Decision Near?

The .308/.260 Remington puzzle seems to be unraveling.

I wanted a nice long-distance-capable semiautomatic rifle. The 6.5 Grendel looked good, but while it does well at long distances, it gives up some long-range punch in order to fit the AR15 platform. The .308 is a dandy choice, but other calibers do better at long ranges, and the recoil is bad. The .260 Remington looked really good, but the ammunition is expensive.

Last week I discovered that excellent .308 ammunition is cheap. That got me thinking. I can get a relatively short-barreled AR10 in .308, shoot it very accurately at my local range, which only goes to 100 yards, and put a .260 upper on it occasionally. And the .308 would be easier to carry, and if I ever got a chance to shoot pigs or deer, it would be a great choice.

So now I’m thinking about getting a .308 from DPMS. I considered other brands, but DPMS has a wonderful reputation for accuracy and reliability, and they don’t charge an arm and a leg.

This seems to be the smart choice, if I do this.

I saw a hilarious gun on the web today. A company called Knight Armament makes it. It’s an AR15-looking gun (“Stoner 16”) with a cool attachment under the handguard. The attachment is…a 12-gauge shotgun.

I’m serious. Here is a link.

I guess I don’t have to feel self-conscious about a laser and a flashlight now.

This is the craziest gun I’ve ever seen. It’s the gun equivalent of a double-necked guitar. It would be a great gun for a woman. Whenever they go anywhere, they like to pack everything they own.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get the Romak III working right. I have to reinstall the fire control group and fiddle with it. Red Star Arms does not answer emails about the fire control group they manufacture; something to think about before buying one.

The Romak is fun, but it’s a curiosity more than a practical weapon. The trigger that comes with it is complete garbage and will not permit accurate shooting. I don’t know how they manage to use it in battle. I guess they’re satisfied with 10 MOA shooting. It’s very popular with our enemies in Iraq, but then they probably can’t obtain guns that work correctly as manufactured.

If they took the trigger slap out of the trigger, the gun would be pretty good. But it ought to sell for $400. It looks like someone built it in his garage.

I got ripped off when I bought my specimen. They were selling for nearly $800. Now they can be had for $600. Cheap ammunition is still available, so the picture isn’t totally bleak.

If I had the decision to make all over again, I’d get a PTR91. Similar money, better performance.

I had a great experience last night. I asked for a scripture to read, and I felt like I should turn to 1 Peter. I went through it, making notes and underlining. It confirms so much of what I’ve come to believe, and what I’ve been taught. Prayer in the Spirit cleanses us and helps us behave. We are little portable embassies of the kingdom of heaven, living temporarily in a foreign land. The good things we receive, and even our good acts, come from God. Our contributions are relatively minor. And each of us is an essential and unique part of the machine that will change the world.

More and more, I feel the the Bible is being opened up to me. I believe this is a consequence of prolonged prayer in the Spirit. I’m not the only one who believes it. Perry Stone says it leads to revelation. He says he does it so much, people are amused by it.

The Bible yields its treasures, bit by bit, as we need them. Some things stay hidden, because the time is not right for us to understand them.

It’s a great relief, to be able to understand the Bible and see the pieces fit together. How many times have you been frustrated after reading a chapter? You make as much sense of it as you can, and you go on, figuring God will clear it up when the time comes. That’s better than not reading at all, but it can’t compare to getting divine insight as you go.

Twenty years ago, I knew prayer in tongues was a foundational gift. I knew it was the key to growth. But I wandered off and got lost. Too bad. I wonder what could have been.

I noticed something while reading a book Paul wrote. When he quotes scripture, sometimes he quotes several verses consecutively, even though they come from different parts of the Bible. I think this is something we are expected to be able to do. God stirred his word up, putting related parts in different places. It’s sort of like the Tower of Babel; he made it impossible for our natural minds to sort it out, because we were not ready for the knowledge. Now with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can take verses from different areas of the Bible and combine them so they work together and express God’s meaning. It’s like the valley of dry bones. The parts are spread out and jumbled up, but they can be reassembled and put to work. The Bible says, “Our bones are scattered at the grave’s mouth, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth” (Psalm 141). Like the verses of the Bible, or like Jacob’s descendants, we wait to be re-ordered and given new life by the Holy Spirit.

This is unrelated, but I had a funny thought last night while I was watching a drug commercial. I thought about depression, which can be caused by a spirit. It occurred to me that it was ironic that a foul spirit could wrap itself around you and whisper depressing things about your future. Who has a better future than a Christian, and who has a worse future than a foul spirit? They have no future. They’re going to burn while we laugh.

I think it might be a good idea to fight fire with fire. If you hear a little voice in your head, putting you down and telling you you’re not going to have a good future, open your mouth and say, “The Bible says I’m part of a royal priesthood. I’m going to live forever in God’s presence. You, on the other hand, are going to roast alive–screaming in agony–in front of your assembled enemies while we shout and high-five each other. No one can save you. I’M the one who should be depressed?”

Maybe it’s a bad move, but it’s a funny thought.

Jesus was tortured to death in front of his jeering enemies, and then he ascended to paradise and took his seat at the right hand of God, and now he has all power over every spirit. Demons, on the other hand, are going to be killed painfully in front of their enemies, and then they’re going to be gone, and they will be remembered as creation’s biggest failures. The parallel is obvious, but the end results are very different. Maybe God gave us the burnt sacrifices of the Temple so the smell would remind the fallen of their fate. Maybe the death ovens of the Nazis and the altars of Molech and the burning World Trade Center were Satan’s pathetic parodies of the burnt offerings. The same may be true of abortion mills.

Incidentally, I am starting to think the book of Amos predicted the Shoah, as well as the renewal of Israel and the Messianic Age. Amos talks of bald heads and piles of bodies. Remarkable.

Enough stuff for one morning. I should be making strawberry goop for cheesecake topping.