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The new amp is done, except for some soldering and the installation of the cord and fuse.

I think it came out very well, given that I started with a piece of aluminum that had been banged around in a metal dealer’s establishmen. Here’s a photo.

If you’re an amp guy, you will see a potential problem there. When you work on projects like this, it’s easy to get too close to the work and forget what you’re doing. I accidentally mounted one of the output transformers in such a way that the laminates are coplanar with the power transformer laminates. Supposedly, this can cause a coupling effect, so the 60 Hz buzz from the AC goes out through the power tubes.

I don’t know which way the bobbins inside these things are oriented. The wire coils inside go around bobbins, and the magnetic fields generated by the transformers are parallel to the axes of the bobbins, as they exit the metal. I think. That’s what my physics background suggests. I believe the fields would be strongest at the ends of the power transformer bobbins, so if it’s pointing at the OT, it could be bad. But maybe it’s pointing the other way, which would be okay. Maybe.

I have found out about a way to test for hum. Before you put the amp together, you stick the transformers in place, and you connect the OT to a speaker or a set of headphones. You connect the PT to an AC source, and you listen to see if it makes the headphones hum. If so, you have to move the OT around until it stops. I guess I’ll do that tomorrow.

I feel like writing some more about my new church. I have been a little reluctant to do that, because it has been suggested to me that certain people at my old church are under the impression that positive remarks about New Dawn are “Trinity-bashing.” I hope that’s not true, but if it is, they’re going to have to hitch up their diapers and take it. There is only so much I can do to avoid offending them, short of wearing a muzzle.

Last week I suggested a friend of mine visit the new place. I’ve already covered some of this in posts I took down. He didn’t fit in at the old church, and he was part of the little circle of people who were excited about prayer in tongues. The Holy Spirit worked a shocking change in him after he started praying in tongues regularly, and he started getting all sorts of revelation. A number of people noticed it. Anyway, he was in a slump, and I thought the new place would suit him.

When I got to church on Sunday, he had already been there for 50 minutes. He said he already knew the pastor. He also had relatives all over the church. His nephew was an usher. He had been there before. I didn’t know any of this. I just thought he would do better there.

The pastor preached on John 15 and Matthew 7. In John 15, Jesus said he was the vine, and that branches that didn’t abide in him would be cast into the fire, and in Matthew 7, he said false prophets would come and take advantage of the flock.

Let’s see if I can remember the important points.

The pastor said the bit about casting people into the fire was not about us. It was about the false prophets. He said God “pruned” us, as a gardener would prune useful branches to improve the yield, but that he would not discard us. That makes sense to me. We are taught that it’s pretty hard to lose salvation, but we also know that if we pray in the Spirit, God will change us from inside and help us bear fruit.

False prophets, on the other hand, are not part of the vine, so they may be cast aside. Makes you wonder about Steve Munsey’s status, since he is clearly making up doctrine that makes him money, serving his own belly instead of the Lord. I assume he’s a Christian, but you never know.

He also taught about Luke 16, in which Jesus told us that if we were not faithful with other people’s things, God would not give us our own things. He said he had worked in other people’s ministries, and that he had been faithful, and that now he had his own ministry.

Naturally, I wondered if he was going to say something indicating that my friends and I had blown it by not sticking with our old church, but on the contrary, he said that if you can’t be fruitful under one man’s ministry, it’s time to pack up and move to another.

My friend Alonzo had moved to New Dawn before I had. He and his wife were sitting across the room when the pastor said the bit about packing up. I looked toward them, and she was looking at me and my other friend. We were all thinking the same thing.

Later in the service, the leaders were getting into prayer and prophecy. There was no tightly scripted service at this point. If you’re Spirit-filled, you know how a minute-by-minute schedule can prevent the Holy Spirit from working. They were calling people up, and somebody called Alonzo and his wife.

For a long time, they have wanted to have a ministry helping people with marriage. They want to write a book on God’s advice for couples. When they met me and learned that I was a writer, they asked for my help. At the old church, they had tried to work in the new ministry for couples, but their ideas had been shot down. I’m not saying they were right or wrong, but they were shot down.

While they were at the front of the room, the prophecy started. They were told they were going to have a ministry for married people. They were told that God had not given up on them. The message seemed to be, “You may have thought you were going to be be ignored forever, but I’m going to bring you through this.”

That was amazing. They’ve had some really tough times, and they’ve had to deal with rejection and discouragement, so they needed to hear that God was still with them. And the pastor had no way of knowing they wanted to run a couples’ ministry. He hadn’t seen them in two weeks. They weren’t planning to join the church. He barely knew them.

There is one other person I’ve been trying to bring to New Dawn. He’s a musician. He’s looking for a place where the Holy Spirit is free to act. While I was standing around after the service, the music director came over and asked if any of us were musicians. They’re recruiting! So now I had some ammunition. God saw the need, and he put this tool in my hand.

Since Sunday, I’ve been Facebooking, as usual. The Holy Spirit keeps doing great things in my life, and I write about it. I write about the power of tongues. Guess what? The pastor has been “liking” my statuses. He believes the same things I do! I had no idea. It’s so strange to have my doctrine ENDORSED by a pastor. It’s like the first time I watched Fox News. I thought something was wrong, because they weren’t slanting the news way to the left. I thought it was a momentary aberration, but eventually I realized they were different.

My new pastor really believes in the Holy Spirit. When he posts on Facebook or writes on his blog, he says things I agree with. I don’t have to hide and scurry around by the baseboards. I can say what I know, without worrying about what people will think.

I know he thinks like I do, because when he thinks he’s not getting a good response from the crowd, he’ll call them “this Methodist church” or “this Baptist church.” He’s kidding, but I know what he means. He means we shouldn’t be like backward churches that teach salvation but stop short of the Holy Spirit message.

I sincerely believe that while my old church is nominally Assemblies of God, which means “kooky charismatics,” in practice and belief, it’s closer to the Baptists or Presbyterians. If you say God healed you miraculously or did some other supernatural work in your life, people in authority don’t seem to buy it. They preach that God will work miracles in order to give you a huge return on your tithes, which isn’t true, but other than that, they don’t seem to think he’ll do much for people. They teach self-reliance. Very strange.

I got an interesting revelation about the Holy Spirit. Jesus told us that you can be forgiven for speaking against the Father or the Son, but that those who spoke against the Holy Spirit would not be forgiven. Here’s what I believe God told me.

God told ancient people about the Father, and some did okay with that, and others fell away. So he sent Jesus. Some went forward with Jesus, and others fell away. Jesus asked the Father to forgive those who put him to death, because they did not know what they were doing. When Jesus left, he sent the Holy Spirit. This is all God has left. There is no fourth manifestation. Every Spirit-baptized charismatic knows about the Holy Spirit. When the churches persecute and exclude and slander him, as they do, daily, no one can say, “They know not what they do.” If they reject him and lie about him and suppress him, while speaking in his name and fleecing the sheep, they will have no excuse, so they will be judged.

Churches are teaching that tongues are of the devil, or that they are just “evidence” of the Spirit’s presence. They deny Paul, who made it clear that prayer in tongues builds us up, and who linked the Armor of God to prayer in tongues. They are depriving people of the only means of receiving improved character (the fruit of the Spirit) and supernatural weapons (the gifts of the Spirit). As a result, people remain in what the Bible calls “iniquity” and “lawlessness.” The Holy Spirit isn’t powerful in them, so they don’t receive his guidance, so the law is not written on their hearts. They don’t have God’s GPS.

Some Christians teach that you get the whole Holy Ghost package as soon as you accept salvation. That’s just plain stupid. Martin Luther believed, yet he hated Jews. Is that the fruit of the Spirit? Jimmy Swaggart is a charismatic, so he has received the baptism with the Holy Spirit, which puts him one step beyond mere salvation. Does he strike you as a person whose nature is like that of God? Is he mature? Is he even honest? Of course not. Kenneth Copeland is a charismatic, and he’s downright mean. So where are the fruit and gifts of the Spirit, which these people and many other carnal Christians supposedly received in full measure?

Don’t even try to tell me they’re supposed to TRY. If it comes from human effort, it’s not the Holy Spirit. Anyone can try. The fruit and gifts of the Holy Spirit have to be more than that.

Jesus taught us that the Kingdom of God was within us, and that it grew gradually, like a mustard tree. He also called tongues “living water.” What do trees need in order to grow? Use your head.

I think the big lesson here is that no matter how easy God makes it, we will find a way to rebel. Sadly, the most influential rebels run the churches of this world. That may be about to change. God is patient, but we may be about to see a little judgment.