, and other non-helpful activities.

My friend told me his dad used to have everyone stay home on MLK Day, so they could be there, armed, to protect the house. He also said it’s a day for settling scores. If there’s someone you want to mess up, you wait for MLK Day. I guess the idea is that the cops are so busy on that day, they can’t enforce the law very well.

One other fun MLK Day activity: large groups of people on illegal, unlicensed dirt bikes ride around the streets at high speed, running red lights and causing problems. This is an accepted activity year-round, but on MLK Day, the gangs get bigger and bolder.

In the black areas here, many people ride dirt bikes on the street. An NFL player from the area died on a dirt bike recently. The cops don’t do much about it. The rules are different in some neighborhoods.

Everywhere else, a bike has to have turn signals, a license tag, and headlights. I don’t think 2-cycle motors are allowed on the street; I’m not sure. In Liberty City, you can ride a bike powered by an unshielded nuclear reactor if you can build one.

Very strange. It’s even stranger that no one knows about this stuff. The press never mentions it. It would be racist!

Life is so weird.

You have to wonder what Martin Luther King, Jr. would think. “I got shot in the face so we could do THIS.”

In order for my vote to count, the mail lady has to agree not to throw it out. Then the Post Office people have to agree not to throw it out. Then the people who count the ballots have to choose to record it. Then the people who run the computers have to agree not to hack the system. It’s a wonder any Republican votes are counted. Maybe my 3/5 will be recorded. I hope so.

Anyway, it’s out of my hair.

I keep feeling like Trump is going to win. I feel it when I pray. I certainly hope it’s not my imagination.

I had some help marking my ballot. The ballot always contains a bunch of obscure local crap I don’t care about, so it’s hard to know what to do. I found out The Daily Kos has helpful information. If you go to the site, you will find recommendations for your area. All the nutbars, left wing nuts, potential terrorists, and champions of sexual deviation will be on the list. I took a look and voted against them. Thanks, Kos.

I voted for medical marijuana. Do I think it’s a good idea? I don’t know. Do I think it will be abused. Yes. I know it will be abused. Very heavily. Do I care? No. I’m tired of watching us make drug dealers rich. Let people over the age of 21 smoke anything they want. They can have heroin and bath salts too, for all I care. I would like to see an America where it’s not possible for a moron with gold teeth and a MAC-10 to get rich selling poison. Drug users will use drugs regardless of the law, so let them have at it.

Having dealt with a hopeless addict for a very long time, I have learned that other people’s behavior doesn’t affect addicts much. Keeping drugs away from law-abiding citizens sounds like a great idea, but we’re not trying to get drugs in the first place. Addicts will cause their families to go bankrupt in order to get drugs. They will commit several violent felonies a week to get drugs. They will abandon their children. They will sell everything they have. Obviously, they are willing to go to drug dealers.

Yay, “medical” marijuana. Stoners of the world: enjoy. Come back when you’ve wrecked your lives and want to repent.

The product is not the problem, any more than guns are the problem. You could move me into a house made of heroin with a sinsemilla lawn, and twenty years from now, I would still not be an addict. Other people become heroin addicts–trying heroin for the first time–in federal penitentiaries, where you would expect drugs to be very hard to find. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and where there’s no will, there’s no problem.

What will happen if Trump wins? Can you imagine the rioting? Maybe this is the day we’ve been buying guns for. Obama ruined race relations and class relations, and he inspired a gun-buying craze that lasted eight years. If Trump wins, some of us may have to use the stuff we bought, in order to avoid being dragged out of our vehicles and homes and being raped and murdered.

On the whole, it would be considerably better than President Hillary. If she wins, she will spend the first four years testifying, committing perjury to avoid incarceration. What a drag that will be. If you think politics is annoying now, wait till we get four years of something that makes the Watergate ordeal look like a weekend at Disney World.

I remember Watergate. It ruined TV. Week after week, the hearings were on. It was very unpleasant. Hillary’s misdeeds are much worse than Nixon’s. His people burglarized a shrink’s office, and then he lied about it. I think they also bugged DNC headquarters. Anyway, it was not a complicated affair. Hillary has a giant cauldron of scandals that will take years to investigate, and unlike Nixon, she will not have the grace to concede. Democrats don’t do that. You have to haul them away in shackles. They keep expecting the press to save them, and it almost always does.

Can’t we just throw a bucket of water on her?

Six days from now, the pain of election anticipation will be gone, and we will be dealing with the new pain of a new administration. If it’s not Hillary and her flying gay and illegal monkeys, it will be Trump and his wake of riots.

Liberals love to say they’ll move to France if a Republican is elected. Sadly, they never follow through. I would like to move if my candidate loses, but I don’t want to go to France. Take me to heaven. You can have my stuff. I am ready to go.

Heaven isn’t very diverse. There are no gays there. Now that I think about it, there are no heterosexuals, either, because there is no sex. There is no Islam. There is no atheism. There are no illegals; if you don’t meet the entry requirements, you go somewhere else. There will be people of all races, but we won’t be at each other’s throats.

Sign me up. I want to be gentrified.

Pray my ballot survives. I give it one chance in three.

No One to the Right

I’ve been thinking a lot about my complete lack of human role models.

The Bible says a number of things about God making himself a father to the fatherless. What does “fatherless” mean, though? Does it mean you don’t know your biological father? Does it mean he ran off? No. It just means no one is doing a good job of performing the functions of a father for you.

A father’s job is to correct and train. Someone has to tell you to get out of bed in the morning, get cleaned up and dressed, go to school, and work on becoming a functional human being. Someone has to tell you you’re not allowed to listen to rap music or leave the house in yoga shorts. Someone has to tell you no one respects a slut or wants one for a wife. Fathers are teachers.

My parents didn’t do a good job. My mother had the best intentions possible, but she didn’t know the Holy Spirit, and her own parents had their shortcomings. My dad was not interested in raising children. A lot of kids spend time with their parents, absorbing wisdom and values. Many parents make a constant effort to pass wisdom on, and because of it, their kids do well and avoid foolish mistakes. My parents didn’t teach me much, and I made terrible mistakes that wrecked my life.

It gets worse.

I have never known anyone who knew how to live a godly life. America is a dirty, trashy place now. What passes for righteous living in 2016 would have been scandalous in 1950. The people around me aren’t very useful in my efforts to improve.

Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. I just turned on the cable box. I have plain old Comcast cable. Nothing weird or special. Here’s what’s showing right now on channel 541: “Rough, Raunchy 3some.” The other movies on the guide screen have titles too gross to mention. “Rough, Raunchy 3some” is an island of wholesomeness in the mid-500’s. The others mention orifices and fluids.

I’m a Christian, and this is in my house. I’m so used to ignoring it, I don’t think about it.

I mentioned yoga shorts above. Until yesterday, I didn’t know they existed. I went to the grocery, and I saw a teenage girl who looked like she had stripped naked and painted her pelvis black. I’ll bet she was about 15. She was wearing yoga shorts. These are extremely thin, very clingy shorts that stick to every feature of the wearer’s surface so strangers can see it. A hundred pairs probably weigh less than a pound.

As young girls who don’t know any better will do, she was making the most of her exhibition. She found it necessary to bend over for long periods and squirm while examining the fresh vegetables. Somehow I manage to pick out leeks without doing that, but then I’m special. I was in line at the checkout stand, and I stood so magazines were between us. Hooray for The National Enquirer.

This is normal life in 2016.

Imagine what would have happened if that girl had popped up in a store in 1950. They would have thrown her out, and she might have been arrested. Which would have suited me just fine. She is not a helpful person.

Guess what I heard over the speakers in the store? Prince’s song, “Little Red Corvette.” The title is a metaphor for a slutty woman’s genitals. Read the lyrics. They will make you gag.

I remember watching Steve Munsey preach at Trinity Church in Miami. What a nasty old goat. He was teaching the boys about the way to treat women. He said, “You can look; just don’t touch.” When he said that, he leered in a creepy way, held his hands out in front of him at face level, and made a gesture as if he were squeezing two oranges.

I am completely serious.

See if you can imagine what he might have been thinking about.

The truth is that you can’t look. He should have known that, but he’s all about money, not virtue. You can’t avoid seeing people, but it’s not okay to keep your eyes on them and fantasize.

We are swimming in filth all the time. Most people don’t really believe in God, and their behavior is out of control. When you go to church, you’re likely to have a preacher who knows just about nothing about living righteously. When we come home, if we want to enjoy secular entertainment, we have to make on-the-fly decisions about how much nudity and blasphemy is acceptable.

My parents didn’t know how to live. I don’t know any preachers who know how to live. I don’t have any friends who know how to live. I am fatherless, but for God.

This is important, because God is showing me that what I think of as a clean Christian life is actually an unclean existence. If I want to know him and receive his help, I have to stop living like someone who doesn’t belong to him.

Take a look at 1 Corinthians 6:9-10:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

Here is Revelation 21:7-8:

He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son. But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

Look at that list. Why haven’t we memorized that and turned it into a checklist? Cowardliness is on it. Did you know that? How many Christians go to God and try to be delivered from cowardice? Most of us probably think it’s a virtue. We probably equate it with meekness.

The “kingdom of God” is something we’re supposed to receive right here, not just in heaven. If you’re living in the kingdom, you get the promises. You get miracles, healing, peace, provision, victory…the things we talk about constantly but don’t seem to receive. We don’t lead clean lives by God’s standards, so it’s no wonder we die from diseases God wants to heal. It’s no wonder ungodly people defeat us all the time.

We have to try to have clean lives, and we have to examine ourselves all the time. This is what communion is about. Paul said that if you don’t examine yourself when you take communion, you may get sick and die. How many times have you heard a preacher repeat that? I haven’t heard it once. I had to find out for myself. Refusal to come clean before God causes defeat, sickness, and death.

I keep asking God for correction. I ask him to criticize me. He’s coming through. I keep learning about new pockets of corruption inside me. He keeps showing me my excuses, which are as deadly as AIDS viruses. Excuses prevent us from receiving forgiveness and help. Think how other people’s excuses make you feel; it makes sense. Excuses don’t make you want to work with people.

It’s overwhelming when I think of the evil I’ve done and the evil inclinations that are still inside me. I shouldn’t be surprised. That’s how strongholds are. The devil builds them up, and then he says, “Look at the size of that. You’ll never get rid of it.” And we believe it.

I don’t have good human teachers or role models. Not a single one. I’ve quit listening to preachers. They’re crazy as they can be. I have to get closer to God and get his help in illuminating my faults and destroying them. There is no other way. He has to be my father. Fortunately, he sent his Holy Spirit to do the heavy lifting for me. That’s the kind of thing a good father does. A good father won’t condemn you for doing wrong without helping you do right.

When the Rapture comes and lifts us up, iniquity will be like lead that weighs us down. You can’t walk on the water if you’re carrying a millstone. Time is short. We need to be thinking about these things. I really do not want to be stuck down here with no good people to stand with me.

Going to church and trying to be good won’t save you, and money offerings won’t even budge the needle on the Rapture meter. You have to give God your heart and mind, and you have to get his help in order to do it.

By the way, I had another strange dream. I was about to get in the shower, and I heard a commotion out in the house. I tried to go out and check on it, but when I got into the hallway, there were no doors. Also, the hallway was not like my actual hallway. It was made better. The walls were sturdy plaster and lathe. It was painted a warm off-white. The light in the hallway, which had no windows, was like sunlight. I was stuck there for a while. Then I found myself standing with my hands in front of me and my eyes closed, and I felt a beautiful, warm, comforting wind blowing in my face. It filled my hands and washed over my body.

Suddenly I was out. I found myself in the parking lot of a company that sold used cars, like the restoration and hot rod companies on the Velocity Channel. The company had a couple of buildings; maybe a showroom and a shop. Two people who worked there–the bosses–were walking from one building to another. They were oddly dressed, as people from the bike/car culture often are. One wore a strange outfit that left his legs bare to the crotch, and he wore big goggles and a colorful scarf on his head. He had a ridiculous cape. He had long hair and a beard. Both men wore clothes with colors you would expect to see on clown costumes. They were racing from one building to another, but they were moving so slowly you could jog past them. The guy in the goggles was raising his knees very high on each step, more like an actor in a comedy than a real human being.

I stood there while they made fools of themselves, enjoying the wind. It felt peaceful. I was protected. I felt more comfortable than I had ever felt. I had never felt anything like it.

I woke up, and I was lying face down on my bed, with my hands in the same position as in the dream. The strange thing is that I still had the peculiar supernatural comfort. I felt like I was lying on a cloud. I didn’t want to move. Ordinarily, I don’t feel anything approaching that level of physical comfort.

Here’s what I took away from it. I spend a lot of time praying in tongues, which means I cleanse myself in living water, like a shower. I make some effort to take part in society, but God restrains me and keeps me in a safer, better place, like the hallway. The preachers I deal with are posers and clowns whose churches are businesses and who think mainly about money and attention. They think they’re making progress, and they compete against each other for acclaim and wealth, but in reality, they are barely getting anywhere. They have the ethics of used car sellers. Car restorers take rusty, broken-down cars and fix the outside while leaving rust and jagged welds all over the inside. There is really no such thing as a rusty car restored to new condition. Charismatic preachers sell old, wrong doctrine that looks good from afar, but when you get close, it’s painted excrement.

I look forward to the dreams God sends me. They’re pretty neat.

Think about where you stand and what benefits you qualify for. That’s what I’m doing. And don’t forget: the Rapture will not be announced in advance. You’ve had all the warning you’re going to get. If the horn blows and you’re not ready, you are just stuck.

Are we Seeing the Tender Shoots of Hillary’s Defeat?

What interesting things have happened since I wrote about the election.

The Clintons have a long history of corruption and failure, but sadly for us, they also have a long history of getting away with both. The liberal press covers up for them and lies about them, so the Clintons persist like a stubborn rash. Now they may finally have a problem they can’t dodge.

I suppose I shouldn’t imply that they’ve never been held accountable, because Bill Clinton was impeached and forced to remove himself from the bar (nice way of saying “he was disbarred”). But generally, they get away with murder.

Now Hillary’s cavalier approach to national security is coming around to bite her in the pantsuit, and it appears that the spaghetti is sticking to the fridge. The newest revelations came out on a Friday–the traditional day for burying stories that reflect poorly on Clintons–and they’re still hot news. Almost invariably, Friday stories die on the way out of the womb.

The Clintons invented the practice of entombing negative stories on Friday afternoons. Some attribute the innovation to Dick Morris. They knew journalists were lazy and not very good at doing their jobs, so they developed a policy of airing the dirty drawers out right before the weekend. It worked so well, other administrations have copied them. I’m not sure if Bush II did it, but he probably did. Obama certainly has.

It’s remarkable that journalists didn’t strike back. What the Clintons did was a major public swipe at their professionalism. People in power, be they cops, judges, journalists, or what have you, don’t care much when you torment and abuse the innocent. What they do hate is when you do things that affect them personally. Give a cop the finger, and he will find a reason to arrest you. Provoke the press, and they will lie in wait outside your home, waiting to catch you on your way to a rendezvous with Donna Rice (remember?). It’s strange that the press hasn’t done anything to counter the Friday-dumping strategy.

It just shows how lazy they really are. They prefer going home at 2 p.m. to salvaging their reputations. They are narcissistic and lazy, and laziness won! It has been winning for over 20 years.

We all know the basic story of the Clinton email scandal. Government employees have to use government email addresses to do official business, and they can’t delete anything. Also, it’s a crime to deliberately expose certain types of classified material by sending it through unsecured email systems. Hillary Clinton definitely used an unsecured system to do official business, presumably with the purpose of avoiding public scrutiny, and she used the system to disseminate a whole lot of classified material.

Those things are bad, but FBI Director James Comey says they don’t rise to the level of prosecutable offenses. In Hillaryspeak, one would call this something like “complete vindication” and proof of the existence of a vast right-wing conspiracy. In reality, it may be that the evidence wasn’t that strong (due to illegal but unprovable stonewalling), or that Comey simply didn’t want to prosecute a former Secretary of State. What she did was still pretty horrendous.

Now Comey is back, saying the investigation is being continued. Anthony Weiner, the astoundingly feckless husband of Hillary Girl Friday Huma Abedin, had his laptop confiscated by the same agency that handled the email investigation. He was engaging in sexual communications with a minor. The FBI found something like 10,000 Huma Abedin emails on his hard drive.

I’ll tell you one of the words God gave me. It may have been in 2014. He said, “The defense of a sin is worse than the sin itself.” He was talking about me, not Hillary Clinton, but the principle applies to anyone. Ask Richard Nixon. Ask Scooter Libby. It’s true in heaven, and it’s true on earth. It’s starting to look like Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin told a number of lies to the FBI, and they may ground criminal charges. If that’s true, no one will care about the classified material or the server in the hall closet. The coverup will be the noose they put around Hillary’s neck.

Why did Comey make the announcement, when the FBI generally avoids disturbing elections? Simple. Remember the principle I referred to above, about people in power resenting personal affronts? That principle is probably in play here. It looks like Clinton and Abedin offended Comey personally, by lying to him and making him look like a dupe, which he probably is. Unless he’s a truly exceptional bureaucrat, Comey doesn’t care if a scofflaw wins the election. His reputation and legacy…different story. If he had sat on this and then revealed it after Hillary won, his name would have become a synonym for “sucker.”

Imagine being James Comey, one month after retiring, after letting Hillary make a shambles of your reputation. Imagine trying to get a cushy job inside the Beltway, while everyone there is busy deleting your name from Google Contacts. Bureaucrats think about things like that.

They think of little else.

I may be wrong, and it may be that Comey did what he did out of moral conviction. Usually, though, when you assume the best about people, you will be disappointed.

It’s remarkable that Clinton’s zombie scandal came through a man’s sexual lust. Clinton is known for crucifying women who stepped up to complain about Bill Clinton’s unwelcome advances. While holding herself out as a protector of women, she helped sacrifice a number of people of the feminine gender. God told me something in about 2010: “What you bury, you also plant.” The Clintons are standing in a big field which always threatens to sprout.

I don’t particulary want to see Hillary Clinton in handcuffs. I just want a friend of the church to win the election. Donald Trump is the best bet we have. If Hillary had to face her past, as far as I’m concerned, this is a great time for it to happen.

To me, what has happened is a great gift from God. It clearly has supernatural roots. Things this strange don’t happen without a supernatural cause. I’m very happy about it. I have literally be afraid to believe my own faith when it said Hillary would lose. I feel a lot better now.

Here is what concerns me now: the gloating of Christians. It’s okay to be happy that a truly disagreeable and destructive person will be kept out of power, but it’s not okay to gloat about it. Look what Proverbs 24:17-18 says:

Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth:

Lest the Lord see it, and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him.

I guarantee you, Christians are gloating right now, not realizing they’re helping the devil put Hillary in the Oval Office. This is not a time to be proud or vindictive. It’s not a time to take pleasure in another person’s suffering. We should be thanking God profusely for a temporary reprieve, and we should be asking for his help in making the most of it.

The race isn’t over yet. If God can help us this quickly, he bring defeat just as fast.

We put Hillary Clinton in power. We put Obama in power. Our pride, rebellion, and lack of prayer did it. We love to blame the godless, but if we had done what we should have, we wouldn’t have to worry about their efforts. God would have given us victory. When we gloat and feel superior, we are showing that we aren’t benefiting from God’s mercy and patience. We are giving him incentive to withdraw it.

We need to quit blaming unbelievers for our government. We have more power than they do. We are primarily to blame.

Now that I think about it, many Christians vote for people like Hillary. Catholics make up the biggest Christian sector in America, and they vote for liberals. Female Christians vote for liberals. Black Christians vote for liberals. Crazy.

I often wonder why the Rapture hasn’t happened already. I would have abandoned this nation a long time ago, myself included.

I have started to wonder if Christianity has a future in Russia. Historically, Russia was a great Christian nation. Now that the USSR is gone, Christianity is back. Putin, for all his faults, seems much more supportive of God than our own leaders. I always say there is nowhere to go once America becomes totally foul. Maybe that’s not true. Maybe Russia will hold out a little longer and become a haven.

Those winters, though…

Putin has done some things to make life hard on evangelists. Maybe Russia is not going to be a safe place. I don’t know all the facts.

I continue to curse the Clinton campaign every day, several times a day. I won’t stop until I see Trump concede. If Trump wins, my new job will be praying for him and his administration to line up with God.

One nice thing about Trump…the Clinton smear machine, which now includes most journalists, has been working overtime on him for months. There probably isn’t much filth left in the smear barrel. I can only hope.

If Hillary wins, I hope the world ends ten minutes later. Either that, or it continues, but I get hit by a giant meteor in my sleep.

The news is better than I had expected. It’s nice to see that a change of fortune is never impossible.

Whose Election is it, Anyway?

I feel like writing a little about politics. Not enough to make the keyboard smell, I hope.

I have to ask: does anyone other than me think it’s weird that the two biggest players in the US presidential election are Mexico and Russia?

Mexico is a backward, crooked, failure-prone Second World state, trying desperately to avoid becoming Somalia by exporting its self-destructive citizens. In the minds of the Mexican ruling elite, the single biggest problem Mexico has is…the presence of Mexicans. The Mexican government regards Mexicans themselves as an unwelcome and dangerous infestation.

So they want to send them to us.

It’s hard to think of a nastier indictment of a people. When your own government wants you to go away and become another government’s problem, you know there is no hope for your country.

The correct way for Mexico to fix its problems is by admitting that Mexicans ruined the place. A country with a healthy, productive culture can’t have persistent, pervasive poverty. The Japanese live on a barren rock, and they do well. So do Icelanders. Look at Singapore. They have no natural resources at all, unless you count mosquitoes, and they have one of the highest standards of living in the world. Mexico has a great climate, a fantastic location, and tons of natural resources, and people there are poor, not to mention very scared of each other.

Put the Japanese in Mexico and the Mexicans in Japan, and Mexico will be rich and Japan will be poor. The people are the problem. You can’t say that, however, because it would make you a racist. You’re not even allowed to think it. You have to pretend that somehow, the hateful, negative influence of white people who speak English drifted over Mexico like a cloud and made everyone poor.

Geez. Imagine what Japan could do with Mexico. Two coasts open to shipping trade. A landmass open to terrestrial trade with all parts of the Americas. Lots of lucrative tourist hotspots. Agricultural land. It would be something to see. Americans would be swimming the Rio Grande to become Japan’s illegals.

By the way, China has always been full of poverty, and 74% of Singaporeans come from China, so please, no canards about the cultural advantages of the people of Singapore. They came from squalor, and it didn’t stop them.

Mexico has horrible crime problems, which interfere with business. Mexico is not known for its national obsession with education. Mexico is extremely violent, and reformers commonly meet grisly deaths. Mexico can’t be fixed, because Mexico doesn’t want to be fixed.

Now Mexicans interfere with our elections. Their government works actively to send Mexicans here. Mexicans in the US become activists. Many vote illegally. They manipulate us with baseless national guilt, as if we were somehow responsible for their self-inflicted misery. They’re busting their culos trying to get Hillary Clinton elected, and their efforts are having a powerful effect.

As for the Russians, I like them more every day. I don’t know what it is they hate about Democrat policies, but it’s pretty clear they’re doing everything they can to shoot down Hillary’s broomstick. They are supplying Wikileaks with a continuous flow of negative (i.e. accurate) information about Democrats, and it has made Obama so angry he is considering taking the reckless step of starting a cyber war with Putin.

The remarkable thing about Obama’s plan is that it has almost nothing to do with our national interests. He’s not upset because foreign hackers are penetrating US servers. They’ve been doing that for years, and the Democrats didn’t care. He’s upset because he and Hillary are taking beatings, personally. Obama wants to start a campaign of dangerous, provocative online aggression for purely personal reasons.

That’s the height of corruption. If the president starts a war because the Canadians invade a state, fine. He will be fighting for America. If he starts a war because Vancouver raises the property taxes on his vacation condo, it’s corruption, and it’s intolerable.

No one seems to be talking about the Democrats’ talk of a private war. How can that be? It popped up in the news, and then it vanished, presumably smothered by a pillow held down by the mainstream media.

I’m not trying to change anything by writing this. No one reads what I write, and no one cares. I just felt like commenting.

I ask how it can be that the press is ignoring the “cyber war” threat. The truth is that I know the answer. Whenever something that makes absolutely no sense happens, you have to look for a supernatural explanation.

Remember the housing boom? People who were supposed to be experts thought it would go on forever. Anyone who can do multiplication with a pencil can tell you home prices can’t increase 20% per year forever. Back when prices were blowing up, I told people it was an aberration. They told me I was nuts, and then everything collapsed.

Why didn’t the “experts” see the painfully obvious problem? Because the boom and bust had supernatural roots. If you don’t have the Holy Spirit behind you, you can believe any lie that can be made up. You can believe men need feminine hygiene supplies. You can believe you support freedom of speech while punishing college students for using the accurate term “illegal immigrant.” No lie will make you gag.

By and large, Americans are controlled by spirits that work for the devil, so we believe what they tell us. Some journalists realize the cyber war story is important, and they choose to ignore it because little voices tell them it’s okay to lie for Karl Marx. Others truly believe it’s insignificant, because that’s what their spirit companions have told them. But if Donald Trump didn’t flush after using the men’s room in 1982, it’s a story of national importance.

When the Jews rooted for the Romans to torture a lay rabbi to death, knowing he had not committed any crimes, they thought they were doing something wonderful. They thought God was smiling on them, and they figured they would be rewarded. In 70 A.D., they must have been very surprised.

When the world starts piling dead Christians and Jews up in trenches, in large numbers, without covering it up, our persecutors will feel the same way; they’ll have a great sense of accomplishment. People who don’t have the Holy Spirit love lies and hate truth. They can’t help it, and if they could help it, they wouldn’t want to. The truth makes people uncomfortable.

I’m not sure Americans should bother voting. Next time, let’s set up polling places in Mexico and Russia, and we can sit the election out. Given that Russia has a bigger population, we might come out okay, although there is a high probability that Putin, though not on the ballot, would win in a landslide.

Both countries have a lot of corruption, so I assume the votes would be nearly unanimous in each nation. Hard to say. I think it’s safe to assume there would be a high death toll in Mexico, because, well, just about any event in Mexico produces a high death toll.

I keep feeling like Trump is going to win, although that doesn’t line up with the polls I read about. I hope the feeling I have comes from God and not my own hopes. I would really like to see us get a few more years to prepare for persecution and the Rapture. I can’t even imagine what the second year of a Hillary Clinton regime would be like. It would be Kristallnacht every day.

God help the cake-bakers under Hillary. They would be roasted alive in their own ovens.

Once America goes, Christians will have no earthly refuge. I hope God doesn’t leave us here too long with no nation. I don’t look forward to spending my remaining years yassuh-bossing cruel, vindictive deviants and oppressive socialists.

Here’s to the Rapture. It can’t come soon enough.

Time to Evict the Strong Man

I keep getting fallout from my dream of the Rapture.

In case you haven’t read my account of the dream, I was sitting in my grandparent’s house–a place I associated with security and belonging–when I was suddenly buoyed up through the ceiling by an invisible force. I passed through the ceiling as though it weren’t there. It was as if the world had suddenly filled with water, and I was a cork.

Until just now, I hadn’t thought of the dream in terms of buoyancy, but it makes sense. The first rapture–the flood–involved people being lifted by buoyancy. Also, in the Bible, water represents voices and words. Human society is a lake of words, and God gives us the power to float above it. That’s what the story of Peter walking on water was about.

When I say I’m getting fallout from the dream, I mean it has had emotional repercussions. I am very disturbed that I was left here on earth. In the dream, for a second or two, I really believed I was done with this mess. Now here I am, back in the snake pit, treading mud.

The feeling of disappointment grows stronger with time, not weaker. Man, I wish the dream Rapture had been the real thing. I don’t see myself getting any relief from this feeling in the future. I expect to grow more and more alienated from the earth. I was in the doorway of heaven, or at least I thought I was. Nobody who has been that close wants to turn back. It’s like standing in the doorway of a penitentiary, thinking you’ve been released, and then finding out it was a clerical error.

Ouch.

I’m not going to complain; it’s a good thing to be sobered up like this and to have my desires changed. Medicine doesn’t always taste good.

My experience makes me think of the flakes who developed a sort of psychosis after they watched Avatar. James Cameron (an atheist who wants to prove Jesus was a fraud) transported them to a fantasy land that conformed to their strange hippie ideals.

In the movie’s world, there was no industry. There was no work. There was no property. People were nearly naked, and liberals love nudity. Everyone looked like a cat (what is it with leftists and cats?). There was no God, except for a female, all-accepting God that sided with the hippies against the white male crew-cut-wearing capitalist technocracy. The world of the blue people was an occultist’s paradise; bring your tarot cards, crystals, RU486 prescription and bong and join the revolution! But after two hours, the projector went off and everyone had to leave. The theater doors opened, and everyone was ejected back onto the cold, reality-besmirched sidewalks of earth.

People developed a strange homesickness for Pandora, the giant blue hippie cat world. They grieved because they couldn’t move there. They were very upset; some contemplated suicide. They found earth inferior to Pandora, and it was hard for them, as precious PJ-wearing hipster snowflakes, to bear.

That’s kind of funny, because the name “Pandora” is associated with a curse. It comes from a myth. Zeus put all the evils of the world in a jar, and things were going great. Then Pandora opened it, and the world was cursed. Pandora was the prototypical bad wife. She was not a good helper, and she loved money. She was the pantheist Eve. Not a good person.

The Avatar crowd feels homesick for a God-denying cartoon that promotes demon worship. I feel homesick for heaven.

It’s very sad. I’m going to get what I wish for, but the thing the others wish for doesn’t exist. In fact, their desires lead to a place of eternal humiliation, pain, guilt, and regret.

I hate to say it, but one of the great things about heaven is that people like that won’t be there. They’re hard enough to put up with down here. I don’t want to continue to be abused by them in heaven.

In a way, death is like a flea dip. Heaven is a private club and an exclusive nation. There are no illegal immigrants in heaven.

I can’t celebrate another person’s damnation, but being free from their constant opposition and filthy behavior and words? Yeah, that I can celebrate.

The dream changed me. I don’t know if it will help anyone else. I notice there are a lot of recent Rapture dream videos on Youtube. I’m not the only one who is disturbed.

In other news, I finally finished Inferno and got started on Boccaccio’s The Decameron, which is making my End Time fixation considerably worse.

These books are part of Columbia College’s Literature Humanities reading, which I am doing now as penance for skipping a lot of it when I was young. I am surprised how the reading helps in my relationship with God.

The Greeks and Romans help me because they show me that Satan’s main religion–pantheism–is ancient and universal. It’s not “Greek mythology.” It’s Egyptian. It’s Roman. It’s Asian.

Dante helped me, because he reminded me that to a large degree, Catholicism is a continuation of pantheism. Mary is Venus or Aphrodite. The Catholic God is a lot like Zeus. The saints are like other false “gods.” Dante even calls God “Jove,” which means “Jupiter.” His vision of hell is full of mythological figures, and some are even in authority.

Boccaccio is helping me, because he wrote about the plague. He wrote about a time that was thought by many to be the End Time.

Boccaccio lived in Florence when the bubonic plague passed through. In a short time, the population decreased by maybe 65%, depending on whom you believe. The mood among the characters in his book is apocalyptic, for obvious reasons. Presumably, it reflects his own mood. The book isn’t a first-person account, but it was written by an eyewitness, so it should be an accurate gauge of how people felt and behaved.

Here’s how it works. Several affluent Florentine women are tired of Florence. The city is full of dead bodies. Every day, they learn of the deaths of people they know. Criminals run wild, because the government has broken down. Contagion appears to be worse in the city, too. They decide to leave. With the help of three young men, they form a group and tour their country houses. They plan to move from one house to another and enjoy life while the plague rages.

To ward off boredom, they tell each other stories.

The first story is pretty funny (spoilers ahead). It’s about a lying homosexual named Cepparello. According to the story, he hated the truth and loved everything evil. He was a glutton, a pervert, a drunk; you name it. At one point he ended up a guest of two moneylenders, and he became ill. They knew he would die, and they had to do something about his body.

If they threw him in the street because of his evil nature, people would think badly of them. They already had bad reputations because they were usurers. If they called for a confessor, and the man told the truth, he would be thrown in the street anyway, because he was so evil. If he refused confession, again, they would look bad.

The liar helped them out. He had them call a priest, and he gave a “confession” that made him seem so holy, he was made a saint. He was buried with honors, and everything was fine, except for the liar, who went to hell. After that, people who didn’t know the story prayed to him for help, and God honored the prayers because their ignorance wasn’t their fault.

It’s somewhat remarkable that Boccaccio’s characters admit they pray to saints. Catholics like to use words other than “pray” to cover up the practice, but Boccaccio is honest about it. He even says the liar was “worshiped” as a saint.

Conditions during the plague were interesting. For one thing, everyone was well-off. Most people were dead, so their belongings were inherited or taken by others. Same wealth in fewer hands. Also, many people gave up religion and sinned as much as possible. They figured they didn’t have much time left, so they should enjoy themselves. That’s bizarre; when you think the end is near, if you have any sense at all, you will do your best to reform. Apparently, the plague drove some people to behave in a way that sent them to hell.

It reminded me of the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. I remember that time. The cops couldn’t get around well, and they had their own homes to protect and fix, so people were on their own. The phone system was dead. The National Guard had to be called out to stop looters, and because they were too busy to process everyone correctly, they and the police would beat looters and turn them loose. Folks sat in their yards with guns across their laps, in front of signs that said things like, “WE SHOOT LOOTERS.”

Andrew wasn’t the plague, but it showed how people act when restraints are removed.

The ethos Boccaccio endured is coming back, and it will strike the entire planet, not just the Old World. We will see plagues and genocide. Governments will turn against citizens (more than they already have). There won’t be any country houses to escape to. Because we have the model of the plague before us, we know how people will act. Some will repent, and some will make the perverse decision to abandon God when they need him most.

It looks like plagues are getting worse. Where I live, a pregnant woman who goes outdoors risks giving birth to a severely deformed baby, and there is absolutely nothing we can do, apart from avoiding mosquitoes. We can’t cure it. We can’t treat the babies. We have no vaccine.

Human beings don’t know what a plague feels like any more. We aren’t going to be emotionally ready for the plagues that are on the way. We endured AIDS, but that plague is almost entirely restricted to people who deliberately expose themselves. Zika–the mosquito plague–doesn’t work that way. Bugs bite whomever they land on. They don’t care about your sexual morals or your feelings regarding drug abuse.

Boccaccio is teaching me about apocalyptic thinking, which goes hand in hand with the expectation of the Rapture.

Incidentally, Boccaccio is a good read. It’s the first book I have really enjoyed since I finished the reading in Thucydides. Inferno was moderately enjoyable, and it was much less painful than, say, Homer. But The Decameron is a book you can read purely for pleasure.

I wonder if the remaining books will continue teaching me about Christianity. I decided to substitute Lord of the Flies for the estrogen-heavy, affirmative-action-motivated Toni Morrison book that was on the syllabus I used. What could be more appropriate for a person who is thinking about the Tribulation? I haven’t read Lord of the Flies, but it’s about a bunch of kids who go feral because they have no supervision. My mother thought it was a great book, and she recommended it, but I never got around to reading it.

Think about the future (what little of it there may be left). Consider what’s truly important. You and James Cameron will be dead before long. You need to prepare.

Time to Figure Out Which Team You’re On

My mind is fried from Quickbooks, so I am writing to decompress.

I’ve been thinking about my dream of the Rapture. I was so disturbed by it, I fasted and prayed yesterday. Some of the things I’m learning are somewhat depressing, and I also have the sensation of being caught up in a whirlwind. Society is changing very rapidly. I feel I’ve been picked up and dragged off in a current, much faster than I expected. I needed some time with God to get my feet back under me.

Two things in the dream made very strong impressions on me: the sound of the horn, and the realization that I was leaving the earth.

The horn made an impression on me because it was not expected.

I am not a prophecy buff. I know a considerable amount about prophecy, but I don’t make a serious study of it. I can’t list all the things that are supposed to happen, in correct chronological order. Because I don’t study prophecy, before the dream, I didn’t associate the Rapture with trumpets. In my mind, I thought of it as a simple disappearance.

Checking the Bible, I see that Paul states that a horn will blow. Take a look:

Look, I will tell you a secret — not all of us will die! But we will all be changed! It will take but a moment, the blink of an eye, at the final shofar. For the shofar will sound, and the dead will be raised to live forever, and we too will be changed. For this material which can decay must be clothed with imperishability, this which is mortal must be clothed with immortality. When what decays puts on imperishability and what is mortal puts on immortality, then this passage in the Tanakh will be fulfilled:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.
Death, where is your victory?
Death, where is your sting?”

Maybe I shouldn’t have chosen the Complete Jewish Bible! The word “shofar” refers to a ram’s horn Jews use for religious purposes. It’s a horn, so don’t be confused.

When the horn sounded in my dream, I was awestruck. I can’t say my bones turned to water, but it was a very humbling, serious moment. Hearing a horn that shakes the world will drive the cockiness and self-assurance out of you in an instant. When you hear it, you can’t help thinking about the immensely powerful being who must be blowing it, at the other end of the blast.

What a sound of finality. When that horn sounds, the game is over. School is out. Put down your pencils, because exams are about to be collected. There is nothing further you can do.

I felt very small. Here on earth, we feel somewhat independent and free, but when the Rapture trumpet sounds, you will realize you’re just a tiny player in a huge, organized spectacle you can’t opt out of. You are part of the play, even if you thought you were just watching. You are a participant, and your performance will be evaluated whether you like it or not.

If I had tried to imagine the Rapture, I would not have thought about horns, because I didn’t remember they were part of the plan. The trumpet is confirmation that the dream didn’t come from my imagination.

Feeling myself rise through the air was even more jarring. I was glad, but like the trumpet sound, leaving the floor and passing through the ceiling made me feel very powerless. I suppose it made me realize how deceiving appearances are. We drag ourselves through our lives, day by day, often seeing no meaning and no urgency in what we do in a given 24-hour span. In reality, it’s all being recorded and managed. All of it is important. The fact that you’re bored or disengaged doesn’t mean God is.

I feel disappointment because the dream ended with me still lying in bed, facing another day or stretch of days in this place. The Rapture isn’t something you want to experience over and over. When it comes, you want it to be the real thing. Being returned to earth is a bummer. It’s like hearing that school has been canceled on account of snow and then finding out the cancellation was a prank.

Whatever I was in for after passing through the roof was better than what I’m doing right now. That’s for sure. I just realized: I would have had my vision back. No more reading glasses! That would have been nice.

America is in a war now, between people who hate God and people who submit to him. The Democrats are controlled by the children of darkness, and the Republican party is much more friendly to the children of light. If Hillary Clinton wins, it’s going to be a disgusting event. It will be America rejecting God in three consecutive presidential elections.

Most people don’t like to connect religion and politics, but the leitmotif is there, just under the surface. Democrats love the murder of the unborn, homosexuality, all types of sexual sin, covetousness, paganism, and uncleanness. For all our faults, Republicans are at least somewhat in favor of godliness. If you look at the policies that cause friction between the parties, most are related to religous convictions.

We pretend the election isn’t a battle between Christians and everyone else, just as liberals used to pretend Obama didn’t have a problem with Israel and Netanyahu. Remember that? Obama’s people denied it. TV heads denied it. Netanyahu probably denied it. Then the gloves came off, and everyone admitted it.

Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and European journalists are pretty open about the hostility between the left and Christianity. I wonder when the rest of us will catch up.

We may be about to reject God in a very decisive, unprecedented way. I wonder if that’s why so many Christians feel a sudden sense of urgency.

I want to go, but I realize that’s selfish. There must be something I can do for God while I’m still here, and that’s probably more important than being cured of farsightedness and never having to do my taxes again.

For a long time, I’ve been asking God to align my desires with his. I’ve asked him to show me the things in my life that displease him, and I’ve asked him to take away my liking for them. I didn’t realize I was talking about life itself. It makes perfect sense now, though, because the Bible says, “He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

I feel like I’m getting ready for a big trip. I wonder if other people feel that way.

Many times in the past, people have decided the Rapture was imminent, and they have always been wrong. At least I hope so, because if not, I missed the flight. I don’t want to get too caught up in preparations for something which, for all I know, won’t happen for 200 years. But the feeling is there.

I checked this week, and the Bible says Christians will return after the Tribulation, to rule on earth for a millennium. On the one hand, it would be a real novelty to live on an earth where things work correctly. I would love to see that, just to have my mind blown. On the other hand…it’s still earth. Heaven is better.

The Bible says Jesus himself will be here during that time, so if he can stand it, I guess I’m in no position to complain.

I’ve always wished I could live a thousand years, just to get things right and pursue a few interests successfully. I feel that my nature is such that I can’t fully mature in threescore and ten years. Sometimes I think God gave me my wish in order to fulfill it during the Messianic Age.

I can say one thing with certainty: I wouldn’t want to live a thousand years in the world as it is now. It would be like being forced to live in San Francisco and bake cakes for gay weddings every day.

I’m a little nervous about going to sleep tonight, but I suppose it’s not likely that I’ll get a dream like that every night.

Maybe I should congratulate the children of darkness. Hooray for you. You win the world. For a while. I wouldn’t want to pay the price you’re going to be charged, for something of so little value. But think how great it will be, watching a bunch of us vanish and then imprisoning, torturing, and murdering the rest. You’ll have a good time, but it will be the last good time you ever have.

Here’s hoping I’m not here for the party. This world is annoying enough already.

Death Itself is Easy

I had a very disturbing dream last night.

I was in my grandparents’ living room, and my late mother was there. She had very long hair; it reached to the middle of her back. In real life, she never wore her hair long. In the dream she wore loose-fitting jeans and a work shirt. She never dressed like that when she was alive. She didn’t own any clothes that weren’t feminine. I’m pretty sure I never saw her in jeans.

There was a dish of pesticide granules in front of me.

Suddenly, there was a noise. I don’t know if “noise” really captures it. It was as if someone had blown a horn the size of a state. The whole earth resounded. The sound was so low in pitch, it could be felt. Everything was vibrating in resonance.

No one who heard that sound could ignore it or fail to be sobered by it. The sound was a sound impossible to create by human means, and it filled the world. A person who heard that sound could not help but sit bolt upright and know something of very great global significance–something completely unexpected and out of our control–was happening.

The pesticide granules started to rise out of the dish. I covered it with my hands to stop it, but then I started to rise, too. So did my mother. Everything was caught in some sort of vertical current that came up through the ground and flowed upward. Some things rose, and others didn’t.

As we rose toward the ceiling and started to pass through it, I realized this was the Rapture. God was taking us off the earth. Man’s time was up. The Tribulation was about to start.

I had mixed emotions.

On the one hand, I regretted not getting more done on earth. There were things I had expected to do; I had been looking forward to more closure and redemption. I was a little sad I hadn’t succeeded in reaching those goals.

On the other hand, I was filled with relief, and I looked forward to meeting Jesus. The Bible says he will meet us in the air, so I knew our meeting was just seconds away. I was extremely glad my earthly burdens were gone; I realized I would never have to touch any of that stuff again. Bills and other obligations were not my responsibility any more. No one could ever bring them to me again. If this was a problem for the people still on earth, it was not my concern. I was permanently exempt.

I didn’t think about people who were being left behind. It was too sudden, and my thoughts of heaven and leaving the earth were overwhelming.

Overall, I was very, very glad. Nothing works here on earth, and America is no place for Christians. The future here is dim, and we are unwelcome. I was thrilled to put this place behind me. It’s a mess, and until Satan is bound, it will never be anything but a ghetto of failure and pain. You can have it.

When I woke up, I asked God to explain the dream to me, and I got a few things.

My mother represented the body of Christ. She didn’t represent all the people who claim to be Christians. She represented people who are baptized with the Holy Spirit and pray in tongues. Her long hair symbolized a long history of communing with God in the Spirit. The work clothes showed that she was concerned with the things of heaven, not the trappings of earth.

The poison represented the things I say every day to fight evil. I speak defeat to various spirits, people, and things, in order to obstruct Satan’s work. We are supposed to work to preserve the earth and minimize the rot; this is what it means when the Bible says we’re the salt of the earth. It says “salt,” not “sugar.” A lot of what we do here is hostile. After all, it’s a war. It’s the only war that matters.

It makes perfect sense. The Tribulation can’t happen while millions of Christians are here obstructing evil. God doesn’t want us to experience what the ungodly will experience, and he also has an obligation to hear our prayers, so when we pray for him to help the world, we block his wrath. We’ll be here for a lot of persecution, but the full-blown Tribulation won’t be for us. When God took the poison up, he was removing things that stood between the world and Satan’s viciousness. He was releasing the devil.

My impression is that the end is closer than we think. Right now, America is in the process of choosing between a leader who hates everything God stands for and a leader who, though not godly, will be used to provide God’s people with a certain amount of help and protection.

Americans are now too stupid to rule themselves; we love evil, and we hate truth more than ever. We’re so gullible, we can’t see that it’s dumb to invite illegal immigrants who are hostile to our interests. We can’t even see that it’s important to prevent them from voting. We don’t deserve a country. We love pride, anger, greed, and lust. We hate correction. We have reached the point where we will vote for just about anyone Satan puts in front of us.

Choosing the wrong leader will speed up the process of destruction. Under Hillary Clinton, the restraints on persecution will melt in a hurry. We will be marginalized more than ever, like Jews under the Nuremberg laws. The resentment others feel for us will blossom into open hate. That hate will ripen into violence. The government will not care; it belongs to Satan anyway.

If Clinton loses, we’ll get a little space to prepare, but even if Trump wins, we will soon find ourselves living in a country where only hate-filled statists hold major offices. It may take a few years longer for us to reach that situation, but it will happen. The state will own you, and it will dictate your religious beliefs. It will claim everything you have, and it will put filthy, cruel leaders over you. There will be no one for you to turn to on this planet

I keep telling God I am ready to go. The more I pray and submit, the less I like this world.

I read a very disturbing news article yesterday, and it serves to underscore my lack of optimism for America. Some man wrote a letter to a newspaper, complaining about women who wear yoga pants in public. If you’re not familiar with yoga pants, they’re a lot like the trashy tights many women wear. They are like tight, opaque pantyhose. They reveal the shapes of women’s bodies, often including the genitals.

A man complained about seeing things he didn’t want to see, and the result was a parade of offended exhibitionists. His address was uncovered and publicized, and marchers walked by his house. Someone took chalk and put a sign on the street, indicating the location of his house. He received death threats.

This article showed me how strong the enemy’s control over us has become. Our attitude toward exhibitionism is now a lot like the attitude we used to take toward freedom of worship. If you’re against it, you’re not just a person with a point of view; you’re a dangerous threat that needs to be addressed harshly and decisively. We treat evil like good and good like evil. We are too stupid to know the difference.

The hatred Americans feel for good is firmly entrenched, and it’s growing. We’ve turned into Sodom. We are intoxicated with evil.

In case you don’t know the stories about Sodom and Gomorrah, I can provide a little information. The women were obsessed with beauty, and they used drugs to kill their unborn babies so their bodies wouldn’t be affected by pregnancy. Every type of sexual perversion was endorsed. People formed mobs and robbed others, each thief taking an amount too small to justify prosecution. The citizens attacked visitors and then charged them for the service. Judges backed them up, ordering victims to pay for being attacked.

The cities were prosperous, but they enacted laws against helping the poor, because they didn’t want them to move to the area. We also know Sodom had homosexual gangs that assaulted people; one such gang tried to rape two angels.

In Sodom and Gomorrah, up was down and right was wrong. Because the people were too far gone to hear reason or correction, God burned them alive, down to the last baby. There was no point in trying to persuade them. Like today’s leftists, they had become immune to logic. They hated it.

That’s where we are today. We have crossed the threshold into the territory of Sodom. We’re not completely mature as a lost culture, but we are past the point of redemption, so we are no better off than the people God exterminated. Our destination is certain now.

Look for things to get worse in a hurry. We’re not winning, because we’re looking for secular answers. We would rather do anything than turn to God, so we put our hopes in politicians. That just makes things worse. God wants us to look to him for help, and when we refuse, we compound our crimes. We are working hard to accelerate our defeat.

If I have to get out of here tomorrow afternoon, fine. Last night in my dream, I was positive my time was over, and I was happy about it. I’ve had other dreams in which I’ve died; I wasn’t bothered by them. First I felt shock and amazement, and then I felt peace and relief. That’s exactly how it will be when I really leave.

I’m not afraid of death. I’m just afraid of suffering. I suppose that eventually, this place will look so unappealing, a considerable amount of suffering will seem trivial to me and worth the cost.

Your desires can change your priorities in a heartbeat.

I used to think the Rapture was going to be a period of slaughter. Now I doubt that. I think people who are in tune with God will be removed supernaturally, as I was in my dream. Your fate is tailored to you, depending on what’s appropriate. It makes sense to put the rebellious through the Tribulation; they require suffering in order to change. As the Bible says, stripes are for the fool’s back. If you’re more in line with God’s plan, it serves no purpose to torment you.

I used to think God would not remove people supernaturally, because it would prove his existence, and that would go against his requirement that we receive him by faith. Now I understand that I was wrong. People can believe absolutely anything. Facts don’t matter. We are so stupid and corrupt now, we would have no problem concocting a secular explanation for a worldwide disappearing act. If you seriously believe Bruce Jenner is a woman, you can believe the Rapture has a secular explanation.

Now that I think about it, they’ll probably say it proves God exists, and that he hated us. They’ll say he obliterated us because we were obstructing his liberal, licentious agenda.

I wish there was hope for America. It was a wonderful place. As flawed and full of pain as it was, compared to the rest of the earth, it was a haven of prosperity and peace. I hate to see it sink beneath the waves. But I look forward to seeing it redeemed when the Tribulation is over.

I got up today and wrote this before attending to any of my other responsibilities. It was important to me to share what I knew. I don’t know if it will help anyone, but at least the information is out there.

If this is the best we can do, maybe the return on investment is not worth God’s continued patience. Maybe it’s best if God wraps things up fast.

Nothing is Real Unless it Lasts Forever

I believe I just finished Canto 29 of Dante’s Inferno. Sorry for not using Roman numerals, but then Dante was from Florence, not Rome.

I left Mr. Alighieri in the ninth circle of hell, where they were putting up a banner reading, “WELCOME, OSAMA” and everyone was being forced to sign up for Obamacare 700 years early. They were toasting with New Coke, and all the refreshments came from Weight Watchers. Needless to say, all concealed weapons had been confiscated, so no one was carrying, and the ones who showed up in vehicles were pushing Smart Cars and Priuses.

Humorousness aside, I must admit that I’m deriving some benefit from going back over Columbia College’s Lit. Hum. reading.

Is it opening my mind to the possibility that Judaism and Christianity are just rehashes of older myths? Is it showing me that man has invented a variety of “gods,” many derived from their predecessors, and that I shouldn’t take the Bible seriously as an authoritative reference regarding the supernatural? Should I recant, go out and buy weed, and start fornicating as much as humanly possible?

Of course not. Don’t be stupid.

It’s showing me that various types of Old World pantheism which I thought to be distinct are actually different versions of the same thing, and it’s showing me that the game we play here on earth is more serious than I realized.

It’s also renewing my lack of respect for Catholic doctrine, much of which comes from pantheism.

Dante is an interesting character. He’s a partisan Catholic fanatic, yet he believes mythology is true. He calls God “Jove,” which means “Zeus.” His hell is full of mythological characters, and he takes their myths at face value; he believes them. Chiron is in hell, ferrying people back and forth. Cerberus is in hell. Jason, Hercules, gorgons, furies…they’re in hell. That means they’re real.

Obviously, Dante’s doctrine is way off. Calling Zeus God is probably his worst offense. That’s what Antiochus did to upset the Jews; he sacrificed a pig to Zeus in the Temple in Jerusalem. Dante is guilty of the same thing.

Zeus is nothing like God. Zeus is a rapist, for one thing. He’s also uncaring and unjust; he kills people simply because he’s mad, not because they’ve sinned. He helps filthy, immoral people commit wrongs. How Dante could confuse him with Yahweh is beyond me, but then he belonged to a faith that says God has a mother, so you can’t expect a lot.

I’m pretty sure modern Catholics don’t believe Zeus is God, and that they don’t believe the Greek myths. Nonetheless, they have incorporated mythological figures in their doctrine, calling them “saints” and giving them new names. Human beings can’t seem to be content with the one real God.

In one respect, Dante’s conception of hell is probably correct. In his scheme, many of the damned do little things to try to reduce their suffering temporarily. Here’s one example that caught my attention: people who are forced to live submerged in boiling tar sneak their way to the surface and expose their backs to the air, so that one part of their bodies will be cool for a few seconds. If the demons catch them, they get additional torment, so they have to be quick. Accounts of hell related by modern Christians indicate that the damned don’t suffer constantly; they experience tortures over and over, separated by brief lulls. Presumably, they do whatever they can to feel as comfortable as possible.

Things like that made me think about the similarities between hell and earth.

The earth is a rotten place. Things don’t work right here. Life is unjust. Bad people and spirits torment and abuse their betters. Terrible things happen to us, even when we try to do things right. We get awful diseases. Criminals do unspeakable things to us. We even get hit by lighting and meteors. Our bodies fall apart and die. This is not a safe planet, by any means. We are surrounded by suffering, all the time.

Our lives, like the lives of people in hell, are sessions of torment separated by lulls of relative ease. Earth is not as bad as hell, so the ratio of ease to torment is higher here, and we are able to delude ourselves and believe life is good.

Yesterday I realized we’re just like the people in the boiling pitch. We live in rebellion, so we don’t have as much peace or protection as we should. To compensate, we do what Dante’s tar-swimmers do; we take temporary steps to provide ourselves with comfort for as long as we can. We try to amass money and power. We look for sex partners. We look for entertainment. We dodge our responsibilities. In the end, there is always a reckoning, and whatever punishment you avoid early in life will be visited on you later, or in hell.

It’s stupid to focus on temporary measures, because they carry interest, just like loans. They don’t pay off in the end. They make us slaves, just as the Bible says: “The borrower is the slave of the lender.”

Earth is just a nicer version of hell, with an escape hatch. Heaven is completely different. There is no rot there. There is no disease. There is no failure. There is no aging. There is no disagreement or fighting. We are here for a short time, in this ruined world, and we don’t have the power to build anything that will last. We should focus on preparing for the next life, in a realm where things work the way they should.

We’re always looking for secular miracles, to make earthly life perfect. You can see it in the diet industry; that’s a good example of how we think. We say, “We are sick all the time. We must be doing something wrong. At some point in the past, we must have had a diet appropriate to our physiology, so if we can duplicate it, things will be fine.” We don’t understand that things have never worked correctly here. There is no magic diet. Some diets are better than others, but the body is a cursed machine, and we feed it cursed food, so there’s a limit to the results we can get. Eat the best food there is, and you will still die.

The stem cell people provide another example of spiritual immaturity. If you have an incurable disease, they believe, you should be able to take cells from a murdered baby, to help you feel better during this lifetime. An innocent person should have his or her life taken away, so your temporary, relatively worthless life can be prolonged. Better to die and receive a perfect body that can’t have a disease than to murder someone else so you can circle the drain a little longer.

Some idiots are talking about uploading our minds to machines, so we can live forever. Can you imagine anything worse? It’s probably impossible to move a spirit into a machine, but if it were possible, what would you have? A spirit trapped here in hell’s penthouse. A spirit that can’t graduate to heaven. We would be like breech-delivery babies, digging our heels in, refusing to move on to the next stage in life.

Imagine dying, going to heaven, living in a glorified body, and then going back to earth to visit some fool whose mind was trapped in a machine. What could be more pathetic and contemptible?

Holding onto this place is a big mistake. People who live that way are like unborn babies who, instead of being born and growing to adulthood, choose to have TV’s and refrigerators installed in their mothers’ wombs so they can stay there forever. Fear of death is really fear of life.

Here’s something preachers don’t talk about much: dying to self, or, as the Bible also calls it, the crufixion of the flesh. We seem to get three bad teachings about it:

1. No teaching at all, because it gives people frowny faces.
2. It means you have to be really nice to people all the time, with no selfishness.
3. You have to be an ascetic and live in a hole.

Dying to the flesh isn’t what we think it is. It means giving up on deriving satisfaction and fulfillment from earthly achievement and gratification. It means realizing, with the help of the Holy Spirit, that this place is worthless, and that our job here is to prepare for the next place.

There is self-denial in it, because you will have to give up things like gluttony and sexual excess, but you probably won’t have to put on a loincloth and live on bugs.

Dying to the flesh is a Holy-Spirit-driven process. You can’t do it using willpower. If you could, you wouldn’t need God. Gradually, the Holy Spirit changes your desires and motivations. I feel that this is happening to me now. I asked God for it, and I see it taking place. It can be a little disturbing, but it’s the only correct path.

Human beings love money, glory, power, and pleasure. We think ambition is a good thing. We applaud workaholics; we think a man who never sees his kids because he works 80 hours a week is a hero to his family. We think our goal should be to make lots of money and receive financial security and admiration. We’re just like the Pharisees Jesus laid into. In reality, we should be focusing on inner change.

We think money and power will bring security. They just bring new problems. We don’t realize we’re seeking a state that only comes from the presence of God. He IS security. He is peace. He is love and provision. He is protection and victory. The sensations we’re clawing to get are found in him, but we’re digging in all the wrong places.

You have to give up on this world. The devil is its god. It’s rigged against you. You’re never going to win on any terms other than God’s. If you can develop a good relationship with God, you’ll get the peace and help you couldn’t get by your own effort.

Charismatics do not teach this stuff, because they’re obsessed with money. They love money more than the Jews ever did; no comparison. T.D. Jakes and Rod Parsley and the rest are big, fat obstacles, sitting in the path between you and happiness.

The more I know about God, the less respect I have for human beings and the worse the world seems to me. We are very near the edge of disaster. We are not just a little bit off the mark; we are nowhere near it. God isn’t rewarding us for doing things right; he is showing us limited mercy while we do nearly everything wrong. The world belongs to Satan; no doubt about it. He won (temporarily). All we can do is look for escape routes for an individual here and there.

We’ve been clinging to the rim of the toilet ever since the third page of Genesis.

The more I turn from the nonsense, the better things get for me. On the other hand, it makes me feel more isolated, because I see how few people are going to make it. I was caked with thick layers of filth when I turned back to God, and peeling that stronghold off is taking a long time. When I see people who haven’t even started, I feel hopeless on their behalf. They’re not likely to try, and they’re even less likely to stick with it.

You can’t take the world with you, but you can escape. That’s the message. There is a way out. You have to walk alone, but you can help others find their paths.

I am looking forward to seeing the other side. It has to be better than a sexually perverted, sleazy, socialist America, with no privacy and no liberty, ruled by Hillary Clinton.

Preparation is Key

The more time passes, the more confirmation I get. I broke with a couple of churches over what I saw as greed, dishonesty, and pride, combined with a poor connection to the Holy Spirit, and God keeps showing me I was right to get out. He keeps showing me that the things I started to suspect a few years back are true. My suspicions came from him.

The world is a horrible place. We don’t realize it because we’re deceived, and because we’re used to it. The world is full of unspeakable suffering and defeat. It’s much farther from God than most of us think. It’s still cursed. Regardless of what any religion tells you, this place is much more like hell than heaven. That makes sense, because our realm–the earth’s surface–is the realm just above hell. Above us, there are several levels of heaven. Below us, there is only hell. We are as far out on the scale as you can get without entering hell proper.

The world is disgusting, and we are filthy. The world is not close to God at all. The world is a ghetto and a death camp. It’s a place where decent beings go only for missionary purposes. They visit temporarily. They don’t set up housekeeping.

Angels don’t live here; they come down, do what they’re told to do, and get out fast. The dead who are saved don’t live here; escape from this place is their reward. There are only two kinds of intelligent flesh beings here: saved humans and damned humans. The damned are in the majority.

God hasn’t abandoned the earth, but he has come fairly close. He showed up in the flesh, allowed a bunch of vicious monkeys to torture him to death, and went home. He hasn’t been back, apart from brief visitations, in 2000 years. This world doesn’t belong to him during this age.

God lets us do atrocious things to each other. He let the Nazis do medical experiments on children. He lets abortionists tear babies apart inside their mothers’ wombs. He allows astonishing suffering in the animal kingdom, day in and day out. Why? Because this isn’t his show; it’s ours. It’s not his job to come down here and run a police force. Free will is too important.

We think of the earth as God’s garden or his project. We think of it as the center of the universe. We think he’s running things. When bad things happen, we even call it “God’s will.” That’s not how it works. Yahweh is a long way off, and he shapes earthly events sparingly, to avoid taking free will away.

The only part of God that dwells here is the Holy Spirit, and we limit and persecute him as much as we can.

Correction and righteousness are very important. The churches I attended didn’t see it that way. They valued attendance too much. The pastors demanded a great deal from people in terms of money and free work, but they didn’t ask much of them when it came to holiness or obedience. The churches were like opium dens; people went there to forget the misery they created for themselves, but they didn’t do as much as they should have to change. No one asked them to.

I remember seeing pregnant single women singing on the stages. Not women who had made mistakes, confessed, and repented. Women who chose to fornicate, even after having illegitimate babies. I remember seeing Luther Campbell escorted to a seat of honor in the front row, simply because he was famous. I remember seeing Steve Munsey–a leading proponent of the gospel of greed and licentiousness–treated like royalty.

I was part of a men’s prayer group. What did we discuss? The Holy Spirit? Prayer? Yes, but things like that took up a very small amount of our time. We discussed rich motivational speakers and their idiotic books. We discussed strategies that would help Trinity Church become a huge, embarrassing megachurch like Keith Craft’s church or Joel Osteen’s church. We talked about the importance of hard work, which is not what Biblical figures used to please God. The pastors liked hard work, because our hard work helped them make money and feed their egos.

At the church I attended after Trinity, a false prophet stood up Sunday after Sunday–on the weekends when he didn’t miss church–and told us how great the church was doing. He told us all sorts of money was coming to us. We were going to receive supernatural power. God loved what the pastors were doing. We were about to get a new building.

I started hearing that stuff in 2012, and in 2016, the church is still meeting in a little rented room. No one calls this man or the pastor on their errors. If one of them says the new building will be in place by a certain date, and that date passes, they simply pretend it didn’t happen. Then one of them “prophesies” a new date, and people believe it.

Charismatics are very focused on what God will do for us. We have almost no interest in what we can do for him, apart from the money and free labor. God’s main goal, after salvation, is to give us hearts and minds like his. That requires honesty and confession. It requires humility. Charismatics teach denial, dishonesty, and pride. We’re like the toys in The Lego Movie, singing “Everything is Awesome” while our lives collapse.

Rats are eating the children’s food, because we think the rats are angels. We let them in. We feed them. We execute anyone who points a finger at them. We protect them as though they were God.

The more time passes, the more I understand that the things I’ve just written are true.

Salvation is wonderful, but it has very little effect on your life until you die. Healing is wonderful, but it’s wasted if it doesn’t motivate you to devote yourself to God. Money is wonderful, but it’s a poison if it convinces you you’re already pleasing God with what you do and what you are.

We are supposed to become like God while we live on the earth. We are supposed to be filled with his nature and turn from the hoglike nature of the flesh. This is what “dying to self” means. Charismatics don’t have any interest in this plan. They try to use God’s power to satisfy the flesh.

Satan rules the flesh. The flesh rules us. If we persuade God to do what the flesh wants, who does God serve?

It’s crucial to know God personally. It’s crucial to spend a great deal of time in prayer. You have to ask for correction and humility, consistently. You have to ask God to help you become aligned with his will.

It’s also important to learn about supernatural warfare. The vast majority of preachers don’t believe in spirits or are embarrassed to mention them, but spirits are all around us. Imagine how things would have turned out if FDR had pretended the Japanese didn’t exist. Spirits are bigger problems than the people we fight all day. Paul said it very clearly. We don’t wrestle against flesh and blood; we fight principalities and powers that are not human. When you turn your life over to God, spirits are assigned to you to destroy and distract you. We know this, but how many preachers teach people to fight?

They’re afraid people will call them holy rollers. They’re so desperate to increase church attendance and line their pockets, they let Satan edit their sermons.

The enemy assigns minions to come after us, and we do almost nothing about it. Then we wonder why people fall away from the church. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do when something you’re doing doesn’t work? When your church leads you into failure, quitting seems like common sense. In fact, that’s exactly what it is. Common sense isn’t necessarily right.

I’ve had some problems over the last few weeks. I’ve been aware that I was under attack. It took me a while to realize it, because my perception is not as sharp as it should be. I started waking up night after night, between 4 and 6 a.m., with no peace. I would find myself worrying about things, and I know worry is wrong. I used my tools to beat the worry back, but it was time-consuming, and I ended up losing a lot of sleep. I wasn’t doing everything I needed to do. It was frustrating, because when you don’t sleep well, you feel bad all day. You lack motivation. You may gain weight. You look bad.

The anxiety I felt didn’t come from me. It came from spirits assigned to my flesh. I had to speak defeat to them and their effects, one by one.

I should have understood why I was having the problem. Right now, our country is in danger of being taken over by a woman who reeks of Jezebel, and I fight her supernaturally. The filthiest people in America back her. The Democratic Party is completely devoted to Satan, and to the destruction of Christians and Jews. I speak against them and their vile supernatural allies every day. It’s only natural that there would be a response.

I don’t ask God to save America, because America is destroyed. I only ask him to put Trump in charge and watch over his people a little longer, while we prepare for persecution and the Tribulation. I ask him to improve and empower us, and to use us to harvest as many people as we can in our remaining time. This can’t sit well with the spirits of sexual sin, pride, violence, selfishness, murder, and hatred of God.

Last night God showed me what to do. Instead of waking up, praying and cursing for a long time, and then getting out of bed at my regular time (followed by another session), I should have my morning prayer session as soon as I wake up. I should spend as much time as needed, praying in tongues to build myself up. I should do whatever supernatural warfare is needed. I should enter God’s presence more deeply. Then peace will come, and I can go back to sleep. I can get up later than usual and have a shorter prayer session so I won’t be in bed all day.

It worked last night. I awoke at about 5 a.m., and I got to work. An hour or so later, I was ready to try sleeping again. I moved my alarm back 90 minutes. When I woke up again, I felt great. First time I had slept well in days.

God showed me I have to try to stay in his presence much of the day. Prayer in tongues helps with this. During prayer in tongues, you will hear from God and sense things in the supernatural.

It all makes sense. The new covenant isn’t about obeying rules; it’s about knowing God personally and communicating with him. If you improve your communication with him, your nature will change with time, and you’ll be more inclined to do what’s right.

This stuff works. It’s not like the old, Spirit-free churches, where people repeat other people’s dead prayers and don’t really expect God to help them. It’s not like the charismatic churches, where people expect God to be their genie and sate their flesh.

Christians have to start drawing closer to God. Trump may win, and he may be used to hold the flood back for a while, but eventually, we will have to grit our teeth and watch the slimiest people in society take over America. It may happen four years from now, or it may happen next month. It’s going to happen, and we are already experiencing the beginning of the storm. If you hold onto this world, expecting it to deal kindly with you, you are in for some very hard times. The world doesn’t care about you; its god derives pleasure from your suffering. You can’t appease him. Take a lesson from the way the Jews have failed to appease his servants in the Middle East.

Don’t continue trying to get God to finance and promote your silly plan. It will never work. Try to find out what his plan is, and get on board.

I’m very grateful for the training I get. Only a tiny percentage of people are being prepared. I hope I can remain with them.

Canto XII

I’m making progress with Dante, and I have a major discovery to report: his book (poem, whatever) isn’t called The Inferno. It’s called Inferno. At least that’s what it says on the cover. Also, Inferno isn’t the name of the whole book. It’s the first of three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The whole work is The Divine Comedy. I never knew why copies had The Divine Comedy above Inferno on their covers. I figured maybe the book’s name was something like The Inferno – The Divine Comedy. I did not check. I did not care.

I’ll have to stop writing “The Inferno.”

More big news: the entire book is called The Divine Comedy, not because it’s full of laughs and features a transvestite who worked with John Waters, but because it has a happy resolution. In Dante’s time, the word “comedy” didn’t have anything to do with humor. It was used to refer to stories that didn’t end in disaster.

Now I don’t feel so bad about missing all the punch lines.

I’m enjoying the book a great deal. My perception may be distorted; it may be that virtually any book would seem enjoyable after Confessions. I won’t question it. It’s nice to be able to read without a timer to force me to keep going.

I continue to be befuddled by Dante’s infatuation with Greeks and Greek culture. Dante was a religious fanatic, so you would think he would have been on the outs with the Greeks. Christianity arose from the religion of the Hebrews, not the Greeks. There is a huge gulf between Jesus and, say, Socrates. The gulf between Judaism and Hellenism is well known. The contrast should be obvious to anyone who has read the Bible and Symposium (note how I didn’t call it “The Symposium“; I’m learning).

My questionable understanding of the history of Western thought goes like this: the Greeks stole some ideas from Egypt, and they developed them pretty well. The Romans stole all the ideas the Greeks had and improved them somewhat. Then Rome fell, and it was as if Europe had its Internet connection unplugged for about a thousand years. Not much happened.

Presumably (I will guess), people like Dante didn’t have a whole lot of post-Roman thinkers to get excited about, so they were Greco-Roman fanbois. They must have had powerful motivation to excuse and promote the ancients, since there wasn’t much else to work with.

The morals and customs of the Greeks and Romans were revolting by Christian standards. You would think Christians would have made a better effort to distance themselves from ancient perverts and warmongers; you would think they would have tried to generate their own culture.

Well, I guess they sort of did. That would be the Renaissance. After Dante died.

Pagan thought apparently had a very strong grip on Christian Europe. That’s unfortunate. Like the annoying old guy said to Jeff Bridges in the movie about Preston Tucker, “You can’t have Falstaff and have him thin.” You can’t have Greek geometry and architecture without getting tainted by the Greek ethos. Dante got hit pretty hard. His hell is full of characters taken from Greek pantheism: gorgons, centaurs, Cerberus, furies, Nia Vardalos…how can a serious Christian claim Yahweh stocked his hell with false gods he hated?

Dante’s hell has levels. The “good” damned are at the top, in what is known as the vestibule. To steal boldly from Gary Larson while splitting an infinitive, they are not the damned; they’re the danged. Their punishment, though eternal, is light.

Their ranks include Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and so on. Below that, you have people who committed sins of “incontinence.” I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not that kind of incontinence. Good thing, because they’re uphill from the rest of the people in hell. It just means they sinned because they were weak. These people are gluttons and so on. They aren’t cold-blooded sinners who simply prefer to sin.

The lower you go, the worse the sins are. The murderers boil in a river of blood. A few floors below that, there was probably an area for drivers who cut into long lines of traffic instead of waiting their turn. Or people who put gum on the undersides of restaurant tables.

Dante put people he didn’t like in hell. In one unintentionally funny passage, he encounters a guy named Filippo Argenti. This man’s crime: belonging to a family that fought with Dante’s family. He’s in hell, he’s being tormented for eternity, and he has no hope of relief. Dante should feel pity, right? No way! He tells Argenti he hopes he stays there a good long time and suffers even more!

Right there, I think Dante proved he had a poor grasp of Christianity. Feeling no pity for a person in hell is completely unchristian. Being glad a person is in hell and hoping for worse punishment: that’s nuts. A real Christian would be afraid God would send him a little punishment of his own, in order to teach him compassion. When you take pleasure in other people’s suffering, in a way, you make yourself out to be God. On top of that, you show a very poor understanding of your own situation. You deserve hell, too.

I decided to check out the Cliff’s Notes for Inferno. For some reason, Cliff puts his notes online, and you can read them for nothing. Not sure how this works out to be a good business model. Cliff says a lot of the stuff in Inferno is allegory and symbols. I’m not sure whether this enriches the experience or merely clutters it with drivel that comes from the imaginations of academics trying to justify their existence.

Example: Dante’s story starts in the woods. He has lost his way, and he’s wandering around. Cliff claims this means he has fallen off the path of Christianity, and that he needs to find his way back. Maybe it’s true. Maybe not. Now that Dante is dead, we can make up stuff like this all day long, and no one can call us on it.

It reminds me of something someone told me about James Joyce’s Ulysses. Supposely, scholars took the first edition and drew all sorts of conclusions about its quirks. If you buy the a newer edition, it may have the old pagination in it, so you can go back and look at the amazing discoveries scholars made on this or that page. I was told that when the book was revised, it turned out a number of things scholars had commented on were actually typographical errors, and that they had nothing to do with Joyce’s intentions.

Funny story; one hopes it’s true.

What a horrible book. I got three hundred pages in before I realized the story was never going to start.

I assume I’m right about that. If someone tells me it started on page 301, I’ll be upset.

I tend to think Inferno is just a good yarn that performs the same function as a political cartoon. Dante had an axe to grind, so he wrote a book which essentially said God backed up all of his pet peeves.

Dante never went to hell, and he knew nothing about hell. His doctrine was bizarre, and his incorporation of material from a false religion seems heretical. Nonetheless, his story is sobering. Somewhere, hell exists, and people we know are there right now. Many of the famous people Dante mentions are there. Inferno is wrong on the facts, but it’s still a chilling picture of existence without hope.

A while back, I came across the movie version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on TV, and as always, I was struck by the shocking badness of it. It’s one of the worst movies ever made; you can’t even enjoy watching it for its incompetence. It’s like Catch-22 with Alan Arkin. Nearly unbearable. I then bought a copy of the old BBC TV version and watched it, and I enjoyed it a great deal. It was immensely superior.

The disks had special features on them, and some of the material dealt with the author, Douglas Adams. He died in 2001. I watched the disks and looked around the Internet. I learned that Adams hated Christianity. According to his own words, he was a “radical atheist.”

I started thinking about that, and I realized he was in hell. I could be wrong; I can’t call the front desk in hell and ask for him. Maybe he managed to pray right after the sudden heart attack that killed him. But the odds against his salvation are overwhelming. So here I was, enjoying and admiring his work, laughing and feeling lighthearted, and the man behind it all, at that very moment, was being tormented in flames, surrounded by vile creatures that mocked him. With no hope of relief.

I had been planning to buy new copies of his books, but thinking about him in hell soured me on that idea.

Who is with him? I don’t know, but I can make some solid guesses. Christopher Hitchens. Henry Miller (one of my favorite authors when I was young). Hunter S. Thompson. Prince. Michael Jackson. Gene Roddenberry. George Carlin, whose work I admired until I was about fifteen. Muhammad Ali.

When I say “with him,” I don’t mean they’re sitting at the same table in hell’s mythological bar; the one people like to say they prefer to heaven. The one where everyone dresses like a biker and listens to AC/DC while downing free drinks. I don’t mean they have companionship. I mean they’re in the same realm of torture and despair.

It’s good that Dante makes us think about the possibility of eternity without hope. It’s also good that he reminds us that murder and theft aren’t the only sins. He has punishments for gluttons, angry people, the sullen, and liars. In 2016 America, we think we’re entitled to be fat, mean, and dishonest. We have forgotten the whole list of things God hates. We don’t try to be good, but if we did, we wouldn’t know how. These days I pray to God to show me how to live, because I’ve never seen anyone who actually knew how God wanted us to act. I have no role models. I used to think I did.

I guess I’ll be done with this book by the end of the week. I hope Bocaccio will have shown up by then. Eventually I’ll have to face the twin horrors of Cervantes and Dostoevsky, but at least I won’t have to deal with Toni Morrison.

All Done With Augustine

For the rest of my life, I need to make a point of celebrating October 15. It’s the day I finished reading Augustine’s Confessions.

This must be how people feel the day after they get out of prison.

When you commit to a task, you make a slave of yourself. Your freedom is gone until the day you finish. While I was reading Confessions, I couldn’t spend much time reading things I might actually have enjoyed. It made me feel as though I hated reading itself, which is not true. Now I’m free, so the only thing that remains is to convince my heart the chains are gone. My ordeal with that miserable book started to produce a habit of feeling like a captive.

I started reading Dante’s Inferno, and it’s a much better experience. I suppose Dante had less influence on the course of the world, so maybe Confessions is more important than The Inferno, but right now all I can think about is how much less Dante makes me suffer.

I’m not far into the book, but I think I can make a couple of observations without fear of being proven wrong.

Dante is not as boring as his predecessors. He doesn’t act like he’s being paid by the word. He can write a sentence that’s less than ten lines long. He doesn’t have to come up with ten cryptic names for every person or place he mentions.

Dante maintains a faster pace than Homer and Virgil. Something significant happens on every page. He probably will not spend three days of my time writing about a dull boat race in which the captains cry and whine like six-year-old girls.

If you can stand Dickens and Twain, you can probably stand Dante. That’s my guess.

Why do we call him “Dante” and not “Alighieri”? How did we end up on a first-name basis with so many old writers? Seems silly to me. But I will not fight it.

According to Wikipedia, Dante lived about 800 years after Augustine, so in moving from Confessions to The Inferno, Columbia’s Lit. Hum. syllabus makes a very gratifying leap. It’s like that feeling you get when a vehicle that’s stuck in the mud breaks free and starts moving. I wonder if it was smart for the Marxist eggheads to skip eight whole centuries. Surely someone must have written something good during that time.

I guess I’ll check.

Apparently, Beowulf and The Song of Roland aren’t important. Neither is Chaucer.

Looks like that’s most of it. No wonder they called the Dark Ages “dark.”

The Renaissance is right around the corner. Won’t that be fun?

Considering Dante’s year of birth, I have to wonder: did the Black Plague influence him? I believe it entered Europe pretty close to 1300 A.D., on a ship that docked in Genoa. No, it looks like I’m wrong. It arrived after he died, in 1347.

I’m already annoyed with Dante. He has a level of hell which is reserved for people who deserve salvation but don’t have it. The reason they’re not in heaven? They were not baptized. Nice bit of legalism there. Forget the thief on the cross who entered heaven after accepting Christ, with no opportunity to hit the mikvah. He didn’t deserve salvation, and he wasn’t baptized, but somehow he squeaked by. He must be heaven’s first illegal immigrant.

Guess who he puts in the area for deserving heathens? Homer, Virgil, Socrates, and Plato, among others. Socrates was a flaming homosexual, and Plato probably had the same bent, if you will pardon the pun. Homer endorsed murder, conquest, pillage, and rape. So did Virgil. Dante apparently thinks talent or intelligence equals righteousness, but he’s not overly concerned with things like purity or compassion. Crazy.

He put Ovid in the nice area of hell. I still don’t get Ovid. Stalking letters from needy women? How are those a great contribution to the arts? Something must have been lost in translation.

If he was going to put someone really nice in the pleasant part of hell, why not Cassandra? Why not Briseis? They didn’t bother anyone. How about what’s-her-name? You know…the daughter of Agamemnon. Was it Iphigenia? Yes. I checked. I don’t understand why Dante chose a bunch of murderous, genocidal imperialists, some of whom had sexual inclinations very much contrary to those espoused by the church.

The church was royally screwed up by the time Dante was born, so none of this should surprise me. The Holy Spirit was long exiled. Popes were greedy, warlike kings. The Catholic Church was the greatest terrorist organization that had ever existed. You could be burned alive for writing a pamphlet. They burned people left and right and thought their agony made God happy.

People were absolutely terrified of the church. It was not an institution Jesus would have approved; it was the spiritual continuation of the Jewish priesthood that had him killed. Had he shown up in 1300, they would have killed him a second time.

I’m very glad Christians don’t have the power to burn people any more, because if they did, the local Catholics would eventually round me up and make me the main attraction at a barbecue. I know several Protestant preachers who wouldn’t mind watching me roast. I feel safe for the moment, because–temporarily–we have great freedom compared to people like Galileo and Joan of Arc. The Gaystapo will probably get us eventually, though.

Wedding planners will become inquisition planners. Everything will be done tastefully, and there will be glamour gift boxes for the ladies and near-ladies.

It’s hard to be green when you burn people alive. Maybe carbon credits will have to be obtained. Plant two trees in Madagascar, and you get to incinerate three NRA members.

Dante’s theology is highly bizarre, but I can overlook that because he isn’t turning my brain into sedimentary rock. I hope to be done in a few days, so I guess it’s time to hit Amazon and order new stuff.