Oh, Wait. Was He a Great Big Fat Person?

I did a very bad thing today. I hit GFS on the way home from church.

I’ve been making pizza for our Tuesday night services, which are enormous, but they lock the cafe during the services, so instead of selling 20 pizzas, I’ve been selling 8. That seemed like a waste of time, and I need to free myself up so I can work as an armorbearer once in a while, and I recently learned they’re opening during the week for lunch. So I went in today and cooked.

I don’t think this was a great idea. I sold 5 pizzas. They scared me by talking about a lunch time rush, so I made 12 dough portions, but I ended up throwing 6 out.

At least I got on the road to go home early.

The kitchen was very low on olive oil, so I decided to visit Gordon Food Supply. I went to the one in Little Havana. For some reason, they have an exceptional selection of pizza products.

I bought Sinatra brand Italian tomatoes, on a gamble. I thought they might be like Cento Italian tomatoes. I don’t need them. In fact, they’re too expensive to use at church. But I got them anyway, because I JUST HAD TO.

I bought a can of Escalon 6-in-1 tomatoes. I tried them a long time ago and decided not to use them, but I couldn’t resist refreshing my memory.

I got a 25-pound bag of GFS Primo Gusto flour. It’s supposed to be sort of like All Trumps, which makes excellent Sicilian. I got bags so I can freeze the excess. I know this is crazy, but it beats paying a much higher per-pound rate for dubious grocery flour.

I picked up FOUR GALLONS of pomace oil for the church. Now I can relax for a while. And I bought my new secret sauce ingredient. Which is a secret.

I got a can of Saporito sauce. I use it at church, so I think it’s best to use it here when doing research. I also got some Primo Gusto 50/50 mozzarella/provolone. That was stupid, but it had been so long since the last time I tried it, I could not resist.

I had to make a pie with Sorrento cheese today, because we ran out of Costco cheese. I have to say, it’s very good. Nothing wrong with it. Just as good as Grande, as far as I can tell. But the flavor is as mild as Grande. If you like that, buy Sorrento. It’s the real thing. It’s just not Kirkland!

Now this stuff is sitting here, staring at me. I can’t make pies and stuff myself. All I can do is make test pies and eat tiny amounts, possibly even spitting the food out before I swallow it. My intellectual and artistic curiosity will be satisfied, but nothing else will be.

I can’t make thin pizza because I blew up my stone in an experiment worthy of Beavis and Butt-head. I need to get to Bed Bath and Beyond so I can buy a new one.

When I left GFS, I took a photo of the food I had bought, and I sent it to Mike. This is what male friends do. We make each other suffer. I had no choice.

I actually ate pizza for lunch. These days that rarely happens. I had a slice and a half. I feel like a glutton. The first slice was mainly for sustenance and partly to test the Sorrento cheese. The half-slice was just a test. My lovely beverage? The usual. Water.

Even though the pie had sat on top of the oven for a long time, it was sublime. I am sure God’s hand is in the recipe. Who else could make me love pepperoni?

I’m glad God has given me control over my diet. Thrilled and amazed, actually. But when I describe what I eat, it sounds pretty boring.

I’m thinking I’ll have wings for dinner. They’re fairly harmless from a caloric standpoint (if you go easy on the butter and dressing), and I could use something tasty and light with lots of meat in it.

Today at church, one of my friends ordered two slices and dipped them in a mixture of wing sauce and ranch dressing. I couldn’t believe it. It was a little gross. But brilliant.

Deep in your heart, I know you agree.

Here’s an unexpected reward that came from watching him eat: I saw how beautiful the underside of the pizza was. I don’t get to see much of that when I’m eating, since I hold the slice right-side-up. It was breathtaking.

Have to go Make Pizza

Reader blindshooter says:

I feel like a prayer bum asking again but please add my Dad to your prayers, he is getting a heart cath today.

Grendel Too Weird

Here’s what I’m thinking, assuming I eventually go through with this craziness: .260 Remington. Unlike the Grendel, it’s a real high-powered round, not a weird technological triumph resulting from stuffing ten pounds of powder into a five-pound bag. I think. I may be wrong about everything, but that’s how it looks.

The .260 has better ballistics than the Grendel for long-range shooting, and you can make .260 ammunition from readily available .308 cases. If my facts are right, the .260 is more realistic for hunting, too, so I would look less like a doofus using it to shoot deer or taking it out west to exterminate prairie dogs or coyotes. And if I ever need to use it for self-defense (exceedingly unlikely), it will do the job better.

The Grendel seems to be an amazing round, because you can carry one rifle and do a number of things well with it. But what if you don’t want a Swiss Army Rifle? What if you want one gun for this, and another gun for that? Seems like the .260 is for people who like guns who do their particular jobs very well.

There is another round called the 6.5 Creedmoor, but it’s weird, so it would probably be a pain buying or making ammunition for it. And there is a Lapua something or other which is nearly the same thing. The .260 looks like a better choice, if I man up and buy dies for it. Using storebought ammunition, it’s expensive.

People are recommending the .308, but I have this fantasy that one day, I’ll be able to practice at distances where the .260 outshines the .308. Maybe that’s stupid, but guns should be fun, shouldn’t they? Why buy one that slaps you in the face with boring reality? I already did that twice. I bought Glocks.

If I were getting an AR15 and no dedicated long-distance gun, I would almost definitely get a Grendel version. It seems like it should do everything the 5.56 will do, plus most of what a .308 will do. But the .260 comes in a different (non-AR15) package. DPMS makes it. I don’t know if it’s considered an AR10 or what. They call it an “LR-260.”

Interesting info for Grendel fans: as mentioned earlier, some people are making Grendel rifles without the name “Grendel.” The name is a registered mark, but there is no way to bar people from making guns that fire the round, or from making the rounds themselves. Crazy. I already mentioned Les Baer’s version of the Round Which Dare Not Speak its Name. It turns out there is also one called 6.5 CSS, made by somebody named Lothar Walther.

I also read a forum post in which some guy claims Bill Alexander (the Grendel guy) has tried to get Wolf to quit making Grendel ammunition, due to some kind of fouling issue. That would eliminate the only cheap Grendel ammo available.

Here’s some amusing news. Remember how I decided I had the hammer in my PSL installed backwards? I took the gun apart, which is really a pain, and I put the hammer in the other way. It was even worse than before. Then I looked at the Red Star Arms diagram of the hammer again. Hey, guess what? I confused right with left. The diagram was a left-side view, but in my head, I decided the right side of the gun was the left side. So, in short, today I took the hammer out and installed it again, backward.

This has happened to me before. Oddly, I think it’s a consequence of being smart. Sometimes I tend to think of right and left as interchangeable. It’s hard to explain. I believe it started happening after I studied physics for several years. Right and left are arbitrarily defined (macroscopically, at least–don’t be a wise guy and post irritating comments about the universe’s inherent “handedness”), and once you start thinking of them that way, you can do some pretty stupid things.

I have had the same problem, confusing numbers with their reciprocals. I confuse 2 and 5 sometimes, because if you put a decimal point by 5, it becomes the reciprocal of 2, and it also works the other way around. If you want to multiply something by five, divide it by two and move the decimal. It’s easier. But if you start thinking this way, eventually you will leave a waitress a 50% tip and have to run back inside a restaurant before she picks it up.

It’s strange, but being smart can make you stupid.

The upshot here is that the trigger is still no good. I emailed Red Star to see if they could help.

I have been looking for 7.62×54 ammunition. I’ve read good things about Bulgarian surplus. Supposedly it will hold 1.5 MOA in the right gun, so that’s good enough for me. I also read a blog post by a Finnish military marksman who says the PSL will shoot better than that. I think. Apparently, you can improve it by getting the barrel off the lower handguard so it doesn’t push against the barrel when it heats up. Maybe the accuracy figure is wrong, but I have no reason to doubt this guy. A Youtuber has put up a number of PSL videos in which he gets 1 MOA accuracy with Bulgarian surplus.

I can’t figure out why the Russians won’t sell 7N1 ammunition any more. It’s not like we’re going to use it to shoot Putin. I wish I had bought five cans of it back when it was cheap. The Finnish guy claims 7N14 (the newer version) is not that great. Over 1 MOA, at best. He says to use Lapua 7.62x53R. I’ll just bet that’s cheap. I’m checking. The 180-grain (too heavy for the PSL) is $2.50 per round, so I assume 148-grain is about the same.

You can get Bulgarian ammunition made in 1953, in pretty brass cases. It’s a little more expensive than the newer stuff in steel, but you get to keep the brass. Down side: you can’t reload it unless you’re willing to deal with Berdan primer pockets. So forget I mentioned it.

I think Bulgarian is looking like the way to go. If I can get the gun to shoot. You can’t complain about a 20-cent round that will hit a lemon reliably at 100 yards. If the Finnish guy and the Youtuber are on the level, that should be possible.

Unleaded Starts my Day

I think I’m falling in love with decaffeinated coffee. I can get up and drink as much as I want while I start my morning routine, and nothing happens.

A while back, I started feeling I should give up caffeine abuse. I’m attention deficient, and I quit taking drugs about 14 years ago, and when I got to law school, caffeine helped me overcome the boredom and concentrate. It also helped in my practice. But lately it has been keeping me up nights, and I think it makes me crabby during the day.

For a while, I’ve felt like God has been cleaning me up. I had to quit smoking cigars because they kept me awake. Who ever heard of such a thing? But it happened. Now coffee is out. I am a man without vices. It is a strange sensation.

Drugs connect us with the spirit realm, somehow or other. Tobacco was a ritual herb smoked by pre-Columbian heathens. Peyote and psilocybin are used in worship. Hippies used to get high and say they had seen God.

I don’t think cigars and coffee are going to give me visions of demons, but there must be something about them that God doesn’t like, because I really had to quit. I had no choice. Something would not leave me alone, and I think it was God.

Maybe weak drugs are sharp tools Satan uses to open little holes in your temple. Search me.

I suppose this is undeniable: drugs that affect your mind are substitutes for things you should be getting from God. Maybe that’s the problem. God fixes people, better than caffeine ever could. Maybe caffeine was in the way.

I don’t have any reason to think other people should give up cigars or real coffee, but it seems to be true in my case.

Coffee is a comfort drink. If I can’t get up and have hot coffee when I first turn on the computer, my morning is damaged. Decaf solved that problem.

Coffee–even real coffee–is supposed to bring health benefits. So I suppose I’m still getting those.

I have been getting comments about the AR rifle. This has been bugging me lately. I don’t need any more rifles, and I don’t think an AR will change my life significantly, but I feel this nagging urge to get one.

I’ll tell you something weird. I think God is driving his people to arm themselves and prepare for hard times. Over and over, I see it. I’ve written about it before. I have a new friend who works for a religious charity, and she travels the country talking to Christian donors. She says lots of people–and this is not a tea party thing; they’re independently motivated–are getting guns and tools and rural land. She told me she met with two elderly sisters in northern Florida who inherited a ranch complete with a gun range. These women are retired missionaries! They can’t figure it out.

I do not believe God tells people to shoot at the FBI or the mailman or any other federal agent. I don’t think we’re going to have a last stand where we all go down fighting, while Janet Reno watches on cable news and claps her hands. I have no interest whatsoever in shooting people. In fact, I am not sure I’d shoot in self-defense, since a criminal is likely to need time to repent and turn to God, while I’m ready to go. I’d shoot to defend others; that’s a moral obligation. But I can’t swear I’d kill someone to protect myself. Still, I think God is somehow involved in the increasing interest Christians have in firearms.

If we are not intended to use these guns against others, I’m not sure what the purpose is. But I think that purpose exists. I suspect it, anyway.

Getting back to the AR, a commenter says a couple of interesting things.

1. I should get an AR15, because 5.56/.223 is sort of mandatory. I don’t really understand that, but there it is.

2. Good AR15s are “cheap” right now, so I should get a Rock River and then add a Grendel upper later.

I know almost nothing about the AR15. I know there are “uppers” and “lowers.” I think that means the lower is the part we think of as a gun, and the upper is the barrel and some other stuff. But I don’t know how interchangeable these things are, or whether combining parts from different companies is a good idea. And I don’t know what he means by “cheap.” Are prices about to shoot up? Have they been reduced recently? No clue here.

I don’t know why I need a 5.56. I’ve seen people call it a “poodle shooter.” For self-defense, I really like my Vz 58 in 7.62x39mm, which is fairly powerful yet easy to shoot. What are the advantages of the 5.56? Do they really exist, or is it one of those things, like a 1911 in .45 ACP or a .22 rifle, that you just have to have, no explanation needed?

I looked at my PSL last night, and sure enough, the hammer is in backwards. I think the same could be said of my brain. I’m going to reverse it and take the gun to the range, but I’ll need ammunition first. I’m not going to shoot the rest of my 7N1 until the Russians release more of it. I could sell the remaining rounds and buy a Corvette.

I don’t know where I can get cheap accurate ammunition for it now. There is lots of surplus out there, and Wolf is not too expensive, but I would really like something that will do 2 MOA out of an ideal gun. That way, I can work on my shooting without wondering if the ammunition is holding me back.

I guess I could drive over to Samco and see what they have.

The glass for the AR is a problem. The gun itself is not cheap, and I would want a scope which would work well at long ranges. Prairie dog range, in case I ever get off my butt and go varmint hunting. I assume such items are not cheap.

Maybe the urge will go away.

Shooting poodles…isn’t that a public service? Is there some way we could train them to pop out of prairie dog burrows? Just a thought.

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To clarify, I would like an AR in a good long-distance caliber, so whatever I get, I want it to work with a varmint barrel and a good scope. But if I also get a 5.56 upper for shorter ranges, do I have to worry that the original lower will not be appropriate for long-range shooting?

Stalking the Varmint Cong

I keep thinking about getting my first AR15. Only I think I actually want an AR10.

It’s confusing. I used to think the correct name was M16, but it turned out…wait, let me see if I have this right. Okay, “M16” is military for AR15, but apparently, an AR15 in a bigger caliber is actually an AR10. I may be wrong. I figured this out from a blog comment.

In any case, for a long time, I’ve wanted a semi-auto rifle suitable for distances over 200 yards. Why? I can’t believe you have to ask. It’s just so obvious that I need one.

I bought a PSL, which is…it gets confusing again…based on the AK74, which is based on the AK47. The PSL shoots 7.62x54mm rounds, which are sort of like 30.06 ammunition. It’s a lot of fun, but it has limitations.

First of all, the PSL is really crude, so you have to do a certain amount of work on it to make it function. For one thing, you have to replace the trigger group. If you don’t, you end up with trigger slap, which means the trigger kicks forward after each shot, so hard and so fast you can’t feel it. At the end of the day, you notice that your finger is sore and you’re shooting badly. That’s no good.

I put a Red Star trigger in the gun, and since then, it has never worked right. The other day, it occurred to me that I might have installed the hammer backward. Or, rather, not backward. Some aftermarket triggers (one, at least) require you to install the hammer backward, which is more than a little confusing. I need to take the gun out and check, but in any case, it is not working. When it did work, it shot well, but not really well. Supposedly the accuracy drops when the barrel gets warm. On top of that, there used to be lots of cheap top-quality Soviet ammunition available, but now it’s gone, so you have to suffer with dubious surplus probably made in people’s garages in the former USSR and Hungary and China.

I bought a K31. It shoots well, but the scope is permanently out of alignment with the barrel. I bought an aftermarket mount to make a Burriss scope fit the gun, and at the most extreme adjustment, it’s off by six inches at 100 yards. I could fix it by jamming a piece of a Coke can in there, but I’d rather have something that works without being subjected to Sanford and Son modifications. And the K31 is not semi-automatic.

Someone suggested the 6.5mm Grendel version of the AR10. This is an interesting thing. The stupidly named Grendel is a caliber invented by a guy named Alexander. Apparently he was not happy with the .308, because it slowed down too much at long distances. The Grendel is still supersonic at 1200 yards, according to highly reliable Internet forum blatherings I Googled. Can that be right? That seems like a long way. Anyhow, it shoots farther than the .308. Sort of.

Unfortunately, Mr. Alexander registered “Grendel” as a trademark, effectively killing industry interest in it. As I understand it, you can make Grendel ammunition and Grendel rifles all day, but you can’t call them “Grendel,” or else you get sued. This makes it hard for other people to join in the fun, so the popularity of the round may be doomed. Once that happens, you might as well have a Commodore Amiga in your gun case. I cite the sad demise of .440 Cor-Bon as an example.

Les Baer (genuflect) makes an extremely similar gun called the .264 something or other. Word on the street is, Mr. Baer got mad at someone who works with Mr. Alexander, and he decided he did not want to deal with them, so he made a gun which will chamber the Grendel round, and he did not trademark anything. The problem with this is, his gun is a Les Baer, so it costs approximately 3 googol dollars or the ratio of Barack Obama’s ego to his achievements expressed in shares of Berkshire Hathaway, whereas you can buy a licensed Grendel rifle for the low price of the weight of Col. Jeff Cooper in rubies. In other words, the new round is a big economic boon to Mr. Baer, but not to anyone else. In fact, it is so unhelpful to shooters, it was pointless for me to mention it.

I don’t know a whole lot about long distance shooting. It amazes me that a 6.5mm bullet can hurt anything. But I suppose it can, because people buy them. It’s close to the same diameter as a .25 caliber pistol round, which is like being shot with an unusually spunky BB gun.

Hmm…it looks like the Grendel is actually an AR15, which somehow manages to combine low recoil with long distance punch. But the AR10 is available in .260 Remington and 6.5 Creedmoor, which are better than 6.5 Grendel at long distances. I think. Maybe.

Man, this is confusing.

The reality is, I am extremely unlikely to find the opportunity to shoot at anything over a hundred yards away. You have to get pretty far out to need a caliber that shoots well at six hundred yards, and I have a feeling that will never happen in my lifetime. But does that really matter? Of COURSE not.

I don’t know why this little bullet would shoot well at long ranges. Maybe it’s long and thin. My dim memories of studying physics tell me the performance of bullet should be limited by the amount of mass in the channel in front of it, compared to the mass of the bullet, so a longer bullet ought to hold its speed better at long ranges.

I am pretty sure I know less about rifles right now than I did before I started studying this topic.

You Know Who is in the Details

I got a nice comment on my Sicilian pizza recipe. I felt I should point a few things out.

1. You don’t absolutely have to have a stone to make this dish. If you get the right pan and find the right distance from the lower heating element in your oven, you will end up with a perfect crust, without removing the pie from the pan. It will fry on the bottom with no problems. I like to touch it up anyway, purely out of neurosis. If your pan is not perfect, you will want a stone to correct the crust.

2. You don’t need a mixer to make this dish. Just all the dry ingredients in a bowl; make sure you use instant yeast, not “active dry yeast.” Add the water and mix until you have dough. It does not have to be kneaded. You don’t even have to mix it very well.

If you don’t have a Publix supermarket near you, I can’t tell you where to get the pan I use at home, but here is some info from an email their customer service sent me:

At the present we do not have a new supplier for = our Publix Premium Bakeware 9 x 9 Cake Pan (GTIN-4141562056). We last received a shipment for this product in April 2008 and that product is comprised of:
99% Steel / 1% Aluminum Powder
Whitford Non-Stick Coating K4326 Champagne Gold Pewter.

Maybe you can find the same pan under a different name. High heat doesn’t faze it, so I’m not afraid to use it in the house with Marv and Maynard.

3. If you have given up looking for Stanislaus tomato products, fear not. Buy Cento D.O.P. San Marzano tomatoes and mash them up, or use Cento “Italian” tomatoes, which are supposedly better.

4. Costco mozzarella cut 50/50 with sliced provolone will send you straight to heaven, but you can also get good results with sliced mozzarella from your grocer’s deli counter. I suggest adding some grated cheese if you do that, because it seems like no other mozzarella has Costco’s wonderful flavor. I realize how crazy that sounds.

5. The cheapest olive oil you can find is probably best. The other day I learned that extra virgin isn’t really intended for cooking. I never liked the cardboard aftertaste it gave my pizza, and it turned out there was a reason it didn’t work. The chemicals that give extra virgin its flavor burn easily and then taste bad. I now use pomace oil, which is so cheap they don’t even call it olive oil. It has no off flavors at all, and you can get it for around $15 a gallon. That’s less than half the price of Costco extra virgin. Mike used it in garlic rolls the other day, and it was fantastic. I like extra virgin in rolls, but this stuff works great, although with less flavor.

For a 9″ square pie, I use 1.5 cups of flour, four ounces of mozzarella, four ounces of provolone, and around 5 ounces of sauce. You need a lot of sauce and cheese on Sicilian. You might consider increasing the dough.

This is not hard to make. You just make the dough and put it in a covered, oiled pan to rise a little, and then you shape it to fit the pan and let it rise again, and then you bake it right over the heating element at 550. Pop it out and put it on the stone for a little while to crisp up, and you’re done. The pan I use never sticks at all, so getting the pizza out is no problem.

I use cheap GFS (Wear-Ever) pans at church because I don’t want to spend a lot of their money, but the Publix pan is much better, and I didn’t have to bake seasoning onto it.

You could roll the pizza out and make it fit the pan at the start, avoiding the second rise, but for my purposes, this would work out to be harder and messier than the method above. I have to make lots of pizzas, and I don’t feel like messing up a counter with a rolling pin and flour. If you’re only making one pie, you may find the rolling pin saves you time and labor.

I know of no Sicilian that even comes close to this one. I have had lots of pizzas in lots of places, and nothing compares. This may not be the world’s best pizza, but it is definitely adequate.

On the Loose

I have free time! I have free time! Can you tell? Was it a clue when I blew up my pizza stone in a pointless backyard experiment?

Mike’s visit is over. I will not be making pizza at church today. I do not have to serve as an Armorbearer tonight. I do not have to get up super-early tomorrow or go to bed late tonight.

I have free time!

I think I’ll hit the garage and try to finish the butt attachment thing for my Saiga 12. Look out for flying swarf.

The Urge to Annoy Nerds Overcomes Me

I guess I’m childish, but I can’t help wanting to poke a hole in the Neapolitan pizza fad.

In case you aren’t up on your fads, Neapolitan pizza is thin pizza cooked at over 700 degrees. The really cool places go a thousand. The pizza is very thin, it’s burned (understandably), and it tends to come with disgusting, silly toppings like goat cheese, arugula, and squash blossoms (I’m guessing on that last one).

Mind you, I’m talking about American yuppie Neapolitan. For all I know, the stuff they eat in Naples actually tastes good.

Pizza nerds cut up their Weber kettles all the time, trying to jack up the heat. It makes a real mess, and it’s a lot of work. When I saw them talking about this on a forum, I asked why they didn’t just go on Craigslist and buy used pottery kilns. For a couple of hundred dollars, you can get a 120-volt deal that will cook a pretty big pizza at 1500 degrees. If that’s what turns you on. They didn’t get too excited about it, though.

Yesterday I got the urge to tinker. Propane burns at nearly 3000 degrees. I’m thinking I should be able to get to a thousand or so by putting a stone on my cajun burner. I’ll need heat from above, too, so I’m thinking I could make a thin steel box to cover the stone (with room for a pizza inside) and hang a second burner above the box, aimed downward. Might work. Heat would go out the sides, but I think a good hot stone and radiant heat from the box above ought to more than compensate. I could put some kind of thin metal deflector under the stone to keep the center from getting too hot.

Will it work? I don’t know, but it would cost about fifty bucks to find out, and it would be fun to prove that you don’t need to bankrupt yourself or make a mess to get bona fide nerd pizza. I should be able to put the box and burner on a shelf in the garage, neatly out of the way, unlike a hacked up Weber kettle full of fire bricks.

I guess the first step is to put the stone directly over the heat and see if it explodes. If not, the project may work. If it blows up, I spent twenty bucks to find out I had a bad idea.

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Okay, let’s file that under “bad idea.”

Tap In

Stilton Jarlsberg did a wonderful thing when he drew this strip: CLICK.

I guess he didn’t draw it, exactly, but still. He is obviously aware that increasingly, Israel is alone in this world, and Barack Obama is among her enemies. This will probably be my big political post for the week. I will try not to discuss President Obama’s pitching arm, in spite of the overwhelming temptation.

My traffic keeps dropping. I think the people who used to come here for snotty political humor got bored. I’m glad I got out of that mess, however. I used to find it frustrating when I wrote well and didn’t get picked up by other blogs, but now I think God’s hand was in it. I was walking into a trap.

The political side of the Internet is turning into a real snakepit. I can’t believe the stuff that goes on at the Breitbart sites. Bloggers used to call each other mean names. Now bloggers are getting arrested, and operatives are throwing eggs (on camera) at buses belonging to people they disagree with. It’s like the SEIU is running things.

Where would I be, if I had really caught on? I’d be writing silly, vitriolic, embarrassing things that contributed to the contentiousness in the world without benefiting anyone. I’d be hanging around with adults who make a living behaving like children. That kind of thing doesn’t do a lot for your self-respect, in the long run. And some of these people are on TV now! You can live writing down, but it’s hard to put video behind you.

Contentiousness is a work of the flesh, according to the Bible. It grieves the Holy Spirit. That’s bad. You want to avoid that. Putting God far from you is one of the most damaging things you can do to yourself.

The other day I read a chapter of my cookbook, and part of me was glad it didn’t sell better. I thought it was fairly tame stuff when I wrote it, but it looks worse in retrospect. I can’t imagine Job or Daniel writing material like that.

I hate to say this, but conservative and liberal bloggers are starting to look alike to me. Conservatives are not as vicious, and they’re right about most things, but the difference is not big enough to make them look mature in comparison to their liberal counterparts. Being right matters, but the way you go about being right is just as important.

“Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.” I probably should have studied that a little harder before I started blogging.

You can overcome your past, no matter how stupidly you acted, given enough time and a sufficiently sharp change of course. That should be a comfort to anyone who reads it. In fact, I would call it the central message of Christianity. One reason God does not care about your past is that the baptism with the Holy Spirit will eventually turn you into a different person, and it will no longer make sense for you to bear the full responsibility for what you’ve done. It would be like spanking a ten-year-old for soiling his diapers when he was six months old or refusing to eat his peas when he was two.

A person who has not been transformed by the Holy Spirit is like an unfertilized egg. Raw material. Jeremiah’s piece of marred pottery. Given what you can become in the future, through God’s power, it doesn’t matter all that much where you started. The reason for the crucifixion was that it was necessary to preserve God’s raw materials so he could craft them into finished goods.

There are some earthly debts that are extremely hard to void. If you’re on death row, even if you undergo a total transformation, you shouldn’t expect to be released. Unpaid taxes and student loans will follow you until you die. If you commit a sex crime, you might as well be branded on your forehead. But a surprising amount of mercy is available, if you have faith. And even if you can’t outrun your past, life as a Christian is still the best possible option. It’s the only option that really works.

I saw an interesting message on Manna-Fest (Perry Stone’s show) the other day. He was preaching about the miraculous irrigation they’re doing in the southern part of Israel. The Dead Sea has changed. Hidden sources of fresh water have been found. Farms are popping up in unlikely places.

He mentioned Isaiah 35:

1 The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.

2 It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God.

3 Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees.

4 Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompence; he will come and save you.

5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.

6 Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.

7 And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.

8 And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.

9 No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there:

10 And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Perry Stone was talking about the physical changes taking place in Israel, but I believe this passage also refers to the baptism with the Holy Spirit.

Over and over, the Bible refers to the Holy Spirit as “water” or “living water.” Jesus used this metaphor with the lady at the well. Many prophetic passages about water describe the Holy Spirit baptism. When you pray in the Spirit, the stream of speech that pours out of you flows like water; this is an illustration of what the metaphor means.

What is a person who is far from God and lacks the Holy Spirit? A desert. A land that is not fertile. He may do what he thinks is good, but without God to guide him, his works may be vain, and his harvest may be an illusion. He is also blind, because the Spirit opens our eyes and helps us understand things, including the Bible. He is lame, as far as God’s works are concerned. He lacks the Spirit-provided power to serve God ably. He is dumb; he can’t say what the Spirit would have him say. Instead, he is likely to use his own puny and unreliable mind, which leads to terrible mistakes.

As for the highway, it refers to the Spirit’s guidance. As Psalm 37 says, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his way.” The Holy Spirit guides believers. He will literally tell you where to go, which way to turn, and what to do. Maybe you’ll hear a voice, or maybe it will be something subtler, like an urge or a desire, but it will happen.

As Robert Morris has pointed out, we wash in the Spirit, not just the blood. So it makes sense that Isaiah would say the unclean could not travel the highway. They lack the Spirit’s indwelling; they are not washed by living water.

Isaiah says that even fools who travel the highway will not err. I believe that means that even humble believers who are not well educated or highly intelligent will still behave wisely when the Spirit guides them. I’ve seen this to be true. A genius who is new to Christianity can learn a tremendous amount from a ditchdigger who is farther along. It’s amazing how many wise things come out of the mouths of simple Christians. You don’t have to be smart to be a powerful or knowledgeable Christian. It’s incredible; no other religion has a similar power.

It’s a great gift. It will make it possible for you to rise above your limitations as you make your way in life and raise your kids.

Man’s unaided thinking gets us in a lot of trouble. It brought us great ideas like conversion by the sword, celibacy, indulgences, the pantheon of saints, gay clergy, and anti-Semitism. It brings us modern Biblical “scholarship,” which is full of error and denies the power of God. It brought us replacement theology and divestment from Israel. It even gave many of us the crazy notion that leftism was somehow acceptable and even favored by God.

I hope I get to go to Israel again soon. I would really like to see what God is up to over there.

Rest, at Last

I can’t believe I went two days without blogging.

A Mike visit is always a whirlwind of food, guns, and church. You end every day exhausted. We went to the gun range. We tried Five Guys. We hit Sonny’s barbecue. We ate at Krystal. On Saturday, we went to my 8:00 a.m. prayer meeting, and it turned out the head Servant Leader from our church was qualifying some Armorbearers on the pistol range, and I was invited to that. Then we went to a classic car rally. Then I attended church on Saturday night. Yesterday, we got to church at 8:30, and we made pizzas until 3 p.m.

Now I can’t move. Mike just left for Delray.

I’m thrilled that I got Mike to go to the prayer group, because most of the benefit of belonging to a church comes from things you do with other church members, and I wanted him to see what I was getting from time with my friends. I’m not knocking sermons, but pastors can’t be with you 24 hours a day, and you can’t expect to prosper on forty minutes of teaching per week, with nothing more.

Easter services at church were insane. They did one on Good Friday, the regular Saturday service, the three regular Sunday services, and an extra Sunday service. The place was so full, they put chairs in the cafe. Yesterday we recorded 922 salvations. Not bad.

Mike volunteered to make garlic rolls, so I turned him loose with the old Kitchenaid mixer, and I made pizza. By the end of the day, we had sold 22 dozen rolls and 19 pies. We ran out of dough. I’m almost glad they closed the cafe before the last service.

The rolls were unbelievable. You can’t get rolls that good anywhere in Miami. I don’t know why. It’s not brain surgery. But people raved about them.

Not only did he make the dough and sauce from scratch; he tied each roll in a knot before baking it. Very fancy.

We set the roll price too low, at $1.00 for four big rolls. A local chain called Mario the Baker is known for rolls, and they get $4.00 for half a dozen. And Mike’s rolls are bigger and much better. We should have charged fifty cents a roll. As it is, we netted somewhere around sixty bucks. Should have been over a hundred.

Five Guys is very good. The food is a little better than Wendy’s. The fries are much better, because Wendy’s makes really bad fries.The big problem with Five Guys fries is that there is almost no oil on them, and they get no flavor from the fat. The portions are too big, too. Their regular fry order comes in a large drinking cup.

The preparation was very slow, and they had the radio on so loud we couldn’t talk, and they had no drive-through. Other than that, very nice.

I didn’t see any shakes on the menu.

When I went to the range with the Armorbearers, I only fired 50 rounds. The range allows rapid fire, so I practiced three-shot drills. I did very well. I have no doubts about my ability to deal with any assailant within 25 feet, and I would be very surprised if I couldn’t do well at 75 feet. Better than a crackhead who shows up without training, anyway. That’s the kind of person we worry about.

Some of the newer guys need to learn shooting fundamentals. I offered to go out with them and get them up to speed. I don’t think they need to be doing rapid-fire practice before they can shoot well slowly.

I read the book of Amos on Friday. It was very disturbing. In this book, God is angry with just about everyone. He pronounces judgment on Israel’s neighbors, and then he lays into Samaria and Israel, complaining of idolatry, backsliding, and corrupt departures from social justice.

Here is some stuff from chapter 4, directed to Samaria:

Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, Bring, and let us drink.

The Lord God hath sworn by his holiness, that, lo, the days shall come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks.

And ye shall go out at the breaches, every cow at that which is before her; and ye shall cast them into the palace, saith the Lord.

Come to Bethel, and transgress; at Gilgal multiply transgression; and bring your sacrifices every morning, and your tithes after three years:

And offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, and proclaim and publish the free offerings: for this liketh you, O ye children of Israel, saith the Lord God.

And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.

And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered.

So two or three cities wandered unto one city, to drink water; but they were not satisfied: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.

I have smitten you with blasting and mildew: when your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased, the palmerworm devoured them: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.

I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt: your young men have I slain with the sword, and have taken away your horses; and I have made the stink of your camps to come up unto your nostrils: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.

I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.

That made an impression on me. It reminded me of what we have gone through since 2001.

Fishhooks symbolize weapons that lure us in. When God chastises us, sometimes he creates situations that are so inviting or even compelling, we can’t resist. Then we feel the pain. A housing bubble is a great example. When you see your neighbors making five or six figures flipping houses, or you see them taking equity loans based on inflated values, it’s tempting to jump onboard. Then when the air leaves the bubble, you have the debt but not the assets to cover it. A lot of Americans did this over the last few years.

“Cleanness of teeth” refers to hard times, as does “want of bread.” We’ve seen a lot of that since 2007.

The reason this passage bothers me is that we have not learned anything. We have a socialist President, trying to finance our present by bleeding our future, and when you turn on shows about finance and investing, you’ll see that many “experts” think he’s succeeding. Mind you, these are the people who didn’t see the tech crash or the housing crash coming.

We don’t hear many people telling us to repent, or that our sins are connected to our problems. As far as I can tell, we haven’t changed. In fact, we are offending God more, in all likelihood. Socialism is inherently anti-Christian; it attempts to replace voluntary giving with taxes, and it tells us man, not God, can lead us into an age of prosperity. Our treatment of Israel now borders on persecution. And our morals haven’t improved at all. I have to ask: are we better than Samaria? Does God love us more than he did the ancient Jews? Should we expect to avoid judgment?

Tradition says Amos was murdered by King Uzziah, presumably because Amos refused to prophesy pretty lies about his people’s future. No surprise there. Today, we still heap scorn on any clergyman who has the guts to connect sin and misfortune.

This morning I read the book of Hosea. The idea came to me while I was praying, and I decided to go with it.

Hosea married a prostitute named Gomer. God ordered him to do this. Some believe Gomer was not a full-blown prostitute. They think she was merely an immoral woman whose flaws did not become known to Hosea until after he married her.

Needless to say, Gomer was not a faithful wife. Her purpose was to symbolize God’s people, who were also unfaithful. God gave them wealth and peace, and they backslid and turned to idolatry.

After Gomer ran off, Hosea redeemed her from her new man for thirty shekels, which was the standard price of a slave. Half the payment took the form of grain. I have to wonder if shekels are the same as the pieces of silver that constituted the price of Jesus. If so, there would appear to be prophetic significance to the figure’s appearance in Hosea’s story.

Gomer was a “bigger, better deal” girl. She gave her attention not to her husband, but to those who gave her money and things. She forgot her husband as we tend to forget God when we do well financially.

A lot of the book is devoted to God’s method of dealing with unfaithful backsliders. Hosea had two children, Loruhamah (“no mercy”) and Loammi (“not my people”). Through Hosea, God told them:

Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts;

Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst.

And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they be the children of whoredoms.

For their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them hath done shamefully: for she said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink.

Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths.

And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them: then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now.

Shortly thereafter, he says:

Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.

And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope: and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.

The message seems to be that God will afflict believers in order to get them to turn back to him so he can bless them. That’s encouraging.

Some of the language following this part suggests that a day will come when God will remove the Adamic curse and give us peace and plenty. It may be that this refers to the Messianic Age. It clearly follows repentance.

I don’t think America’s problems are ending. I think Barack Obama has managed to delay them and increase them. Denial is like a loan; you always have to pay interest. I believe we should be trying to clean ourselves up. Instead, we’re behaving exactly the way we did before the towers fell.

Maybe we’re getting a little time to pull it together, so the people who have chosen to return to God can get themselves prepared for the problems that lie ahead.

Amos 5:13 appears to describe the time of chastisement as “an evil time.” Psalm 37 says, “The Lord knoweth the days of the upright, and their inheritance shall be forever. They shall not be ashamed in the evil time, and in the days of famine, they shall be satisfied.”

Incidentally, The Jerusalem Post is offering a subscription deal for Americans. You get their Christian edition, their international edition, and something called the Jerusalem Report. I believe it’s $49 for a year. I had a hard time understanding the guy on the phone. I decided to sign up. If you’re interested, email me and I’ll give you his email address.

Teens Coming to an End

I just realized today is Maynard’s birthday. He is 19 years old.

Here he is, in front of a closet door he ate.

More

Props to Sonny’s Barbecue in Florida City. Mike and I had dinner there, and the manager let me take two ribs home so Marv and Maynard could celebrate.

Psst…

Today I feel like I should read the book of Amos. Wonder if it means anything.

Nehemiah Shouts Across the Centuries

Yesterday I had a wonderful experience.

For a long time, I’ve prayed for God to give me scriptures to read. It’s not like you can go wrong when you open the Bible and start reading, but there is such a thing as the right scripture at the right time. So before I crack the book, I usually ask for guidance.

For months, I’ve been hearing “Nehemiah” in my head when I do this. Not every time, but very often. It got to the point where I nearly assumed it was my own imagination, giving me the same unoriginal answer over and over to shut me up.

Yesterday I had a false start with Ruth, but then I looked down at the Bible and saw that it was open to the notes at the beginning of Nehemiah. Okay, you don’t have to drop a piano on my head. Not every time. I started reading.

As background (even though I know all my readers are Bible scholars) I’ll provide some information. Solomon built the first temple in Jerusalem, in 900-something BCE. A succession of bad kings followed him. There was a lot of idolatry. As a result, in 586 BCE, on Tisha B’Av, God permitted the Babylonians to sack Jerusalem, rob the temple, and carry Jews off to Babylon to serve Nebuchadnezzar.

Around a hundred and sixty years later, Nebuchadnezzar was gone, and a Persian, Artaxerxes, ruled in his place. Nehemiah (a Jew) was his cupbearer. From a visitor to Babylon, Nehemiah heard that Jerusalem’s walls were down, and that the city was in ruins.

Nehemiah was saddened by the news, and he prayed about it, and Artaxerxes noticed his sadness. When Nehemiah told him why he was sad, Artaxerxes gave him time, power, and money to rebuild Jerusalem. Nehemiah returned to Israel and got to work. In Jerusalem, non-Jews had gained power, and they resisted him forcefully.

Many Old Testament stories, though true, are valuable for their symbolism. For example, the story of Moses foreshadows the story of Jesus. The Jews were delivered from the Angel of Death by the blood of unblemished lambs, splashed on the doorposts and lintels of their houses. We are delivered from damnation by the blood of Jesus, and our “houses” are our bodies.

I have always thought of the book of Nehemiah as a story of restoration, but until yesterday, I didn’t have a really good grip on it. I thought it was about the restoration of the church, and it is, but it’s also a guide to help individual believers to be restored.

The Biblical concept of “strongholds” is very important, but I don’t think Christians understand it very well. A stronghold is simply an area in which some entity or other has power. A house is a stronghold, and the owner should be the dominant power. A human body is a stronghold, and the believer (combined with the Holy Spirit) should be the dominant power. A nation is a stronghold. A military garrison is a stronghold.

When you look at a map, what you see is a collection of strongholds. The colors and borders define them.

Strongholds are typically defined by boundaries, which sometimes take the form of walls. Our bodies end at our skins’ surfaces. Ancient cities had immense walls. Countries have borders with defenses. Jerusalem had a wall. Temple had its own wall, and observant Jews even constructed an enclosure called the eruv, in which they were permitted to violate the Sabbath. Many eruvs exist, and the “walls” may be as insubstantial as wires.

We are told that Satan has strongholds in our lives. For example, we may have chronic sins we can’t beat on our own. Or we may have curses that repeatedly defeat us despite our best efforts.

For some reason, we are not often reminded that God has strongholds, too. A week or two ago, in my Saturday prayer group, I told everyone that the group was a stronghold. It’s like a military base. We get together in peace and safety and strengthen each other and prepare each other, and then we break apart and venture into the world to do battle.

You should be a stronghold. So should your family and your house. So should your church. These should be strongholds in which Satan’s power and presence should be minimized.

Strongholds usually have gates. Jerusalem has twelve. A stronghold has to interact with the world, so it has to be possible for things and beings to move in and out. A gate is a point of vulnerability. Let the wrong thing or person in, and you have a problem. The Trojan Horse is a great example. The Trojans brought a hollow horse past their impenetrable walls and unbreakable gate, and the Greeks inside came out and allowed other Greeks waiting beyond the wall to enter and destroy the city.

The body has gates. The five senses are examples. So is the mouth. The mouth is interesting because it shows that we have to be careful what we let out, as well as what we let in. Jesus said we were defiled by our words.

What did Nehemiah complain about when he spoke to the emperor? He said Jerusalem’s walls and gates were down, and that the Temple was in ruins. What is a backslidden believer (or someone who has never believed) like? They’re like cities without protection and without the benefits of worship and prayer. They’re like Jerusalem before Nehemiah arrived.

Human beings, even good Christians, are often (I would say generally) infested by demons. Presumably, it’s worse when you’re not a believer at all, but even a believer can be a glutton, a drug addict, an alcoholic, a kleptomaniac, a violent person with no self-control, or a compulsive gambler. If your “house” isn’t in order, you have no walls to protect you from demons or even people, and you have no relationship with God to save you from your sorry state. You are like a city with no walls and no temple. Your borders mean nothing to aggressors, and you have no refuge to which you can retreat. Enemies will come in and rule you.

In Nehemiah’s time, enemies of the Jews ruled Jerusalem from within. Three are mentioned prominently. One is Sanballat the Horonite, another is Tobiah the Ammonite, and another is Geshem the Arab. They were furious when the restoration began, and they tried to stop it (Nehemiah 2:10) Like a believer who begins his restoration by breaking a generational curse, Nehemiah informed them that they had no right to Jerusalem (Nehemiah 2:20).

Nehemiah’s enemies called a meeting of their allies (Nehemiah 4:1-3). Does this sound familiar? When a demon is cast out, it walks in dry places, and then it tries to return to the house it left, and it brings more demons with it. Satan will multiply the forces against you when he sees your walls go up and your worship resume. But your walls and your worship and your righteousness are stronger than any number of demons or human beings.

Nehemiah and the Jews responded with prayer, knowing God was more powerful than their enemies (Nehemiah 4:4).

Like the spirits who come after us when we try to return to God, these enemies were strongest at the beginning, when they still ruled openly. They flexed their muscles, threatening to kill Nehemiah and his friends (Nehemiah 4:11). How did the Jews respond? They placed warriors along the wall, to watch and guard (Nehemiah 4:13). Nehemiah reminded the Jews of God’s power (Nehemiah 4:14). They adopted a policy of carrying arms while they worked. With one hand, a man would work, and with the other, he would hold a weapon (Nehemiah 4:17). And they never removed their clothing unless they had to; they remained ready as much as possible (4:23).

This is exactly what believers need to do. Belonging to Satan’s world is like joining a gang. When you try to leave, you get a beating. Don’t be surprised. Expect it, and arm yourself. Pray, and take up the Sword of the Spirit (God’s word) so you’ll be able to repel the attacks. Stay ready; avoid sin and clothe yourself in righteousness. Sin opens your gates, lets enemies in, and gives them the legal right to afflict you. Minimize it and ask God for help. Don’t be discouraged when you fail; that’s normal. Pick your sword up, dress yourself again, and start over.

Nehemiah’s enemies didn’t get anywhere with violence, at the time when they were strongest. Nehemiah rebuilt the walls and the gates, and the power of his enemies waned.

There was a famine in Nehemiah’s time, and life in Israel was difficult (Nehemiah 5:1-5). Many Jews took advantage, lending to their brothers at high rates and taking their property. They profited from the crisis and hindered God’s work. Nehemiah persuaded them to stop, for the good of the nation (Nehemiah 4:6-13). This tells me believers have to put unity and God’s work ahead of profit. We have to share in the sacrifices of building the kingdom. An individual believer who wants to be restored has to put the kingdom first instead of letting money and comfort lead him by a ring in his nose.

Because Nehemiah built Jerusalem up and remained faithful, his enemies lost strength, just as Satan loses power over you when you return to God. The next time his enemies came at him, they were not able to attack with physical force. Knowing they had weakened, they sent word for him to negotiate. And they threatened to go to Artaxerxes and say the Jews were rebelling and building their own kingdom (Nehemiah 6:1-7).

This is what Satan does when he loses power. He can no longer use force, so he has to get you to help him. He uses persuasion and threats. False witnesses rise against you.

What did Nehemiah do? He continued to pray, and he told his enemies he was busy with God’s work, and that he had no intention of going to talk with them (Nehemiah 6:3, 6:8-10). That’s exactly what believers should do when threats and persuasion come. Don’t engage. Don’t bend. Pray and continue, and hold onto your weapons.

Like Joshua, who also rebuilt a stronghold, Nehemiah had problems with Jews who opposed him from within. Delaiah the son of Mehetabel, a double agent, came to him pretending to be a friend and a prophet. He tried to get Nehemiah to flee into the temple, driving him with a false prophecy of attack and tempting him with a promise of safety. Delaiah actually intended to spread a rumor that Nehemiah was a coward, to weaken his leadership (Nehemiah 6:10-13).

Nehemiah rebuked him and prayed to God to remember the actions of his enemies (Nehemiah 6:11, 6:14). God gave Nehemiah insight and showed him what Delaiah was up to (Nehemiah 6:12). I see this as a reminder that carnal believers can be used against us, and that if we are faithful and righteous and strong in prayer, God will warn us when those who speak in his name are working for Satan.

The priesthood had decayed badly by Nehemiah’s time. The holidays weren’t observed. The law was not taught. There were no offerings or sacrifices. After the walls were built, Nehemiah sorted out the priesthood and got them working again (Nehemiah 7:1). The city was still largely vacant, so Nehemiah made an accounting of the people (Nehemiah 7:4-73) and later, a tithe of the people were selected by lot to live in Jerusalem (Nehemiah 11:2). Judging from the text, living in Jerusalem at this time was considered service to the nation, perhaps because of hostility to the restoration. This reminds me that Christians who opt to live in the kingdom of heaven here on earth choose to subject themselves to persecution until they die. It also reminds me that a believer who has been swept clean and restored has to have a core of righteousness and power inside him in order to stay free.

Nehemiah restored offerings and sacrifices (Nehemiah 10:32-39) The priests brought out the law and read it to the people (Nehemiah 8:2-8). They acknowledged their sins and repented, as a body (Nehemiah 9:5-38), renewing their covenant with God.

A restored believer has to resume giving of himself and his wealth. He has to acknowledge God’s principles and accept his covenant. Through the Holy Spirit, symbolized here by the priests, he has to have God’s word written in his heart, and he has to agree to live by it.

You have to have the word of God in your heart, from reading the Bible, from hearing teaching, and from baptism with the Spirit. When demonic “strong men” are evicted from the stronghold which is you, something has to take their places. Something stronger than they are. If God isn’t there when they return, you can’t keep them out.

Nehemiah had to leave for a time, and when he returned, he found that Tobiah had moved into the temple and displaced the holy things that belonged there (Nehemiah 13:7-9). Tobiah was like Satan, who gets thrown out through the front door and then, thief that he is, returns through the window.

God tells you exactly what is expected of you, and you agree to it with your eyes wide open. That’s what it means when Jesus says the Shepherd comes in through the front door. Satan traps you with lies and candy. He gives you drugs or fornication or pride or wealth, and the next thing you know, his throne is inside you, on a big foundation of concrete and rebar. Chronic sin always leads to slavery.

Like Satan, Tobiah displaced the things of God. Tobiah got rid of the holy things, which symbolize God’s Spirit. Satan ruins your prayer life and diminishes God’s power in you. The psalms say, “For innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up.” “Iniquity” refers to a powerful inclination to sin, which results in chronic disobedience. Iniquity can be the result of the presence of demons which we let in through sin. Tobiah represents the power of iniquity.

What did Nehemiah do? He threw Tobiah out, brought the holy things back in, and sanctified the area anew (Nehemiah 13:8-9). You can do the same thing when the enemy sneaks back in. Cast him out, fast, pray, repent, give offerings, and cleanse yourself of the stench. If he comes back a hundred times, do it a hundred times. But he tends to give up on a given tactic after a certain number of tries.

Merchants tried to pollute the Sabbath and Jerusalem by selling things there on Saturday, and the Sabbath was profaned in other ways (Nehemiah 13:15-18). Nehemiah expelled them, just as Jesus did in the Gospels. Our flesh will always try to turn our bodies into marketplaces where righteousness is sold for trinkets. Like Nehemiah, we have to be watchful and continue fighting. It’s like taking out the trash. Taking it out once won’t solve the problem forever, but imagine what life would be like if you never took it out. It would bury you.

After the reading of the law, the Jews observed Succoth, or the Feast of Tabernacles (Nehemiah 7:13-18). On this holiday, Jews build outdoor shelters and sleep in them. To Christians, this symbolizes union with God. In the Gospels, at the transfiguration, three disciples wanted to build tabernacles for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. They wanted to build places in which they could join with these three and commune with them.

A restored Christian has God inside him, literally, through the baptism with the Spirit. We are tabernacles. Like the Succoth booths, we are temporary; our flesh eventually dies. The holiday observed in Nehemiah demonstrates that God will enter into a restored believer and be with him. This is the goal of restoration. The strong man is gone, the house is clean, and God dwells inside us to guide us, improve us, and keep us free.

Incidentally, after Nehemiah, the Jews had 400 years of history during which they were relatively free of idolatry. If you read the history of the kings of Judah and Israel, you will see how unusual that was, and how effective Nehemiah was at freeing the people and bringing them God’s blessings.

It’s not clear to me why the Jews ended up serving the Greeks and Romans later, or why they had no prophets between Malachi and Jesus. Nonetheless, Nehemiah did a remarkable work, with God’s help.

There are many other stronghold teachings in the Bible. The book of Joshua is primarily about strongholds and the need to rout demons. When Samson tore the gate of Gaza out of the ground and carried it off, he was opening a stronghold to God’s wrath, symbolically and literally. Eden was a stronghold destroyed by Satan.

My advice is, turn yourself and your family into strongholds. Sin makes you a slave and gives Satan the right to hurt you. A weak relationship with God disconnects you from the help you need and stunts your growth. Take up arms, be clothed in righteousness, and never stop praying, giving, studying, or attending church. Keep your eyes open and repel boarders. Sooner or later, the vermin will decrease, and things will start to improve for you.

We can be our own enemies. When Satan yammers from outside your walls, your flesh will listen, and its voice will plead Satan’s case. What would have happened had Nehemiah listened? There would be no Jerusalem today, 2500 years later. Israel would be part of Syria, and the Jews would not exist. Jesus would never have been born. Look what Satan can accomplish through a spiritual abortion. He attacks things early, when they’re small, to prevent a tremendous harvest in the future.

You should read the book of Nehemiah yourself, and look for other teachings on it, by people who know more about theology than I do. I’m sure there are writings that are not as half-baked as this one, which I threw together in my spare time today. Googling around, I see that other people get the same messages from it that I do.

It’s a tremendous book. I’m glad God kept poking me to read it.