Florida Upswing Defies Logic

Florida is a giant coronavirus hotspot! We just had over 50,000 new cases pop up in one day! Or did we?

Florida is home to a person who will certainly be the GOP presidential candidate, or his running mate, in 2024. Keep that in mind. The worse our stats look, the more hope Democrats have of reelecting a dementia patient. They want to blame the local coronavirus upsurge on our governor, Rick DeSantis.

The list of worst-hit areas includes blue strongholds in California and northeastern states. I wonder how DeSantis managed to infect people over a thousand miles away, under the watchful eyes of infallible leftist politicians.

Here’s something interesting: at more or less the same time, the nation of Zambia had a new wave of cases. Zambia and Florida have about the same populations. Both places have the delta variant, which is supposedly the reason for Florida’s monster virus wave.

Facts to keep in mind: Florida’s vaccination rate is around 50%. Zambia’s rate is under 1%. Zambians don’t practice social distancing in any serious way. I know this from watching them on live video as my wife moves about in the capital, Lusaka. They have things like Zoom classes for students, but when people are out and about, they don’t stay far apart. They do wear masks, but then they were also wearing masks when their recent case increase started. Masks didn’t stop it.

Contrast: Zambia’s case numbers have plummeted. Their wave is nearly over, and Florida’s chart shows a continued increase. Why?

It’s not the masks. Even pro-maskers don’t claim masks are that effective. It’s not vaccines. Zambians aren’t getting them. It’s not social distancing, because Zambians aren’t doing anything Floridians aren’t doing.

I am not against vaccines. Let me make sure I say that. I am for anything that actually works and doesn’t destroy our economy or our civil rights.

I got the J&J vaccine. I don’t trust the mRNA vaccines because they mess with genetic material. Doctors tell us they don’t affect our DNA, but then doctors have told us many, many things that were the opposite of true. They said cocaine wasn’t addictive, and they also told us to eat lots of trans-fats. I believe in conventional vaccines, so I got one. Still, Zambians aren’t vaccinated, and their coronavirus wave dried up. Floridians are vaccinated, and our wave is supposedly increasing fast.

Here’s something else that’s weird: Florida is reporting new cases every other day, and the authorities are attributing all cases to the days when they report. On a day when they don’t report, the graph says zero. The next day, the chart will combine all cases for that day and the previous day. This is how we get a nasty-looking chart with scary daily figures. We aren’t really having 50,000-case days, but our keepers keep giving us graphs with 50,000-case bars.

Why are the authorities doing this? Could it be because they like those high, fictional, vote-swaying spikes?

Medical people lean way left, and they get tons of government money. They are rewarded financially for reporting coronavirus cases. Many coronavirus diagnoses are made subjectively, based on symptom presentations which can also be consistent with other illnesses. Should we trust our medical personnel to report honestly? I don’t.

Another interesting fact: Florida’s coronavirus death rate isn’t going up like the infection rate. Why? They’re telling us the new variant is worse than the original disease and kills younger people. Why is the death increase so small?

Florida is reporting insanely high infection numbers, but the death rate is lower than it was in April, before the wave hit. It’s comparable to the lowest rates we’ve had since spring of last year. It’s a little higher, but not much.

We haven’t come up with a flood of better treatments since April. The comparatively low death rate can’t be attributed to medical advances.

Could it be because vaccines are allowing infections but preventing deaths? It appears to be true that vaccines allow a lot of infections while preventing deaths, but if that explained the graphs, the death rate would still be a lot higher than it was in April. The number of vaccinated people hasn’t changed all that much since then.

Most people who are getting sick (we are told) are unvaccinated. I’m inclined to believe that, because the vaccines are generally believed to reduce infection rates. Our new wave of unvaccinated victims should be giving us a big increase in deaths. They are not. Why is that?

The natural explanation that seems to fit the death graph best is this: the infection numbers are grossly exaggerated.

I don’t know if it’s true, but it fits the facts which are available to me.

The only real conclusion you can draw from the confusion surrounding coronavirus is that “the science” isn’t up to this fight. Scientists and the politicians who obey them have no idea what’s happening. Their predictions fail over and over. Their protective measures, apart from vaccines, very clearly do not work, regardless of what studies seem to show. The only real study is reality, and it says masks and hiding don’t help.

Digression: when did the word “science” start requiring a definite article? I remember when we used to say “science,” period. Now we say, “the science.” Strange.

It’s fashionable to run around saying, “I trust the science,” but a) “the science” contradicts itself repeatedly, b) “the science” has failed to stop the pandemic, and c) “the science” used to tell us margarine would prevent heart attacks, train passengers would suffocate in tunnels, the dinosaurs became extinct because they were too big, fever patients and athletes shouldn’t be given water, and stomach ulcers were caused exclusively by stress, not bacteria.

Science has told us many stupid things, even recently. Remember global cooling? I do.

Science doesn’t like to talk about its howling errors, and the more recently they were made, the more it wants to cover them up. Fortunately, it has a helpful pal: “the journalism.”

My belief is that coronavirus makes no sense, and can’t be conquered by science, because it’s a plague with a supernatural origin, just like AIDS and syphilis. When things make no sense, there is often a supernatural cause.

Coronavirus has never made any sense. It made no sense when the Chinese government covered it up and spread it around the world. It made no sense when their domestic outbreak disappeared almost instantly. It made no sense when people who stayed home got the disease at much higher rates than people who walked around freely. It certainly made no sense when Andrew Cuomo sent infected people into nursing homes to kill thousands of vulnerable seniors.

We know coronavirus makes no sense, because scientists are on TV every day saying things like, “We think maybe,” and, “We don’t really know,” in connection with what should be very obvious questions.

Fauci has no idea what’s happening. Neither does Biden, although to be fair, you could say that about his efforts to work a smartphone or dress himself. The CDC is clueless. The only thing man has done so far that has helped has been to develop a few half-effective vaccines.

I think coronavirus is one of God’s efforts to humble mankind. It bobs and weaves like Floyd Mayweather, and our punches keep hitting the air. I expect this to continue.

In a rational world, there would have been global fasting and repentance. We would have abandoned sin. We would have flocked to churches. During the Black Death, people threw jewelry over monastery walls to please God, and the monks threw it back because they thought it would make them sick. The world isn’t acknowledging the fact that we brought this problem on ourselves by offending God over and over as a matter of policy.

The Bible shows that plagues don’t go away until people repent or God decides enough people have died. We are not going to repent, so I think we’ll just have to wait until God feels the punishment is sufficient. Maybe it will never stop. The common cold didn’t. Neither did the flu. Coronavirus seems likely to turn out to be the third major permanent plague.

People who are against God seem to be unified in one belief: conservatives and Christians are the reason the plague continues. It’s not the world’s newfound love of female sluttiness or male-on-male anal sex. It’s not the increasing popularity of paganism in once-Christian countries. It’s not the decline of Christianity. Humanity wants evil trends much more than it wants God, so it is convinced they’re indisposable. The problem has to be the Trump voters and bitter clingers.

We should not be surprised. Europeans blamed the Jews for the Black Death. Clearly, there was a connection between festering lymph glands and the consumption of gefilte fish.

Leftists and other anti-God factions want us gone from the planet. Many of them are eager to get the go-ahead so they can start killing us. Coronavirus is just more fuel for the fire of persecution.

The children of darkness have a murderous, irrational hatred for Christians and conservatives, and many Christians and conservatives have irrational phobias about vaccines. A number of us have even flipped out and committed crimes over mask requirements. Insanity rules on both sides. Evil spirits are successfully motivating untold millions of people, filling them with delusion because they don’t spend time with the Holy Spirit. He’s the only one who dispels all delusion, but only a tiny percentage of human beings commune with him every day.

It’s a recipe for widescale violence. The word says a spirit of murder will be released at the beginning of the tribulation, and we are already seeing it at work.

Murderous feelings are not just increasing among people with differing opinions about coronavirus; they are increasing, and leading to actual murders, among black people. I didn’t learn this until today. Most Americans are probably aware that there has been a gigantic increase in the murder rates in our cities since the pandemic started. What they may not know is that it’s a black phenomenon. Other groups haven’t been caught up in it yet. It’s very strange.

The press won’t tell us because their propaganda protocols forbid it; negative news about black people is to be suppressed.

Why would a murder epidemic hit black people and leave the rest of us nearly untouched? It makes no sense at all. It’s true that even before coronavirus, black people were committing over half of America’s homicides, but the rest of us were murdering nearly as many people. Our rates should have shot up, too, but they haven’t. Another strange thing: property crimes haven’t skyrocketed at the same time Why not? If a general atmosphere of lawlessness were the problem, wouldn’t burglars and rapists be affected?

It’s extremely odd. During Black Lives Matter’s biggest year, more blacks than ever were killed here. Only a very small percentage of people killed by blacks were not, themselves, black.

It’s almost as though God were mocking BLM. Maybe he is; BLM mocks him. Last year, about 8600 black people were murdered in the US, less than 200 were killed by police, only a tiny handful were killed wrongly by the police, and still, BLM ignores black murderers and their black victims and screams about defunding the only people who are paid to protect blacks from blacks.

Anyway, bad trends tend to hit black people first and then emerge into the general population. Consider illegitimacy, rap, and sagging. My feeling is that the murder problem is hitting blacks first because evil usually hits them first, and it will spread among other Americans later.

I don’t know why curses often hit black people first, but they clearly do. It doesn’t seem like it’s always behavior-related. During my time on the earth, I have developed the impression that bad things are more likely to happen to black people even when they are exemplary individuals. My suspicion is that it’s because they are fewer generations removed from witchcraft, and spirits that owned their ancestors don’t want to let go of them.

As non-blacks move farther from God and participate more and more in idolatry, we are probably moving toward a future in which most of us will have the same problems black people have.

I guess I’m rambling now. I don’t think human reason is going to save us from the pandemic. I suppose that’s my main point. I think we’re sliding into the tribulation, and things will get worse and worse because we refuse to admit guilt. I think we will eventually see old-style plagues that make us regret using the word “plague” to describe a minor problem like coronavirus. I believe it’s time to prepare so you have some chance of being raptured before things get really bad.

One More Door Closed

I was about to write, “I’m afraid I may start to appear obsessed with the rapture, but…”, and then I realized I don’t care if people think I’m obsessed with the rapture. If the rapture is really almost here, we should be obsessed with it. So here I go.

I have a Youtube channel. Actually, I have several, but Youtube denied me access to some by changing the login procedures. I guess the videos on those channels will be up, being ignored, when the Lord returns.

I don’t link to my main channel from my blog. I don’t have any desire to involve my blog readers with my videos.

Originally, my channel was about tools. Over time, it changed, and for quite a while, it has mostly been about God.

Yesterday I made a video about my recent boat dream. I was on a boat that started to sink, and I told someone to start the engines and get the boat moving so the water would run out. The dream was about prayer in tongues. When you don’t pray in tongues often enough, your life becomes like a sinking boat.

Last night, I tried to upload the video. Ordinarily, Youtube takes you through a few pages, and on the last page, you click a button labeled “Publish.” After that, the video finishes uploading, Youtube processes it, and it appears before your audience.

This time, the “Publish” button was greyed out. I was informed that Youtube would run a “check” on the video before it appeared. The ostensible purpose was to check for copyrighted material in order to prevent me from infringing.

Uploading finished some time last night. It’s 1:20 p.m., and the video is not published.

What’s happening? Will it ever appear? No idea.

Earlier today, when I realized the video was going to be a pain to publish, I felt God was telling me I didn’t have to do videos any more. I felt he was saying, “You said what I told you to say, and virtually no one listened. It’s only going to get worse. You are free to delete your channel so you won’t continue fighting a pointless battle.”

Yesterday, I had a similar feeling. I was praying with Rhodah. We were interceding for other people. We have a long list of people we have prayed for. I thought about all the people who hadn’t changed one bit since we started praying. I realized the problem wasn’t with God or ourselves. The people we had prayed for were refusing to change.

I came up with a list of people who had shown improvement, and we prayed for them. If you’re going to sow, you should sow in good soil. There is no point in continuing to pester God about people he has already tried to help.

I have been thinking about a lot of applicable scriptures.

A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.

And into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, enquire who in it is worthy; and there abide till ye go thence.And when ye come into an house, salute it. And if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it: but if it be not worthy, let your peace return to you. And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city.

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

This all relates to the rapture. God is going to pull us out when our presence on earth ceases to produce adequate results. The phrase “turn again and rend you” is a description of persecution from an unreceptive world.

Jesus mentioned pearls because we are his pearls.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.

We have been taught that the pearls are the good things we say to other people about God, but that isn’t true. Jesus is the merchant in the parable, and Jesus had no need to buy the gospel. He bought the saved. The word says we were bought with a price. Jesus gave all he had on earth in exchange for us.

When Jesus went to towns where they rejected him, he didn’t stick around, begging and cajoling. He left quickly, sometimes speaking judgment against them.

Jesus isn’t going to leave his pearls here forever. There is a limit to what he will let us endure.

I don’t pray for my sister to be saved. I used to. Then God showed me she was the obstacle. I was willing, the many people who have prayed for her were willing, and God was willing. God didn’t deny our requests. My sister denied his.

In 2015, God told me he had cut my dad off. I stopped praying for his healing and salvation, knowing it was a waste of time. My dad became demented and sick, and it wasn’t until he had been nearly destroyed that he accepted salvation.

On the other hand, there are people who listen to me and put what I tell them to use. I don’t have to chase after them and beg them. Life is much better when I focus on such people. The others bring discouragement. They make me doubt God, even though they, not God, are the ones denying my prayers.

God gives up on people. That’s not a popular thing to say, but it should be repeated over and over. He gave up on Sodom and Gomorrah. He gave up on Pharaoh and the Egyptian army. He gave up on the entire world in Noah’s time. He gave up on the Hebrews under Moses, and Moses had to remind him of Abraham in order to dissuade him from killing them all. He will give up on you, too, if you become so stubborn you can’t be helped. It’s important to know when you’re fighting a battle God told you to give up.

I think God is about to give up on the world. He has given us every chance. He even sent a plague, and there has been virtually no effort on our part to repent and get relief. Even in the midst of a pandemic, the celebration of sin, including homosexuality and pride, is burgeoning like never before.

Revival is going nowhere. There are individuals who are being used successfully to save others, but the numbers are minimal. There is no big movement anywhere. God restored the Holy Spirit to us over 100 years ago, and the response has slowed to a trickle.

I used to think the rapture and tribulation couldn’t come until we saw armies surrounding Jerusalem. In the book of Luke, Jesus said this:

And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.

He said that during a discussion of the end, but if you look at it closely, you can see it’s not about the apocalypse. It’s about the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. He said Jerusalem would be trodden down until the times of the Gentiles was fulfilled. That trampling, and that age, clearly started when the Romans sacked Jerusalem. Muslims are trampling the temple area right now.

When will the age of the Gentiles be fulfilled? When we become as hard-headed as the religious Jews of Jesus’ time. We’re already there.

Should I be so pessimistic about other people when I took so long to come around? After all, the Hebrews danced naked before a golden calf, and Moses still asked God to save them, and Abraham prayed for the Sodomites. I think it’s different today. Christians have been interceding for the lost practically forever, and they haven’t changed.

It seems like the world is stuck in the mud. Travel and commerce are restricted. The plague and the hysterical responses to it are getting worse, so relief may not be coming. All over the world, people are staying home and doing nothing. Maybe this is the end of progress. Maybe we’re just waiting for a big event.

It will be interesting to see how the year finishes.

Eat Your Hearts Out, Single Ladies

Here is some interesting news: I am married.

I used to wonder if God had decided I was supposed to be single all my life. It seemed like there was no one for me. Then I tried a couple of interracial dating sites, and within 11 days, I had found someone I could find no reason not to marry. Three days later, I told her I loved her. We kept talking, and I never did find any reason to think she wasn’t perfect for me.

Two months later, we flew to Egypt to meet each other. We already knew we were going to be married. We thought we would be applying for a fiancee visa for her, and to get that, we needed to prove we had met in person. A few days into the trip, I proposed.

Later I found out it would be better to marry and apply for a spouse visa. To get that, we needed to have a wedding and then get together a second time, to show the State Department the marriage had been consummated.

We looked for countries where we could both travel during the pandemic and which would be willing to allow us to marry on their soil. Iceland looked good for a while, but we eventually decided it was best to avoid the expense, time waste, and trouble of going to a foreign country simply to marry. I found out we could marry online, so we chose to do that instead. Marrying online left us free to honeymoon in a nicer place than Iceland.

Last week I got us a Utah marriage license, and today we had a Zoom ceremony attended by 17 friends and relations.

We have known each other 129 days.

Before we met each other, the field of marriage was like a wall of thistles to us. There was no way to get through. Once we came together, everything fell into place without effort.

I say I didn’t find any reason to think she wasn’t perfect for me. It’s really that simple. I never had a particular kind of person in mind. I never had a list; this age, that height, and so on. I just wanted a good Christian woman who knew God very well and who was attractive and compatible with me. Other than that, she didn’t have to have any particular traits. I was open to anything, as long as I couldn’t find any deal-breaking qualities.

It sounds like it should have been easy, but my efforts yielded nothing of use until I met Rhodah. She doesn’t match some target image I created. I just can’t find any problems with her. Since then, it has been as though we were sliding down a greased path.

Grooms are supposed to have cold feet. I didn’t. I felt a very small amount of anxiety, but the truth is that I have felt more nervous about stock trades.

Today hasn’t been a nerve-wracking day. It’s about like yesterday, except now I’m married. The big difference is that I feel I can relax more with Rhodah. There is a part of you you will always hold back when you’re single, and now that part of me is hers, permanently.

I don’t feel bad about having an online wedding, and neither does she. I feel as though I should feel bad, but I don’t feel bad. It seems as though it was the most natural choice in the world.

I don’t feel like I married my girlfriend. I feel like I married my wife.

Now we have to get her a Swiss visa while the door is still open, and we have to make plans. I have a ring on the way. It has to be appraised before I approve it, and then we have to meet in Switzerland.

There really are low-maintenance women out there. They are rare, and when you know one, it takes a while to believe what you see. Rhodah is low-maintenance. She didn’t buy a dress for the ceremony until today. She had me on video chat while she visited the mall. She kept telling me she hated shopping. She couldn’t wait to go home. She looked at about 6 dresses, total.

What kind of woman hates shopping? What kind of woman agrees to an online wedding ceremony, enthusiastically, goes to the mall on her wedding day to buy the dress, and then complains that she hates shopping?

The low-maintenance kind.

She looked beautiful, too. She wore a nice royal blue dress with a modest cut. We’re hoping to redo our vows with a preacher, so there was no point in buying a gown for today’s event.

It was wonderful having so many friends watching. I think of myself as a hermit, but I had over a dozen good friends watching, and I could have had a few more. How many people have a dozen worthwhile friends? Most people don’t even have one.

Almost all of my friends entered my life through church. I think that explains things.

To make the day even better, I found out I still had a pearl necklace that belonged to my mother. I had thought my sister had taken it. It has two strands of pearls and a diamond locket with a ruby in the center. Our wedding ring is a ruby with a diamond halo. Now Rhodah has something to wear it with.

I wish she could have my mother’s gold Rolex with the malachite face and diamond bezel, but that went to a pawn shop in Miami a long time ago, along with the other things I didn’t ask for.

I’m a husband. I can say “my wife.” From now on when I fill out forms, I have to check the “married” boxes. I don’t need a will; I have someone who will automatically inherit everything. When I’m with a single woman who seems eligible, I won’t have to wonder if I should do anything, because I shouldn’t.

I also have someone to support, but the same God who brought me a wife will help me feed her. After all, as the Bible says, “He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.”

I don’t know if I’ll still want to blog. We’ll have to see how things unfold.

“Deputy Clerk Osmond Just Logged In”

Today I have something I didn’t have yesterday: a marriage license.

It’s so strange to use phrases like “fiancee” and “marriage license.” They used to seem like they were only parts of other people’s worlds. Barring unforeseen problems, soon I’ll be saying “my wife.”

Rhodah and I gave up on marrying in person. The only non-tropical location we could find within reasonable distances was Iceland. I didn’t want to meet in a warm New World setting like Cancun and Jamaica. Who wants to get married in a hot place full of drunk, sweaty tourists? I have had enough of the tropics.

Iceland sounds like fun, but we would be blowing like $3000 just to get married, only to go somewhere nicer as soon as the wedding was over. Getting married an hour from your house and then going where you really want to go is fine, but wasting 5 days and lots of money on a second-place destination is not.

Today I finished our online application in Utah County, Utah. I don’t even know the name of the county seat. Just the county. For $70, they set us up very quickly. You upload a few documents and fill in some blanks. Then you enter payment, and a minute or two later, you are licensed.

In the confirmation email, they provided a link to a page where we can make an appointment with an officiant from the clerk’s office. They have spots open as early as Monday.

The strange thing is how stress-free all this is. We aren’t second-guessing ourselves. We’re not nervous. The main thing that concerns me is how relaxed I am. How can it be this easy?

I have two friends who want to be our official witnesses, so scheduling will revolve around them. Once Rhodah and I have a time that works for both of them, we can deal with other people who want to sit in. I don’t know if it’s possible to include “guests.” I’ll find out tomorrow.

Thanks, everyone who offered to witness in my comments. Had I not had potential witnesses on tap, you would have been life savers.

It’s a shame Rhodah can’t come to America. Biden’s idiotic travel ban has nothing at all to do with science. The leftists who elected him are hysterical and irrational when it comes to coronavirus, so he is maintaining the bans to keep them happy.

America was the single biggest coronavirus hotbed for a long time, and we already have the delta variant here, so, as scientists have said, there is no point at all in restricting travel. Coronavirus is here, so what are we trying to keep out? Pressure to return to sane travel policies is mounting, but Biden looks out for himself, not America, so he is taking his time.

I told Rhodah someone should chloroform him and fix things while he’s out. His wife probably already has a kit.

People whose businesses are dying because of leftist hysteria vote, so maybe Biden’s self-centered reluctance will hurt him in 2024, assuming he hasn’t already been removed from office because his dementia has progressed.

Once we’re married and can show we had a honeymoon, we can apply for a spouse visa. Then we wait. In the meantime, we will have to meet for trips every so often. Maybe Biden will have a lucid moment and okay tourist visas.

Switzerland says it may let us in for a honeymoon, but getting a visa for Rhodah may involve a lot of work. There aren’t a lot of other pleasant honeymoon destinations. Sweaty, beachy countries, Muslim countries, and European countries where people’s names have no vowels. That’s most of it. I think Thailand is open, but flying to Thailand is like driving to Jupiter.

Really long trips aren’t that bad if you have someone with you or you’re not meeting anyone, but it’s unpleasant to work them out when you have to meet another person. This is especially true when it’s someone whose welfare is your responsibility.

I like Switzerland. I can communicate in English and French. I’ve been there before, so I won’t be confused. It’s probably the safest place on Earth. The food is good, and they have interesting, decadent Swiss stuff full of potatoes and melted cheese. It may well be the most beautiful country there is. The weather is excellent.

I really don’t want to end up in a place like the Czech Republic, Albania, or Turkey. I don’t want to deal with countries I know nothing about, weird alphabets, regimes that torture people for wearing shorts, or the depressing atmosphere Islam invariably generates. I admit, it might be fun playing drinking games with Melania Trump’s family.

Tomorrow we should have some idea whether Switzerland will cooperate. If not, we may have to go to Iceland whether we want to or not. The sun is shining all day there now. That would be weird. I assume they make really good blackout curtains. Not like the crummy ones we have here that always let the sun blaze through an opening 5 feet long.

I am not all that comfortable about the ring, because buying rubies is so complicated. I found a nice stone and a magnificent setting. I’m unsure about the company that sells it, and I can’t find what I want anywhere else. I read a few disturbing things about them. Someone claims the president went to prison for defrauding people. They have a no-cost return period, though, so I would be able to have it appraised here.

You can’t get a good deal on a ring. All you can get is the best bad deal. Buying women’s jewelry is like buying coffins and anything made by Apple. You will always overpay. Buyers have spoiled sellers for centuries, treating their fungible goods as though every piece were a treasure and every occasion was as important as the second coming. “How often does little Ashley graduate from T-ball camp?”

You pretty much have to spend x, knowing the seller paid x/4 or less. I don’t mind. I just wish jewelers wouldn’t pretend rings were investments. Take my money, but don’t ruin the experience by insulting my intelligence. Something you buy for x and sell for a fraction of x is not an investment. No one has ever paid retail for a ring and then turned around and made money.

My plan is to buy the ring, have it appraised, and be content if the RETAIL (not resale) value is somewhere close to what I paid. If that’s true, then everything will be fine. I don’t want to find out I paid a lot and gave Rhodah a piece of junk. I want her to be thrilled.

The web says jewelers mark up wedding rings by 300 to 1000 percent. When you’re getting soaked like that, it has to be for love.

My buddy Mike used to know the Zale family, from Zale’s Jewelers. He wanted to buy a girl a ring, so they showed him a bunch he could choose from at cost. He says the thousand-dollar rings were down around $100. Don’t think about this if you’re a man and you’re still paying off a ring.

I’ll probably order the ring tomorrow. I’ll do my best to have it checked out. If we keep it and start having doubts about it later, we can always buy a different center stone. Rhodah absolutely must be happy with it.

I feel like I’m dreaming as I write about these things. In February, I was alone and willing to accept it. By mid-March, I was in love and thinking seriously about marriage. It’s early July, and I may be 5 days away from a crazy online wedding.

Who says we don’t serve a great God?

Listening to Ezekiel Finally Pays Off

Today I had one of the strangest thoughts I’ve had since becoming a Christian. I ran it by my fiancee Rhodah to see how it checked out with her. I didn’t want to call it “revelation” until I had talked to someone who was full of the Holy Spirit. Now I’ll run it by you.

For at least a couple of years, I’ve felt as though my earthly responsibilities didn’t matter much. I didn’t feel it mattered whether I invested or concerned myself with taxes. I felt it didn’t matter if I let home maintenance tasks go. The feeling I had was that the age during which these things had meaning, if ever they did, was about to close. If you knew you were going to move to Mars tomorrow, for good, you wouldn’t paint your house today. If you knew you were going to die next week, you wouldn’t bother counting calories this week. If you were on a sinking ship, you wouldn’t fight over who got to sit at the captain’s table for dinner.

I do try to take care of my responsibilities, but my motivation is not strong. I almost feel as though I’m humoring myself when I cut the grass or consider building a tractor shed.

Of course, I often wonder if the Holy Spirit is telling me the rapture is coming soon. Is he saying handling the mundane obligations of life is a waste of my time, because I won’t be here to eat the fruit, whether good or bad?

I never had much ambition. Now I have none at all. It doesn’t bother me at all that I’m not a high-earning patent attorney, which is what I would be had I cared about practicing law. It doesn’t bother me that I dropped out of college when I was a pre-med student. I don’t feel bad about the people I could have healed or the discoveries I might have made. I don’t feel pain over abandoning physics as a graduate student. I never think about my career as a writer, which is over after three books that didn’t go anywhere. There are people out there ignoring their families, working late nights, and cutting throats in order to win awards and recognition. It never bothers me that I haven’t won a prize since I came in first in The Miami Herald spelling bee.

Other people remind me of bugs, fighting over the choicest balls of dog poop. The things they chase may bring them pleasure for a short time, but none of it goes with them to heaven. Think about it. What will LeBron James be the second after he dies? Penniless, unemployed, obscure, and uninfluential. What will Jeff Bezos be? Poor. What will Beyonce be? A person who walks everywhere, because she has no limousines, and whose autograph no one wants. If there are lines, she’ll have to wait in them just like everyone else. If there is clothing, hers will be just as cheap as the next person’s. She will have no gold albums. She will have no Grammys. She won’t even have her weaves.

I’ve noticed that wealthy Jews love putting their names on things. I think this comes from their ancient relationship with God, even though they don’t know it. The ancient Jews knew there was no bigger curse than to have your name forgotten. Most Jews are distant from God, but the concept remains ingrained in their collective memory. Rich Jews donate money to all sorts of philanthropic projects, and what is the condition? Someone’s name has to be mentioned. The Morty and Sadie Weinberg Cancer Pavilion. Fishbein Hall. The Saul Rosenstein Observatory.

It’s all pointless. Two weeks ago, I visited structures built by some of the most powerful people on earth. I took pictures in King Tut’s tomb. I posed on the empty sarcophagus deep inside the Great Pyramid. The human beings who built these things made people tremble with fear. They were considered Gods. They had the power to execute people arbitrarily. They were wealthier than Bill Gates. Now tourists take funny selfies in the burial chambers the pharaohs thought people would forever be afraid to desecrate.

I saw a fancy box containing the mummified guts of a pharaoh. They looked like old bread crumbs. The pharaohs don’t scare anyone now, they have no power, and although their names survive in heiroglyphics, their language is dead, and no one is sure how to pronounce any of it.

We fight over excrement. When we get the big balls of excrement we want, we perch on top of them, possibly decorated in fancy clothes, and we toot our horns so people with less excrement can ooh and ahh. Then we die, our dung balls go to other people, and our bodies themselves become excrement. The excrement of lowly creatures like worms and beetles. Even embalmed people rot eventually.

You know what Jesus is going to do when the tribulation is over? He’s going to destroy every pyramid. All of them. Egypt. Mexico. Turkey. He’s going to destroy Angkor Wat, every mosque, every Hindu temple, and every Buddhist shrine. He’ll destroy every dirty movie and book. He’ll destroy every print, tape, and disk of The Wizard of Oz. He’ll destroy every naked Renaissance statue and painting. He’s not going to care about the loss to history. He won’t care about the artistic merit or the financial value. It will all burn.

No one in heaven will know you were your high school class’s valedictorian. If you hold an Olympic record on earth, you won’t hold it when you die, because there won’t be any Olympic records. There won’t be any Nobel Prizes in heaven. There won’t be a bestseller list.

It’s all garbage. Earthly achievement means absolutely nothing in the long run, and everyone will be alive to see the long run. Some will live on in heaven, and some in hell and then the lake of fire. No matter who you are, you will live to see your wealth taken and your accomplishments disappear.

The only things that will be remembered will be things we did for God, and our only treasures will be people we helped save. Cleaning ladies will be honored royalty in heaven while billionaires and famous actors scream and cry in hell without a trace of dignity.

To get back to the point, I was never highly motivated to “make something of myself” on earth, and now I feel even less motivated. I don’t owe the world that. I do have a duty to do God’s work, but I don’t have any obligation to become a doctor and cure cancer. I don’t have an obligation to become a soldier and defend my flag. I don’t owe the world books, symphonies, inventions, or paintings.

The thoughts I had today made me feel less ambitious than ever.

I was in the car, listening to the Bible, and I didn’t understand what I was saying. I figured it had to be Ezekiel. When I hear the Bible, and I understand nothing, it’s always Ezekiel. I looked at my car’s display, and sure enough, I was right.

The prophet was talking about winged beings that flew in God’s presence, and it said their wings made a sound like many waters.

I started thinking. In the Bible, waters are words and voices. The Sea of Galilee represents the world, and the world, really, is made up of voices. God spoke it into existence, and people and spirits shaped it and filled it with words. The powers that run the world use the power of words. Laws are words. Prayers are words. Blessings and curses are words.

The Bible says Jesus is God’s word, and it also says his voice is like many waters. It doesn’t say “water.” It says “waters,” plural. “Many waters” means “many voices.”

Why would Jesus sound like many voices? Are there more than one of him?

I thought about the Beast.

As we all know, there will be a man called the Beast. What many of us do not understand is that the Beast will be a figurehead. He will be controlled by Satan, and he will be the voice of all the people in the world who do not belong to God. They will worship him and be ruled by him, but his rule will be a fiction. In reality, Satan will control him, and other spirits will control the people who are under his rule. The Beast will be a follower pretending to be a leader.

The people of the Beast can also be called “the Beast.” They will be one with him. They will be his body, just as we are the Body of Christ. Satan is small and weak, and he is not omnipresent, so he can’t have a unifying spirit like the Holy Spirit. There is always symmetry in the supernatural, though, so he will have a counterfeit. The Holy Spirit teaches all of God’s people the same things, and he empowers them. Satan will use the Internet and cell phones, or whatever comes after the Internet and cell phones, to simulate the Holy Spirit’s work.

Even now, we are seeing mobs guided by Satan via cell phones. Kids coordinate on social media, and they converge on stores and empty their shelves. The police can’t react in time. In the future, we’ll see many more mobs, and they will be bigger. Before long, electronic connectivity will replace the government. Governments are slow and clumsy. Internet mobs are too quick for governments to stand up to.

So the Beast won’t just be Satan or a man or a mob. He will be a combination of all of these. Many voices, acting as one.

There is always symmetry in the supernatural. If the Beast is a combination of voices and the persons they represent, and Satan always copies God, why can’t God be a similar type of being?

Today it occurred to me that God, on the throne of heaven, may be a combination of all the beings who serve him. Cherubs, angels, seraphim, people, and whatever else there is. All of humanity’s worst parts are settling into the Internet, like dregs at the bottom of a bottle of wine, and the Internet will be the Beast’s nervous system. All the filth in cyberspace will be in the mind of the Beast. I now think God the Father is the sum of all the best parts of the beings who are on his side.

It would explain why he speaks of himself in the plural. It would explain why his voice is like many waters.

If what I am saying comes from God, then every Christian is already part of God. What did Jesus say? He said he was in the Father. I believe Rhodah pointed that out to me. As she told me today, the Bible says that in God, “we live and breathe and have our being.”

It’s very nice to have a woman who knows God.

If our spirits are already part of God, then each of us has an innumerable number of powerful beings who are on his side, as long as we are not in rebellion. No wonder the word says, “The LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”

We are in the majority, all the time.

It appears that it works like this: every life comes from God. The lives of the innocent, including the forgiven, are attached to him. The lives of the rebellious are cut off from him, so they rot. Christians and other beings that are not damned are distinct persons, but we all have roots in God. Viewed with this in mind, the trinity makes sense.

My hand is part of me, and I give it life, strength, and commands, but it’s not the core of me, and if I sever my hand, I still exist.

If this is how it works, then it should not be that hard to get in touch with God and make the communication channel deeper and wider.

It would also seem that lower creatures would return to God at death, because they can’t be guilty of sin. Without sin, there can’t be a separation.

God doesn’t destroy beings he has created. Even Satan has eternal life. Instead of being destroyed, he will live on in a lake of fire. If God doesn’t destroy Satan and his fellow rebels, why would he destroy your cat?

Since I became aware of these ideas, I have felt less concerned than ever about what happens here on earth. I feel like an ambassador who could be recalled at any moment. If you were an ambassador in some messy little country, and that country had a revolution full of bloodshed and pain, you would be displeased, but you wouldn’t worry, because you would know our military would come and get you, unless you served under Barack Obama. The Bible says we are ambassadors, and we serve a leader who won’t abandon us.

I feel very disconnected to things here. I like it. I don’t like this place. I don’t like living in a body that can be hurt. I don’t like waking up and wondering if I’ll have a physical problem that day. I don’t like aging. I don’t like being surrounded by proud people who are impossible to communicate with and who get filthier every day. I don’t like living under the threat of man’s ridiculous, unfair laws. I don’t like death. I’m tired of death. I’ve seen so many deaths, and I’m only maybe two-thirds of the way through my life. I’m entering the death-rich third, which will also include my own death, unless the rapture comes first.

Feeling disconnected to Earth makes me feel like my trip to heaven is close. Maybe it isn’t, but I like the feeling. I am at peace today.

I want to marry Rhodah and have her with me during whatever time I am required to endure here, and I want to be useful in saving people and reducing their suffering. These are the only major goals I have now.

This all seems correct to me. Maybe it will be helpful to you.

In 2021, You Can Marry Anyone, Anywhere

If you’re trying to marry someone you can’t visit because of coronavirus, I have help for you, and it doesn’t matter where you live. I thought I had written about this already, but I can’t find any sign of it.

Utah County, Utah, now allows people to apply for marriage licenses and get married online. They don’t care where you live. You can be in different countries.

Jews have been taking advantage. Israel refused to recognize certain types of marriages performed in Israel, so Israelis started marrying online and then insisting their government approve their unions. This practice became so popular, Israel made an official policy decision to reject Utah marriages.

Utah County’s website will help you get a license by uploading your identification, and it provides email addresses for judges who will perform your ceremony via Zoom. There are also links to officiants who are not judges.

Problem solved.

What if you don’t want to have an online wedding in your pajamas? Iceland will help.

It’s easy to get married in Iceland, but you have to give them proof you’re single. They need a “no impediment” document from every state where you’ve lived since you were 18. In some American states, you can’t get this proof. I have lived in Kentucky, and Kentucky says I can’t have a document because I’m not a current resident. This is an idiotic requirement, but there you go.

The way out: Iceland accepts foreign marriage licenses. You can get a license from Utah County and use it in Iceland. There are probably other countries that will let you do the same thing. I have not checked.

Rhodah and I now have at least two choices. Iceland and Zoom.

It would be nice to get married in person, and I think it’s safe to say a lot of women would flip out if they found out they couldn’t start their marriages with real weddings. Rhodah does not care. As I wrote yesterday, she is strictly low-maintenance.

My only problem with an online wedding is that it will make me feel like I let her down, but as she points out, I didn’t cause the coronavirus problems. And she does expect a big fat ring and a nice honeymoon.

This week, we’ll find out if we can get her into Switzerland, where we would like to honeymoon. If we can do that, we may go ahead and do a Utah marriage. Even if we can’t, we might settle for Cancun. Hope that doesn’t happen.

Why get in a hurry? Because Utah is examining its online marriage process. The window could close. Getting married online can’t hurt us, but delaying might.

I think we should get a license tomorrow, regardless of what we do. Then we can sit back and plan at leisure. We need the license either way.

I have no reservations about marriage at all. You’re supposed to wonder if you’re making the right choice. You’re expected to get cold feet. Not me. I admit, it’s a little scary to know I’ll be responsible for another person, but that’s the extent of my negative emotions.

I’m not asking myself if there is someone better out there. I don’t doubt Rhodah’s sincerity. I don’t worry that she’s going to steal my life savings and turn out to be from Nigeria.

Compared to a fiancee visa, a spouse visa for Rhodah looks like the way to go. It may cost us a couple of extra months, but there is less hassle and less expense, and we will not have to walk on pins and needles when we’re together, for fear of committing sexual sin.

One nice thing about marrying quickly is that it will put yet another barrier between me and my sister. She would no longer be in a position to inherit, and she would have no standing to involve herself in my affairs if I became disabled. I don’t think she would have me killed for money, but I have been wrong about her before. I’m pretty sure that even if she was willing to kill me for money, she wouldn’t kill me simply for getting married and putting her out of contention.

All I have to do is live a few more days.

The fact that these thoughts are in the mind of a rational person says something about how she has lived her life.

What kind of officiant should we get? I have been sorting through them. A religious ceremony would require someone meeting certain standards. I don’t want a gay tree-worshiping pagan. I don’t want a Mormon. I don’t want a woman. He has to be a Christian of some kind.

I think it’s best to have a civil marriage. It counts in God’s eyes, and in a civil marriage, the officiant’s religious beliefs would be irrelevant. I would still want a man, though.

We need two witnesses. My buddy Mike is in. Do I invite all my friends? I can just imagine them, delaying everything while they try to figure out how Zoom works. I think I should pick one other person and let it go.

If you’re struggling to get married, think about Utah. It may be the answer to your prayers.

Coronavirus Makes the World Very Small

I appreciate the kind words I received after writing about the unnecessary, preventable death of my gentle little friend Maynard. Thanks, everyone who left a comment.

Things are slowly getting better, but I have waves of grief when I’m not busy doing things. The life of an animal can’t be as important as the life of a person, but you can certainly love an animal more than a person and grieve harder when he dies. These things are particularly true when you know your errors helped cause the death.

Marvin, my other bird, doesn’t miss Maynard at all. Not one bit. They lived next to each other for 25 years, and Marvin didn’t bond with him in the slightest way. That’s a blessing. I wouldn’t want to see him pull his feathers out because he was lonely.

He likes certain people, so it’s surprising he never felt anything for Maynard. Nothing positive, I mean. When he was young, he assumed Maynard liked him, but Maynard bit him as a reward for his advances. I guess Marv took the hint. Maynard was originally very friendly to other birds, but my first African grey, Frank, was nasty to him and changed him.

Marvin actually seems happier now. His attachment to me seems stronger. He becomes very emotional when I take him out of the cage. I didn’t see that coming.

Bird maintenance is easier now. One cage to clean. One poop tray to empty. Two dishes to clean, instead of four. No looking at the clock when Marvin is out, to make sure I leave time for Maynard. Every time I notice these things, I feel sad.

I feel sad when I bless Marvin at night. I used to decree that God was ending his hatred of Maynard. I don’t have to do that now. When I pray for God’s protection over me and all I have, I don’t have to say, “Marvin and Maynard” any more. Just “Marvin.”

Maynard’s death was made more painful because I had spent a lot of time using the birds to help me project love into the world. I didn’t have a wife or kids, so I made a special effort to pour love into the birds, just to open up the channel. I would hold them against my face and focus love on them. I asked them if they felt loved. I guess they thought I was crazy. From being near God, I knew love poured from him, and I believed it should pour from us, too, so I didn’t hold back. That left me more open to grief.

Maynard was not one to resist affection. Sometimes I held him against my face as long as I could, just to see how long he would stand for it. He didn’t protest at all. I always gave in first. He was happy to be held and loved for as long as I could manage it.

I would say I feel somewhat worse than I did when my dad died. I’m not sure. If so, it’s probably because my dad made his own bed, I tried to do right by him, his death was expected, and we were together at the end so I could say what I wanted to say. Maynard died young, I wasn’t as good to him as I wanted to be, his death was mostly my fault, and he was killed in a locked room in a veterinary hospital, where he could not see, hear, or feel me.

So much for that.

Today I’m working on arranging my marriage. The coronavirus picture keeps changing. Suddenly, it’s possible for Rhodah and me to go to countries that were locking us out a week or two ago. To my surprise, I found that even places like France and Switzerland were available.

We were thinking of Iceland, but I ran into what seemed like a roadblock. “Stronghold” is the word that will pop into the minds of Christians.

To marry in Iceland, you have to produce proof you’re not married already. In many countries, it’s simple to get what is called a “no impediment” certificate. Rhodah already has one. In the US, the federal government does not provide them, and many states don’t offer them, either. It’s stupid, because marrying abroad is not very unusual.

I researched a lot, and the best information I found said Florida would not give me a certificate. I contacted Iceland, and although the people who corresponded with me responded at length, they were not that helpful. They didn’t answer the questions I actually asked. They told me what they thought I should know.

I can understand that. People from Northern Europe can be very rigid. It’s a fact of life. I’ve dealt with it before.

Iceland said it would accept documents from every state I’ve lived in since I was 18, saying a search had been performed, and that nothing had come up. Having lived in several states, I was not happy about this. I started looking at state websites and making calls.

It turns out New York will give me a document, even though their website clearly says it’s impossible. I also ordered one from another state. A third state doesn’t answer the phone, so I left a message.

Regrettably, I didn’t check Florida first. Their website is not great, but when I called, they directed me to a page where I was able to download a form ordering a certificate proving my single status.

This means the money I sent Texas was wasted. On top of that, they take up to 25 business days. Now I have to try to cancel. They even provide apostilles which are tailored to various countries.

I will ship the Florida application out today, and I should have my marriage-ready document in maybe 2 weeks.

Iceland is looking good.

Before I got help from Florida, I was looking for alternatives. Gibraltar’s website seemed to indicate that they would accept Rhodah as a tourist, and they would also let us marry using an affidavit from me, notarized in Gibraltar. I started planning a trip.

Gibraltar is too tiny to hold much interest, so I thought we might take trains up into Europe. We can go to Spain, France, and Switzerland right now, unless I’ve misunderstood things. Right now you can check different “authoritative” sites and get differing information on coronavirus restrictions. I thought we could hit Marseille and then spend some time in Lucerne, where I spent part of a summer when I was in high school.

The first time I visited Lucerne, I fell in love with a cheerleader named Debbie. She seemed to be on board briefly, and then she started running around with a guy who played football in Calera, Alabama. I thought the world had collapsed. I thought love was supposed to be forever.

Of course, this girl was wrong for me. There was no way she could have been a good wife. I was young, though, and no one had taught me anything at all about women and marriage. I really believed God would put a boy of 16 and a girl of 14 together for life.

I didn’t eat for 13 days. I lost weight. I didn’t move fast enough when the cheerleader’s roommate showed interest. On the night before we left Europe, she asked me to dance and planted her lips on mine. I flew home on a high note, but I wished I had done something instead of waiting.

Visiting Lucerne with my new wife would feel like a victory lap.

Today I learned that Gibraltar is not accepting Zambians after all. That kills my plan. Maybe we should marry in Iceland and then fly to the continent for our honeymoon. Iceland looks great, but I can’t imagine spending more than a few days there.

Missing Spain will be a bonus. I’ve heard enough Spanish for a lifetime, and there is something dark about Spanish and Hispanic culture. It has a similar feel to Muslim culture, which should not be a surprise, given that Spaniards and Hispanics have so much Arab blood.

Spain is bigger than it looks on a map, so getting out would have taken at least two days.

I was disappointed to learn that the trains in Europe had changed. I knew there were fast new trains in Europe, but I didn’t know how common they were. I had been hoping for comfortable cruising on the nice, old-fashioned trains I remembered from over 30 years ago. It looks like Star Trek trains are all over the place now. You zip along at 200 mph in a double-decker car.

I’m not interested in speed. I enjoy watching the countryside roll by. I liked stopping in little towns and leaning out the windows to buy food from vendors. I guess those days are ending, except maybe in America, which has a backward passenger rail system.

I suppose a person can drive in Europe. Maybe we could fly to Marseille and drive through the alps. The gasoline would probably cost hundreds of dollars.

Jeremy Clarkson says Switzerland is like hell for drivers. The speed limits on many roads are very low, and being the kind of people they are, the Swiss enforce them. It’s strange the Germans don’t have the same policy. Maybe the highway is the only place where Germans can cut loose. But for the Swiss speed limits, people like Clarkson would probably spend every weekend in the alps, driving Porsches into guard rails.

My two favorite hangouts in Lucerne–Fugi’s restaurant and Pickwick’s Pub–appear to be gone. Fugi’s had nice, fatty Swiss food, which I liked. Pickwick’s was where I learned to drink way too much beer, at the age of 16.

I have looked at restaurants online, in Lucerne and other European cities, and I have been disappointed. Many, many places are full of the same nouveau garbage they serve in America. Cold kale and blue corn soup with locally-sourced squid ears. News flash, Europeans: no one goes to your countries to eat pretentious food they can get at home. They want the food your parents ate. I’ll have to screen restaurants in advance in order to avoid being buried in Gordon-Ramsay-wannabee gastronomic science projects.

Food doesn’t actually have to be creative to be good. A rib eye steak, prepared correctly, is still as wonderful as it would have been in 1905. In fact, most restaurants prepare steaks and other simple foods badly, after centuries of practice. It’s still a big deal to walk into a restaurant and get a perfect steak, a fluffy baked potato, and a proper martini without disgusting olive juice in it. I’ll bet I would have to drive 90 miles to get that meal, unless I wanted to cook.

Update

It’s frustrating, trying to get solid information on travel, especially for Zambians, because no one really cares whether they get to go anywhere. I have three sources for information on Switzerland. One says Rhodah will have to quarantine for 7 days. That’s no good. Another, the official Swiss travel information site, claims she does not have to quarantine at all. My third source, the Swiss government, has not responded to the email I sent.

France doesn’t look good. One source says Rhodah would have to quarantine for a week. I would not. I’m not sure why a vaccinated Zambian has to be treated differently from a vaccinated American. We get the same shots. Is the delta variant more likely to accompany a Zambian? I don’t know.

I just found a claim that Iceland has a 5-day quarantine requirement, but it sort of looks like it only applies to unvaccinated people. I see indications that if you’re vaccinated, you only have to quarantine until you get the result of a post-flight test.

Maybe we can marry in Iceland and then fly to Switzerland so we can honeymoon in a more pleasant location. I’ll have to delay applying for proof that I’m single until I know where we’re going.

My friends Alonzo and Teri have announced that they want to come. That will make for an interesting trip. I never thought they would want to spend that much.

Anyway, God will get us married one way or another. Getting the answers is a challenge, but it’s a nice problem to have.

YouTube is Still Here

I haven’t been here for a while. “Rebecca” and I have been working on arranging a meeting overseas, and also, I’m not quite as enthusiastic about reaching out over the web as I used to be.

Today I texted her when I got up, and she said she had been to church. She had been crying. The reason? T.B. Joshua had died.

Joshua was Youtube’s most popular evangelist until an obscure homosexual group got his channel deleted. Youtube did it instantaneously, without providing a chance for the ministry to remove the videos that made these homosexuals uncomfortable. The videos showed Joshua casting demons of homosexuality out of willing adult Christians. It wasn’t electroshock therapy. These weren’t videos of people claiming to be doctors. The videos showed Christians doing exactly what Christians are supposed to do, according to Jesus himself. Youtube made a remarkable leap into the realm of censoring religious speech, while leaving up videos of Muslims spewing hate and at least one rabbi claiming Jesus was in hell in boiling semen and feces.

Joshua did wonderful things. He performed a great number of healings. He delivered many people. He helped the poor. He never had a real scandal. One of his buildings collapsed, killing a number of people, but that was not a personal scandal. Anyone can own a badly constructed building.

Why did Joshua die? He was only 57, and he was doing God’s work. This morning, I asked God, and the impression I have is this: the church glorified Joshua too much, and he didn’t resist enough. People who came to him for help called him “Man of God” and behaved as though he were a great authority. He had a group of appointed “wise men” who also healed. His photo appeared in many places. Many videos were presented in a way that glorified him more than God.

I don’t believe God took him. I think Satan got access through pride.

This is what I seem to hear when I pray about it.

I felt that God told me what happened was part of the ending of the age of big churches. In big churches, people respond to peer pressure more than the Holy Spirit. A preacher who lets people idolize him is responding to peer pressure. I feel God said that peer pressure is the weapon of the Antichrist.

Of course, that’s true. The Beast isn’t just a man. It’s the voice of the unsaved masses. They are also the Beast. The man himself is just their representative.

The Beast likes homosexuality because liking homosexuality is the easy route to temporary peace. The Beast doesn’t like miracles and other manifestations of the Holy Spirit, because the Beast thinks self-confidence is our salvation. The Beast doesn’t mind hearing the word “God” (yet), but it hates the name of Jesus because Jesus brings division and demands obedience.

The Beast says you have to wear a mask and get vaccinated. Eventually, it will say you have to have a mark in order to buy or sell. Peer pressure will be overwhelming in America, just as it always has been in non-Christian countries. Persecution is peer pressure.

Obeying your peers is a bad idea. They’re your equals, so, like you, they know very little, and much of what they know is wrong. You should be obeying someone who is not your peer. God’s thoughts are better than ours.

Pride and peer pressure are connected. Proud people want others to think well of them. It turns preachers into followers when the word says we are to be the head, not the tail.

Peer pressure ruined the Hebrews on two well-known occasions. First, they chose Saul over prophets and judges, and second, they chose Barabbas over Yeshua. Both times, they chose the Beast. On both occasions, the damage was done by a popular vote. Crowds rejected prophets and Jesus and sentenced the Jews to future problems. The Beast is a crowd. His voice is their voice.

A few days ago, the government of Nigeria banned Twitter because Twitter deleted a tweet from the country’s government. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Joshua died soon thereafter. Youtube struck, Nigeria struck, and Satan showed Nigeria it could take down its greatest evangelist.

I expect Twitter to win, because the power of the Beast has gotten too strong. Humanity has elected Satan in a landslide. For a long time, I’ve been saying the Internet would replace government. Maybe the battle with Nigeria’s government will be a way for Satan to show how big he’s grown. I would be surprised if the ban worked properly. There are too many ways around it. Even if Twitter falls, another service can replace it next week. The Beast is like a shark which has rows of new teeth to replace the ones that fall out.

I don’t think Joshua was a bad preacher. Far from it. I believe everyone’s armor has chinks, however. The Bible shows that Satan can’t touch us without permission. It says a curse does not alight without a cause. It says Satan roams the street as a roaring lion, seeking whom he MAY devour. It may well be that in the age of “likes” and “influencers,” social pressure has become so strong, no one who heads a big, organized congregation is safe from pride.

I am praying for God to help me to give up all pride. My most dangerous and most culpable enemy is my flesh. The spirits and people who tempt me can’t get anywhere unless my flesh lets them in, and pride is a big doorway. If God has given me anything, it’s not because I’m good. I have been cruel to animals. I have paid for pornography. I have used drugs. I have said filthy things about people. I have stolen. I have lied. I can’t let myself mistake mercy and inheritance for wages I’ve earned.

My strong hope is that God raises up the grassroots ministries I believe he has told me about. We don’t really need a few individuals who reach millions of people. We need millions of individuals who reach a few people. Jesus never said any person would reach millions. He said a person might get a hundredfold return. That is the maximum figure he mentioned. If every Christian reached a hundred people, there would be no one left to go to hell. Right now, we have preachers flying around on jets speaking to billions, and hell is still the destination for most people, including many of the preachers.

A ministry doesn’t prove itself by healing the sick and working other miracles. A ministry proves itself by raising up many people who can do those things. If one men or a few men stay on top, very few people they teach become like Jesus, and the people who attend their church remain dependent on the pastor and his appointees, the church fails at its purpose. I hope the grassroots church which is developing now will have a lot more success.

Pray for Open Eyes

“Rebecca” and I have something to celebrate today. Yesterday, she decided to stop working on her bar exam.

Rebecca used to be career-driven. Now things are different. God has been transforming her, and her priorities have changed. She was supposed to start cramming for her exam last year, but she was not able to summon the necessary enthusiasm. As a result, she felt ill-prepared this year.

Exam stress has been a huge weight on her, and studying has interfered with our time together and her relationship with God. She wasn’t able to pray as much as she wanted. She couldn’t read Christian books or watch helpful videos. Lately, we have been limiting the time we spent praying together, and it was a big problem. When you’re Spirit-led, the last thing you want is to start a prayer session by saying, “We only have five minutes.” Flexibility is essential when you serve the Spirit of Holiness. If he wants an hour or more, you need to be free to comply.

This week she felt as though exams were not going the way she wanted, and last night, she made her decision. Prior to this, the plan was to complete the first cluster of exams and then stop.

The strange thing is that after she told me, I felt as though I were the one who had dropped the weight. I felt drained. I wanted to sleep. I hadn’t thought of her problem as a burden to me, but the sense of relief was overwhelming. I slept very well, and I woke up feeling very rested. It seems there is a supernatural connection between us, and we are sharing the same feelings.

As for Rebecca, she looks very different today. Her skin looks toned and bright. Her face seems to glow. We both noticed it. She says her youth has returned.

Psalm 103 says God renews his servants’ youth like that of the eagles. In the Bible, eagles are angels. When Jesus told the disciples how to know whether he had returned to earth, he said where the body was, the eagles would gather. He was referring to spirits that serve him. Two spirits that serve him were found at the tomb when he was resurrected, and apparently, they will be with him when he comes back.

We know that spirits in heaven surround God and praise him, and we know God strengthens those who are in his presence. Perhaps renewing your strength like the eagle’s means spending time near God and having your vitality restored. The word says to rest in God.

In any case, Rebecca will now be able to spend more time in his presence.

I heard Kenneth Copeland repeat a ridiculous myth about eagles. He said an old eagle will shed its old feathers and the outer layers of its beak and be physically rejuvenated. This doesn’t happen, of course. Eagles get old and die. Angels, on the other hand, do not.

It’s amazing how preachers will repeat nonsense, without investigation, when they can’t hear the Holy Spirit. Unbelievers hear it and draw the conclusion that Christianity itself is nonsense.

In other news, the press is saying anti-Jewish attacks are increasing in the US. If so, thanks, Democrats. It’s a pity so few Jews have avoided the trap of conflating Christians and conservatives with Nazis, and it’s unfortunate that around 90% of them consistently embrace their enemies and sponsor them financially.

Many anti-Semites, and perhaps many Jews, think our government favors Israel because of a mysterious, hidden group of rich Jews who control journalists and politicians with money. In reality, Christians are behind it. Our numbers are many times those of American Jews, and politicians are afraid of us. When Joe Biden feels compelled to help Israel, it’s not because he’s scared of the Jews, who make up about 2% of the electorate and who will vote for his party regardless of what it does. He’s afraid of the many tens of millions of Christian voters.

A supernatural delusion prevents most Jews from seeing this.

Anti-Semitism is a big problem among blacks, Hispanics, and of course, people from Muslim countries. Americans are afraid to correct people belonging to minorities, so the problem keeps growing. I think a lot of Jews expect their persecutors to show up in pickup trucks with Confederate flags, but in reality, the pickup people are more likely to defend them and donate money to charities that help Jews.

The worst thing about increasing anti-Semitism is that it is likely to include more and more white leftists who have fallen under the influence of BLM and Antifa. BLM is openly against Israel, which is no surprise, given the shocking prevalence of anti-Jewish hatred among American blacks. Antifa also sides with Israel’s persecutors. Most American kids have no connection to the Holy Spirit now, and many think it’s cool to protest and riot, so we should expect anti-Semitism to become much more mainstream in the near future. Presumably, we will eventually see cheerful selfies of white suburban kids beating Jews.

Rebecca and I have been praying for Israel, and we will continue, but ultimately, the spread of belief in Yeshua and the baptism with the Holy Spirit are the only things that can bring real peace. Only God puts Palestinians and Jews in church together as brothers. Peace talks and appeasement through giving up precious territory don’t really help.

Israel’s enemies are not interested in coexistence, so giving up land is pointless. If Israel only had one acre, the Palestinians would kill to get it. If the Jews left the country entirely, Muslims would still try to exterminate them. That’s why Israel exists. The Jews need one piece of land they can defend, because things haven’t gone well when they’ve relied on protection from gentile nations.

It’s tragic that Jews have created a religion which requires them to live in cities. It concentrates them among their worst enemies. They’re like sheep in corrals, waiting to be slaughtered by their neighbors.

God’s word provides a shocking confirmation of what happens when Jews live in gentile nations:

Thou hast given us like sheep appointed for meat; and hast scattered us among the heathen.

Yea, for thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.

Those passages are from Psalm 44.

Israel created nuclear weapons (supposedly) and a big war machine to defend itself, but Jews in America have done nothing whatsoever. They have made themselves as vulnerable as possible. It’s a strange contrast.

I wonder if Israel really has the bomb. Nuclear weaponry is very expensive, and fissionable material is hard to get. Israel has no nuclear power plants. Israel has never had a confirmed bomb test. If they’re bluffing, I hope they continue to succeed.

In short, overall, the Jewish strategy for self-defense is more like a strategy for partial extinction. Support your enemies. Fight your friends. Fight firearm ownership. Concentrate yourself in small, undefended areas so rioters can reach you using mass transit and even on foot. Then dress conspicuously.

I look forward to continued improvement in my life and Rebecca’s life, especially with our new freedom. I hope we can help as many others as possible.

Plus Weird New Ice Cream

My friend Mike is in town, and this weekend, his son Ben visited. Mike is delivering him to the airport right now. Activities included barbecue, shooting, more shooting, ice cream, and pizza.

Ben has been eating Mike’s pizza all his life, but somehow he failed to learn how to make it. Mike bought him a Kitchenaid mixer in hopes of motivating him. Now that Ben is out of college, he has concerns about the sky-high price of pizza in his area. On Sunday, Mike made a thin pizza, and I made Sicilian. We both made rolls. I showed Ben how to do what I did.

Sadly, I had some issues with my dough. I changed my method recently, and like I always say, never do anything new when you cook for company. Sunday’s pizza didn’t rise enough. My new method resulted in dough my food processor couldn’t cope with, and although I worked out a fix, I was not happy with the results.

Yesterday, I put on my game face and decided to make more pizza. I made a Sicilian pie and rolls that blew my guests’ minds. Very satisfying. Afterward, I wrote down a very detailed set of instructions for Ben to take with him.

Mike had been wanting to fire up my expensive ice cream machine, so yesterday we went to work. He made a crazy suggestion: vanilla with Grape Nuts. He and Ben had visited an ice cream parlor that sold this flavor, and they insisted it was fantastic.

I made vanilla ice cream and added a huge amount of Grape Nuts. Incredibly, it was very good. It’s hard to describe, so I won’t try, but I recommend it.

Next time, I plan to sweeten it with honey. A long time ago, Haagen-Dazs sold honey vanilla ice cream, and it was excellent. They stopped making it. Now I have the power to make a better version at a much lower price. In your face, Haagen-Dazs. Adding honey will make Grape Nuts vanilla even better.

On Saturday night, we had a long discussion about God, and it was very productive. It surprised me. I keep telling God to make my house a place of prayer, not just a resort. He listened. I hope the testimony Mike and I shared will help Ben escape the horrors of this age and the afterlife.

As for the horrors of this age, Mother’s Day brought a fresh one. Leftists are now pushing to call it Birthing Person’s Day.

Birthing Person’s Day.

In case your dad gave birth to you.

Wait…does this mean celebrities and driven career women will have to send presents to their surrogates?

Your personal assistant gives birth to your kid, your Salvadoran nanny raises him…what exactly is your purpose?

Maybe you’re the sponsor. You pay the bills, right? We could celebrate Sponsor’s Day.

Isn’t Birthing Person’s Day demeaning to animal surrogates? Surely we’re headed that way. Why dismiss the non-human surrogate community? We’ll call it Birthing Entity’s Day.

Wait…what about caesareans?

Fetus Host’s Day! I think that will actually work.

Except for adopted mothers. Entities. Whatever.

I had a neat revelation about Facebook yesterday. My friend Alonzo drove up from the Leesburg area to pray, and we were talking about the toxicity of social media. Suddenly I understood what social sites are. They’re where the children of darkness go so iron can sharpen iron.

If you’re an ignorant Christian, you may not be aware of Proverbs 27:17: “As iron sharpens iron, So a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.” It means that when we get together, we inform each other and build each other up. Christians who are acquainted with the Bible often say, “Iron sharpens iron.”

When Christians meet, they improve and strengthen each other in correctness. When the children of darkness meet, they corrupt and weaken each other.

The Bible calls the word of God the sword of the Spirit. Today I realized Satan’s kids have a sword, too. It’s the garbage they speak and write. You can find it all over social media.

Facebook is like Satan’s church. People meet there every day to be polluted and infected. Meanwhile, real churces are closed.

It’s fascinating.

I was talking to “Rebecca” today about this, and she had a revelation. Here is the relevant verse, which is Isaiah 54:17:

No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.

She pointed out that swords are weapons.

So the Antichrist’s children are using the Internet to forge their filthy verbal weapons, just as they used universities to forge stinking, abominable libels like critical race theory.

When they drive us off the web, they’re choking off our voices, because words are our swords. Meanwhile, they forge their own crooked blades and use them on us.

The cancel culture is their shield, just as the word says the truth (Jesus) is our shield and buckler.

It’s amazing how deep wisdom goes, when God allows you to see it.

The flood, the rapture, hell, and the lake of fire are manifestations of God’s cancel culture, which is permanent and right, unlike the left’s cancel culture. Satan always apes God because Satan is not capable of forming new ideas. When he cancels good people, he’s just imitating what God did to Satan’s babies in Sodom.

God showed me something interesting the other day while I was listening to the first Book of Kings. It’s 1 Kings 14:24:

And there were also sodomites in the land: and they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the LORD cast out before the children of Israel.

Two things about this interested me. First, it showed there were sodomites in Israel long after the destruction of Sodom, and second, it showed the nations God ran out of Israel were sexual perverts.

It’s amazing, because I have been saying two things: homosexuality will be the club Satan uses to beat the church, and people who used to run from Americans are now putting us to flight.

Our experience is like that of the ancient Israelites. When they did good, God drove their enemies before them. The rest of the time, they were oppressed.

All the things I’ve been saying are true. The story of the world is a story of genocide: God’s children versus Satan’s children and the fallen angels. The evil ones want us off the earth, but God is going to do whatever it takes to get rid of them and give it to us. It won’t happen until after the rapture and the tribulation, but it will happen.

It’s wonderful to have a life of ministry and revelation, but it makes me feel even more alienated from society. I have always been an outsider, but now I wish I could vomit the earth out of me and go somewhere else. This place is vile. It’s as though I woke up in the movie Idiocracy.

This sensation will keep increasing as I get closer to God and more aware of the true nature of things. It’s a very good thing, but it makes me long to live in a better place.

I hope the rapture comes soon. Life is extremely pleasant, but eventually, I want to be somewhere where I don’t have to be surrounded by blind, trashy, arrogant, malicious people who hate God. I also want to be free from spirits who are against him. I can’t wait for the day he binds them in hell. The earth will be a wonderful place to live.

Online Courtship Steams Ahead

I am not blogging as much as I used to. My life keeps changing. I spend at least two hours every day video-chatting with my girlfriend, and it seems like I’m also finding myself presented with ministry opportunities involving other people.

In case anyone is wondering, my relationship with “Rebecca” keeps getting better and better. Anyone who thought the relationship was a money-based or immigration-centered scam perpetrated on a self-deceiving man in his second childhood is going to be disappointed. The Bible says envy rots the bones. Anyone who hopes we fail should let it go and look for ways to get himself blessed. If God is willing to help us, he is also willing to help you, but you have to get your head on straight.

I hate the term “girlfriend,” because it’s used as a modern excuse for two things: fornication and fear. In modern America, we now see fornication in a shacking situation as equivalent to marriage, so people use their shacking status as a shield to block criticism. We also use the terms “girlfriend” and “boyfriend” in relation to multi-year relationships between people who refuse to marry because one or both partners are waiting for someone better. They’re afraid of being stuck with people they’re not sure they want. Rebecca and I are stuck with these terms until we can get together in the same place, however. We are working on a visa and flights and so on. A ring design has been chosen.

Regarding our relationship, it seems too good to be true. To whom, though? To people who live in Satan’s alternate reality. To people who believe everyone is cursed and defeat is normal. People get used to this false reality because generally, we are not blessed. We have preachers who teach us how to become poor by buying them jets, or how to fail as Christians by turning Christianity into a game of rules, but not many preachers teach us how to live in peace, prosperity, power, and health. Not many teach us how to win as a lifestyle.

God really does make marriages. He makes people physically well, even when their bodies terminally ill or severely damaged. He really raises the dead. He saves people from their enemies and makes them prosperous.

If you don’t believe these things, it’s probably because you don’t want to believe. If Christianity is correct, then you have to give up sin and pride, and you probably don’t want to do that. You think you can show up at the throne when you die and plead ignorance. Testimonies of God’s power and goodness are everywhere. It’s not God’s fault you’re not looking them up. It’s yours, and you will be held accountable.

You’re reading a testimony now, and that fact is being recorded.

Maybe you want to believe, but you can’t because it seems too improbable. You need to get baptized with the Spirit, pray in tongues every day, learn all you can, and get God’s help. You may think you have to believe without help, but that’s not true. Faith, like being raised from the dead or having a tumor removed through a miracle, is a gift from God. No one ever said you had to rely on your natural faith. Ask for faith, and you will get it.

In the Bible, Peter managed to walk a few steps on the water, but then his natural faith failed, and he sank. Jesus had to give him his hand, and then he rose again. Jesus didn’t lift him using the strength of his arm. That would have been impossible. He lifted him with supernatural power. It symbolized the way God lifts us above the curses of the fallen world. Maybe your earthly life will never be perfect, but you can be very, very blessed. It’s certainly not unusual for God to give people attractive, pleasant spouses who bless them all their lives.

We are conditioned to think our goal should be to please God by suffering a lot without complaining or turning away. The thing that really pleases God is removing our suffering. How many times did he help people in the Bible? Why should we think he doesn’t want to help any more?

People think they please God by refusing to ask him for things. Imagine having a child with that attitude. What if your son was sick and didn’t ask for help? What if someone stole his clothes and he didn’t ask you to buy new ones? Would you be pleased? No. You’d wonder what was wrong with him. And God is better than you. If you want to help your kids, think how God feels about you.

I’m thinking I should go on a pride fast. I would spend most of a day asking God for very small things. “Help me stand up.” “Help me breathe.” “Help me tie my shoes.” Why would I ask him to help me do things I can do on my own? Here’s a question: who says I can do these things on my own? I can’t. If God didn’t enable me and defend me, I couldn’t take my next breath. He’s already helping me, so if I ask for help, I’m just admitting it.

The more you glorify God and admit you’re not blessing yourself, the more he helps you.

As we move closer to the tribulation, life will get worse, and it will be more important to be close to God so you can live in the realm of blessing and protection. Consider Noah and Lot. Think about Daniel in the lions’ den and his three friends in the furnace. Consider the Jews under Ahasuerus and those who followed Moses. Moses himself was thrown into a river and rescued. Peter was supposed to be executed, and he walked out of prison. Paul and Silas were freed from jail by angels. Jesus walked through a crowd of neighbors and friends who wanted to throw him off a cliff in Nazareth. He also escaped Herod’s murder posse as a child.

FYI, Youtube has banned Nigerian evangelist T.B. Joshua a second time. They banned him for posting videos of himself casting homosexual demons out of people, and then when he created a new channel, they banned it, too. I doubt he put the same material up on the new channel. That doesn’t matter. Christians need to understand this: we are not hated for what we do; we are hated for who we are. Your identity as a real, Spirit-led Christian is enough to guarantee you persecution.

I checked Roku, and Joshua’s church has a channel there, but it only contains one video. Have the people at his church been too lazy to post new videos, or did Roku follow Youtube’s example? I don’t know. I don’t have any other practical way to watch him now. Maybe he’s on Christian TV, but I don’t watch it, and I don’t know if there is a Christian TV source that would allow me to decide which videos I watched.

Solid teachers will keep disappearing from public view. What will weak Christians do when it gets very hard to find teaching? If you depend on a man and a building for your help, you’re in trouble.

I think toxic teachers like the pope, Paula White, Joel Osteen, and Kenneth Copeland will outlast the rest. They’re doing great work for Satan. When Satan got Jesus killed, he didn’t bother the priests who were responsible. He went after John the Baptist and the disciples.

It’s amazing that Youtube is now officially condemning Christianity. The lack of public outcry is also remarkable. Christians are asleep, and Satan controls the press. Wake up, unless you to be defeated.

The homosexual group that got Joshua banned will certainly look for other Christians to destroy. Maybe Derek Prince’s videos will vanish this month. Youtube has encouraged persecution, so the predictable result will be an increase. There will be a purge eventually, and it may happen sooner than you expect. The more popular your favorite teacher is, the more likely he is to attract predators. Hopefully, it will take longer to remove people who only reach a few viewers.

One nice thing about the ban is that random individuals are uploading T.B. Joshua videos. They should be able to keep Youtube dancing for a while.

Rebecca and I pray every morning, and we intercede for other people in the afternoon. God also has me praying with a friend every day. He has domestic turmoil you wouldn’t believe, caused by a spirit of murder. Yesterday, I found out my cousin, whom I baptized in 2019, was not doing well. I am hoping to get her to join Rebecca and me on video chat.

If you can do business remotely, you can assemble and serve God remotely, and you can do it without being subjected the presence of hypocritical boneheads and arrogant church rats. All things work together for our good.

Hypocrites are in the most danger as the apocalypse dawns. Real Christians will be protected. If the tech kids ban all Christian content, it won’t be a big problem for people who know God, any more than rain was a problem for Noah. It will hurt the unbelievers and the people who refuse to move from milk to meat.

I am starting to understand how poorly the fate of God’s children and the fate of the Antichrist’s children are related. The more I think about it, the less I think God cares about your relationship with the government, for example. He never wanted us to have government. I don’t think he cares whether you’re patriotic or whether you obey every law. I think your obedience to your government only matters to God when it intersects with obedience to him. I doubt you have to ask forgiveness for speeding, keeping an undersized fish, or putting aluminum cans in the trash.

I don’t believe he cares that much whether you keep your yard neat or excel in school. I’m sure he isn’t concerned because you don’t work out. He’s not mad because you prayed with someone instead of washing your car. When Mary neglected her work and sat at his feet, and Martha washed dishes and served guests, Jesus said Mary had the better part. He also led the disciples away from two boats full of fresh fish, which, according to the Bible, they abandoned.

When the disciples failed to plan responsibly for the feeding of crowds, he made fish and bread appear. He didn’t get on their backs for being poor event planners.

If you’re obsessed with patriotism and civic duty, or with your job or sports or any other fleeting thing, you may not be living in God’s kingdom. Our kingdom is not of this world. Yet. We have to make some accommodations in order to coexist with the children of darkness, but I don’t think much else is required.

My friend Mike continues to report good news regarding his own relationship. His new girlfriend sent him a message about her devotion and her conviction that God put them together, and it arrived as he was typing a similar message to her.

These things really happen. You can’t judge blessed people by what happens to the general population. Instead of sitting back and hoping to see others fail, you should try to get blessed.

Good Leaders are Consistent

Some Christians, myself included, believe the rapture and tribulation are close because the Bible seems to say these things will happen after 6 millennia from Adam. We are in the Hebrew year 5781. This figure is based on a calculation by Maimonides. Obviously, the Hebrews have not kept a calendar for 5781 years. They didn’t exist until Abraham was born. Maimonides may be wrong, as he was about other things, but he is probably within the ballpark.

I have numerous other reasons for believing the end of the age is upon us.

Jesus said the gospel of the kingdom would be preached in all the world for a witness to all peoples. That has pretty much been done. You can argue about what “gospel of the kingdom” means, because it’s not the same thing as the gospel of salvation or the gospel of buying Joel Osteen another Airbus A319. It’s not the gospel of homosexuality being okay with Jesus. You can argue about what “all the world” means. Do we have to get inside every house and hut, everywhere? You can also argue about what “all peoples” means. Does it mean every subset of every group has to get a fair shot at hearing the message? Regardless of the answers to these questions, the gospel of the kingdom is traveling like never before. By radio, TV, satellite transmissions, the Internet, mail, smuggled materials, and the efforts of traveling preachers, the information is penetrating even places like Saudi Arabia and Burma.

The Revelation says that before the tribulation, three evil spirits will be released on the world: murder, death, and lack. We’re already hearing their entrance music. Coronavirus appears to be a permanent and ever-changing addition to our lives, it brought shortages, and hatred and violence are increasing. We also had the VD explosion in the 1980’s, including AIDS, which killed tens of millions of people in Africa alone.

Technology has become so advanced and so common, we are losing free will. We are close to a state of constant surveillance, and when we get there, free will will disappear. Without free will, there can be no judgment, so there will be no reason for this age to continue.

Jesus said the love of many would grow cold. That has already happened. People give lip service to God, but they don’t belong to him, and a big percentage of people from formerly Christian nations don’t believe in him at all. In the UK, outright hatred for Christians is common and open.

He said the end times would be like the days of Lot and Noah. In Lot’s time, sexually corrupt mobs ruled Sodom and Gomorrah, and justice was perverted. In the modern West, Christians run from homosexuals now. They take away our jobs. They drive us out of public life. They wreck our businesses. They hold parades where they literally march naked in our streets, while decent people are forced to hide. Homosexuals just put Youtube’s biggest preacher out of business because he cast demons of perversion out of people. In Noah’s time, people were filthy, just as they are today.

There are plenty of reasons to believe things are, mercifully, winding up.

As for the millennial theory, I just heard someone put forth new evidence from the Bible. He mentioned something I had never heard of. He connected events in Exodus with the rapture.

In Exodus 19, God told Moses he was going to appear before the people on Mount Sinai. He told Moses to sanctify the people and command them to wash their garments. This was their task for the first two days, in preparation for his appearance on the third day.

The parallels are obvious when you look at the story.

Jesus was crucified, and since then, two millennia have passed. The Bible says that with God, a day is like a thousand years. People who believe in a return after six millennia believe every millennium is like a day, and we are coming to the close of day 6. The seventh day will be like the sabbath. It will be a day of rest, dedicated to God. Curses will be removed from the earth, along with ungodly people and the spirits they serve. Even animals will give up predation and fighting.

God gave us two thousand years to receive salvation, washing our garments. The Bible makes it clear that white garments represent salvation. In Hebrew, the world for salvation is “Yeshua,” the name of Jesus. It appears the third post-crucifixion millennium will be like the day God appeared on the mountain. After his appearance, he handed down the law, representing the way he will put his law in people’s hearts after the tribulation. He will fill people with the Holy Spirit, remove temptation and troublemakers, and rule as Earth’s king.

I didn’t notice the signs in Exodus until I saw a video by a Scottish man who calls himself Brother Grahame. God has been telling him a lot of things.

It’s amazing how God tells different people the same things in different ways. This sets cessationist churches, which receive no revelation, apart from Spirit-led people, who hear from the Holy Spirit every day. Here is how God put it in Psalm 133:

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

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

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

“Ointment” means the oil of anointing, which represents the Holy Spirit. Hermon is a place where spirits descended from heaven. Enoch mentions it. Satan and his cohorts descended there to have sex with women and create their own race of losers.

People who hear from the Holy Spirit agree because God tells all of them the same things. When people agree, there is peace. Order and peace are the same thing.

God alone orders people. Satan is the author of confusion, and it’s no coincidence that the Bible says sexual perversion is confusion. It says this specifically about sex with animals, but it is also true of homosexual relations. Love of sexual perversion is bringing hatred and murder to the world. It’s the main thing that drives persecution in America now.

Sometimes I wonder if the mark of the Beast will be a rainbow flag tattoo. Maybe you’ll have to have the mark in order to show you endorse perversion. Some people have the idea that coronavirus vaccines are the mark, but that doesn’t line up with the Bible.

The other day, I looked up Stella Immanuel, the Nigerian doctor who got in trouble for saying she had cured coronavirus with a combination of medications. She’s a Christian. She says people will go to hell for getting the shots. I don’t know where she got that idea. It isn’t true. God never said it was true. She said Facebook’s servers would crash because she was censored. That didn’t happen. She may be a fine person, but I question her prophetic insights.

Only the Holy Spirit brings peace. We already have many examples of his work. I’ll mention one. Negotiators have worked for decades to bring peace to the Middle East, trying to appease the Muslims. It will never work, but right now, you can go to Israel and see Jews and former terrorists going to church together as brothers. For people who listen to the Holy Spirit, peace is already here. They will testify against the people who rejected Jesus and didn’t seek the Holy Spirit’s help. They prove peace is possible.

I am trying to get my garments clean. I had an experience the other day which highlighted dishonesty in my heart, and it was disturbing. I want to get everything straightened out. My feeling is that God will leave people here during the rapture if they continue to squabble and scam over earthly wealth and other fleeting blessings.

I don’t want to wash my own garments, because I can’t. I’m not good enough. Paul said we should approach the throne of grace with our requests. Grace is anything God does for you. If you do it for yourself, it’s not grace. The Bible says faith comes from God, not us. It says our righteousness is from him, not ourselves. God said he, not we, would carry our burdens.

I hope I am married before the rapture. I hope we go together. I have concerns about the visa process outlasting this age.

I hope people find the video informative and useful.

Casting Out Demons is Now a Hate Crime

Something I have been expecting has just happened. The Ewokes and Wokiees have taken a bold leap and declared that Christian deliverance is therapy and therefore subject to social media banning.

In the past, the Ewokes were afraid to mount an existential attack on the church. They criticized it, but generally, they expressed admiration for Jesus–a false leftist Jesus–and even tried to claim Christianity by sending homosexuals to push their way into positions as pastors and priests. Now they’re moving to a new phase of Antichrist “cancellation.” They just banned Youtube’s most prominent preacher for casting homosexual demons out.

The preacher in question is T.B. Joshua, Africa’s most prominent clergyman. A charismatic, Joshua practices healing and deliverance, as well as giving words of knowledge and prophecy.

As a prophet, he is hit and miss. His prophecy for the year 2020 contained a lot of misses. On the other hand, he has a steady flood of people emerging from his church with what they claim to be miraculous healings, and they often supply medical documentation which is shown on camera in his videos.

He has cast demons out of numerous people. This is why his channel is gone. He cast a spirit of lesbianism out of a woman on camera. An anti-Christian hate group run by homosexuals reported him to the Google kids, and they behaved predictably.

The libels coming out now are amazing. The Ewokes removed his channel so people can’t see it, and then “journalists” said things about his video that aren’t true. They said his methods are violent, for one thing. This is a baldfaced lie. I’ve seen them. He taps people and puts his hands on them, but it’s about as violent as a massage. He doesn’t injure anyone or cause them pain.

It’s a great strategy. You say, “T.B. Joshua did THIS.” First, though, you destroy the evidence so people can’t see that you’re lying.

Other people are uploading his videos on their own channels, so the Wokandan Truth Squad is going to have a hard time erasing him completely. Maybe this will open the door to making Youtube a members-only site where you have to agree with their political beliefs in order to be registered.

My Zambian sweetheart texted me today and told me about Joshua’s virtual execution. She said I was right. She said, “They are silencing God’s children.” She said, “The world is ending.”

She is a young woman, and she doesn’t like talk of the end of the world. She wants marriage, a home, and kids. I told her what she wanted was what we call “the American Dream.” But that dream is no longer on the menu because all the things God told me would happen are happening. We will be driven off the Internet. We will be prevented from working. The government will land in the hands of leftists as extreme as the murderers who killed the czar’s children. Our property will be taken. We will not be allowed to buy or sell. Eventually, we will be summarily executed.

The madness will not stop increasing. Satan won the worldwide election.

Only two types of Christians will be spared: those who die before things get really bad, and those who are raptured.

Jesus told us only one of the seven churches would be spared “the hour of temptation” that would come upon the entire world. He was referring to the tribulation. He said the church of Philadelphia would be removed from the earth, but he didn’t promise this to the other churches.

Philadelphia is a city in Asia, but he was referring to part of the modern church. He was referring to Spirit-led Christians who are full of love. In other words, a minority of Christians.

We like to argue about whether the rapture will come before, after, or during the tribulation. We should be more concerned about whether we will make it, although a post-tribulation rapture would be completely pointless. It would be like being sentenced to flogging and being pardoned after the act.

I thought a huge financial decline would follow the mess of 2007, and I was wrong. Other than that, the things I’ve expected have been coming. I said homosexuality would be the club Satan used to beat the church, and I was right. I said we would be excluded from society, and I was right. The other things I foresee will come to pass. They’re in the Bible. It’s not necessary to trust me.

At first, I was angry when I saw that T.B. Joshua had been crucified, but that was my flesh talking. Now I feel a sense of foreboding. The persecution of an African preacher may not seem like a big thing in America, but America is not the center of the universe. It is not mentioned in the Bible, and God has never promised us this nation won’t collapse. Joshua is a huge figure, worldwide, and the moment when Youtube took away his voice was a pivotal moment. As of a few days ago, the entire church is an underground church. Every person who speaks or writes the truth about demons and homosexuality is marked for deletion from the marketplace of ideas. The “hate” label hangs around our necks with the world’s approval.

We are going to lose. Ignorant Christians love to say God will give us victory and we will change the world, but the Bible doesn’t say that. We are going to lose because the world changed so many of us. The man of perdition will be revealed, some Christians will be raptured, others will be tormented and murdered, and the rest will join the Antichrist and burn with him forever.

Long ago, I had several dreams in which I was in a car headed off an overpass hundreds of feet high. I was in Miami, which is a disgusting city of idolatry and trashy morals. The car fell toward the ground, and I saw it through the windshield. I wasn’t afraid, but I felt the same foreboding I feel now. I knew I was going to die. I looked forward to the adventure of going to heaven. These dreams must have been about the time I’m living in now. The world is hurtling toward the end of the age, and I am hoping to be removed instantaneously instead of lingering and suffering.

I was angry to hear that Joshua had been libeled and censored, but now I see what happened as sad. A soundproof wall is being built between real Christians and people we want to reach. It’s fine to create our own Christian-friendly social media sites, but nearly everyone who will join them will be Christians, so what good will they do? Unsaved people are unfertilized eggs, and the gospel is semen. The only reason saved people aren’t taken at the moment of salvation is that we are supposed to reach the unsaved. If we can’t talk to the general public using the Internet, our reach is drastically curtailed, and our ability to serve our purpose is reduced. It’s a move toward the moment when God decides it’s no longer worth it to keep us here.

Years ago, God told me the age of the church was ending. He meant the church dependent on pastors and big buildings. He showed me that Christianity would spread like a virus, outside of church, the way it was always intended to spread. The Ewokes can kick us off Youtube, but they can’t keep us from talking to our friends and relatives.

They have shut down churches. They are taking us off the Internet. They’re pushing the church underground. Eventually, they will have to address the underground church, too. They’ll have to do something about the people who spread the gospel at work, in their homes, in schools, and so on. In order to do that, they’ll have to kill us. It’s coming, and the people who kill us will say they’re doing God’s work.

Think of the gospel as coronavirus and the persecution as lockdowns and masks.

Like any person who is too proud, dishonest, and full of hate to be saved, the body of leftists is showing us we are not wanted on earth. God is going to grant their wish, and they will be destroyed by his cooperation. We will not be able to help them, no matter how much we want to.

I disconnected from most forms of social media a long time ago, and in my Youtube videos, I tell people, “Don’t watch. Don’t ‘like.’ Don’t subscribe. I could not care less.” I’m not going to cultivate popularity by weaseling and pretending. I hope I helped some people. A popular channel full of lies wouldn’t help anyone.

As for my blog, if they take it down tomorrow, I’ll be fine. I won’t grab a rifle and shoot up my hosting company’s offices. I will miss communicating with people, but in another way, I’ll be glad to let the burden drop.

I assume I’ll eventually be disbarred, if I live long enough. Good thing I don’t practice law. I hope I’m not here when they start confiscating wealth and impoverishing believers, but if I am, I’ll ask God to help me not to tap out. I just have to hold onto him until I’m free of the earth, and after that, I will never see the people who hate me again. No spirit that hates me will ever see me again.

I feel like telling my girlfriend “Rebecca” to quit school immediately. I feel like I should buy tickets to any country that will accept us so we can fulfill the in-person meeting requirement of a fiancee visa. If the world is going to get even crazier, it’s best to unite while we can still travel.

Dead Criminal Now a Hero

Welcome back to 2020.

I guess everyone knows there are new anti-police riots taking place. A young criminal named Daunte Wright was pulled over by the police. They tried to arrest him because he had a warrant. He fought with them and drove off. A female cop shot him by accident, thinking she was holding a taser.

The shooting was very obviously an error, and of course, many leftists are saying it was deliberate. Everything is on video. There is no room for doubt. Unfortunately, there is always room for deliberate lies.

The shooting took place near Minneapolis, so there is rioting there. There are also riots in Portland and God knows where else. All over a young man who would never have been in a position to be shot, had he simply done what everyone else does during traffic stops.

People are claiming he ran because he was afraid he would be shot simply for being black. No. Completely wrong. When someone is pointing a pistol at you from two feet away, and you don’t want to be shot, you comply. He ran because he was defiant, plain and simple.

A discouraging thing happened at a press conference. The then-chief of police was talking to reporters. Remember, a reporter’s only job is to gather and disseminate information. A reporter doesn’t tell sources what to say. The chief correctly described the riots as riots, and two reporters scolded him. One said, “Don’t do that.”

This is not what actual reporters do. It shows how arrogant and deluded the left has become. They know they won’t be held accountable, so they pervert the First Amendment on camera, for public consumption.

It’s a symptom of the Antichrist disease. Spirits of delusion rule Satan’s children. Not only do they contemn the truth; they can no longer perceive it.

The best way to defeat an enemy is to convince him to love and believe lies. You can make him fight and destroy himself for you. You can screw his mind up to the point where he will celebrate his own destruction louder than you will. You won’t have to do the work. You won’t have to mount a defense, because he will defend you as well as attacking himself. No wonder Satan loves lies so much.

We already knew that “protest” was the code word for “leftist riot.” Now they’re coming out and admitting it.

The police chief has since been forced out of office by a newly-empowered black mayor. Technically, he resigned, but his summary dismissal was in the works.

The city manager called for due process to be applied before firing the officer who fired the shot, and the manager has been fired.

Leftists have a long history of hatred of due process. The Romanovs had no trial. The legions of innocent people murdered in Cambodia had no trials. Cuban revolutionaries have arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered countless people without trials; Che Guevara took particular pleasure in overseeing firing squads. The Russians and Chinese had no interest in trials.

Anyone who knows anything about our Constitution knows that due process is a fundamental right. It is mentioned in two different amendments. Without it, there would be no hope of justice for anyone. Leftists can’t understand this. Satan has blinded them.

Many leftists are saying, “Rioting works.” They are openly saying rioting is necessary. What is rioting? Most fundamentally, it’s a denial of due process. Ignorant, unprincipled, impulsive people sidestep the government, and they punish and inflict what they see as revenge, with no guidelines or restraint.

A lynch mob is a type of riot. America is now in the hands of lynchers. What happened to Kyle Rittenhouse was an unsuccessful lynching, literally, and the prosecutor who charged him is now part of the mob. The leftist terrorist rioters who are destroying our cities are moving toward a general policy of lynching. It will increase. We have a gutless, amoral, demented, unintelligent, self-worshiping president, and his vain vice president is only better in that her reason is intact. There is no one at the top to resist the lynchers and terrorists.

This is all self-inflicted. It sounds like I’m putting all the blame on leftists, but nearly all of us made this happen. Christians rejected the Holy Spirit. We didn’t intercede. We became followers of depraved people, especially entertainers. We took up false religions. When you do these things, you give your enemies power. They incubate below the horizon, feeding on your pride and disobedience, and they eventually jump into view and conquer you. You put the power to rule and humiliate you in their hands. God didn’t do it. Satan didn’t do it. The left didn’t do it all by itself. America and the rest of humanity are primarily responsible.

We face a future of increased racism from every quarter. We face a future of increased factionalism of all types. People will identify with nations, races, and political groups, and they will hate each other with a fire that can’t be put out, even with blood. Minorities are already full of hatred for whites, Jews, and Asians in the US, and white people are starting to respond in kind. This is how the red horseman of the apocalypse–the spirit of murder–works. It won’t get better, because the only remedy is the one most of us hate: the Holy Spirit.

This morning I watched a Mark Hemans video. He’s an Australian apostle who heals people and dispenses correction. He can’t go to people in person now, so he uses Zoom. He has a big TV with a screen divided into little squares. Each square contains the image of a meeting participant. Typically, there will be multiple pages of screens.

I’ll post a photo of his TV. You’ll see that the faces and names are extremely diverse. His meetings draw black Americans and Africans. British blacks. Asians of every kind. White Americans. White Europeans. Citizens of Muslim countries. There are probably Messianic Jews in the mix. How does this picture differ from the world at large? It differs because it’s a picture of peace. The people in the squares consider each other siblings. They are on each others’ sides. They pray for each other. They love each other. They love being together.

It shows what the world would be like if we all submitted to the Holy Spirit. The Bible calls Jesus the Prince of Peace, and you can see why. No one else can bring peace. No one else can take a Palestinian terrorist and an Arab-hating Orthodox Jew and turn them into brothers. It’s completely normal in charismatic churches that serve the Holy Spirit. Everywhere else, there is enmity and division.

God fills people with love for each other, and it’s better than human love.

I am bored with talk of politicians fixing the world; especially the Middle East. It’s nice that they try, but they’re just polishing the leaves of a tree instead of medicating the roots. The leaves will continue to rot because the roots are infected with the spirit of Antichrist.

God always tells his children the same things. He doesn’t suffer from the inane delusion that debate is healthy. Debate is a curse. He unites people. Satan is different. He tells you one thing and me another. He wants the children of Adam to kill each other and send each other to hell.

BLM and Antifa have no human leadership and no articulated goals. Without an articulated goal, there is no way for a combatant to know when the battle is over. This is why they will never stop fighting. Their true goal, which their father knows very well, is to remove Christians and Jews from the earth, making them endure as much suffering and humiliation as possible in the process. This goal can’t be attained, so the war will never end. It will continue until the rapture.

Most Christians either support the leftists or plan to fight them with ridiculous weapons like rifles. Either way, they support Satan. They are against the leadership of the Holy Spirit, and they are headed for catastrophe. The only weapons and defenses that work are supernatural, and they are not available to people who do things their own way. The word says everyone who trusts in the strength of man is cursed.

You can join God’s family at any time. What you’ve done is irrelevant. It can all be wiped out by the blood of Jesus. All that matters is your willingness to change course. Every intelligent saved person above the age of accountability is filthy and disgusting, but for God’s help. Your mother. Your kids. Your pastor. The nicest people you know. To God, there is no important difference between them and a Satanist who curses God every day. Sin is sin. You can be repaired. Thinking you can’t be fixed is no excuse for remaining as you are.

Preachers generally don’t have the guts, the honesty, or the knowledge to say these things. They want butts in seats and checks in collection plates. They’re like the dogs who started following men centuries ago, in order to eat their table scraps and their feces. They are useless.

Expect new riots with every report of a controversial interracial shooting. The enemy can never be appeased. He’s not after peace. He wants your annihilation.

America will continue to try to appease, as will the rest of the nations, and things will get worse and worse until the end comes. There may be pauses, but the process will not stop for good because people will continue choosing Satan. They will continue to endorse fornication and homosexuality. They will keep punishing and ostracizing God’s children. They will never stop looking for Satan’s solutions, because behaving and submitting are so abominable to them. We have had over a year of coronavirus, and there is almost no move to repent or take responsibility. That’s a pattern that will continue.

It would be nice to be wrong.

Yukon Keep These Potatoes

Things are still going great with my Zambian sweetheart, “Rebecca.” We are still struggling with the question of whether she should continue studying for the Zambian bar exam. We keep getting what seem to be indications that it’s not God’s will. Prayers for his guidance would be appreciated.

There are only two reasons for her to continue. First, there is the possibility that we won’t work out, which seems highly unlikely, and second, it’s generally not a good idea to quit big projects you’ve started. If she quits and something miraculous happens that splits us up, I can easily fund a return trip to Zambia and a new period of study, but she would lose some time.

In other news, I bought a deep fryer. I’m not sure it was a good idea. I am tired of having problems frying things. My chicken has been performing poorly.

In the old days, the portable fryer market was gloomy. They had things like the Fry Baby, and not much more. The Fry Baby is a small electrified bucket that holds oil. They now make a Fry Pappy. It’s bigger, and the reviews are not good. One problem: you have to fry everything at 375 degrees.

Now you can get a machine that will sit on your countertop and fry 2.5 pounds of food per batch. You can get models that have preset modes for various foods. One model, made by Breville, has a special two-part mode for twice-fried fries. Do you trust a stranger to tell your fryer how to make fries? I don’t. My Instant Pot does a great job with rice, however.

The Breville gets a lot of bad reviews because of build quality, so I don’t want it.

I decided to try a T-Fal. Their machine comes apart so you can put various pieces in the dishwasher. It has a big basket which is easy to handle. It also has a filtering mode. After you fry, it filters the fat and stores it in a container which is part of the fryer.

Today I watched some videos about fryers, and I also caught an America’s Test Kitchen video about frying chicken “like the pros.” I thought they did a surprisingly bad job. They used a Dutch oven with a clip-on thermometer, and they fried the chicken right on the bottom of the pot. It came out with dark areas in the areas that hit bottom. I don’t need a fancy kitchen and a staff of professionals to tell me how to burn chicken.

Usually, the people at ATK give great advice. Not sure what happened this time.

T-Fal’s machine looked good on Youtube, and the ATK video made me despair of frying chicken well in a plain old pot. That’s why I ordered the T-Fal. Now I’m not so sure. Since placing the order, I’ve learned some things.

I decided to make fries to see if I could do better than ATK. I looked for recipes online. I wanted to fry twice, the way you’re supposed to. Okay, technically, I wanted to blanch once and fry once. I kept seeing recipes calling for Yukon gold potatoes, which were all I had. I sliced some thin and blanched them in a pot with a thermometer, and then I chilled them.

For some reason, I have a stainless basket which can be used for frying. It has little bumps on the bottom to lift it off the bottom of the pot. I used it for blanching, and it worked very well.

It wasn’t much trouble at all, and I didn’t have to take a fancy machine apart for cleaning. Also, because I now have a dedicated grease-filtering storage canister, handling the oil was easy.

Sadly, the fries were not good. They tasted great, but Yukon Golds are not frying potatoes. Not as far as I can tell, anyway. The fries looked perfect, but they were limp, probably because they were low on starch compared to russets.

It looks like I got snookered by the Internet again. It’s full of recipes written by people who can’t cook at all.

I have made wonderful fries in the past. I always used russet potatoes. I have never had good results frying red potatoes or Yukons. I should have known better than to try Yukons today.

Sources on the web say the Russet Burbank is the top fry potato. I don’t know if the russets I can buy are Russet Burbanks, but I’m sure they will beat Yukon Golds.

To get back to equipment, I’m wondering why I should keep the fryer when I have a pretty good solution on hand already.

ATK’s chicken video got me thinking about Dutch ovens. Le Creuset makes the best, if reviewers are to be believed, but boy, are they expensive. Like $380 expensive for a big one. I’ve been resisting getting one. Today I learned they’re on sale for $250. It’s a manufacturer’s promotion. The big model is over $100 cheaper than the next size down.

I tried finding used Dutch ovens a while back, but it was a waste of time. If you want a Le Creuset cheap, you pretty much have to find it at a thrift shop or inherit it.

I just told Amazon to cancel the fryer, as I was writing this. There is no point in spending $120 on something you may not need. Making my bad fries gave me confidence in my frying ability, even if the potatoes let me down. Had I had russets, I would have had excellent fries, and the basket would have made them very easy to handle.

I think I should buy a Dutch oven and invest in some russet potatoes. I don’t actually need a Dutch oven for potatoes, but it will be useful for other things, and I don’t expect Le Creuset to keep the sale going forever.

Not too much is going on, apart from the above. Still waiting for the side effects from my Johnson & Johnson vaccine. I almost had a headache last night, and I felt sleepy, but then I had eaten a big bowl of garlic rolls, so what was I supposed to expect? I feel a little sleepy right now, but I just ate too many fries.

Great things are happening in my relationship with God, but I can’t talk about them here. I am willing to say I am being much more critical of (i.e. “realistic about”) about myself these days, and I am really trying to dedicate myself to God and get his blessings, starting with transformation, to flow. I still think the apocalypse is about to dawn. This is no time to be lukewarm or proud, and I have been both.