There is no Power Without Responsibility

I’m always disturbed when one of my friends starts to be a fanboi for a successful preacher. Suddenly, instead of hearing about his or her testimony–the astounding things God has done in his or her life–I start hearing about Lonnie Ray McCracken’s latest 3-hour sermon. Instead of my friend’s testimony, which is what I want to hear, I hear Lonnie Ray’s. Which may or may not be BS.

That makes complete sense, doesn’t it? I’m getting a revelation right now. It makes sense that focusing on a teacher would stunt your testimony. When you look at a man instead of God, the man blocks whatever God is trying to send you.

This blog post is changing direction, so I will let it happen.

The New Testament says there were times when a sick person would be healed by the shadow of a Christian. Tom Fischer, the no-jet-having, non-rich street evangelist I’ve been watching, has videos where he heals people by casting his shadow on their afflicted areas.

I watched these videos and received thoughts about eclipses as he cast his shadow. It was as if Satan were a star, shining destructive radiation on people, and Tom Fischer blocked it, like a moon coming between the sun and the earth.

I have often thought that God gave us the sun to symbolize himself and the moon to symbolize Satan. Unbelievers think it’s a coincidence that the sun’s apparent diameter is the same as the moon’s. That’s quite a coincidence. It’s so improbable, it’s hard to comprehend how it could happen. I think the moon appears to be the same size as the sun because God wanted to show us how Satan, who is small and generates no power of his own, can look just as big as God, who is far greater, simply by being closer to us.

The moon and planets are dark. They shine only with the sun’s light.

I believe we have eclipses to show us how a tiny, useless being can come between God and us and make himself seem strong and God weak.

When Tom Fischer stood between the sun and sick people, to me it seemed as if he were eclipsing Satan.

I know I’m using the sun to represent Satan, and I used it to represent God a few words back, but no analogy is perfect, and besides, Satan is the god of this world, according to Jesus.

When a person gets sucked up into celebrity worship and turns a preacher into a little god, it’s as if that preacher performs an eclipse. God is behind him, telling you things and sending you help, but whatever God sends is blocked by the preacher or bent and distorted as it goes around his edges.

Why am I saying this? Because Tom Fischer isn’t my god. I’ve been writing about him a lot, but he’s not my father, and I am not going to call him “pastor” or send him money.

Well. I might send a few bucks to support his street ministry. But I’m not sure about that.

I’m writing all this because I saw a neat Tom Fischer video today, and I wanted to be able to write about it without giving people the impression that I’ve attached myself to a new false god. I still go directly to the source, every day, all day. If Tom Fischer disagrees with the source, I will discard what Tom Fischer says.

I just watched a video in which Tom discusses the difficulty of healing Christians. That’s a great topic. He says it’s actually much easier to heal total heathens than Christians. Why? Because we are more accountable!

I guess I’ll pick on my old churches–Trinity Church and New Dawn Ministries–again. Why not? Trinity is a dangerous, destructive church, and New Dawn Ministries was obliterated and utterly disgraced because of pride and dishonesty. Might as well speak the truth when it can help people. I know there are individuals from these churches who have read my blog in the past, even though they don’t talk about it. The pastors have read it. Think they had the guts to talk to me about it? Come on! Never! If you took all the bone and tissue from the spines of the folks who run Trinity Church, you couldn’t build a backbone for a mouse.

Maybe things I write will get back to them, and it will help them, or maybe things I write will help people they enslave. I don’t know if anyone from these churches still comes here.

People said I criticized Trinity in “the wrong way.” I admit, I called the bigwigs there “idiots,” and I probably should have used a different word. But other than that, I have nothing to apologize for. I was much nicer than Jesus and Moses.

When you kick a rat’s den open and let the sunshine in, the rats will squeak. That’s life.

A friend of mine told me something God told her: if God tells you to tell someone something, you’re not responsible for what they do with it. You’re just carrying a package. Put it down and go on your merry way.

The folks who thought I was too harsh were brainwashed. They had become toadies. They needed to be slapped awake. They needed to see someone contradict their corrupt, uninformed leaders and throw cold water on them. They needed to know I could do that without being struck by fire from heaven. People said, “Touch not my anointed,” but in reality, I was anointed to criticize. Someone had to do it.

New Dawn dried up and died, disproving years of rosy “prophecies,” and Trinity is a financial and spiritual mess. Meanwhile, things are going very well for me, and I am experiencing something I have dreamed of for a long time: rural life far from Miami. I almost can’t believe I’m here. When people said I was disloyal and so on, I said something like, “May God judge between us,” and he did. I am not a good person, and I don’t deserve the good things I get. I’m not saying I’m a great guy or that God rewards me for being wonderful. I’m saying I did a better job of obeying, in this particular set of controversies, and I came out better than the people who were (are) in rebellion.

If you want to know who’s anointed and who’s not, look at the long term and see who remains on his feet.

What could be worse than reviling someone who is telling you what God wants you to hear? Shooting a friend because you’re drunk is very bad, but it can’t compare to sawing a prophet in half because he relays a word from God. I’m not saying I’m a prophet, but God did tell me a few things, and I got ostracized by ignorant people for passing them on.

The things God told these people could have been so helpful it would have amazed them. They turned a blessing into a curse.

I’m going to pick on these churches in ways I didn’t foresee when I said I was going to pick on them. I thought I would criticize them for ignoring the need for repentance, but I think I will also criticize them for doing evil when they knew better. It’s sort of the same thing, really.

The leaders at these churches knew they were wrong. Rich Wilkerson, for example, knew the money-in/money-out doctrine he learned from Steve Munsey was not true, and he knew he was taking money, without God’s permission, from poor people. People like me dropped off packages of truth, and the leaders let them sit outside the doors in the rain. As a result, these churches failed. They could not get healed. Trinity is still open, but it’s hollow and powerless. It’s filthy. New Dawn is gone completely, and several lives have been shattered by systematic sexual predation.

In the video I watched today, Tom Fischer says many Christians have physical problems that are the direct result of sin of which they refuse to repent. Like the preachers at these awful churches, people know they shouldn’t continue doing wrong. They shouldn’t smoke tobacco or fornicate or use drugs or whatever. They continue, and then when a healer shows up and prays with complete faith, nothing good happens. The sin people cling to eclipses the healing power. The devil puts out a “Do not Disturb” sign, and God respects it. Satan has rights.

Smoking tobacco is a sin, by the way. Nicotine is a drug, and cigarette smokers are hard core drug addicts. Every year, tobacco gives millions of people vile diseases and causes them to die, shriveled and incapacitated, before their time, in agony. That’s not the type of outcome which is associated with something that isn’t a sin.

Smoking has had a big impact in the south. I see the results here in Ocala when I take my dad to clinics and hospitals. People with blue skin stagger in, dragging tanks behind them, with tubes in their noses. There are a lot of them. I don’t see the cancer patients. They’re wasting away, and/or screaming in pain, in privacy.

It always amazes me that people are willing to smoke cigarettes. They don’t even get you high. I understand heroin addicts. I’d love to try heroin myself, if it weren’t a sin. Opiates feel wonderful. But to let someone cut your withered lung out so you can suck on a burning weed that does almost nothing for you? That decision is incomprehensible to me.

I used to smoke an occasional cigar. That was stupid, and I regret it. It was wrong. But cigarettes? They’re on a different level. They’re addictive. They are extremely likely to give you cancer. They are guaranteed to damage your lungs badly. Why not just jump off a building?

Other people’s sins always look stupid to me. Thank goodness I’m perfect.

At New Dawn Ministries, we had a head deacon named Ozzie. He had breast cancer. I knew him for a couple of years. During that time, he slowly shrank until he was a stick of a man. He was the former brother in law of the pastor’s wife, if memory serves. He was very close to the pastors. They used to put him in front of the church and call him “Ozzie healed of the Lord.” They tried to cast devils out of him. People fasted for him.

I prayed for him. I had tremendous faith that he would be healed. I felt supernatural faith, telling me it was a done deal. Ozzie was one of my projects.

During this time, God was teaching me about pride. I knew I had to get rid of my inquities, and pride was one of them. I saw that people at the church were very proud.

The pastor’s son, a drug enthusiast and possible dealer with a terrible attitude toward adults, was probably the proudest person there, even though he had much more to be ashamed of than a lot of people. He had absolutely nothing to be proud of. He couldn’t hold a fast food job. He had no money. He had no education. He had no discernible talents. His personality was off-putting. But he glowed with pride. He thought he was a genius. I think he smirked even in his sleep.

The pastors were proud. You could not tell them one single thing. If they had been on fire, and you had told them you needed to throw water on them, they would have burned to death while telling you they didn’t need your help.

These were not impressive people. They were uneducated. They were not particularly attractive or gifted. They hadn’t accomplished much in life. Their church was failing. It had gone from filling an entire building to occupying a tiny rented room in that same building. But they behaved like royalty.

Their “house prophet,” a guy named George, used to stand up and yell for long periods, telling everyone how thrilled God was with New Dawn. We were doing everything right. God was going to give us a big building and this and that. He told a lady I know she was going to have twins. He told me God was about to bring me a wonderful wife. He was always wrong. I came to understand that it was dangerous to let George prophesy over you, because it gave God incentive to prove him wrong.

George never said anything negative, and the pastors maintained that prophets were only supposed to say positive things.

They didn’t mind saying negative things about people, so you have to marvel at the cognitive dissonance.

Interesting story about George: he went to Africa with an older minister. They ministered to people they met. One man was very happy to hear about Jesus. He had lunch with George and the other man. To show George his love, he insisted on feeding him from his own hand. It was some kind of gross African custom.

George, like me, was a germophobe. He didn’t want anything dirty near him. He had to let a man put his nasty hand in food and shove it in his mouth. To me, that meant something. George had used his mouth to do a lot of damage, and God used his mouth to chastise him. Unclean things went out, so unclean things went in. Anyhow, I took it that way.

I told people what God had been telling me about pride and iniquity. He had been showing me I needed to deal with these things in myself, and I wanted other people to know, so they could share the benefit. I told them they needed to repent if they wanted their problems solved. I made them angry. No one listened. Especially Ozzie. “Everything is covered by the blood.” “Faith is all that matters.”

Ozzie dropped dead.

The tumors went to his brain, he went to a hospice, he started raving, and then he was gone.

Ozzie was just as proud as the pastors. This is odd, because he didn’t get excited about God until he was diagnosed. I can understand how a lifelong Christian with great knowledge and a good testimony could be proud, but that wasn’t Ozzie. Like me, he ran to God after a long time in rebellion, because things weren’t working out. He hadn’t led a good life. Adultery had been a major problem.

It was hard to talk laterally to Ozzie. You had to talk up, as though you were talking to someone on a throne. I say this as an older man he should have spoken to with a little honor. He treated me like a child. He was a nice guy, but he knew all the answers.

Ozzie’s death shook the church, and it shook me. I was not used to having great faith and seeing no results. It made me wonder what I could trust. It was like the earth started to crack under me.

Eventually, God told me this: the church had let Ozzie down by not helping him repent. People there got furious when repentance and humility were discussed. They said I was blaming people for their diseases, which is…TRUE. Jesus sometimes blamed people for their diseases, so I should, too.

We had prayed for Ozzie, and God had sent faith, but we had never warned Ozzie about his pride and denial. Actually, I made an effort, but it never caught on or went anywhere. In the end, pride and denial eclipsed God. They were in the way.

Hosea said people were destroyed for lack of knowledge, and it’s still true. And when God sends knowledge, people spit it back up.

To get back to the video I watched today, Ozzie was a classic case of a Christian who could not be healed because he was in rebellion.

In a way, he was destroyed for lack of knowledge. He had the knowledge that he needed to repent and work on pride, because he had heard it from me and maybe from others. He certainly should have seen it in the Bible. He rejected that knowledge, so it was as though he didn’t have it. It did him no good. In another way, he was destroyed because he had knowledge. He knew he was proud. He knew he needed to repent. He was held accountable for that knowledge. Because he knew and did nothing, he could not get healed.

The package was delivered, but Ozzie didn’t sign for it.

Christians are held to a higher standard than other people. If you know God at all, you have to snap out of your complacency and realize the consequences of your deliberate sins will be much worse than the consequences ignorant people face.

Here is why some of the Pharisees Jesus dealt with are burning in hell right now and will remain there forever:

Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth.

In at least one case, Jesus equated healing with forgiveness. How can you forgive someone who is, at that moment, sinning with no plans to stop? What’s the point? It’s like trying to wash a car while you drive it through the mud.

He also said this:

And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.

But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.

A lot of my problems can be traced to this principle. God visited me personally in 1986 and told me what I needed to do, and I wandered off eventually and did whatever I wanted. I did not take him seriously.

Actually, all of my problems can be traced to this. When I got away from God, I stopped praying. God has since told me, “All of your problems are caused by lack of prayer.”

“All.”

I cause my own problems. Maybe you don’t, because you’re a victim and you’re incredibly holy. My hat is off to you. I don’t buy it, but anyway, hooray for you.

Here is the video I watched. I couldn’t find anything wrong with what he said, and I think it will benefit you.

To go off on a tangent, I had an extraordinary experience last night. It’s something I’ve been praying for. I really need this kind of thing.

I was tempted, and I started to fall into a sinful activity. I really did not want to do it. I am sick of sin.

I got close to sinning, but I didn’t feel sufficiently compelled to close the deal. In this life, I feel urges to do evil, and I feel countering urges to do good, and many, many times, the evil urges have been too strong to fight. Last night, I suddenly felt like the vote was 70/30 against sin, and that was plenty. Suddenly I just wasn’t up for sin. I thought of it the way I would ordinarily think of working on my taxes or cleaning the kitchen. I wanted to put it off and not think about it. I was very relieved.

I often see sin and righteousness the way I see the flow of money in a casino. To make money running a casino–to ruin people’s lives and destroy children’s inheritances–you don’t have to rig the games so people lose all the time. In fact, that will assure you of going out of business. No one will show up to play. What you do is rig the games so you have a very small edge. I don’t know what that edge is in any particular game, but my understanding is that the house’s advantage is generally under 10%.

A person can go into a casino and gamble for a very long time before losing all the money he brings with him. In the end, the result is the same as if he had blown everything on one hand of cards, but the loss can be very gradual.

When it comes to sin, I find that my heart and mind are divided. I want to do the right thing, but when it comes to sins I can’t get past, the urge to do the wrong thing has a small edge. If 55% of me wants to sin, and 45% wants me to do right, I will eventually break down and sin. It’s like I’m arm-wrestling someone stronger than me. I can resist for a while, but my arm will eventually go down. I can’t carry the load indefinitely by myself.

In order to be able to refrain from sinning, all I need is a tiny edge. That’s what I felt last night. It’s enough.

Wanting to sin isn’t sin. Being tempted isn’t sin. It’s normal to want money, things, sex, and so on. If you resist successfully, you’re blameless, even if you wanted to sin very badly. You may have an iniquity–an unnecessary and unhealthy urge–you need to get rid of. You may have demons that need to be cast out. But you haven’t committed a violation. A violation is worse than an urge, because it opens the door and gives the enemy more power over you.

God can put his righteousness in you. We don’t have to avoid sin purely through our own willpower. I know this because God has changed my desires before. It’s something to strive to get. I am really hoping to get more of this.

I don’t care at all about the credit. I am past that. I would be completely happy to have God send an angel to slap my face when I want to sin. I don’t care. I don’t care. I’ll be happy to go on national TV and tell the world I can’t stop sinning without supernatural intervention. I just want a clean life.

It’s better to avoid unnecessary sin in the first place than to indulge in sin and develop compelling habits–iniquities–and have to get God to remove them. Unfortunately, I’ve done what I’ve done, so I have things to deal with. If there’s any sin you haven’t tried yet, and you’re thinking of giving it a shot, take my advice and forget about it. You may feel like you’re picking up something very light right now, but eventually it will be very heavy, and you won’t be allowed to put it down.