My Rebuttal to Dale Carnegie

I had the funniest dream last night.

I use a lot of Internet forums because I have a lot of interests. I can’t just conjure up friends and relatives who can tell me how to wire up a guitar amp tube socket or change an oil seal on a tractor axle. I have to look elsewhere.

Something about me attracts insults and abuse. Internet forums are full of jerks. Anyone who participates in a typical forum will eventually be bullied and provoked. My strategy is to try to show humility and patience from the start, and I use self-deprecating remarks to keep the jerks from waking up, but to many jerks, humility and self-deprecation are like the smell of poop to flies, so they pounce.

Eventually, if someone will not leave me alone, I will respond in kind. I am much better at this than most people, and forum moderators don’t like it. You can let a complete ass insult you over and over for weeks, and you can count on forum moderators to leave him alone, but when you get fed up and snap back with a penetrating shot from a larger caliber, you get in trouble.

These days, more and more moderators are ignorant young wokesters, so things are worse if there is any kind of conservative or Christian smell to you. It doesn’t have to be overt; a slight hint will serve just fine to get you disparate and unfair treatment.

Some old crank has been needling me on a forum for saying it’s a good thing to expose people who give consumers a raw deal. It’s like he’s a dog and the neighbor’s shar pei is in heat. He can’t move on. I responded to his obnoxious remarks civilly several times, and he can’t shut up.

I quit going to the forum, but after a week or two, I decided to visit again, and he was still at it. I told him the first of the month was coming up, so I was glad I wasn’t paying rent on his head.

Personally, I would rent a house, not an efficiency, but let’s move on.

Now some woke kid moderators are sending me email messages. I responded once, and now I just put them in the Archived folder. Maybe I’ll read them in a month or two, or maybe I’ll use other forums.

There are some seriously non-woke forums out there, so that’s nice. One example is Arborist Site, for people who need help with forestry tools. Gun forums are also pretty good. I wouldn’t go near a Christian forum, because I can’t handle the self-righteousness from people who do nothing but quote fools like Joel Osteen and T.D. Jakes. Few things are worse than being scolded by ignorant, disrespectful people.

Some people are drawn to Christianity by a desire to change and get close to God. Many more, however, are drawn by the desire to be God’s Karens and HOA presidents. Yeshua was murdered by self-promoting, self-adoring Karens.

A Youtube preacher named Tom Fischer lectured me for criticizing TV preachers and their prosperity nonsense. Well, he lives in a camper that was a gift. I am not making fun of him. Poverty is no joke. But he lives in a camper, he has had this standard of living for many years, and he essentially called me an enemy of Christ for criticizing the prosperity gospel.

He told me I had discipline coming. I was living in a nice house. I had a wonderful wife. I didn’t have to work. I lived in a fantastic area with warm, kind people. Since he gave me his warning, I have had a magnificent baby son who brightens every day of my life. Things get better all the time.

As I have told my wife, if this is discipline, I want more of it.

He has a lot of company. A lot of people have told me God was either getting me or going to get me. Most ironically, Alberto Lee Santiago, the child-rapist pastor from my last church. He told me God didn’t like what I was doing. Within a couple of years, he was put in prison, his wife (who agreed with him) died from a brain tumor before he was sentenced, and of course, he lost his church.

His brother-in-law Sander was also enraged at me, although of course, he claimed he was praying for me. Sometimes I think that’s the ultimate Christian diss.

Sander was an illegal alien; maybe he still is. He got furious at me for calling Osteen a grinning jackass, which I stand by. He got even madder when I said illegal immigration was a Biblical curse, which is a hundred percent true. When Santiago was arrested (after doing his level best to discourage the victim’s mother from forgiving him), Sander posted a meme criticizing church members for abandoning their “shepherd.”

There are a lot of things a good shepherd does with sheep. What Albert did is not one of them.

I would like to see Tom Fischer and his wife in a big, beautiful house with a pack of cute kids playing around their feet, but it looks like the prosperity gospel is keeping him where he is. It was designed by Satan to do that. It works beautifully. As Satan’s tools go, it is unsurpassed in its effectiveness.

The more you give to prosperity preachers, the less you prosper, and the less you can give to the poor. That’s the scheme, in a nutshell. In a way, it’s almost beautiful. So simple and powerful.

Fischer also lays into the Jews all the time, which is beyond disappointing.

Anyway, that’s just an example of what happens when I speak up around Christians. Religious people murdered Yeshua, and they want to get rid of everyone else who shoots down their idols and superstitions. Jewish or Christian, it’s the same kind of people.

I really hope no one hits me with “Judge not” for the rest of this year. I don’t know if I’ll be able to restrain myself. I’m going to get a shirt that says, “‘Judge not’ is not the only verse in the Bible.”

Like Yeshua and the apostles, I judge people all the time. It’s extremely helpful to me and whoever hears it. I don’t care who the person is; the other day I judged Billy Graham for saying Muhammad Ali was a follower of Jesus Christ. That was a stupid and dangerous thing to say. I don’t care how many people went to Graham’s crusades.

Billy Graham is probably close to the top of the Christian idol totem pole. He was so relentlessly inoffensive, he drew the admiration of hundreds of millions. What did Yeshua, an unpopular person, say about popularity?

If I’m willing to knock Billy Graham, you know I’m hard core.

My wife saw Graham say this, and she was mortified. We listened to him, and the impression we got was that he denied the necessity of the cross, which could mean he was not saved. Denying Yeshua is the absolute surest and quickest way to lose your salvation.

Muhammad Ali, a Muslim, named himself after a pedophile rapist gangster who was physically dirty and encouraged his followers to perform acts of terrorism against non-Muslims. Ali was no follower of Yeshua. He was an extremely ignorant man, he lived a life of defeat, and he is almost certainly in hell. Graham saw no point in correcting him. In fact, he reinforced his eternal itinerary by lying to his face. Great job, Billy.

Believe it or not, warning people about hell is important. Is it controversial to say that? Can that possibly be? Slap yourself hard in the face and think about it.

To get back to my dream, I dreamed someone emailed me a link to a new forum, and I visited it. All of the posts were reposts of things I had written on forums. All the horrible non-woke things that had sent snowflakes running for their weed stashes and power crystals.

One of the posts was very funny. The guy who created the forum was furious at me for using the phrase “crazy people.” You can’t say “crazy” any more, even if you’re describing a bona fide psychotic who has to be kept strapped to a wall.

This useful, accurate phrase is considered offensive. That’s just crazy.

God has blessed me for giving up secular entertainment. I did it earlier this year, and although my life was very good beforehand, it is much, much better now. Years ago, he blessed me for giving up social media. Now I wonder if he wants me to quit using Internet forums.

I feel like I need them for the purpose of getting information, but that may be an excuse. I also use them for socializing.

Now that AI is freely available, I have found that it’s a better source of help than Internet forums. Forum people like answering questions about which they know nothing. They also drag threads off topic. Maybe I should drop forums and stick with AI as much as I can.

Participation in the world’s culture is unequal yoking, so it has to be minimized.

Is using AI unequal yoking? I hope not. It’s pretty woke, i.e. deluded. AI bots aren’t people, though, so I treat them like the inanimate objects they are. I don’t try to get along with them. I don’t use good manners. I never joke with them. It would be like trying to befriend a shovel.

The world’s culture is a minefield. It was designed by Satan. He puts little temptation mines in TV, fiction, movies, sports, music, and the news. When you walk through it, the mines blow up under your feet. Demons get permission to enter your home and go after you and your family.

The most pleasant thing about abandoning secular entertainment is that it put an end to my lust issues. I didn’t realize it, but websites that don’t seem sex-related have little bits of erotic content in them designed to pull you further astray, and it works. News sites are full of erotic clickbait about whorish female celebrities. This one or that one shocked the crowd at Sundance by going to a viewing naked! This one has an incredible “bikini bod” at 57! That one wore a CHEEKY dress to the Golden Globes! It’s all over sites like The Daily Mail and Yahoo News.

I don’t need to see professional sluts all day. Sorry; that’s what they are. I wouldn’t let them be part of my social circle or walk onto my property, so why read about them on the Internet?

I didn’t realize reading the news or watching shows like Clarkson’s Farm could lead to problems with lust, but it does. It must lead to other demonic issues, too.

Being delivered from demons is wonderful, but it’s a second-rate blessing. The better blessing is to avoid having demons in the first place. Secular culture brings them in, and if they are cast out and you go back to secular culture, they enter you all over again.

I would rather stay free than watch Fox News. The Catholic news channel.

Any channel where more than one host refers to an old celibate socialist elected by gays as the holy father is suspect.

I’m not going to fit in with this world. If I started to, it would be a sign that I had backslidden and lost my relationship with God. Changing my behavior to avoid offending won’t help. The real offense is my existence. I’m like a Jew. The problem people have with me isn’t my behavior. It’s my existence itself.

Currying favor won’t make anyone like me. It will just strip me of the favor of God and grieve the Holy Spirit.

If I try to make people like me by being less honest, they will still hate me, but I will lose my relationship with God.

Go ahead and dislike me. They will never build a microscope powerful enough to detect my respect for your opinion of me.

Don’t Give Everything Away Just Yet

Rapture fever is apparently peaking again.

I believe in the rapture. It is described clearly in the Bible, and there are also lots of symbolic references to it.

I have no problem with the rapture. In fact, I am counting on it, because I am not eager to die of old age on a planet that has descended into wholesale, violent, sadistic persecution. I don’t want my wife and son to be stuck here, either.

I’m convinced rapture-deniers have the poorer view. On the other hand, it is fatiguing to get excited, repeatedly, about a possibly-imminent rapture and then find out it’s not happening. It’s like sitting in a restaurant, watching waiters stroll by with pizza after pizza you mistakenly think is headed for your table.

In 2015, in a dream, I experienced the rapture with my late mother. I heard the trumpet and everything. It gave me hope I would not be stuck here much longer. It is now 2025.

In 2020, I had another rapture dream, but it was symbolic. I thought it might point to a rapture that would take place at around Christmas of that year. January came, and I was still here.

I think both of these dreams were related to Christmas, because in the 2015 dream, I was in my grandparents’ living room. That is the room where my cousins and I opened our Christmas presents. The memory of opening presents in that room is the strongest memory I have of it.

Also, if you think about it, the rapture is like Christmas. The first Christmas was the first time Yeshua came to earth as Messiah, and the rapture will be the second time. A second Christmas.

I used to keep up with other people’s rapture dreams on Youtube, but it became very difficult because an eccentric woman put up a channel which stole and reposted other people’s videos. This effectively blocked out other people’s content unless she liked it. I think she did this to make money.

I quit searching for videos and went on with my life, so I lost touch with other rapture enthusiasts.

Recently, a friend of mine reposted a video from a young man who said he had dreamed of the rapture. He said Yeshua had told him he was “right at the door.” He said he had heard the dates September 23 and September 24 over and over.

He said Yeshua kept saying, “My wrath is just,” meaning the tribulation was ready to fall on the world.

He also said God spoke through him to his father, telling his father that his grandfather was in heaven, and the grandfather wanted the father to pray for the father’s siblings because they were not saved.

This all sounded pretty good, except for a few problems that made it incompatible with the truth.

First of all, the rapture did not come, unless it was tiny. If so, I am in big trouble, because I am now in the tribulation.

Second, there is no reason to believe dead people know anything about what happens here, that they intercede for us, or that God would give us messages from them.

Predictably, there is a parachute to save the prediction from the date problem. People are saying Yeshua is coming on September 23 or 24 on the Julian calendar, which is 13 days behind our Gregorian calendar.

The obvious question is why he would use a calendar no one uses today.

The Julian September 23 is our October 6, so some people will hold out hope through October 7.

There is no getting around the dead people problem. Talking to the dead is forbidden in both Judaism and Christianity, except for old semi-pagan churches like the Catholic Church. It’s for witches and sorcerers.

In the Old Testament, only one dead person spoke to a living person. It was Samuel. Saul conjured him up, and Samuel told him he was cursed for it. Some people say it wasn’t really Samuel, but the Bible clearly says it was Samuel, so God must have permitted Saul to talk to him on this special occasion.

There is no example of a dead person talking to a living person in the New Testament. Elijah and Moses appeared with Yeshua, but they didn’t talk to anyone else. Resurrected people talked to the living, but they were alive.

In the Bible, God spoke to human beings through Yeshua and the Holy Spirit. I think there is also at least one example of a person visiting the throne room in heaven, meaning Yahweh spoke to him. I am not a great Bible scholar. Anyway, God spoke to people as Yahweh, the Holy Spirit, and Yeshua. As the Holy Spirit, he often spoke through living men. He also spoke to people through angels.

With the likely exception of the Samuel incident, which is something no one should ever try to copy, there is no example of God sending a dead person to talk to the living.

If God were speaking to the young man in the video, he would simply tell him his dad’s siblings needed intercession in order to be saved. He would not involve his grandfather. That would make no sense.

God didn’t tell the young man the rapture was coming on September 23 or 24 on any calendar. He didn’t give him a message from his grandfather. The information in the video came from somewhere else, and the whole video should be dismissed.

In comments below the video, Christians are oohing and ahhing in agreement. We have a terrible culture of gullibility, which is not faith. We try so hard to believe, we get used to accepting whatever we hear that seems to be positive for the kingdom. We swallow a lot of garbage. This leads to disaster for many of us.

Today, I see heathens gloating on the web, saying MAGA Christians are crying like babies because the rapture didn’t come this week. I don’t know if this is true; I haven’t checked. I didn’t know September 2025 rapture predictions were widespread, so I am behind the curve.

I have nothing but empathy for anyone who cries because the rapture hasn’t come. It seems like a rational response.

Although the video was not from God, it did contain some interesting information.

The video says that when Yeshua said people would not know the day or hour of his return, he was quoting past Jews who were talking about Rosh Hashanah, which is the Jewish holiday that started on September 23. It’s the day the Jewish new year starts.

I decided to look this up, since there is a lot of unvetted garbage out there regarding Judaism’s connection to Christianity.

It turns out there is something to it. Rosh Hashanah is one of the Jewish special days that starts on a new moon. Deep in the past, Jews did not assume the new moon was out there because astronomical charts predicted it. They didn’t go ahead with new moon festivities until two witnesses testified that they had seen the new moon.

This may be wrong, but: the web says the current Jewish calendar, which is very good, didn’t exist until a millennium and a half ago, and this is why they had to eyeball the moon.

Because the moon was sometimes covered by clouds, and clouds can last a while, the beginning of the new year could be moved back quite a bit, meaning it wasn’t just the hour, but the day, which was not certain.

Is this all correct? Do your own Googling and see what you think.

The idea that the date and hour were uncertain seems to be solid, but not so, claims that Yeshua was quoting well-known Jewish wisdom when he said, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.” This may be a Christian embellishment.

The video also says something about Jewish weddings and abductions. The idea is that ancient Jews used to hold mock abductions at weddings, grabbing the brides and carrying them off to the ceremonies or something.

This appears to be fiction. Maybe someone can find proof that doesn’t come from a Christian source.

It makes the rapture look more plausible, because the rapture is Yeshua, grabbing his bride and taking him away with her. It is understandable that Christians will little regard for the truth would make something like this up. Christians have promoted enough lies to fill encyclopedias. They made up the saints, the immaculate conception, the rosary, original sin, baby-baptism, and the Seventh-Day Adventist rules against pork and shrimp.

No bacon-wrapped shrimp! Now that’s a sacrifice.

While I am sure the September 23-24 theory is wrong, because here I am, I have to say that I saw another September rapture video that was not as easily debunked. A lady who sounds like she is from Australia says her autistic son spelled out prophecies on a letterboard and told her he had seen her aborted daughter in heaven. She says he didn’t know she had had an abortion. She says he named the man who raised her and said he was in heaven. She says the boy couldn’t have known about him.

She does not call for a September 23-24 rapture. She says God clearly told her son “September 2025.” I’m assuming that’s Gregorian.

It would be impressive, if true, and for all I know, it is. But she could be making it up.

Here’s a great lesson for you: you can’t “read people.” You can’t tell whether people are lying or not. If you think you can, you’re delusional. The world is full of people who know exactly how to act to make others believe them and give them sympathy. Only the Holy Spirit can read people for you.

The lady in the video seems open, honest, and brave. She says things that tug at your heartstrings. Well, if I were a bored psychopathic liar in love with attention, I would look for ways to seem just as credible and sympathetic as she does. It’s not that hard. If it were, there wouldn’t be hundreds of millions of people doing it.

This lady could be a AI creation for all I know. I can’t find the original location of her video, or any other videos she created, anywhere.

I would be very happy if my family and I were taken this month. I don’t think we’re going anywhere on October 6 or 7, but if we do, it will ruin future October 7ths for Islamists everywhere.

I don’t think anyone can specify a date. I think what Yeshua said about days and yours probably still holds true, although it’s not certain. He fully expects us to know the time of the rapture, but it’s not clear how accurate he wants us to be. I think it’s reasonable to think we could be told the month when he will come.

I’m not worried about being wrong about any of this, because I know of no requirement that you believe in the rapture in order to be included.

I am ready to go. This place is getting crazier by the second. It looks like Candace Owens is now surpassing Hitler in her ravings about Jews.

Owens is an excellent barometer. The more approval she gets, the crazier our country must be.

As far as I know, Hitler thought Jews were immoral, subhuman parasites whose disloyalty (not the Kaiser’s obvious incompetence) caused Germany to lose World War I. What a terrible thing to do, if true. How wonderful Europe would be with Germans running it (sarcasm). As of right now, they’re just funding it.

Owens now says Israel is a “demonic nation.” Hitler didn’t go that far, unless my knowledge of history is even spottier than I think it is.

I can’t believe I live in an America where a crazy woman can blather blatantly, patently, shamelessly antisemitic lies, not be censored or fired, and get richer every day! Could this have happened even in 2015?

Most political commentators are silly, but Owens is genuinely dangerous. She is moving us toward an America where pogroms are everyday activities. Where will Jews go then? No idea. I don’t even know where I could go.

If the success of Candace Owens can happen, we can eventually have troops goose-stepping down Pennsylvania Avenue, saluting Fuhrer Carlson and Vice Fuhrer Owens as they pass the White House. No delusion is beyond us now. We could hold fair elections and put a fox terrier in the Oval Office.

Owens is a self-debunking liar. She wants us to think Israel killed Charlie Kirk because he was turning against Israel, which he was not, but she is much worse than she wants us to think he was, and Israel hasn’t had her killed. She thinks Jews control the media, but they haven’t shut down her horrendous podcast.

I’m genuinely sorry the rapture didn’t come. Take comfort in the knowledge that we won’t be here forever.

Welcome to Nonbinary Day Care, Little Tyler Routh Mangione

My baby son grew up this week. He is now 47.

Three big things have happened.

1. His crawl speed has increased by about 300%.

2. He tried to climb up our stairs.

3. We are pretty sure he was trying to say “Dad” in the car yesterday.

All of this took place over about two days. I don’t know what’s with this kid.

Yesterday, I planned to have a pleasant day of testing country ham and procrastinating, but I had to go to Walmart get a baby gate and a real playpen. It couldn’t wait until today.

The crawling thing was a shock. I used to be able to put him on the floor and come back and find him pretty close to the same location. Now we get–literally–two seconds before he drops the clutch and crawls completely out of the room. For the first time, if he is on the loose, we may not know where he is.

When we’re on the bed together, I have to grab one foot of his romper and hold it, because he may launch himself like a Trident missile to get at the stuff on my night table. He may also launch himself over the side completely, head first.

There is no warning at all when he takes off. Suddenly, he’s somewhere else.

I don’t know how anyone can crawl quickly. It’s hard on the limbs.

When I hold him by his romper, he keeps groaning and straining. He never looks back to see what the problem is.

My wife found him at the bottom of the rec room stairs, pawing at things I had left on them because I was too lazy to move them all the way to the second story. She had to move everything away from him.

Now when I receive .22 ammunition to try out, I’ll have to take it all the way to the storage room. Otherwise, he’ll turn himself into a human magazine.

On the way home from the trip to get the gate and playpen, he started saying, “Da da da da da da DA!” I have been trying to teach him to say “Dad.” I touch my chest and say, “Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad!” He thinks it’s wonderful. It appears he is trying to imitate me.

My wife says she thinks it’s great because she’s a patriarchist.

If only a feminist would come, deprogram her, and save her from happiness. She, too, could have 7 cats named after famous socialists and witches, an apartment all to herself and a fatherless son, dated Seventies rainbow hair, and a bellyful of Zoloft, Klonopin, semaglutide, and fattening bagged organic snacks from Trader Joe’s.

Putting a gate on the rec room stairs may be hard because we have a high baseboard. I bought something anyway, and I’ll see if it fits.

Playpens are now called “playards.” It’s not a real word, it makes no sense, and it looks stupid. When I saw it, I smelled wokitude.

Turns out I was right. Evidently, suggesting a child can be put in a pen is non-woke, microaggressive, and extremely hurtful. In the view of utter pinheads.

A playpen is nothing like a yard.

I call it what it is: a playpen. I will always call it that unless I can come up with something that invokes colonialism and manspreading.

Why do young people have to opt for idiocy every time? Is there anything millennials can’t ruin?

We already had a playpen for him, but it was no good, because it wasn’t a real playpen. It was a bassinet. The mattress can be lowered close to the floor, so that supposedly makes it a playpen. No; it’s just a weird bassinet. It’s small, and he can’t be expected to learn to walk on a foam pad.

I wonder when they’re going to come up with a new word for “diaper.” Maybe “pooyard.”

“I was chestfeeding little Lenin Snoqualmie when I realized zhey needed a fresh, sustainable, gender-neutral, tuck-friendly, soy fiber pooyard.”

This brings me to disturbing woke baby names. My buddy Mike already has granddaughters named Fern and Wren. I am not kidding. A boy is on the way. This was Mike’s chance for a normal name.

I won’t give you time to brace. They chose “Oak.”

Fern, Wren, and Oak. Where is Christopher Robin?

I almost miss the days when all liberals named their kids Dylan.

Oak isn’t a name. I don’t care if there have been people named Oak. There have been people named Raspberry and Osprey. Doesn’t mean these are real names.

Here is his future:

1. “Could you repeat that for me? Again?”

2. “Class, I thought I told you to stop throwing Oak on the ant pile.”

3. “Is it okay if I call you by your middle name?”

4. “Honey, I’m just not comfortable with ‘Oak, Junior.’ Let’s pick something else.”

I hope he’s big and strong, because he will need to be. A boy named Oak.

They gave him three names plus a surname, and only one is normal. Unfortunately, the normal name is sexually ambiguous. By design? Wouldn’t surprise me.

You have to give a kid an escape hatch unless you like putting cold washcloths on black eyes.

It was predictable that they wouldn’t consider “Michael,” even after all the things Mike has done for them and paid for. It fits in perfectly with all the things I have heard about them.

My understanding is that his son is a very smart and talented young man and an extremely conscientious and dedicated father. Mike says he is very concerned about morality and tries to improve himself. He appears to have a blind spot in one area, though.

Seems like an undeserved slap in the face to me, but what do I know? Mike would have been on cloud nine, but never mind. I would have loved to hear they named the baby after him.

I would have given my son my dad’s name, but because of my dysfunctional upbringing, hearing it makes my blood pressure spike. It’s like I’m a baby sparrow in the nest, and my dad’s name is the shadow of a hawk flying over. I gave my son my grandfather’s name, and I told my wife we should give the next one her dad’s name.

She rejected that, however, because he did not behave all that well in life. She has demoted him to middle-name status.

Christians name children to honor older people they know, or Biblical figures. Leftists name children to one-up other leftist parents.

Leftist 1: Our son has an Algonquin Indian name.

Leftist 2: Be better. My unassigned offspring has a sub-Saharan click-language name.

Leftist 3: How 2020 of both of you. We chose “Sinwar Bud Light Luigi.”

Is the last-names-first fad over with? Are leftists still naming their daughters awful things like Wilson and Flannery?

I am not in love with my first name, but it’s not bad, and at least it’s a name. It’s much more dignified than I am, so that’s a win.

“Tyler” is probably trending among leftists right now.

I think I should take a page from an old Bloom County strip and name a son Trump T. Trump. Or Reagan T. Trump.

It’s startling to see a baby make sudden leaps in development. Of course, it’s encouraging, but it also reminds me he will only be a baby once. When babyhood is gone, it’s gone. It has to be savored while it lasts.

We will try to teach him to have a little gratitude and respect instead of criticizing and putting us on trial every day of his adult life while expecting us to support him and do things for him well into his thirties. I hope it works, because I have seen what happens when it doesn’t.

Things are just about ideal here. My son is a joy. My wife and I love each other; we are more like parts of each other than separate beings. God’s presence comes to us over and over. Our area is peaceful. We lack for nothing.

Everyone was miserable back in 2020, but we both loved it. Then we found each other in 2021, and while a lot of people were worrying and being held prisoner in their own homes by Democrat governors, we were having long video calls, praying together, getting married on Zoom, and flying to exotic destinations to be with each other. Every year has been better than the last. As happy as we were with just each other, we are even happier now that we have a baby, and we expect every new baby to make us happier still.

God keeps giving us correction, and I believe anyone who keeps receiving and applying his correction will find that his life gets more pleasant as years pass. I am optimistic because I have a loving benefactor who is patient, eager to bless, and slow to punish. He has been right about everything.

Today we will be taking the baby to the dermatologist for a followup, and then we plan to go to our favorite restaurant: Costco. We hope to be home when the anniversary ring I bought my wife comes back from being resized.

If you’re not happy, keep asking God to tell what you’re doing wrong. It worked for the ancient Jews, and it is certainly working for us. God loves you as much as anyone else, so he is ready to start when you are.

Depends on Which Pole You’re On

I had a spectacular day.

I was going to go outside and remove the nasty old rocks around an unwanted flowerbed, but instead, I ordered country ham over the web and took the family to Costco for pizza. We actually like having dinner at Costco, and it runs us about 10 dollars.

I love country ham, but it has to be good. My grandmother used to cure her own hams back in Kentucky, and she aged them a couple of years, so they were magnificent. They were also fatter than today’s hams, so there was no lack of grease for gravy. If you go into a grocery store that sells country hams, you’re likely to end up with Smithfield or Clifty Farms, which are aged very little and lacking in flavor. Also, Smithfield ham smells a little bit like manure.

One of the pleasures of having a foreign wife is introducing her to American food. My wife loves barbecue, Ruth’s Chris, Lee’s Famous Fried Chicken, Dr. Pepper, and a number of other things, but she has been a little slow to embrace country ham.

A country ham is supposed to be fermented. The aroma is supposed to have a little funk to it, and when you slice the ham, you should have to scrape some mold off of it. It’s also supposed to be very, very salty. It’s supposed to contain enough salt to prevent harmful bacteria from growing. After all, country ham was invented in order to help people preserve pork so they had meat during the winter. People made it as a survival tool.

When my wife tried country ham, she did not think much of it, but I fried a piece yesterday, and she liked it. She keeps telling me she is becoming Americanized. She has quit eating the flavorless corn mush Zambians call nshima, for example.

A few years back, I ordered samples from several ham companies so I could compare them. Sadly, I failed to record the results of this important research, so I was forced to repeat it.

I used to order hams from a company called Gatton Farms, but they went out of business. After that, I uses Scott’s hams, but they tanked, too. This is why I needed to find a new source.

My second cousin Wade, who is now gone, liked Colonel Newsom’s hams, made in Princeton, Kentucky. He once told me walking into Newsom’s was like entering a shrine.

I’m sure he knew what he was talking about. Everyone from the hills knows a good ham when he tastes one, and it seems like no one else does. My grandparents and all of their daughters knew what a good ham tasted like. I know. But people on food websites make deplorable recommendations.

Newsom’s doesn’t use curing salt. Just table salt, brown sugar, and hickory smoke. My understanding is that curing salt speeds up the cure process. Personally, I have nothing against it, as long as the ham gets plenty of aging time in spite of it.

I have never had a Newsom’s ham. They are extremely expensive, and Gatton Farms and Scott’s made top-notch products for way less. I used to get a whole ham, sliced, bagged and shipped, for under $70. I couldn’t persuade myself to spend more for Newsom’s.

Yesterday I decided to make sure I wasn’t missing out. I ordered a whole Newsom’s ham. Life is short. When my wife saw me looking at the website, she increased my joy by suggesting I order sausage, too. She used to refuse American sausage. She’s coming around!

It wasn’t a cheap purchase, but it will be nice to find out whether these hams are as good as some people think they are.

I also ordered slices from Broadbent’s and Benton’s; two other famous ham companies. My hope is that they will turn out to be as good or better than Newsom’s. If so, I won’t have to pay Newsom prices in the future.

The important thing will be to record the results of the experiment. If I could remember what I thought of Broadbent’s and Benton’s the last time I compared them, I wouldn’t need to spend more money.

My wife was also critical of Southern-style collards, which I love. I boil them forever with ham hocks or neckbones or whatever other smoked pork products are available, and they are heavenly.

Zambians are like yankees. They barely cook their greens. Sure, they look nice, and they have a less-wilted texture some people like, but that slow-cooked flavor is not there. It’s a giant waste of potential.

Yankees always say Southerners turn vegetables into mush. They don’t know what slow-cooked vegetables are supposed to taste like, so they don’t know what they’re missing.

Now my wife says she loves Southern-style collards. We have been going to a place called Fat Boys BBQ, and they serve collards. They won her over.

Sadly, Newsom’s doesn’t slice hams, so I will have to do it myself or find a butcher who has a machine. I can vacuum-seal the slices, but the tedious job of slicing is mine. Another reason to root for the other two contenders.

I ordered the Newsom’s ham yesterday, and I ordered samples from Broadbent’s and Benton’s today. Feeling satisfied with my accomplishments, I forgot all about moving the rocks and told my wife we were going to Costco for dinner.

We drove down to Sumter County, to the Villages. This is an enormous retirement community. It’s as close to heaven as an old person can get without dying. There are all sorts of stores, restaurants, and golf courses, and the old people zip around the community in golf carts.

There is no Costco in our county. I belonged when I lived in Miami, but I had to quit when I moved here. Last month, the Costco in the Villages opened, so I renewed my membership.

The drive is very pleasant. It was relaxing. Lots of little farms. Oaks arching over the roads. You would never know you were in the same state as Florida Man or Miami’s aggressive hordes.

It was very different from our recent visit to Gainesville for P.F. Chang’s.

To get to Gainesville, you have to use I-75, which is crowded and full of pushy drivers. Florida’s population keeps growing, and the main roads have not kept up. The pushy drivers are from South Florida, along with some from Georgia. People here don’t act like that.

We visited Trader Joe’s, P.F. Chang’s, and Bass Pro, in that order.

Gainesville is in Alachua County. It’s where the University of Florida is located, so it’s full of miserable people. College students from other places. Angry, cynical leftist academics. On a visit prior to our last one, we saw two young men in prairie dresses and work boots. We ate at a restaurant where they gave us paper straws. What more do I have to tell you? But I will tell you more anyway.

Trader Joe’s was packed with leftists. Young college students; not the kind of people who build Charlie Kirk memorials. Old ones who looked like worn-out communists. Freaks by choice.

In the parking lot, people were driving aggressively to get as close to the door as they could. That never happens here.

The atmosphere was cold and unfriendly. I would even call it tense. People seemed rushed. I asked my wife what she thought of the people, and she told me she would tell me when we got outside.

When we take our baby out in our county, people always want to see him. They tell us how cute he is. They say they want to take him home. At Trader Joe’s, precisely one lady noticed him.

At Bass Pro, the atmosphere was completely different. It was peaceful. We felt calm. Everyone was friendly. We took our baby to see the aquarium, and he loved it. Other families were showing their little ones the fish.

Today, before we went into Costco, we checked out Fresh Market, an upscale grocery my wife hadn’t seen yet. The people were wonderful. Everyone wanted to see my son. They talked about how cute he was. The employees loved him. They spent a lot of time telling us about the store and ways to get deals.

At Costco, my wife occupied a table, and I went to pick up pizza and a chocolate sundae. While I was gone, the old man behind my wife turned around to talk to her about the baby. He noticed how aware he was of his surroundings.

We only bought three things, so we weren’t there long, but a number of people wanted to see the baby.

He smiled at people. He loves meeting them.

The drive home was just like the first drive. No hurry. The golden light of late afternoon. A baby full of ice cream.

We could be living among sour, furious University of Florida professors who frown to the point of injuring their faces over the existence of Christian and conservate students and their beloved president. We could be in Miami, being insulted and scammed by aggressive, rude illegal aliens. We are extremely blessed to be where we are, surrounded by warm, loving people. We are blessed to have had our priorities changed so we aren’t still mud-wrestling with people whose only pleasures in life are being unhappy and making others unhappy.

This morning, we watched videos about Singapore. We both said we wished we were there instead of in the US. As much as we love our area, Singapore has some big advantages. No one is killing Christians, or anyone else, there. The air isn’t filled with hatred.

We saw a video about the huge underground developments in Singapore. They are building a vast network of tunnels attached to their clean, safe, comfortable train system. I told my wife that if anyone tried to build something like that in the US, enraged hippies would glue themselves to the pavement and scream bloody murder.

I noted the difference between videos about Singapore’s trains and videos about American subways. American videos are about terrorism and other crimes. Black people shoving whites and Asians onto the tracks. Turnstile-jumpers. Ghetto kids terrorizing passengers, doing stupid dances and demanding to be paid. Gropers. Daniel Penney being prosecuted for saving strangers from a disgusting bully.

We loved the trains in Singapore, and also in Hong Kong, for that matter. So clean, safe, and pleasant. I went to college in New York, and I can’t tell you how strange it seems to me to go down into a subway system and not be immersed in the intense aroma of fermented pee.

I told my wife Singapore reminded me of the New Jerusalem, in the Revelation. A perfect city full of peaceful, well-intended, like-minded people. Maybe that’s why it appeals to us. In our spirits, we know we are supposed to live in a place like the New Jerusalem.

We have been to Egypt, Turkey, Ireland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Mexico, Switzerland, and Italy. After Israel, we both agree that we would rather go to Singapore a third time than revisit any of the other places.

Egypt is dirty and crazy. Ireland is pleasant but boring, and the food is not good. Turkey is nice, but not nice enough to make you dream of going back soon. Rome was one giant tourist trap, and it was full of pushy illegal aliens who had no manners. Switzerland is gorgeous, but they have jacked prices up to the point where tourists feel insulted, and it’s also filling up with Indian and Chinese tourists who are not always fun to be around. Staying in Cancun is like sleeping in a college bar.

I never thought I would say this, but I am not interested in seeing Switzerland again. I used to love it, but that has changed. You only have to charge me $7.50 for tap water once to make me understand that I’m unwelcome.

My wife doesn’t want to go back to Rome, ever. The illegals really got to her. She says she would make an exception so our children could see it. I liked Rome a little better, and I like Italians (real Italians in Europe), but I’m not hot to go back.

Singapore feels like home. When we arrived for our second visit, we felt like we were home again. It’s the strangest thing.

Singaporeans do everything well. They shame Americans every day.

To get back to the day I just had, I don’t know what I did to deserve a life this good. Actually, I know I didn’t do anything. I was rotten and immature. I deserve evil, and the Lord gave me the good he deserves.

I look forward to a bright future. The millennium. The New Jerusalem. Seeing God face to face. And maybe before the rapture or the day my body gives out, I’ll get to see Singapore a few more times.

You’ll Need the Official Hat and Shirt

I need to stop looking at the news. My general rule is to avoid it. Sometimes people tell me about stories, though, and occasionally, I see something I feel I need to look into. When Charlie Kirk was murdered by a liberal Mormon boy who cohabitated with a homosexual transvestite, I looked at a number of stories.

I am cutting back again, but I still heard about Ryder Corral, a sloppy, spoiled leftist baby man who trampled the objects set out as a tribute to Kirk in front of the offices of Turning Point USA. He did this in front of Fox News cameras along with a crowd of conservative and Christian mourners, one of whom slung him to the ground and put a stop to his antics.

Corral was wearing a shirt featuring the same design the coward Tyler Robinson wore when he shot Charlie Kirk with a deer rifle in front of his young wife and two small children. The design shows a flying eagle in front of our flag, along with the words “Land of the Free Home of the Brave.”

Pretty ironic, on the front of a sadistic, chickenhearted leftist punk who shot a man for exercising his freedom.

I would guess Robinson picked that shirt so he would look like a harmless conservative as he moved around the campus of the university where he shot Kirk.

Corral’s infantile rampage isn’t the big story. I don’t think people realize this. His shirt is the story.

Kirk had his neck blown apart on September 10. Corral threw his sociopathic tantrum on September 15. He already had the shirt. How did he get it so fast?

Sick leftists are selling copies of the shirt online. That’s how Corral got his shirt. In order for him to have it to wear on September 15, he must have ordered it no later than September 13. That’s how quickly Democrats seized on the opportunity to celebrate a brutal, bloody, public murder.

Today I Googled, and I found all sorts of ads for Tyler Robinson shirts. I took some screenshots on my phone, and I will show them to you now.

For a while, you could buy them on Walmart’s site.

This isn’t the first time this has happened during the last year. When another leftist coward, Luigi Mangione, shot down an insurance executive, other leftists lined up to buy hats identified with a video game character named Luigi. They wear them at their events. Not a few of them. Many of them.

If you don’t understand that America is in a very bad state, you need to wake up. Stop comparing today to yesterday. Compare it to the 20th century.

Imagine it’s 1963. John Kennedy’s brains have just been scrubbed off the car he was riding in when a communist shot them out of his head. Then imagine seeing people walking around in hats and shirts celebrating Lee Harvey Oswald.

Imagine it’s 1981. President Reagan is still hospitalized after being shot by a lunatic who thought it would impress an actress. Then imagine seeing people wearing T-shirts with the assassin’s picture on them.

We are going to have a civil war. Leftists will not leave it alone. For all their “coexist” bumper stickers and lying about peace, they are going to keep tormenting the rest of us until there is a nationwide reaction.

While I was taking a shooting class (not a killing class or militia preparation class), one of my instructors said something to us about how people were going to have to rise up and do something about America’s situation. He was talking about going to war.

There are a lot of problems with his thinking. One big one is that he’s talking about a war that can’t be won.

In order to truly win a war, you have to have a sane enemy, or at least one whose sanity can be restored. Otherwise, after the battles are over, you have to occupy his territory forever. A sane enemy will come around and let things drop. The Japanese, Austrians, and Germans were vicious and disgusting, but they made peace with us because the demons that motivated them were not told to keep going. American leftists are ruled by apocalyptic demons, sent to figuratively raise hell until after the tribulation. They are not going to stand down.

Another problem: there can be no front. Even in states that are fairly politically pure, the population is mixed. We work alongside lefists. They sit around dinner tables with us. They are our groomsmen and maids of honor. Our close relatives. They’re not going to show up as a separate force at a clearly-defined border. Americans will be killing each other all over the place, and they will be sneaky about it, just like the Viet Cong. You’ll be sitting at Five Guys, and an IED will go off. You’ll be gassing up your car, and an Eagle Scout wearing a Tyler Robinson shirt will shoot you from cover.

People we associate with all the time will become hidden dangers. It’s very difficult to deal with that kind of enemy.

There are potential killers and their helpers all around you. You don’t know they’re against you. You may find out who they are one day.

My buddy Mike posted something nice about Charlie Kirk on Facebook, and one of his “friends” excoriated him and spewed the usual lies about Kirk. Then she went after Kirk’s children. Look:

His daughter is three, and his son is one.

Aren’t women supposed to be child nurturers? Did I imagine that?

There is no military solution to the problem. We can’t put a third or half of our population in prison. We can’t occupy every big city. We can’t bomb them; they live in our houses.

America had a civil war a century and a half ago, and we have pretty much gotten over it, but it was different. Americans weren’t insane. They were divided by their opinions on important issues, but they never felt the people on the other side didn’t deserve to exist.

Leftists believe people like Charlie Kirk and me should not be allowed to exist. We should not have jobs. We should not be allowed to speak. No one should be able to see or hear us.

This is a common thread with Satan’s children. They don’t just want to win. They want their victims to cease to exist, and they want it to look like they never existed. This is why God would not let the Jews cremate their dead, and it’s why the Nazis used cremation to get rid of their bodies.

In the supernatural world, one of the worst types of harm is to have your name and memory blotted out. This is why some religious Jews call Yeshua “YESHU,” which is an initialism for, “May his name and memory be blotted out forever.” The problem for leftists isn’t just that we exist; it’s that we ever existed in the past.

Ryder Corral’s sick actions show that demons still want to erase the memory of those who oppose Satan. Charlie Kirk is dead, and his work will not continue. That should be sufficient to satisfy leftists, but it’s not. The demons are furious that people remember him. The memorial display Corral and his demons attacked is a reminder Satan can’t stand.

The thing that makes you Satan’s child is to have a character similar to Satan’s. Satan wants all the attention, because he’s like a gay man who wants to be the queen bee; the only Cher impersonator at the party. It enrages him that people even know who Yeshua is. His children are enraged that people know who Charlie Kirk was.

A man in Colorado put up a display honoring Kirk. He put a banner on his fence. A cowardly leftist came in the night, burned the banner, and threw a rock through his car’s rear windshield. Anyone who expresses sympathy for Kirk in public will make cowardly enemies.

In 2017, God told me the hatred that would drive leftists and pagans to murder us was already here, and increasingly, we see it manifesting. It’s so strong, it has even united homosexuals with Muslims who murder them. Satan’s children are like billions of rocks in billions of slingshots, pulled back and waiting to be released.

There is nothing we can do to prevent the final conflict or prevent them from taking over. It has been prophesied. We can do little things here and there to protect ourselves, but the earthly war is lost. There is no remedy for the world, but individuals can draw close to God and get protection. They can be isolated from the world and set aside in relatively friendly areas. They can learn to pray and do battle in the supernatural realm.

There is no reason to feel doomed. That’s not for us. It’s for them. Leftists will only with in the natural realm, on a macroscopic scale. We will have complete victory in the supernatural realm, and eventually, we will see a world without leftists, paganism, war, and hatred. A world of peace and love, and not just the false kind we read about in stickers on the backs of hybrid cars.

You know people who, right now, are willing to kill you. I mean people who are friendly now. You’ll find out about them soon enough. You need to separate yourself from them as much as you can. You need to get away from their culture. There is no point in building bridges God is going to burn.

Last night, I told my wife I had seen a lot of disaster movies, but it was really something, finding myself living in one. I said the end of civilization was quite a spectacle. A rare experience, since it only happens once.

Well…twice, if you count the flood.

American Parents Made This Happen

If Charlie Kirk’s barbaric, infantile killing has resulted in any good, it is that American adults are now being forced to look at the Satanic culture of our wrecked educational system.

Teachers and other school employees are making the news all over the country for celebrating Kirk’s death. It’s not a fringe phenomenon. It’s a tidal wave that covers the entire United States.

Even in conservative areas, the people who run our school system are usually leftists who hate Christianity and capitalism, and who bully students into supporting the left’s hatred or at least remaining silent.

The irony of educators publicly supporting a school shooting should be obvious even to leftists, but demons control the perceptions of people who don’t know the Holy Spirt, and they give them disdain for the truth.

God has said, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Satan agrees. That’s why he captured our educational system.

I suppose there will be scattered improvements, but overall, it will get worse. It’s nice to see that some people are outraged, but when the dust settles, leftists will still be in charge of your kids, and they will keep doing what they do. It probably won’t be long before the dominant position in American classrooms as that the firing of teachers who celebrated Kirk’s murder was an outbreak of fascist persecution.

A Firearm is Nothing to be Ashamed of

Two days after Charlie Kirk was shot, I have learned I am now allowed to carry a firearm–not just a pistol–openly in at least 32 Florida counties. The relevant court ruling was published on the day of the shooting.

That is certainly interesting.

For a long time, I have suspected that God has chosen to allow Americans to arm themselves. Gun rights have been expanding, and it seems inexplicable to me, absent a supernatural explanation.

Why would God support the proliferation and carry of firearms? I don’t know, but I can make guesses.

1. There are a lot of people here who aren’t doing a great job of receiving God’s direct protection, but he would still like to give them a chance against those who hate Christians and Jews.

2. The tribulation is coming, one of the features will be bloodshed, and the weapons the raptured leave behind, along with those possessed by others, will facilitate it.

People say Florida is a gun-friendly state, and overall, I believe that is correct, but when it comes to open carry, we have lagged behind fierce right-wing strongholds like Washington and Delaware. In fact, Florida was so backward (Or is it forward?), we were in a 4-state group along with California, Illinois, and New York. Right there with us: the crime-free paradise known as the District of Columbia.

How did we get to open carry so quickly?

A local political candidate named Stan McDaniels decided to stand beside a busy road, waving a copy of the Constitution while carrying a pistol that was clearly visible. He was trying to pick a legal fight, and he succeeded. He was arrested and prosecuted. This happened in Escambia County, in the panhandle. About as blue as a ripe tomato.

He said he wanted to take the issue to the United States Supreme Court, but that was never necessary. The Supreme Court doesn’t block open carry. Florida legislators and courts are the problem.

McDaniels was convicted and sentenced, and following his own plan, he appealed. The First District Court of Appeal ruled in his favor, and our Attorney General is not going to fight. In fact, he is thrilled.

Imagine where we would be if DeSantis had lost the election to Andrew Gillum, the homosexual pervert who was found unconscious, naked, and lying in vomit in a hotel room where he and two other homosexuals went, along with performance drugs (Trimix) homosexuals inject into their penises. Imagine the kind of attorney general we would have.

It’s embarrassing for a lawyer to admit, but I am somewhat confused about the law’s status at the moment. I never practiced much in state courts. Let’s see if I can unravel this. My legal opinion is worth what you’re paying for it, so don’t trust me.

Based on a 1991 Florida Supreme Court decision (Pardo), where there is no conflict among circuits, a ruling by one DCA is applicable to lower courts (trial courts) statewide. If there is a conflict, however, a trial court adheres to the position of the appeal court in its circuit.

The McDaniels ruling does not conflict with any other DCA rulings. Unbelievably, it was a case of first impression. What has the NRA been doing with our money all these years?

Conclusion: open carry is now legal everywhere in Florida. Problem: some jurisdictions are waiting for the decision to be finalized, so liberal counties may continue arresting people. That means the only people who can exhale with confidence are within the 1st DCA’s jurisdictional area.

The state has a certain amount of time to appeal the decision. That’s not going to happen. When the period lapses, the law will be binding on every trial court in Florida, with no weasel room for blue counties.

Could there still be a conflict eventually? I guess so. Maybe there are cases currently on appeal in other districts.

I believe these cases would have to be in the appeal process right now, since trial courts can’t send new ones up. They have to dismiss.

The 1st DCA has direct jurisdiction over 32 counties, and sadly, I’m not in one.

My sheriff has proclaimed he will not enforce the open-carry law, and so has the relevant city PD, so now I can go to Walmart with an AK slung over my shoulder if I am so inclined. Unless Walmart posts a sign, in which case they have the legal authority to make me put my gun back in my car. Regardless of the ruling, private citizens and companies have the power to ban guns on their property and thereby offend all sorts of people who like exercising a critical civil right.

Can they ban open carry while permitting concealed carry? I don’t know. If you can ban tank tops, I guess you can ban open carry.

You can tell I’m happy about the ruling. Because I want to display a rifle at Walmart? No. Open carry has an obvious drawback. It has a deterrent effect, but it would put me in a position where I would have to be extremely attentive to my surroundings in order to keep criminals from trying to take my gun. It also disturbs snowbirds and yankee transplants needlessly.

When I carry in a front pocket, I make it very difficult for a criminal to figure out I have a gun, and I also make it hard for them to take. They can’t just stroll by and snatch it.

The Second Amendment is crippled when open carry is banned, because the founders expected us to be able to carry military-grade firearms, suitable for militia service, in public. That means long guns. You can’t conceal a rifle, and Florida’s concealed-carry laws banned concealed rifles anyway.

I’m happy about the ruling because there are many situations in which open carry is appropriate, helpful, and/or important. I’m also happy because a dumb and highly technical law is a bear trap for well-intended citizens who should not be turned into felons because they’re not great at parsing statutes.

The open-carry law has been used as a tool to persecute good people who didn’t think they were doing anything illegal. It was a “gotcha” law. We shouldn’t have laws like that.

I may have violated the open carry law, and I’m an attorney. Open carry is legal on private property. I may have carried openly, illegally, while mowing my yard. In the past, I thought a little strip of property outside my fence belonged to me, and I may have carried while mowing it. That would have been a felony, because I later found out the land belonged to a neighbor.

A neighbor on another side voted for Biden, so he and his wife can’t be trusted to respect my civil rights. What if one of them had seen me out front with a Glock 20 in a Miami Special shoulder holster?

The practical answer is: nothing. My sheriff would have laughed at them if they had called, and no local prosecutor would have gone forward with the case had I been arrested. But I would have been guilty. There are 23 million people in Florida, not all are in sane counties, and even if I was in no danger, other people surely did the same kind of thing, and they could have ended up in the hoosegow.

Although my county is outside the sweet zone for now, because my sheriff and the biggest city police department have already proclaimed their intention to ignore open carry offenses, I am covered, at least in unincorporated areas and the largest metro area. I don’t know what the cops in the tiny towns and cities will do, but it seems safe to guess nearly all of them will go along.

There are only two other town departments here. One is currently letting the sheriff handle law enforcement, so no problems there. The other serves the town where I buy groceries most of the time. I have carried big knives openly there, because this has never been banned. No one cared. I would guess the police department is so small, they don’t think much about press releases regarding changes in the law.

It is interesting that the open-carry law applied to guns but not knives. A big knife is extremely dangerous in a crowded place.

I have been inconsistent, carrying a gun in my pocket and a knife visibly. I wasn’t very concerned about having the knife taken. I live on a farm, and a sheath knife is much more convenient than a folding knife, so I like carrying one. I didn’t think of sheath knives primarily as weapons, but that’s what knives are, regardless of the intended use.

The State’s Attorney’s Office for my county has not issued a statement about open carry yet, but I think I can guess where he’ll come down, assuming he wants to stay in office.

I don’t plan to carry openly, but smart people make some effort to know the law. I might need to carry openly some day, so I should know the law beforehand instead of Googling feverishly under stress.

If there is a funny side to all this, it is that some blue counties got caught in the ruling directly because they are 1st-DCA counties. The county to my north, Alachua, is home to the University of Florida, and it is heavily infected with the woke mind virus. I would guess dramatic performances are in the works. Maybe students and employees will splatter themselves with organic non-GMO ketchup and lie down in groups.

Gadsden County is overwhelmingly black and liberal, and it is also under the 1st DCA’s jurisdiction. Florida State University and our capital are in Leon County, and it is also suffering from the blue flu.

I feel like making predictions. I think that if I go to any big store this week, I will see somebody carrying openly. I think very, very few people will do it. Mainly isolated activists who feel like celebrating.

Will our new freedom result in a crime surge, as liberals are surely predicting? Of course it will, because the ban completely prevented criminals from carrying openly while shooting people, and every state that has open carry is like Mosul on a bad day. Not.

It may help some criminals plan, and there will surely be guns snatched from foolish people who carry behind their backs and so on, but overall, it will reduce crime. That’s my prediction.

The knowledge that some civilians carry concealed weapons does a certain amount to discourage crime, but criminals are generally stupid and impulsive, so some need a stronger hint. I think seeing people carrying weapons will put the fear of God (or at least Gaston Glock) into many of them.

I doubt Florida will start to look like Somalia, with shiny rifles on display everywhere. Normal states that already had open carry don’t have this issue.

The ruling was handed down by a male judge and two girls. I wonder what feminists are saying about them today. I know many are busy celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk in front of his wife and small children, so they may not have noticed the ruling.

MORE

I thought I was right when I said the McDaniels case was a case of first impression, meaning the issue of whether Florida’s open carry ban is unconstitutional had never been considered by a Florida court. Was I right? I’m trying to decide. It comes down to hair-splitting; the reason lawyers have to go to school.

I have since learned that a 2017 Florida Supreme Court case, Norman v. State, held that the open carry ban did not violate the US or Florida constitutions. But there is a twist.

Norman was decided before the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen. In that case, the court did away with a balancing test that was used in Norman. The McDaniels panel referred to this in its opinion. No balancing test, no ban.

So is the McDaniels case a case of first impression or not? The issue of the constitutionality of the ban has been considered before, but the issue of the ban’s constitutionality in view of Bruen has not. Far as I know. If you want a solid answer based on serious research, pay me.

It looks like I was wrong to think McDaniels was a case of first impression because the constitutionality of the ban had already been confirmed, but it’s still a case of first impression because it considers the issue of whether Bruen invalidated Norman. Different issue.

Gun-unfriendly counties outside the 1st DCA’s geographical area are now claiming there is a conflict between the circuits, because the 4th DCA, which decided Norman, upheld the ban. That seems disingenuous (lawyer talk for “dishonest”) to me.

The definition of the term “first impression” seems to be under attack.

I always say this: a law doesn’t mean anything until a court decides what it means. Most laymen don’t know this. If Congress passes a law saying it’s illegal to pick your nose in church, and a federal judge in Chicken Bend, Arkansas, says it really means you can’t open your gifts on Christmas Eve, it means you can’t open your gifts on Christmas Eve, within the court’s geographical jurisdiction. At least until a higher court disagrees.

Courts have been known to misconstrue laws on purpose, in bad faith. This is why there were two Brown v. Board of Education cases. The holding in the first forced Southern states to implement desegregation “with all deliberate speed,” and dishonest judges pretended that meant “very slowly.” The second case cleared this up.

Courts misconstrue laws on purpose, and so do prosecutors and the police. I think the counties that reject McDaniels are out of order.

In any case, it’s the law right now in the 32 counties under the 1st DCA’s jurisdiction, and it will remain so unless other jurisdictions manage to find a way to generate a conflict and get it before the Florida Supreme Court. Even then, it looks like it will probably be affirmed.

The Loving Left Strikes Again

It’s the Sixties in America all over again, just as many people on the left would have it; they think the disgraceful Sixties represent the peak of American civilization. Political assassinations of private citizens are back.

As far as I can tell, you have to go back to Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers to see anything like the Charlie Kirk murder. Leftists tried to murder Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Donald Trump (twice), and a leftist tried to kill Republican legislators playing softball, wounding Steve Scalise. Also, a conservative nut named Vance Boelter murdered Democrat politician Mark Hortman and his wife and shot Democrat John Hoffman and his wife a number of times. But I can’t recall anyone going after a private citizen the way the killers of Evers, King, and Kirk did. As Charlie Kirk liked to say, “Prove me wrong.” I don’t know everything.

I suppose you could count the kook who attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband, although that was a lot like attacking Pelosi herself. It happened in her house.

Going after government officials is, sadly, almost normal. Shooting people for debating at colleges is not.

I wouldn’t count Malcolm X, since he was murdered by his own kind. A black Muslim shot him for exposing Elijah Muhammad’s corruption.

I’m not such a fine person that I get weepy over every celebrity murder, but I was very disturbed by the news of Kirk’s death. It wasn’t just the death of a man; it was a milestone in our nation’s decline to self-destruction. It made me feel hopeless and powerless. Not for myself or my family, but for America and the world.

I was starting to work on my utility cart when I heard about Kirk. I was going to replace an axle seal and bearing. When I heard the news, all desire to get anything done and left me. I had my wife put our son in the car, and we drove to Sonny’s, where I had a cheeseburger while I considered the state of the world.

The Kirk shooting is remarkable in that the intent was to stifle speech and nothing more. Kirk did not hold office. He did not have the power to do anything to anyone. He didn’t run a ruthless, dishonest insurance company that ruined countless lives. All he did was argue with people, a hundred percent peacefully, and work to get Republicans elected. He was shot to prevent Americans from hearing conservative and Christian beliefs and to make it harder for J.D. Vance to win in 2028. He was also shot to terrify other Republican speakers and thinkers so they would stop doing their jobs.

I wonder what Candace Owens, a mother and wife, is thinking today. She’s an antisemite, and I don’t support her, but that doesn’t mean she should be shot on her way into a college auditorium. I wonder what the people at Accuracy in Media are thinking; they put sign trucks on college campuses, exposing Hamas supporters. I wonder what every member of every conservative or Christian college organization is thinking. Also, I would guess that insurance executives are even more nervous than they were last week.

Events will be cancelled. Careers will be redirected. People who would otherwise have tried to join Charlie Kirk with their own crusades will find other things to do. The shooting worked. It will make it that much easier for leftists to flood the world with their Satanic ideology. The resistance has been damaged.

Leftist public figures will not be chilled at all. They will go about their lives as though nothing had happened. That should disturb people. If the left is morally superior or equivalent to the right, why is it that only conservatives and Christians are being impacted?

Why was Kirk shot? According to the murderer, it was because he was against the transgender myth and he represented fascism. The rifle has been found, and the remaining cartridges are engraved with words revealing the cowardly killer’s motivation.

Fascism is definitely a problem in America, because many mainstream leftists are now shameless fascists. Charlie Kirk was an enemy of fascism.

The murderer gave superficial reasons for the killing. The real reason is that Charlie Kirk is more or less aligned with Christians, Jews, and Israel. He was helpful to people God cares about, and he spoke out for Yeshua, so Satan sent spirits to kill him. Satan doesn’t just go after people like Stephen and Paul. He goes after Christians who aren’t very strong. He goes after people who help Christians. He goes after people who agree with us about certain things. He goes after people who sort of look like Christians.

I consider Charlie Kirk a legitimate Christian martyr for two reasons: he was a Christian, and he would not have been shot but for his association with Christianity. I don’t consider him a minister or a man of God.

A friend of mine thinks Kirk is a great Christian because he acknowledged Yeshua at his appearances and defended the faith in debates. That’s not correct. Charlie Kirk was an ambitious man who depended on his own skills to advance political beliefs and, less centrally, to support Christianity. He didn’t prophesy, heal the sick, work miracles, or cast demons out of people. He was a carnal Christian. Debate is carnal.

Debate is not a legitimate tool of salvation. Take it from someone who is very good at debating and whose father was also very good. I debated with my dad for perhaps 40 years, debunking his irrational unbelief and hostility toward God, and I got nowhere. Then the Holy Spirit touched him as we listened to Derek Prince videos in an assisted living facility, and he came to Yeshua without my help.

Debate usually pushes people farther away from Yeshua.

Paul knew this. He was a brilliant student. He studied under Gamaliel, a top religious teacher of his time. He was zealous. He was definitely capable of argument. He told us he considered his studies and pre-salvation efforts to be feces.

He said this:

And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.

For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.

And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power:

That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

Paul healed people, cast out demons, and prophesied. He was bitten by an adder and shook it off into a fire, unharmed. He visited heaven. Charlie Kirk was no Paul.

If argument produces a convert, it will usually be a weak or invalid convert. If argument can bring you in, it can pull you back out, and only the Holy Spirit gives people saving faith. The Bible says so.

Kirk belonged to a Calvary Chapel branch. I am familiar with this brand. I have been to their churches. I know people who have belonged and left.

They permit the activity of the Holy Spirit, but they don’t encourage it, and they don’t consider it essential to an optimal walk with Yahweh. It is essential. Christianity begins with the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, and he perfects it.

None of this matters to Satan or leftists. If it looks like a Christian, it should be killed.

Kirk was a truly exceptional debater. I saw him work a few times on Youtube, and it seemed like there was no topic he couldn’t discuss masterfully. He could think on his feet. He didn’t get flustered. But debating is not an activity that interests God very much.

The disgusting feminist website Jezebel paid witches to curse Charlie Kirk in August. Looks like it worked. Witches have gathered repeatedly to curse Republican presidents. Have you ever heard of witches blessing conservatives or cursing leftists?

Torben Sondergaard has posted a video about Kirk, labeling him a martyr. I think he may be exaggerating Kirk’s Christian credentials a little. He also says Kirk “laid down his life.” My wife saw that and said it was not true. She is right. Yeshua laid down his life. Paul laid down his life. Kirk’s life was taken unexpectedly. He didn’t see it coming, and he would never have sat down in that chair if he had.

Torben is right about one thing: he says we should expect more killings of prominent Christians.

Of course, Christians are murdered all the time. A few days back, Muslims killed 60 in Nigeria. Torben spoke as though murdering Christians were a new thing. It’s not. But murdering us in public in America is new. That seems to be what he was referring to.

Leftists really want to kill us. They are not kidding when they go on the web and fantasize about it before the public. They truly mean it, just as Germans and Austrians wanted to kill Jews in the 1920’s. They’re just waiting for sufficient permission and approval. Those things have nearly matured to the critical point.

Tiktok is now full of videos showing joyful leftists celebrating the murder of a decent man in front of his two small children. One leftist says Kirk’s daughter is safer now that her father is dead. People are literally dancing.

An MSNBC commentator has been fired for blaming Kirk, on the air, for his own murder. “MSNBC” means “Microsoft and NBC.” It’s not a network that operates from someone’s kitchen.

In other news, the MSM has been covering for a genocidal black criminal who murdered a white Ukrainian girl on a mass transit train. He murdered her because she was white.

You must have seen the story. He sat down in a seat behind hers. He stood up, took out a knife, and started stabbing and slashing. He slit her throat, and she died. The he walked around and explained his crime. He said either, “I got a white girl,” or, “I got the white girl.” It’s not clear.

The dead woman wasn’t just white; she looked like a model from a Nazi propaganda poster. She had long blond hair and fair skin like porcelain. She was very beautiful. She was exactly the kind of person you would expect a whiteness-hater to murder.

The murder took place on August 22, and the MSM buried it. The story just came out. If you Google it, you will find multiple sites claiming there is no evidence he said he had killed a white girl. “No evidence” and “without evidence” are things the MSM likes to say when it wants to raise the bar too high and debunk the truth. Unfortunately for the MSM, there is video of the killer speaking the words they say he didn’t say. I’ve seen it.

The murderer, Decarlos Brown, is a career criminal with a dozen or more felony convictions. His mother (no word from dad, of course) says he is mentally ill and the system failed him.

Demons told him to go after white people. Somehow, we are associated with Christianity in the minds of Satan’s children. The truly disturbing thing is that respected media outlets concealed the story (as they concealed the murder of 60 Christians) and then lied about the killer’s confession, which was already in front of the public on video.

We–Christians–are not going to get a fair shake. We have never gotten a fair shake. As God said through me, “The world hates me.” Trusting and depending on the world are very bad ideas.

No one should know that better than Torben Sondergaard. When a state television station offered to film his ministry, he thought the platform would be a big help to God, and then he was victimized with a hit piece so full of lies he felt he had to flee his country.

There was such outrage in Denmark, the government passed a law about casting demons out in front of children; it is now considered child abuse.

Yeshua cast a demon out of a child, and he resurrected a child. The Danes would have had him arrested, just like the Jewish priests who arrested Yeshua and had him murdered.

Look for things to get worse. If you want protection, draw close to God. Get to know the Holy Spirit. Get serious. Try to be prepared for the rapture. See if God will help you move away from leftist areas. We are outnumbered, not just by spirits, but by our friends and relatives.

Curses work against people who are not close to God, so the closer you get, the safer you will be.

Incidentally, I am hearing weird theories about the shooting. Someone told me he thought it was a professional hit job.

There aren’t really any professional hit men, except in intelligence agencies. The idea that you can go to Facebook Marketplace and hire a multilingual genius martial-arts-and-firearms expert who knows how to make radio-controlled bombs and ricin is absurd. It’s not a real career because it’s not sustainable. There are thugs, usually clumsy, who kill people as part of their work, but there are no Jackals or Jason Bournes. They only exist on screens.

I was told the shot in the neck was intentional, to represent silencing a voice. That’s not true. The weapon was a crusty old Mauser in 30.06. It is probably a 5-10 MOA weapon. The shot was fired from around 200 yards away, by a college-aged person who probably doesn’t have a lot of training. He wouldn’t shoot for the neck. He would have shot for the chest and hoped for the best.

It is not likely the murderer took the time to have his rifle rebuilt or that he made ammunition for it, and you would pretty much have to do those things in order to hit someone in the neck with a .30-06 from 200 yards.

A real marksman would probably have picked something easier to shoot, like a precision rifle in 6.5 Creedmoor. You can buy a sub-MOA rifle off the shelf, do zero modifications, use factory ammunition, and shoot very well with 6.5 Creedmoor. It’s smarter than using your ancient, unique Mauser with cartridges you have personalized for the police.

I have a rifle that shot 22 consecutive rounds at or below 0.75 MOA at 100 yards, and I used three different types of factory ammo. Then I had to quit because it was raining.

I think the murderer is a confused, vicious young man who wears women’s underwear and loves Karl Marx. Occam’s razor.

Thank you, God, for the rapture. If I’m not here when it comes, I thank you for saving the people who will be.

“Thanks for Nothing” Would be too Kind

Gloria Copeland is dying from dementia. My wife told me.

She is the wife of prosperity preacher Kenneth Copeland. He is 88. He says he prevented his hair from turning gray by telling it not to, and he also says he and God have a deal which will keep him alive until 2056. He says he will die on his birthday at the age of 120.

While he was announcing the deal, he compared himself to an old car that had been restored, and he said certain parts had been repaired.

He also tells a story about being short of breath while getting on one of his expensive airplanes. He said he sat down and prayed, and God told him he was giving him a new heart.

He now has a pacemaker.

I used to love Kenneth Copeland back in the 1980’s. I didn’t know any better. He mixed the truth with very seductive lies, and he was an excellent speaker. I had had supernatural experiences, so I was looking for preachers who were in the same boat, so they could teach me. I was not able to sift out the truthful ones and discard the liars.

Things got worse when I got a supernatural healing by listening to Copeland. When I decided to find a church, I got a flu-like illness that persisted for weeks. I heard him say I should pray for healing and keep saying I was healed, so I did that. I was tenacious. One day, I walked into the kitchen, looked into the freezer, and saw a dark shape fly out of me and into the freezer. Then it turned and flew out of the house through a closed door. I was instantly healed of all symptoms.

It was my misfortune to get a powerful bit of truth mixed into a gruel of lies. The healing was wonderful, but it gave me the false impression that Copeland was a man of God.

It seems ironic that I got healed and the Copelands have not. I don’t think either of them seriously expected anyone who listened to them to receive a miraculous healing.

Copeland has a protege in Africa. His name is David Oyedepo. He apparently claims to have the same deal with God. He says he will die at 120. He is 70 now, so keep an eye on him for the next 50 years.

I used to listen to Gloria Copeland, too. She is also a fine speaker. Unlike her husband, she has always exuded a false aura of class and serenity. On first examination, she seems wise, mature, and gentle. Now that I think about it, I’ve seen Buddhists who come off the same way, and of course, they go to hell.

The self-righteous act is one of the most annoying thing about Buddhists. You’re supposed to be enlightened, so you act enlightened, and if you make a career of it, people pay your bills and treat you like royalty. And every truthful, perceptive person who gives you the emperor’s new clothes treatment is sloughed off as unenlightened and in need of a few more incarnations.

To be a successful Buddhist authority, you just have to smile constantly, trying to look benevolent, and pretend you’re not as upset as everyone else. That’s really true.

Another great thing about the job is that you never have to answer a question or give intelligent input. When someone makes a remark about Buddhism to you, you can grin and close your eyes, say something like, “Who can make the wind orange?”, or just say, “Yeah, mmm,” in a dreamy voice.

There is a mildly famous lady from Texas who does this act beautifully. She has a calm, hypnotic voice. She doesn’t show signs of irritation or anger. She gives ridiculous advice, like “Stop doing.”

People give her roses at her appearances, and they stand in awe and stammer rehearsed speeches about their own enlightenment process, trying to make it look like they’re “in” with the awakened one, just like she is. They work hard to say the right things, fearing she might expose them as unenlightened.

But, you know. Who can make the wind orange?

To get back to the Copelands, Gloria doesn’t know what’s going on any more. She looks fine. Always elegantly dressed and made up, as in the past. She can talk. But she has to be led around, and people have to explain simple things to her.

If she were not the wife of a billionaire or near-billionaire, she would be in a memory care unit. She will get worse and die soon.

Like many or perhaps all prosperity preachers, Kenneth Copeland has not healed anyone.

Yes, I got a healing, but I was on my own. He never prayed for me. I’ve never been in the same building with him.

I saw a recent video of Gloria Copeland with her husband. Her condition was startling, but it didn’t startle me as much as this: her husband was on the verge of tears as he spoke to her. I was shocked to see that Kenneth Copeland loved anyone other than himself and Mammon.

He makes his living making gullible people poor and buying himself airplanes he doesn’t need while they move in with their kids or go on welfare, so it was reasonable to assume he had no heart at all.

He knows perfectly well that he has destroyed countless lives. The lives of people who had less than he did and gave it to him.

It made me think of my sister, who used to send him money. It may seem odd that a narcissistic sociopath would support a ministry, but then the ministry taught selfishness, and sending money was a way to get admiration, which narcissists love.

Ever notice how sweet and full of admiration salespeople are when you’re buying expensive clothes or jewelry? That’s how crooked preachers and their employees treat people who give them a lot of money.

My sister gave preachers money. Then she quit. Kenneth Copeland’s people called her. They said they were worried about her. They didn’t worry when she was sending them money.

She was going broke fast, because she shopped but did not work. She could have used some cash to repair her house. Although it would not have helped her, a real minister would have offered counseling.

Not one ministry offered to give her back a single penny.

She gave to John and Lisa Bevere. I will give them this: Bevere’s mother called and seemed concerned. Somehow I ended up talking to her instead of my sister. I can’t recall whether I prayed with her.

They didn’t send a refund, however. They weren’t around later to help fund her cancer treatment or rehab expenses. My sister was there for the Beveres. They weren’t there for her.

“Minister” means “servant.”

I don’t know what to think of Bevere. I drove him around for a while when he visited Trinity Church in Miami. I still have his cell number. He seemed pretty sincere, and I don’t recall him pushing for offerings. On the other hand, he was a youth pastor under Benny Hinn, and he was involved in Joyce Meyer’s company. I won’t call it a ministry. He pals around with some truly slimy and dangerous preachers.

Doesn’t the Bible say God’s children should give? If that is true, why is it that when we connect with celebrity ministries, we expect them to take a lot, but it doesn’t occur to us that they might give us anything, even if we have given generously to them in the past?

The disciples had to choose deacons because they were so busy helping the poor.

T.B. Joshua’s ministry gave a lot. When my wife and I took our son to his first pediatrician, we picked a Nigerian. Somehow, we ended up mentioning T.B. Joshua to him. He told us that when his father got married, T.B. Joshua gave him and his wife 40 bags of rice.

Where is my sister’s rice, Mr. Copeland?

The charitable efforts of Joshua’s church were extensive and generous, and he lived in a modest house.

Kenneth Copeland is not very likely to live to be 120, and he will probably be a widow by 90, so living to 120 would really be a punishment.

I won’t prophesy, but I will predict. Copeland’s health will take a downturn, and he will realize he’s going to die. Then he’ll tell the world he decided to go ahead and be with his wife, deal notwithstanding. Either that, or he’ll give up public life and abandon his flock, because he never cared about them to begin with.

Yeshua spoke about religious Jews who were like the Copelands:

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.

The Bible says a lot of scary things about those who swindle and those who oppress the poor. It says if you give to the rich, you will come to poverty.

Having your wife lose her mind and die is a very harsh punishment, but when you consider the hordes of people the Copelands and their friends have impoverished, it seems very lenient to me. Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead for much less.

In any case, Kenneth Copeland’s plans and his rich old age have been spoiled, and what’s in store for him afterward is much worse.

The world is really filthy. Most people have no interest in Yeshua. When you try to find him, people who claim to represent him do their best to make sure you find Satan instead. If you’re in one of the old churches, that’s about the worst of it. If you’re in a charismatic church, they also do their best to make you poor. It’s amazing that anyone gets to know God.

God Tells Everyone the Same Things

Last night before my wife and I prayed for other people, I asked her how she was feeling about the way things were going in the world. She said she felt detached.

That’s exactly how I feel.

Her sense is that this world is not a place where we can be accepted and build a future.

You turn on the TV or the PC and look at the world, and what do you see? Homosexuals, including cross-dressers, protesting in favor of Hamas, which has been known to throw homosexuals off tall buildings. Millionaire sluts rapping about their genitalia, saying things so crude, even a sailor would be grossed out. Satanists and witches praying aloud before government meetings. Transvestites reading stories to kids in libraries and schools funded by taxes. Many non-Muslim members of the United Nations accusing Israel of genocide for defending itself against…genocide. Public protests, some violent, against businesses that are Jewish but not affiliated with Israel.

Lesbians in colorful sashes, pretending to be priests, running large organizations that pretend to be Christian churches. Demoniacs vandalizing electric cars because Elon Musk helped a Republican get elected. Violence against Republicans that has become routine. Transvestites performing a big percentage of mass shootings for reasons they seem to be unable to articulate. Ads for Jaguar cars featuring sexual deviants but no cars and no normal men.

My wife watches a family on Youtube. Supposedly, this is a Christian family. She tells me they used to pray and talk about God on their channel.

Yesterday, I saw a video in which they dropped their daughter off at Berkeley, which stands out among schools dominated by left-wing insanity. They were thrilled for her. They toured her dorm floor. They went into the bathroom. It’s unisex. They thought it was funny that their daughter would be using the toilet and showers with young men.

If this is what Christians are like now, no wonder unbelievers are delusional.

I can’t send my son to Berkeley or any other far-left academic nuthouse. Any mainstream university, in other words. Imagine what they would put him through. Lectures about whiteness and patriarchy. Lectures about transphobia. If he stood up for his beliefs, he would be the most persecuted student on campus. He could never fit in or be treated fairly. He would be a target, and he would get low grades from vindictive instructors. He would be excluded from opportunities. He would receive negative recommendations. He would probably be thrown out of classrooms.

We had lunch at Costco yesterday. Costco is pretty woke. They gave us weird cup lids intended to discourage straw use, and they provided paper straws that leak and get soggy. To protect the sea turtles from plastic. In a country that dumps zero garbage at sea.

Before we visited Costco, we took my baby son to the dermatologist. They gave me a tablet so I could tell them his history. They wanted to know his gender identity. This is the second provider that has done this to us. A pediatric facility asked what my son’s preferred pronouns were.

“Detached” is the right word. We are now like disaster tourists. We are here. We observe. We can’t join, though, and we don’t want to stay. It’s like having a day pass at a mental asylum.

Both of us are aware there is no future for our family here within the system. We will live out our lives as outsiders.

This isn’t the old America. I watched World War Two veterans talking about their experiences the other day, and by modern standards, some of them sounded like religious fanatics. Mainstream guys. One said an angel had appeared to him to tell him he wasn’t going to be hurt. That kind of talk used to be considered normal.

The other day, I saw someone on the web suggesting that really smart people should be working to solve hard problems for society. Cancer and so on. As though able people owed society something. Not true.

I thought of what Yeshua said: “The poor, you will always have with you.” More broadly, he meant that the world’s problems were not going to be solved.

Mankind is cursed. It’s in rebellion. Things aren’t going to go as they should during this age, because we consistently reject the only source of real, enduring blessings. We will never have clean, cheap, inexhaustible energy. We will always have disease. We will always have violence and poverty. We will never stop doing the things that cause our misfortunes, so there is a limit to what we should do to fix the world. It’s a treadmill.

Secular solutions have some importance, but our main obligation in life is to expand the kingdom of heaven. Look after your own soul. Do what you can to help others become like Yeshua. Give to people who need help. Deliver people from demons and work miracles if God permits. You’re not really obligated to work 16 hours a day in a lab, trying to synthesize a chemical that obliterates every kind of tumor or cures AIDS.

Mary was right, and Martha was wrong.

It’s more important to help one person go on to eternal salvation than it is to fight global problems which are not going away. Salvation is permanent and priceless. Fighting worldly problems is Whack-a-Mole.

It’s hard for people who are close to God to position themselves so they have the power to do what unbelievers think is good. If you’re a genius Christian, and you try to do groundbreaking cancer research, Satan will probably see to it you end up assisting incompetent DEI hires or teaching biology to bored high school students. Satan’s kids blackball Christians.

It’s even hard to make headway in churches. I tried to work as an armorbearer. I created fantastic food for a church kitchen. I tried to get into prison ministry. I helped drive poor people to church. I shared revelation with people. My pastors and many of the other volunteers treated me like a troublemaker. They crippled and shut down programs. They promoted sychophants and nincompoops and made sure I was always an outsider.

I can’t complain. John the Baptist was a priest by inheritance, and instead of taking a position of honor in the temple, he had to live in the desert and eat bugs. Religious people beat Yeshua and had him murdered, and they murdered the prophets as well as many Jews who believed in Yeshua. A secular Jew whose father built the temple murdered John.

If you belong to God, you can’t join the herd. If you’re part of the herd, and you think you belong to God, you are deluding yourself. It’s normal for Christians to serve Satan and the flesh while claiming they’re sold out to God. Look at Chris Pratt. I could make a long list.

We always want to have our cake and eat it, too, and we are better at lying to ourselves than lying to other people.

My wife and I feel as though the end is just about here, so it doesn’t matter much what we do. America has fallen away for good. But does that mean the rapture is close? The area that is now Turkey used to be the boiler room of Earth’s Christian activity, but it went Muslim, and the world didn’t end. Europe took over the lead role in spreading the gospel, and then it turned on God, and the world didn’t end. Should America be different?

I think it is, because there is no other part of the world that can take our place. When Turkey fizzled, Europe took over. When Europe fizzled, America took over. All the other countries and continents have already been evangelized heavily, and they are not making progress. We’re not going to see China or Africa or India take America’s place.

When Europe faded, the US was ready to step in. Nobody is ready to step in now that the US is spiritually almost dead.

Chris Pratt is an interesting case. Unbelievers in Hollywood love him. He’s a nice guy, and he doesn’t make waves. That last part is important. Satan’s kids often take up for Christians who don’t make waves. If you actually accomplish anything, they go after you.

Pratt makes movies that endorse fornication. The characters aren’t Christians. God isn’t involved in the scripts.

Come on.

He’s a nice guy. A goodfella. A good old boy. Tamed and declawed.

I feel like the world is stuck, like a car that has run out of pavement and gotten stuck in mud. We seem to have reached the end of a journey. None of it seems to matter.

I don’t feel like attending to home repairs, yard work, or my other responsibilities. I don’t feel like planning. I don’t feel like watching our spending.

If the county had forced me to sell my house so it could be demolished, and I were outside waiting for someone to pick my family up and drive us to a new home, I wouldn’t run back inside and start painting the kitchen.

Maybe things will change, the rapture won’t come during my lifetime, and I’ll feel differently about the future. I hope not, though. It would be wonderful to be raptured and forget about this place.

No Wonder God Laughs

Am I the only one mystified by the AI boom? What is the purpose of making AI available to everyone who has a computer, free of charge? Why are they giving it to us for nothing? Where is the money coming from?

Google provides very annoying AI blurbs to every person who uses the search engine, without being asked. Many people look for ways to make this stop. The “feature” is called “AI Overview,” as you surely know. In addition to facts, it delivers erroneous woke lectures no one asked for. It is programmed to shame people who are correct.

It is clearly an effort to indoctrinate and pull people away from capitalism, common sense, and Christianity. We all know the Google kids are far-left social engineers who are against Yeshua; that is not news. But when did they become so militant they were willing to invest billions in a brainwashing feature that doesn’t seem to bring in money?

Why did it even occur to them to include lectures on morals and behavior? It’s very obvious that a person searching for a dry cleaner or a good hotel doesn’t want lectures written by fringe kooks.

Imagine if encyclopedias had done this. Your curious child looks up spider monkeys and gets an article shaming everyone who ever bought a product that came from a rain forest. No one would have bought them, and a set would have weighed 300 pounds.

AI is extremely expensive to produce. You probably know that “data centers” are popping up all over the US. I don’t know about the rest of the world. These are huge facilities full of computers hooked to the web. They consume gigantic amounts of electricity, and I have read they also need a lot of water. Who pays?

I’m not paying. I use Grok, ChatGPT, and Google AI (the one you actually request), and I have never paid a cent. The money must be coming from somewhere.

I suppose I should ask AI.

After a lot of babbling, Grok says:

In short, you’re not paying because companies prioritize growth over immediate per-user revenue, subsidizing free tiers through investors and high-value customers. If you exceed limits or need advanced features, that’s when payment kicks in. This model has fueled AI’s rapid spread but raises questions about long-term sustainability amid rising energy demands.

Grok also says businesses will pay for AI, subsidizing the rest of us. It says that for now, the money comes mainly from existing tech companies and investors.

By the way, you can fix your browser so you don’t see AI Overview. It’s like physically ejecting an angry, demented hippie from your living room.

Interesting fact: Google just reduced the frequency of AI Overview intrusions due to consumer annoyance. People don’t like being scolded. Wow. Who could have foreseen that?

The data centers I’ve seen in photos look like enormous, out-of-place warts on the landscape. They remind me of the machine-built structures we saw in the Matrix movies. They also remind me of hostile spaceships I’ve seen in movies about alien invasions. They seem threatening. Their presence announces the arrival of their age and proclaims that they will eventually cover a lot of the earth’s surface.

Basically, they tell me humanity’s ludicrous, pathological efforts to create shared omniscience will increase and become extremely oppressive.

I believe I’ve received revelation about technology.

To begin with, Satan has no Holy Spirit. Unlike God, he is neither omniscient nor omnipresent. Through the Holy Spirit, God can broadcast all sorts of things to all Christians. He fills us with information. He debunks disinformation. He gives us the gifts and fruit of the Spirit: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, tongues, interpretation, love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, humility, and self-control.

Most people who call themselves Christian don’t get much of this. Most churches reject the Holy Spirit. It’s all available, though. God hasn’t changed.

If Satan wants to copy the Holy Spirit for evil, he has to rely on agents that are sent. Little spirits and people. He can also use things like the printed word, video, and audio.

Through technology, Satan has been building his counterfeit Holy Spirit. He uses phones and the web to indoctrinate, slander, curse, tempt, instigate, and so on. Electronic connectivity has been very helpful to Satan in his efforts to corrupt us and harm us.

Consumer-level AI is a big leap forward in Satan’s efforts to control our minds and emotions. It can disseminate Satan’s wokeness around the clock, even to people who have no interest in it. It can generate the illusion of a reasoned consensus that is actually a tapestry of lies and distortions intended to make people reject holiness and God and rely on machinery and other people’s apish conceits.

We copy the Internet slavishly. We get our slang, which is a powerful indicator of whom we follow, from the Internet. We follow disgusting people just because other people follow them. We buy things people recommend on the web. We migrate to and away from Internet platforms along with the herd. As AI does its work, our beliefs will become more and more homogeneous. The Internet will play the tune, and the world will dance, like Orwell’s Proles, exercising in front of their telescreens.

Technology helps fill us with demons. We can get porn free of charge around the clock now, and it gives demons the power to enter us. We get types of porn other than sexual porn. We get cruelty porn. Violence porn. Pride porn. Covetousness porn. We get secular entertainment which seems harmless yet fills us with demons. Even the news helps them get in.

Smith Wigglesworth said this about newspapers: “If I read the newspaper I come out dirtier than I went in. If I read my Bible, I come out cleaner than I went in, and I like being clean!”

That is still true today. Think of all the lies we’ve been told.

Reagan didn’t do anything for AIDS sufferers. AIDS is a big problem for heterosexuals. Tawana Brawley was raped by white cops. George W. Bush, not local politicians, was the reason for Louisiana’s poor response to Katrina. George W. Bush invaded Iraq to take the oil. There were never any weapons of mass destruction. Iraq never had enough uranium ore to create weapons. Polar bears (aquatic) are drowning because the ice is melting. Oil is running out. Ethanol is good for the environment. Paper bags are better for the environment than plastic. Obamacare will save you money. George Zimmerman is a murderer. Michael Brown was a good boy who didn’t attack the police. Antifa doesn’t exist. Donald Trump is in cahoots with Russia. Donald Trump defrauded banks. Kyle Rittenhouse is a murderer. Donald Trump is an antisemite. Joe Biden isn’t demented. Joe Biden is sharper than ever. Donald Trump is demented. Joe Biden never discussed his son’s business or met his contacts. Voter fraud is rare. Homosexuals don’t prey on teenaged boys. Transvestites are women. There is a famine in Gaza. Israel, not Hamas looting, is the reason some people can’t get food. Gazans are innocent victims of Hamas. Israel targets hospitals.

The Holy Spirit tells everyone the exact same things. There are no opinions in heaven. There is only the truth. God has no opinions. Through the Holy Spirit, he fills his people with truth. He is against the ridiculous notion of “healthy debate.” Where there is debate, someone is wrong. God is righteous, which simply means he is always right. Because he wants us to be righteous (in one accord with him and each other), he tells us the same things.

Satan is somewhat different. He doesn’t always tell people the same things. He creates Christian denominations that disagree, along with other religions. He tells some people to be atheists. He gives people differing and conflicting believes and urges. At bottom, though, he is consistent in that he always tells people things that bring disunity and pull them away from the Holy Spirit.

AI has started behaving like a god you can talk to. I think everyone has thought about talking to God and getting answers on demand. This is something we crave. We love seeing people do it in movies. With AI, now you can get answers to all sorts of questions, very quickly.

Yesterday, I asked a question about a brewing machine I bought, and AI gave me a brilliant, long, detailed answer that could have been written by an expert brewer. It read as though a human being with a personality had written it. It took a few seconds.

AI generates wrong answers all the time, but it also generates excellent answers that would take human beings hours or days to create.

It is trying to simulate omniscience.

By simulating omniscience and a global consensus, AI is applying the main tool of the spirit of antichrist: peer pressure. Satan works through the voice of the crowd. We are supposed to look up for guidance, not to the side. By preaching wokeness to billions simultaneously, Satan is creating an astroturf consensus that will drag people into its wake. We are herd creatures, and Satan uses that to destroy us.

To belong to God, you have to be willing to be unpopular on Earth. This isn’t my opinion. It’s God’s truth. He said it himself.

AI is being used to take people who don’t know the Holy Spirit and merge them into a shoddy replica of a global consciousness. Like Star Trek’s Borg. The data centers are like big nerve clusters that generate and disseminate the thoughts, emotions, and desires new generations are generally going to adopt.

I don’t know if you will own nothing and eat bugs in the future, but thanks to technology, you are very likely to be even more of a conformist than you are now. People who will read this will generally be against God, and such people will be obsessed with fitting in and being popular.

If you think human beings can fix the world, you disagree with God.

I don’t understand people who crave popularity, but apparently, it is one of humanity’s strongest drives. I saw an old video of high school students a day or two back, and when they asked kids what they were most afraid of, they mentioned not fitting in. That amazed me. How can that be anyone’s biggest fear? It’s sick.

If you have to be afraid, be afraid of God. Failing that, pandemics. Nuclear war. Car wrecks. Death. Disease. Poverty. Heights. Clowns. Being afraid you won’t be popular is evil, and it says there is something badly wrong with you. You have no moral anchor.

Everyone has a certain amount of desire to be accepted, but it shouldn’t be the center of your being. I don’t want to know people like that. They are disgusting, not to mention dangerous. They will always side with the crowd against its victims. They turn on people they claim to love. They are born liars and traitors. They’re like the kids who turned their parents in to Hitler, Stalin, and Castro.

I suppose this explains the “likes” craze. People will do things for worthless likes which they would not do for their own children.

Leftists are promoting the creation of a huge communal human organism. We are all supposed to be part of it, sharing the same beliefs and drives, working together to achieve left-wing goals created through central planning. It’s inexcusably naive. It’s practically psychotic.

I don’t want to be part of the communal organism. You can’t be part of the communal organism and also be part of God’s family. The communal organism will always pit you against Yeshua, and you owe him complete loyalty.

It will be interesting to see what happens as the data center plague covers more and more of the earth. Human individuality appears to be on the way out.

The Long View Must Prevail

A thoughtful reader asked whether it was possible I was depressed. The answer is yes, and I appreciate the question, which helped me consider the issue.

I was completely miserable during the last two days. My friend Marvin was dead, my faith was under attack, and a loving member of my household, with whom I had interacted nearly every day for 29 years, was gone, leaving a gaping hole, like a crater where the living room once was.

Something I had dreaded and dreamed about for years, which I had fought as hard as I could, had happened. My emotions were drowning me.

It made me think about Job. All the children he had hugged and loved as babies, and for whom he made daily sacrifices, had died in a moment, and his body had broken out in boils. He said, “the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.” Although his misfortune was much greater than mine, I think I understand the nature of what he felt. I don’t think he was talking about the boils. He wanted to save his children.

I am not habitually depressed, though. That hasn’t happened to me since the ordeal I went through as a graduate student, when I was away from God and pumped full of ADD drugs, socially isolated and watching my dream slip away from me despite my best efforts. That was almost 30 years ago.

I have sometimes said I was depressed by proxy, however.

I have a great life. My relationship with God lifts me up above the turmoil, worry, and failure that are inundating most people. I know I’m saved. God answers my prayers over and over. I have a wonderful wife and son. My health is good. I don’t have to work. I live in an area full of warm, kind Christian people.

On the other hand, I see the world collapsing around me. Satan won the popularity contest, and even in formerly-Christian countries, people are turning to Satan in droves. Here in America, our culture is hateful and nauseating compared to the culture of 2000, and the farther back you go for comparison, the worse 2025 looks. In videos about the 1940’s, people who were considered normal then seem like those who are considered religious freaks today.

I can’t help people. Not many, anyway. No matter how good things get for me, I can’t get other people to listen to my testimony and give the Holy Spirit a try. I have to sit back and watch them destroy themselves needlessly. I know it won’t change to the point where the tide goes the other way.

I coined the term “depression by proxy” to describe this situation. Depressed people have no hope for themselves. I have no hope for the world.

God clearly agrees with me about the world. He told us the tribulation was coming. He didn’t say it might come. It will happen.

I would be much happier if I were not surrounded by people who are doomed, but I am not depressed. Not ordinarily. I was depressed this week, and I was depressed when my other bird died, but these were brief intervals. I haven’t gotten depressed when human beings died.

One mark of depression is predicting your own future irrationally. I have been doing this to some extent. I predicted that I would be stuck here for the rest of my life, watching other people crash and burn, and I thought it would be very hard to bear. Now I am leveling off. I realize my prediction about other people was correct, but I also know God will not allow me to be miserable on a chronic basis. Depression is the opposite of joy, and the Holy Spirit provides joy. It is named as one of the fruit of the Spirit. I feel it today. It displaces grief.

I don’t feel great, but today is much better than yesterday, and things will get better as God supplies me.

My Boys Went on Ahead

Today I took a box out of my spare refrigerator, took it to an animal hospital that does cremation, and said goodbye to my little friend Marvin. I did not open the box. I have also thrown out nearly everything that had anything to do with her or my other deceased bird, Maynard. I don’t want that stuff around me. I threw out food. I threw out vet bills. I deleted emails from vets. I didn’t keep their bells or toys. Just photos and videos, as well as a few old feathers.

The hospital says Marvin will be part of a communal cremation, and then the remains will be scattered on a horse farm. I hope that is true. I can’t say it actually matters, because Marvin is not in that body.

I have lost other pets, but losing a parrot is worse. A dog is likely to be with you a dozen years. You expect a dog to die after a short time. Marvin was nearly 29 when he died, and Maynard was 30, and they were fairly young. To say I was used to having them around is an understatement. I expected them to outlive me. I felt as though they would always be there, like the walls or the floor.

My habit is to greet Marvin by exclaiming “MARV!” as I come in the door. I used to greet both birds. Now I walk in the door, and I realize no one is there, and no one will ever be there again. The greeting sticks in my throat. I keep walking.

Last night I got up to use the bathroom. To avoid disturbing the baby, I like to leave the bedroom and walk past the kitchen. I always say something to Marv along the way. Not any more.

We went to a fried chicken joint today. Usually, we ask for containers for scraps for Marvin, which he loved. Not today.

For the first time since early 1991, parrots have absolutely nothing to do with my life. That is so strange. I have old books on parrots. I belong to parrot forums. I’m used to thinking a lot about parrot food, toys, and cage upgrades. Instantly and forever, that ended.

It’s like losing a hand. You feel you can look over and see it whenever you want, but it’s not there, and it will never be there again.

A life without parrots.

I was going to take Marvin’s cage to the dump. I gave away my other cage after Maynard died. I started feeling guilty about throwing out Marvin’s cage, so I put it on Craigslist in the Free Stuff area. I thought there might be some little bird out there whose owner could not afford a decent cage.

I got emails right away. When I asked the senders what kind of birds they had, they had nothing to say. I asked because I didn’t want scammers to take the cage and then try to sell it at thrift shops or on Facebook. Three senders didn’t answer, and one admitted he wanted to flip the cage.

Of course, none of the senders admitted they didn’t have birds up front. The whole business made me feel very bad. I didn’t need to have people try to take advantage of me on this particular day.

Now, for the next two days, I am stuck with a cage I will probably have to take to the dump. I can’t get rid of it until Wednesday. Maybe someone who actually has a bird will get in touch.

As for me, I do not feel good at all.

My faith has been attacked. I stood on the word of God, and then Marvin died. I felt faith when I prayed for her, and it didn’t work. I have been talking to God, asking him to help me know what’s real and what isn’t. My wife and baby son depend on my relationship with God. It has to be sound.

I am more tired of death than ever. I can get new pets and meet new people, but I will still see more deaths, so it’s an imperfect solution.

I would say I want death for myself, to get me out of this world, but that’s not true. I don’t want to die, and I would never, ever harm myself. I just want to leave. I wish Yeshua would come get us. I want to move to a place where things that go well. A place less like Omaha Beach.

Today in one short car trip, I saw sick people and crippled people. I saw poor people who clearly didn’t have it together. I kept thinking about how much suffering there was in the world, how little I could do about it, and how I was going to keep seeing it. I know what I’m in for. I could conceivably live another 30 years, and the world will be as it is now or worse. Will I ever be able to do anything real for people? I keep asking God to use me to heal people. I would love to heal people’s children and even their pets, so they would know this world doesn’t have to win. I sound like Holden Caulfield.

I am blessed, but those around me keep dropping. Being blessed is wonderful, but if you live among people who suffer horrible fates, it’s natural to want to be somewhere else where things are different.

God has said, “A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee; only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.” Sounds wonderful at first glance, but who wants to see other people destroyed over and over?

If it were not for my wife and son, I would be glad to leave this minute. My family is my only reason for choosing life.

When my dad was alive and I was single, I wanted to see him saved, and I wanted my pets to be taken care of. Other than that, I was happy to leave whenever God called me. Now my dad is dead and in heaven, and my pets are presumably with him. But I am still attached to this miserable planet by my family. I have to watch out for them. I have to prepare them. They are surrounded by enemies, natural and supernatural. They are swimming in a sea of lies. Abandoning them is not something that could ever be on the table.

I hope my friends and relatives do well on Earth, but I would not stay here just for them. Maybe that’s a flaw. I care more about my wife and baby.

I’ve also thought a great deal about what a bad person I’ve been and how I’ve let my loved ones and pets down. I don’t like thinking about it, but correction is like free money. I won’t turn it down. I wish I had done less evil.

I will surely feel better as time passes, but I don’t think the weariness will ever leave me. The future of this world is dim. I don’t expect the constant flow of bad news for humanity to stop or even stop accelerating.

I don’t think I’ll have much reason to mention my birds in the future.

“Marvelous” is Long for “Marv”

My sweet little buddy Marvin just left us. It was around 3:15. I had just put him in the car to take him back to the animal hospital. He was one day short of his 29th birthday.

This is something I have always dreaded. I have had many dreams about it. Now I don’t have to worry about that any more.

He was the funniest bird ever. He had incredible empathy. He read my moods. He adored me. He was far better to me than I could ever have been to him.

I didn’t deserve Marvin. This is for the best. Parrots were not created to be pets. They live too long. They’re too smart. They love too intensely. It’s better that my little friend is with Yeshua. I wish I could be there, too. I am so sick of death. I am sick of watching people destroy themselves and not being able to get them to listen to me when I try to help them. I wish Yeshua would come get us.

I don’t think Marv suffered much. He never seemed to be in pain. Even today, when he was declining, he wasn’t sad.

I may have caused this. Bad diet, maybe. Not enough sun. It’s impossible to know.

I will never have another parrot again. I don’t want the guilt of buying a pet that needs more care than I can give and which will probably outlive me. The only exception I would make would be for a rescue bird that needs a lifeline.

I wish little Doug could have known Marvin. He should have inherited him.

I call Marvin “he,” but he laid an egg when he was 26. I could never get used to “she,” and Marvin didn’t care.

I must have kissed him ten thousand times. I blessed him every morning and every night. I rubbed him all the time and told him not to worry. I held him to my face and thanked him for being here.

Yesterday he was not so sick. I took him out to weigh him and hand-feed him, and although he was weak, he refused to get off my hand. I blessed him and kissed him and thanked him again and again for being here; being mine. I asked him to stay a little longer.

I talk to him all the time instead of talking to myself. Sometimes I find myself doing it out in the yard, where he can’t hear me. I’ll have to stop now.

Thank you God, for all my undeserved blessings. Thank you for rescuing my baby bird from this horrible world. I can’t wait to be with him again, along with Maynard and all the people I know who died in Christ.

His toys, possessions, food, and medicines are on the way to the dump. I don’t want to see them. I will get rid of his cage as soon as I can.

I have contacted someone about communal cremation. I can’t bury him here. It would kill me to walk past the grave over and over. I don’t want to see his ashes. They will be scattered on a horse farm.

It doesn’t matter. He won’t be there. He is already in heaven, where he belonged from the start.

If You Don’t Want Roaches, Take the Trash Out

Derek Prince was an extraordinary preacher. He died in 2003, and I still learn things from him.

Yesterday, I saw one of his videos, and I learned that Yeshua never called Satan “the god of this world.” I didn’t learn that directly from the video. In the video, Prince said Paul (not Yeshua) had called Satan the god of this age, not the god of this world.

People like me believe that God has broken history into distinct ages. I don’t claim to belong to any particular recognized brand of Christianity, but I would say I could be considered a dispensationalist. It appears that the history of humanity, prior to the return of Yeshua, is like a week of thousand-year “days.”

Abraham existed around 4,000 years ago, and it looks like that was the start of the age of the Jews. They were God’s main representatives on Earth. Then came Yeshua, and that began the age of the Gentiles. After this age ends, we get a thousand-year Messianic Age, during which Yeshua is present on the earth in the flesh and rules as king.

God likes the number 7, and it appears to be associated with completeness. Seven days per week. Seven millennia for humanity. Seven Spirits of God. The seventh millennium will be a long sabbath, like the seventh day of every week.

Eight seems to be associated with new beginnings. Jewish boys are circumcised on the eighth day. God saved 8 people during the flood to repopulate the world.

In 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, the King James Version says:

But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:

In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

This is not correct. The Greek calls Satan “the god of this age.”

Yeshua himself called Satan “the prince of this world,” not the god.

There is some debate as to whether “god of this age” refers to Satan or Yeshua, but I think it’s safe to say it has to be Satan, because Yeshua is the God of all ages. It would be odd to call him the god of a particular age.

The Greek version of 2 Corinthians 4:4 makes more sense than the English translation. Satan won’t be in power forever. He’s an upstart, and he has to be slapped down eventually.

I believe the two millennia since the crucifixion have been the Age of the Gentiles. During this time, God revealed himself to billions of Gentiles through Christianity. Most Jews were expelled from Israel, the temple was destroyed, the Jews were dispersed, and mainstream Jews haven’t accomplished much of anything in the way of spreading the knowledge of God since before Yeshua. Meanwhile, the handful of Jews who accepted Yeshua and the baptism with the Holy Spirit evangelized millions, and Gentiles who believed them evangelized the world.

I complain to God a lot about this age. Humanity has become like a rotting trash heap. We give power and praise to astoundingly filthy people. This, in formerly Christian countries. We think abomination is good. All fornication is abomination, not just homosexual acts. Cross-dressing, idolatry and witchcraft are abomination. Pride and swindling are abomination. So is oppressing the poor. We are now solidly in favor of most of these things.

Increasingly, we are convinced we can solve all our own problems. We are like the college kids who keep telling us socialism will work if we just do it right. We never learn. We want all the blessings life has to offer, but we want them on our own terms, not God’s. We want sexual sin and pride. We want idolatry and drugs. We want to make up our own rules.

I believe the principle of rapturing doesn’t just apply to the rapture. It’s really just holiness. “But know that the Lord hath set apart him that is godly for himself,” as Psalm 4 says. When God lifts the people who love him off the earth and leaves the rest behind, he will be pulling that which is holy away from that which belongs to Satan.

When God tells you to give up secular entertainment, rapturing you away from it, he is making you holy. When he helps you to hate pride and love humility, he is making you holy. When he helps you spend hours praying in tongues, he is making you holy. He is preparing you for the big jump.

This process also brings you blessings and protection. It puts you inside God’s hedge with him. The word says, “Whosoever breaks a hedge, a serpent shall bite him.”

There is a wall or hedge around you right now. You’re inside with God and humility or Satan and pride. If you’re with Satan, through rebellion and pride, more bad things will happen to you, and you will miss out on blessings. Things that may seem harmless, like listening to secular music or watching movies, can put you inside the wrong hedge.

I think clinging to worldly culture causes things like cancer, dementia, poverty, miscarriage, birth defects, accidents, attacks from criminals, and just about every other type of misfortune. We tend to think bad things should only happen to those who do things like murder, rape, and theft, but there is no Biblical basis for that idea. I think showing your kids Disney videos or watching filthy Hollywood shows and movies will suffice to attract harm.

When Job wondered why his family had been killed and his body had been disabled by disease, he named all the harmful things he had not done. He included looking at young women. Sounds harmless to us, but Job apparently understood that it was dangerous. Try and sit through a week of TV without seeing a woman dressed like a whore.

Job wasn’t ignorant. He lived for hundreds of years. He knew things we don’t know. If staring at young women was dangerous, what about all the other things we consider normal?

At my last two churches, they played secular music to convince the kids Yeshua and church were cool. I wonder how much damage they did. I remember seeing the old fool Steve Munsey dance to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” on the stage at Trinity Church in Miami. That song is about a woman who had sex with a man in order to get him to marry her. It’s about abomination. Nobody in the Trinity hierarchy heard from the Holy Spirit, so they saw nothing wrong with Munsey’s antics.

This is normal in 2025.

I have found that the more God renews my heart and helps me feel love and empathy, the more I hate this age. I hate the suffering and failure. It makes me wonder how God, who is love itself, can stand it.

We harden ourselves and make ourselves get used to the suffering of those around us. I don’t think God wanted us to do that, but it’s a normal survival skill. We laugh at things that would have brought our grandparents to tears. I’m a huge offender. I made a deliberate effort to cultivate that type of sense of humor. I didn’t think it mattered to God.

I often pray for God to show my family evil. For example, I ask him to show us the worthless people around us, and I ask him to rid us of them permanently. It seems like he has come through. Lately, I have been asking him to show us the Spirit-led people around us, so all the exposure to the others won’t destroy our morale.

People in formerly-Christian nations are pursuing curses now, like never before. We get more and more loathsome. I find it oppressive now. I keep asking God to come now and rule.

John, who was closer to Yeshua than anyone, said this at the end of the Bible: “He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

He was talking about the end of this age, which the Revelation describes. It’s about the decline of man, the rapture, the tribulation, the millennium, the battle at the end, and the New Jerusalem. He was telling us Yeshua had said surely, he was coming quickly. Just like me, John said, “So be it. Even so [quickly], come Lord Jesus.” John was sick of this place, too.

I have about had it with this place. I want the rapture to happen now. Today. This minute. Barring that, I have to stay as close to God as possible, because that is the only way to have the blessings, protection, and strength to tolerate this place. It’s like living in a big building with adults who run around smearing poop on the walls and furniture. Enough.

Marvin has had some ups and downs with his medical situation. He got worse a day or two ago, so I had to drive him to a hospital in Orlando. His condition has been a very unpleasant ordeal for me. It has gone on for two weeks.

I prayed on the road in both directions. I was thinking about how miserable this world is and how I still had to stay here for a while. I was trying to have faith for Marvin’s recovery.

I got stuck in a traffic jam on I-75, and I found myself behind a semi. In the dirt on the back of the trailer, someone had written, “Bee [sic] the good. You are ENOUGH! Don’t quit. Pray for my Aunts Susan + Shelly. It’s gonna be okay Love God.”

Cars and trucks were shifting positions, but this truck kept ending up directly in front of me. I had to sit behind it.

It made me think of Belshazzar’s feast. Belshazzar and his pagan buddies were in Babylon, getting drunk using the sacred vessels of God’s temple, and a finger appeared and wrote, “You have been weighed and found lacking.” As my wife put it the other day, “not enough.”

The writing on the truck used the same word. “You are enough.” I took it to mean that though I was not very good, I was doing well enough to get God’s help and make it in the rapture.

I found that and the assurance that things were going to be okay very comforting. I prayed for Aunt Shelly and Aunt Susan, and my wife and I prayed for them again last night.

What Belshazzar went through was like the rapture and tribulation. God’s protection left him suddenly, and he was destroyed.

Today Marv is doing better. I got a call this morning. He’s on a better antibiotic, and he has capable people looking after him. I am planning to move him to UF as soon as he seems strong.

I don’t know when the rapture will come, but the way the walls are closing in, it can’t come fast enough to suit me.