Be Sure to Remove the Cartridges From Your Pocket Prior to Immersion

You could say yesterday was a good day for me.

Five weeks ago, I traveled to Clearwater to get re-baptized at an event held by The Last Reformation. Their Youtube videos convinced me that my first baptism was a farce, and they also convinced me that a real baptism would have positive supernatural effects. It’s not just a way to dedicate yourself to Jesus in front of a crowd. Since my real baptism, I have experienced new self-control. I feel much, much better.

The person who is most closely attuned to me on spiritual matters is my friend Travis. He’s a music student at the University of Miami. We have known each other for about 10 years now. We were armorbearers together at Miami’s corrupt and toxic Trinity Church. We both moved to another church, and that church dried up due to pride issues and a pedophilia scandal. We have had many, many prayer sessions together. God is changing both of us.

Before I went to Clearwater, I told a number of friends about it, but only Travis really got excited about it. A couple of others are interested, but Travis absolutely had to get what I got. He lives in a miserable county full of hateful people. He is constantly tempted by young college girls with post-2010 morals. He knows dozens of hostile, self-pitying victimhood junkies. He wants to have his desires changed. He wants power over his flesh.

Travis borrowed a car and drove up here day before yesterday. He had to work during the day, and then he got in the car and drove up here alone.

Yesterday morning, we had a discussion of baptism, and I did my best to help him understand what it was supposed to be. You’re supposed to repent of sin, for real (not just until the end of the current church service). You’re supposed to give your entire life to Jesus, putting all your desires on the altar and asking God to take whatever he wants (this is called “dying to the flesh”). You’re supposed to be baptized in the name of Jesus, not the trinity. You need to be fully immersed; sprinkling is a bizarre perversion that probably originated in cold countries.

You have to have complete faith in Jesus in order to be baptized; a baby can’t receive it. This is what Acts 8:37 tells us. Many Bibles don’t include this verse, but the historical record shows that it existed prior to the translations most Bibles rely on.

We prayed, and Travis put on white clothes (his idea). Then we had to decide where to baptize him.

My dad is now in an ALF, so for over a week, I have been working on cleaning up his bedroom suite. I shampooed the carpet with bleach. I mopped the bathroom floor with bleach, along with the doors, doorframes, counters, and tub. I keep going back and finding new things to clean. I don’t know when I’ll be completely done, but the bathroom is clean enough for a baptism. There is a huge jacuzzi tub in there. I had hoped we could use it (with nice warm water), but when Travis tried it on for size, it was too small for total immersion. That meant only one thing: we were going to have to use the pool.

When we went out to check the pool, the air temperature was 55 degrees. The water was very cold. We have had freezing nights. I felt vicarious terror when I thought about what Travis was about to do. He put his foot in the water and found out what he was in for. Nonetheless, he was determined. I got out some towels, turned up the heat in the house, and found myself a place on the patio where I could hold Travis by the hand and baptize him while getting as little water as possible on myself.

Hey, it wasn’t my baptism.

He did it. I could barely believe it. How desperate do you have to be, to sink your entire body in water that could be used to chill soda?

Here he is afterward.

We are hoping he’ll get the same kind of result I did.

I have never baptized anyone with water before. I baptized a friend with the Holy Spirit, which is not the same thing, and I helped baptize another person with the Holy Spirit. Travis is the first person I’ve put under. We have a friend in Miami who wants it, too, so Travis is going to baptize him. Our friend is another Trinity Church casualty. With any luck, no one else we know will have to come to my house in the winter and risk hypothermia. I can baptize people as well as the guys from TLR, and Travis can do it as well as I can.

To complete the experience, we got out a pistol and a couple of rifles and went shooting in my pasture. If only I had been able to get him to wear a MAGA hat and eat barbecue, the day would have been the perfect northern Florida Christian day.

I don’t have a MAGA hat. I was trying to be funny.

Travis has a talent for shooting, but he never gets to practice. Here is his pistol target, fired at 7 yards. Most people at gun ranges shoot a mess that spans about two feet. It’s remarkable, and what’s more remarkable is that many are content with that. They don’t look for instruction. Many men seem to be insecure about their marksmanship. They would rather put on special tactical pants and try to look like action movie heroes than actually learn how to shoot, because they don’t want to admit that they shoot badly.

It’s odd, because when your groups are huge, everyone can see that you shoot badly. You look bad no matter what you’re wearing. If you can’t shoot, no one cares how many zippers your 5.11 pants have. One would think insecure people would be more concerned about their shooting than their wardrobes.

Human beings are irrational.

I’m very happy about the way the day went. It’s tremendous. I was used to help Travis, and he will be used to help other people.

In other news, I talked to my new friend Gloria yesterday. Travis had to go to Orlando for a job interview, so I went to see my dad at the ALF, and while I was there, Gloria called me over.

She said my dad had been wandering around without enough clothing on, to put it mildly. I told her he was not a modest person and that I couldn’t do anything about it, but I said I was grateful for the information. Then we started talking about the new ALF I had picked for my dad.

Gloria does not like the current ALF, and I don’t blame her. It’s okay for ordinary old people who still have their faculties, but the memory care area, which is separate, is depressing and not as clean as it should be. She has blackouts from Parkinson’s, but her memory is fine, so she is not really like the other patients. She was put in memory care because she walked off during a blackout.

I told her about the place I found for my dad. One of their branches is literally 100 yards from where Gloria and I were standing. I told her both of their operations were extremely clean and that the branch close to me had a fanatical activity director who worked hard to keep everyone entertained. I told her it was cheaper than the ALF where she now lives.

She has an older sister who can move her, so she is considering calling her and setting up a visit.

I feel bad for her. She is tormented by an illness which may very well be demonic, and she is well able to perceive the problems with her living arrangements. Many memory care patients are so far gone, you could feed them cat food and bed them down on yoga mats in a common room, and they wouldn’t mind at all. The experience is much worse for someone who is still capable of functioning normally.

I told her that I would pray for her, and that I really meant it. I hope people who read about her will take up the cause.

My visit with my dad went well. Once again, he kept talking about how great he expected the future to be. He was pleased by my description of the new ALF, which he had forgotten about. He kept telling me what a wonderful son I was. He did ask about moving back home, but he didn’t harp on it or tell me I was selfish. I don’t know what’s gotten into him. I can’t help thinking God has been speaking to him, preparing him for salvation.

It’s wonderful to look forward to seeing my dad instead of dreading it. I didn’t think that would ever happen.

I am hoping some of the other friends I communicated with will be baptized. Everyone needs to be properly equipped in this world. I don’t want to freeze anyone, but the need for baptism is urgent. In the Bible, new believers were baptized immediately after converting. I’m sure Satan is doing his best to keep them procrastinating.

While Travis was trying to come up here, he lost his wallet in an Uber car, and he called me, distrought. I think I wrote about this already. We had already talked about the certainty that Satan would try to wreck our plans, and we had prayed about it. I spoke God’s help to Travis in finding his wallet, and I repeated the words God gave me: “I am a son of God, and this is how things are supposed to work.” I refused to worry about it.

A few hours later, I hadn’t heard from Travis, so I texted. He said he had the wallet. My response: “Ha.”

Whenever you decide to obey God, Satan will look for a way to ruin it. Never get angry at God because you tried to serve him and then ran into trouble. Expect it, and pray about it before it happens.

I don’t know what today will bring, but after yesterday, I feel like I have already received everything from this weekend that I could have asked for. Now I look forward to hearing about the people Travis baptizes.