But I Do Believe I’ve Had Enough

I don’t blog my travels in real time, so I am writing this on January 4, in Hickory, North Carolina, and I will publish it when I get back to Florida.

Today I went to an open house held by The Last Reformation near Connelly Springs, North Carolina. This is their second open house. They are leasing a new headquarters in hopes of buying it. They kept quiet about the location for a long time, but now it’s no secret, so I will tell you about it. It’s a former resort in the hills. It used to be known as Pine Mountain Resort, and it’s located beside a golf course which belongs to a gated community called Pine Mountain Estates.

It’s not clear to me how much property they own. An Internet source says something about 50 acres. They have a big hotel and a three-story restaurant which is maybe 200 yards away. The hotel is like a circa-1960 Holiday Inn. It’s a long building made of concrete and corrugated steel with Spartan rooms opening onto verandas. There is an office/lounge/cafe area in the middle, and they have a pool out back.

The main building needs a roof very badly. It was raining for part of the day today, and water was pouring in through various areas. They had rigged sheets of plastic up to divert it away from the building. If they can get the roof together, my guess is that they will have a perfectly serviceable headquarters. I’m not sure they understand how important a roof is. It’s more important than walls or a floor. When your roof leaks, everything under it will eventually be destroyed.

I don’t understand how the roof ended up like this. I know roofs deteriorate, but this one is like a sieve.

The restaurant’s roof seems to be in much better shape. I did not see any obvious problems.

The land is very nice. It’s in a very hilly area. The woods have obviously been timbered in the not-too-distant past, so most of the trees are under a foot thick, but there is a variety of hardwoods, and there are tall white pines. There are also lots of mountain laurels.

I drove to a hotel in South Carolina yesterday, and today I finished the trip. When I started out this morning, I was not all that far from Savannah, which appears to be situated in a swamp. As I drove, the landscape developed a little altitude, and I started to see real trees. At some point, there was a transition that marked the beginning of real Appalachian scenery, and I felt like getting out and kissing the ground. Given that mindset, it was a real treat to see mountain laurels. I considered grabbing a leaf to take home with me.

I don’t know why Appalachia is suddenly so attractive to me. It has to be God. I felt a thrill of relief when I crossed the Florida line on the way north, and it disturbed me. I love Ocala. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for my home. It’s perfectly normal to be glad you’re north of Miami, but I’m surprised to see that I was happy to get away from northern Florida.

It was a real treat to drive on the twisty roads on the final approach to the resort. I learned to drive on roads like that in Kentucky, and that’s why I don’t drive like a tourist up here. My family had a cabin in North Carolina in the 1970’s, and there were a lot of Florida people up there. My mother used to make fun of them for riding their brakes and creeping around curves. They had no idea what they were doing. I’m grateful I know how to drive here. It would be really nice to have a manual transmission here. Automatics don’t really work well with hills.

When I got to the property, there were a lot of cars there. TRL has students, and they live on the property, so they accounted for some of the cars. There was also a bus belonging to a family of Mennonites. Yes, there are now Mennonites who speak in tongues. I have to wonder how that goes over with their relatives.

There were a lot of people there. Kids were everywhere. I introduced myself to some people, and a lady named Christina took us for a tour. She’s from Denmark, like Torben Sondergaard and a lot of the TRL early adaptors. She showed us the roof issues.

Torben and his family live in one end of the hotel building, which, I suppose, is now a dormitory. Other rooms contain students and visitors.

I spent quite a while talking to a lady from somewhere on the North Carolina coast. She’s a student at the school. We had a long conversation with a local Chinese lady who became a Christian in 2015. We tried to give her guidance. She belongs to an Assemblies of God church, but that denomination, while tolerant of the Holy Spirit, is not in great shape. It spawned a lot of the money preachers.

At around 4 p.m., Torben gave a talk. He brought up a young man who went through their Luke 10 school. They have more than one program. The Luke 10 people divide into groups and go out and evangelize, relying on God to provide them with things like food and shelter. The young man had a wild testimony about the things God did for his team. I’ll just link to a video in which he tells the same story. There is no point in rehashing it in print.

Torben said TLR was about to come to Florida for a long campaign. They’re looking for people to let them stay in their homes. I asked God if I should volunteer. I have a big house, multiple bedrooms, and a pool for baptism. I felt the answer was that I should not offer, but that I should agree if they asked. No one asked, so that’s how that went.

They put a portable hot tub on the deck at the restaurant, and a bunch of people got baptized. It was below 50 degrees outside. I was impressed with their determination. Everyone came out of the tub speaking in tongues.

They also prayed for people in the restaurant. I wanted prayer. I have been having pain in the joints at the bases of my thumbs, and I think whatever spirit gave my mother rheumatoid arthritis has been after me. I wanted help with that. I also wanted deliverance from spirits of fear, unbelief, and worry. Seems like they come for me every morning.

A young Dane named Matt prayed for me. As he prayed, the problems with my thumbs got so faint I could not be sure they were still there. Oddly, almost all of the joint soreness went away about two days ago for no clear reason, so it was not easy to find it today in order to give Matt feedback. Anyway, he was very helpful. I feel some soreness now, so I think more work has to be done.

I have asked God if there is some problem with my personality that gives joint problems a right to bother me, but I believe he has told me that it’s just an opportunistic spirit that has no right to be here. Not every illness or evil spirit comes to you because of something you’re doing wrong.

Out of the blue, Matt asked if I had lower back pain. I do not. At least not chronically. I have strained myself from time to time, causing temporary problems. I told him all this, and he had me sit with my back against a chair so he could check to see if my legs were the same length. Christian healers typically do this for people with back pain.

It turned out my left leg was slightly shorter, so he told it to grow out. My leg twitched a little, and before long, both heels were level. He told me to walk around, so I did. I couldn’t say I felt any different, though.

I’m not going to tell you I was healed, or even that there was anything wrong with me. Just that my leg did twitch, and it did seem to grow out. I can’t swear it wasn’t the power of suggestion.

While he was talking to me, I started to feel a little dizzy. He and a young lady told any spirit that was causing it to be gone. I think it was just the Holy Spirit, however. It was NOT the power of suggestion. It was real.

Here’s something odd: I started to feel a little pain in my lower back (also real). It was very slight. I don’t feel it now. I started to wonder what was going on. You don’t expect to receive prayer for healing and then find you have a problem you didn’t have before.

He said it might be taking me some time to get used to the change. Don’t ask me to explain. I’m just telling you what happened.

I did not see anyone else get a miraculous healing, but I didn’t go around looking to see what was happening, and I left before the testimonies started.

I heard a lady say she was “from this area.” I had been marveling at the lack of Southern accents among those present, so I asked if she was from North Carolina. She said she was from Louisville. I guess “this area” was intended broadly. She said she and her husband had sold everything they had and bought an Airstream trailer. They went to Denmark and studied at the original Jesus Center with Torben.

I guess he affects a lot of people that way. Actually, I hope it’s the Holy Spirit and not Torben.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m burdened with too many objects and too much real estate. Many people give up all their worldly ties so they can travel and serve God. I don’t think he wants this for me, though. I want to be rooted in one place. I feel that he keeps telling me to have a house and keep my tools.

Among charismatics, there may be a tendency to condemn people who won’t give everything up and travel around, but God probably doesn’t require this of everyone. We all have different desires. I would go nuts, living out of a Winnebago. I want to own some soil, and I don’t want to look over my hedge and see my neighbor standing around in a tank top with a beer in his hand.

It really seems like Christians admire people who spend their lives traveling, and that they look down on those who don’t. There are so many people near you who need evangelizing; can you really say you need to go to Africa or Mexico? Africa is full of African evangelists, by the way. A lot of people don’t know that.

After all the healing and baptisms, there was a long period where I didn’t seem to connect with anyone, so I took off and headed for Chick-fil-A and my hotel. I felt that whatever God wanted to happen to me at the Jesus Center had happened, and that there was no point in hanging around. I didn’t make new friends. The only thing I said to Torben was “hi,” when he welcomed me.

I am still not planning to join TLR. It’s a denomination now, whether they know it or not. When you have classes, a curriculum, a headquarters, and a name, you’re a denomination. I can’t have a board of directors or a handbook between me and God. I think what they’re doing right now is right for many people, but I can’t get too close. Don’t ask me why.

I don’t think they’re frauds. I don’t think TLR is a cult, although it may become one if they don’t watch it. I’m just sure God does not want me to join.

Many of the people who attended the open house were Europeans. I suppose they knew Torben in Denmark. It seemed like most of the others were not Southerners. That surprised me, because Southerners seem to own charismatic Christianity, and the Jesus Center is situated in North Carolina. They told me they hadn’t gotten too close to their neighbors yet.

They call this place “The Jesus Center” and “The Ark.” I don’t know if they’ve settled on an official name. For a long time, I’ve believed that God was moving people to rural areas to keep them safe, and TLR clearly has the same idea. I’m sure urban mobs will be traveling around killing Christians before long, and I think God wants the elect to be so far from lazy leftist handout-lovers, they won’t have the gumption to get in cars and come to us.

The Ark is certainly a good place to be in that scenario. It must be 15 miles from the nearest limited-access highway, and you have to take narrow, winding roads to get there. Once you’re there, you can’t use your phone to get home unless someone lets you use their wifi to get it started. Angry mobs from inner cities will have a very hard time reaching places like The Ark. They’ll exhaust themselves in the cities, suburbs, and relatively accessible rural areas. If you’re too lazy to work for a living or take care of your family, you’re not going to work hard to reach people so you can persecute them. Places like The Ark will not be attacked until the easy pickings are exhausted.

You can see this principle in action today. When there are riots, the perpetrators, who are invariably leftists, don’t even leave their own neighborhoods. They destroy the local stores they depend on for food and other necessities, and then they complain that big businesses won’t open locations in their areas.

I can see why God wants me in an area like the one where The Ark is located.

Here is what Psalm 91 says: “Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most high, thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.” It says, “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee; only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.” People who have been moved out of cities will have to sit by and watch while the people they left behind are slaughtered. It’s very consistent with similar things that happened in the Bible.

Torben is a huge Trump fan. There are ignorant American charismatics who think Trump is God’s enemy and that Obama was a messiah figure, but Torben, a Dane, is aware that leftists are going to come after us, and he says Trump is our friend. He says persecution will fall on us after Trump leaves office, or at least after conservatives lose their political power. It’s amazing that he can see this while so many black, Hispanic, and coastal charismatics can’t. It’s strange to see a European from a left-leaning country see things so clearly.

Supposedly, charismatics in Europe are much more supportive of Trump. This is what I was told today. How can that be? I guess it’s because the charismatic church in Europe is already an underground movement used to rejection. Underground churches are supposedly stronger. It takes determination and sincerity to be a charismatic in Europe. Here, any lazy, worldly person can join a charismatic money church, listen to someone like John Gray or Richie Wilkerson, and continue to serve the devil.

I have no idea how to find the property God wants me to have, but I suppose locating it was never my job anyway. I’ll go back home and wait to see what he wants me to do.

I’m very glad I came to the open house. I hope one day I’ll have more strong Christian friends, and that I won’t have to take long drives to be among them, but until then, trips like this will be very helpful. Right now, there is no one near me who is really on the same frequency.

MORE

I am home. It’s January 6. I spent the night in Georgia, and I made it to my house this afternoon.

It’s great to be in my own house. I was getting a little too comfortable in hotel rooms. Before Christmas, I ordered myself some genuine Hampton Inn pillows, which are wonderful. If I keep traveling, I may find myself buying tiny bottles of shampoo and hangers that are permanently fastened to the rod.

Because I believe God has been telling me I’m going to move to Tennessee, I wanted to drive through some areas of the state after finishing up with TLR in North Carolina. One place that has caught my attention is Johnson County, where Mountain City is located. The elevation is high, which means nice summers, and unlike the higher areas farther south, it hasn’t attracted throngs of unpleasant people from Florida.

I was surprised to see that Mountain City was less than 60 miles from my hotel in North Carolina.

Yesterday morning I drove to Mountain City, passing through Blowing Rock, North Carolina, on the way. At first, the land was merely pleasantly hilly, but then I saw Blowing Rock clinging to the top of a big mountain in front of me. I hadn’t been there since I was a kid. I had forgotten what a crazy place it is. You have to wind your way up a very steep highway, right up the side of the mountain, to get there.

When I left the hotel, it was 40 degrees. On the way to Blowing Rock, I saw a truck with snow on its hood and roof. When I got into town, it was 29 degrees, and before long, I saw the external temperature bottom out at 28.

One of the negatives of the Mountain City area is that in order to get the cool summers, you get cold nights a lot of the year, and the winters are several degrees cooler than they are at lower altitude. I didn’t know how big the difference was until this trip.

The impression I got was that once you get up to Blowing Rock, you find yourself on a sort of plateau, and it continues into Tennessee. The Mountain City area seemed relatively flat, and it’s 1100 feet lower than Blowing Rock, which is on the very top of a mountain.

There isn’t much in the town. Just a few stores, a couple of gas stations, a courthouse, and so on. I went into the grocery store and bought apples, just to find out what I would be dealing with if I moved there. I wouldn’t starve, but I wouldn’t be able to count on croissants and baguettes.

I had to stop at a gas station to put air in my tires. In the cold air, they shrank, and the drop in pressure set off my car’s sensors.

I drove from Mountain City to Asheville, through some towns that were considerably smaller than Mountain City. The distance was about 95 miles. I saw a lot of houses. I wondered what the people did for a living. I wondered where they got their food. Surely they didn’t drive to Mountain City every week. Maybe they do, though. My grandmother used to drive to Lexington, Kentucky, for groceries, and she lived over 60 miles away. There was an IGA grocery store in her town, but it wasn’t always enough.

I’m not sure what to make of what I saw. The places I drove through didn’t look as promising as the other side of the mountains, in areas like Blount County. I don’t want to be in a city, but I don’t know if I want to be 90 minutes from the nearest town with over 10,000 people. Ocala has a population of around 60,000, and it’s big enough so you can buy an appliance or get your garage door fixed without major problems. I don’t want to be so far out I have to do everything for myself.

If I lived on the other side, I could always go into Knoxville if I needed to, without mounting a major expedition.

On the way out, I drove past Asheville, not Knoxville, which was a mistake. It put me too far east. I was trying to avoid driving through southeastern Georgia on the way home. Going north, I had gone through the area between Ocala and Jacksonville, which is pretty bad, and then in Georgia, I had driven through an endless expanse of swamp. Savannah, for all the romance people attach to it, appears to be in a swamp. It’s oppressive and creepy.

After I got through Asheville, my GPS still wanted to send me through the muck, so I went out of my way to go farther west. I must have added two or three hours to my trip by the time I was done, but I didn’t care. Driving through Brunswick, Georgia, once is enough for anyone.

After about 11 hours on the road, I gave up and got a hotel room. Took off again this morning, after more Chick-fil-A. I eat there out of principle, in spite of the fact that they quit supporting the Salvation Army. Leftists still haven’t forgiven them, so I haven’t stopped supporting them. Also, the food is great, and the way they treat customers gives me a real boost.

I did not feel good about re-entering Florida. That made me a little sad. I asked God if he was making me feel that way so I would be willing to move to Tennessee, and I felt that the answer was “yes,” so I asked him if he could motivate me with the positives of Tennessee instead of making me feel bad about Ocala, which is a beloved refuge. I think he agreed.

If you’re wondering why I’m so focused on moving, I will tell you one reason. Torben says God told him to move to America a long time ago. He didn’t listen. Then Danish TV made a dishonest documentary about him, people started confusing him with a preacher who was abusing people sexually, and the Danish legislature passed a law because of him, making it illegal to cast out demons in front of kids and disabled people. There was talk about taking away his children because of his doctrine. He and his family had to move in the middle of the night, with 8 suitcases. I want to go when God says “go,” at a leisurely pace, with all of my great stuff.

I feel God has told me to quit asking him exactly where to go. As I understand it, I’m to wait until I hear from him. It’s a little difficult to sit back and do nothing, after spending so many hours looking at houses on the web, but on the other hand, do I really want to do the work myself? No. Not if he’s willing to take it off my back.

I feel that God showed me something this week: it’s wrong to feel sure of yourself. If you feel you can handle any challenge, you will jump in front of God, take things out of his hands, and mess everything up. That’s hard to swallow, but it must be true, because the word says we are not to lean unto our own understanding.

It’s hard to get used to taking my hands off things and refusing to plan, but where did planning ever get me in the past?

You know nearly as much about my future as I do right now. I know it will be better than the past, and I know that I don’t have to have a plan in order to make it happen, so I am content.