There are no Stars in Hell

God’s training program continues to unfold. Usually, it’s pleasant. Sometimes it’s not. It’s always profitable.

The two big themes right now seem to be correction (nothing new) and relief from demonic activity.

I ask God for a lot of good things, and a lot of them are things I expect to sting. I don’t think too much about the prospect of my own suffering when I pray. It will come soon enough whether I think about it or not, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because when you need something, you have to get it, whether or not it hurts. You wouldn’t reject an important operation because the doctor said you would have pain afterward.

For a long time, I’ve been asking God to help me accept criticism and admit fault. I don’t want to live on a high horse. I need all sorts of correction, and if I can’t bite the bullet and accept it, it won’t take effect. If I reject a correction, God will either give me something worse or give up, and I would like to avoid both of those things.

I have learned to try not to get on the high horse to start with, and that’s not so hard. What’s hard is admitting it when I get knocked off.

It’s somewhat difficult for me to perceive what’s wrong with me, but changing myself once I’m aware is even harder. In reality, it’s not possible. I can make little adjustments in myself, like an astronaut using retro rockets to make minor course corrections, but that’s about it. I created strongholds of bad behavior and attitudes in myself with the help of powerful spirits. Only another spirit can set me free.

Demons love pride. It’s their armor. They sit in you behind their armor, listening to arrows of correction as they bounce off. That’s bad, and now we have a problem that makes it worse. For the first time in Christian history, we have a culture that teaches us that pride is a virtue. We are taught to strive to be proud. Even as recently as 1960, we knew better. What happened to us? Was it the Sixties? We started celebrating pride, not realizing we were sealing demons inside us and helping them bring friends in.

Not long ago, I said something very ugly and unnecessary, and it hurt someone. Afterward, I was oblivious, as though I hadn’t done anything wrong. I can’t explain it. I had a supernatural blind spot. The victim was kind enough to let me know what I had done, and when I got that information, I was amazed. It was as though I were hearing about something someone else had done. I had done something I hate doing.

I felt very bad. I couldn’t eat. I ended up taking generic Imodium and Zantac so I could face lunch.

I was forgiven, but I don’t know if things will ever be quite the same. If not, I can’t complain. I don’t have anyone else to point the finger at. The best I can do is to keep working at it in prayer.

I’ve learned a few things as God has worked with me. I’ve learned that I can have an inquity I hate. To pull an example out of a hat, it’s possible for a person who hates drug addiction to be addicted and to have a demon infestation related to it. I’ve also learned I can have iniquities I don’t even know about.

The other day God told me something very surprising. He said I had a spirit of “church-worship.” That was not something I foresaw. As I understand it, he was talking about a spirit that wants me to worship pastors instead of God and put the success of churches above the success of the Holy Spirit.

I have no desire to have a position in a church or get heavily involved. I don’t want to sit and be taught doctrine any more. I would like to go just to be among Christians, but I don’t expect to learn much, and you would have to hold a gun on me to get me to accept a title. I have a desire to see megachurches dry up and vanish, and I long for a time in which people are so aligned with God they don’t need to build organizations and buy buildings. I feel a little sick when I see a church named after a human being, like “Andrew Wommack Ministries.” I don’t feel like a church-worship person. But I know what God said.

Maybe it’s something that lies dormant until it’s awakened.

I knew someone whose father was a Muslim. Presumably, there weren’t a lot of drinkers in the father’s line, because Muslims are not supposed to touch liquor. This individual drank a great deal, habitually. It was startling to watch this person put it away, night after night. I used to wonder if there was a dormant alcoholism curse in their family. With no alcohol around to expose it, an alcoholism curse might never manifest. I wonder if the church-worship spirit is like that.

I have fallen into church-worship in the past. I supported people who should never have been able to fool any intelligent person. A long time ago, I actually supported Robert Tilton, which is about as low as you can go.

I thought church-worship wasn’t a problem any more, but maybe it’s still there, hoping to jump out and take over.

This isn’t the first time God has surprised me like this. He told me I had a spirit of murder and a spirit of antichrist. I would never have figured those things out on my own. He was talking about things I truly hated. I didn’t think they could get me to cooperate, but now I know that I did. Murder manifested in rotten things I said and thought. The spirit of antichrist manifested in embarrassment I felt over being associated with “holy rollers.” Even when I overcame and ignored these things, they were still there.

I don’t know everything, but I know what spirits do inside me. They make my interior like hell. They make it a place of anger, fear, filth, and torment. When I listen to them, I let filth in. I think about people in a way which is like holding them captive in my mind and torturing them. I listen to spirits of fear, and I worry. I know I’m supposed to be like heaven in my heart. I’m supposed to be a place of love and peace. A temple.

This morning I was thinking about this, and I thought about the stories I’ve heard about hell. People who say they’ve seen it often say the individuals there had a burning desire to tell people on earth not to follow them.

That made me think about myself. I put a lot of nasty things in myself. I made myself like a little portable hell.

I have often thought my job was to help people become like me. By that I mean I thought I was supposed to help people get baptized with the Holy Spirit and hear from God and be corrected and repaired. In view of the hell analogy, I am forced to think that my actual job is to help people avoid becoming like me.

I screwed up very badly when I was in my twenties. God gave me the key to a successful life, and I discarded it. I didn’t maintain a prayer habit. I let all sorts of spirits in to rule me. I turned my inner world into a little hell. I should be helping younger people avoid that.

I know younger people who have serious problems, and some of them listen to me and look up to me. Sometimes I remind them that their lives should be better than mine. I tell them they’re doing much better than I was at their ages, and that when they’re as old as I am, they will be much better off than I am.

I have wondered what their future perceptions of me would be. Decades from now, when they look back and understand how badly I performed as a Christian, will they wish they had never known me? Will they feel contempt for me?

It doesn’t really matter. Other people’s esteem doesn’t put food on my table, and the objective isn’t to make people admire me. It’s to get them connected with God. Directly.

I no longer watch network TV, and I spend very little time watching reality TV. I watch old movies when I need empty distraction. Sometimes I look stars up to learn about them. Hedy Lamarr invented something that is supposedly the basis of wifi. Jimmy Stewart was an Air Force general. I remember little things like this, so I go to the Internet to find out more.

Lately Errol Flynn has been featured prominently on Turner Classic Movies. I didn’t really know who he was. While I was watching him, I thought about rumors I had heard. Some people think he collaborated with the Nazis. I looked him up.

Man, was I surprised. The Nazi business seems shaky, but I learned a lot of other things. He was vile. He had as much sex as humanly possible. He owned and lived in a hotel in Jamaica, and he used to get penicillin injections before his frequent visits to the local brothels because he thought it gave him 6 hours of immunity to syphilis. He drank constantly. He was tried for statutory rape. He had one-way mirrors and peepholes installed in his house so he could watch guests. He couldn’t serve in world War Two because he had VD and other health problems related to debauchery. He used opium and cocaine. He used to expose himself. He would sit down to dinner naked with his own mother.

Shortly before he died at the age of 50, he wrote an autobiography called, My Wicked, Wicked Ways. He was proud of himself. The book was so filthy, it had to be edited for the public.

His evil nature surprised me, but I was even more impressed by the contrast between his onscreen persona and the man behind it. In movies, he’s charming. He’s self-deprecating. He’s decent and unselfish. He makes you think he has to be somewhat like that in real life. No such luck!

I learned that the movie My Favorite Year is about him. Mel Brooks worked for Sid Caesar in the Fifties, and Flynn appeared on his show. Brooks had to babysit Flynn to make sure he showed up and did his job. The Peter O’Toole character in the movie is based on Flynn.

In the movie, the Brooks character shows O’Toole that deep in his dissipated heart, he really is the noble character he played. It’s a moment of redemption. In real life, nothing like that happened. Flynn was never redeemed. He dropped dead from a heart attack, happy in his sins, and the coroner found him so diseased and atrophied he compared him to an octogenarian.

It makes me think about the contrast between what I am and what I want people to think I am.

Last night I was watching some movie or other with the birds, and TCM showed the faces of a bunch of stars, zipping by the screen. TCM was celebrating them like Greeks lionizing the false gods of the pantheon. I thought about Flynn, and I thought about the other people I was seeing, many of whom were no better. I knew most of them were in hell.

People who go to hell don’t disappear. Everyone who has gone to hell is still there, suffering more than we can imagine. They’re all conscious right now.

It seemed like a cruel joke. These people were in hell, crying in agony, wishing they could tell people not to imitate them, and here Satan was, using images of their happy faces to make people admire them and want to be like them. Think how you would feel, in hell with maggots eating your bones, looking up and seeing naive human beings staring at your image and wanting to pattern themselves after you.

The world is very perverse. It’s full of deception and traps, and it’s a huge mistake to take it at face value and get caught up in the whirlpool.

Trusting human beings too much is very dangerous.

All of this knowledge is good. It tastes harsh, but the effect is worth it.

I hope you won’t make too much of bad examples. There is only one true way, and he ascended 2000 years ago.