Always Nice to Get Constructive Feedback

I’m getting trolled again.

I guess I should be honored. After all, “Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.”

Someone who is so concerned about discovery he or she (I will use “she,” arbitrarily, since “he or she” is tiresome) won’t even use an Internet handle is coming to my blog and posting comments ridiculing the Holy Spirit and, of course, me.

I don’t understand the anonymity. I don’t go after people. I’m not going to get in the truck and go shoot someone. I don’t even engage them on the Internet. There is little to fear from me personally. I can understand using a handle, but if you won’t even go that far, you’re overdoing it.

I think she may be an anti-Semite. She made approving reference to a name which appears on a weird, obscure, anti-Semitic blog.

I’ve received 2 trolling comments. It may be that they came from different people, but I don’t think so.

Summary:

1. Prayer in tongues is stupid and crazy.

2. My music is really bad and will never amount to anything.

3. I am conceited because I think my music is better than the worst music I’ve heard on TV.

4. I claimed I was going to be a famous humorist, and that didn’t happen.

5. It’s good that I didn’t have kids.

6. I am insane.

I think that’s most of it.

I don’t think I claimed I was going to be a famous humorist, although I did have hopes. If that had happened, I would have been lost. I’d want nothing to do with God. I’d be spending money and living for myself. I’d be praying for three minutes on a good day. Thank God it didn’t work out.

When I saw the last comment, the obvious Bible verse came into my head: “Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.”

Criticizing someone for praying in tongues is reproach for the Son of man’s sake. Jesus died partly so we could be saved, but also in order to give us the gifts and fruit of the Holy Spirit. His primary mission on earth was to make it possible for the Holy Spirit to live in us and make us like Jesus. This is a horrifying thing to Satan. It’s the reason he killed and tortured early Christians. Once the Holy Spirit was driven out, persecution dropped off, and the church went mainstream, with much less opposition. When people insult you because you’re obeying God, you know you’ve hit a nerve. Satan doesn’t activate his puppets for nothing.

I used to have endless trolls. I was something of a troll myself. By that I mean I engaged in pointless carnal disputes, and I went out of my way to provoke foolish people. I try to avoid blogging about politics these days, and I think it has reduced the troll population, but not all trolls are political. Some hate God. And they hate God’s people, for no reason.

I don’t plan to approve troll comments. That may seem unfair to people who think everyone has a God-given right to have their point of view published, but as I’ve said for many years, my blog is not a forum. If you want to insult me, do it with your own money, somewhere else.

I also block troll IPs. A stubborn troll can always find a way to get here, but I might be able to discourage the weak ones.

It’s kind of remarkable that a person would show up to hit me with discouraging lies, when the things I’m writing are so non-confrontational. I understood it back when I was making fun of Al Gore and the BDS people. When someone attacks you or someone you idolize, you may get angry. But this nameless person is angry because I pray in tongues and because I like the music I write. That’s strange.

The music is going really well. With God’s help, I have figured out how to come up with original melodies, so it looks like I’m going to have a copious supply of material. More than I know what to do with. When God says our cups run over, he is not kidding. I’m not going to be able to finish all the tunes I come up with. I’ll have to start doing triage. If things keep going the way they are, I’ll end up with a tremendous library of original music. My hope is that some of it will be accepted and used, but it will be nice to have, even if I’m the only one who enjoys it.

My new Internet friend may not like what I’m doing, but my teacher–an actual musician with outstanding credentials–does. Here’s something crazy. He composed a new tune and put it on Youtube. At my last lesson, he said I had inspired him. If it weren’t for me, he probably would not have done it. That’s amazing! God used me to wake someone up. And the worship leader at my church is also excited. He composes, but he has been putting it off. Now that I’m doing what he’s supposed to do, he says he has new motivation!

As for prayer in tongues, the things that are happening at my church are astonishing. My pastor has been teaching about the Holy Spirit. Suddenly, he’s telling us things I tried to tell the people at Trinity Church for several years. The things that got me ostracized are now being proclaimed from the pulpit, by an authority figure. The leadership at Trinity Church had no respect for me or the Holy Spirit. The whole operation was a mechanism intended to promote the pastor and his family, and they did not want to spook people. Now I’m at a church where the Holy Spirit is taking over.

On Tuesday, the pastor had us pray in tongues as a group. I would guess we went about 15 minutes. I didn’t know what to say. I was watching a dream come true. The shoots are coming out of the ground. The final fire is lit, and this time, Satan will not be able to put it out, because this time, God is not going to rely on man to keep it going. It’s like the restoration of Israel. In the past, Israel’s situation depended on how the Jews treated God. Now it’s different. In order for prophecy to come true, God has to get in there and make things happen, regardless of how badly his people behave. It’s grace this time, more than before.

My own prayer life gets better and better. Sometimes I get so far into the Spirit, I feel as though my attachment to the physical world is almost broken, and I tell God I’m ready to leave if he wants to take me. I get new breakthroughs in faith and revelation all the time. Every time one comes, I think it can’t get any better than that, and then the next one comes, and it’s better.

Things keep improving. God has made it clear that certain things are going to happen for me. I wish everyone could get what I’m getting. It’s so easy, but people reject it. Or they never find out about it.

One of the things that comes out in my music is the sorrow over the people who aren’t going to make it. In nature, many are born, and few survive. Even in the moment of conception, millions of sperm cells die, and only one survives. In the kingdom of God, it doesn’t have to be like that. Provision has been made for all of us. But most of us will not know God, and most of us will go to hell. There isn’t much we can do about it. If the situation could be fixed, God would have taken care of it. Many of the people I see around me now are going to disappear permanently. I won’t know them much longer.

I am starting to see unsaved people as unreal. In a way, this is correct. Is anything real, if it doesn’t last? The unsaved show up for a while, make a little noise, and then vanish for good. A person’s life shouldn’t be like condensed breath on a windowpane, that appears for a minute and then dissipates. But this is how most lives go. The unsaved matter. But their presence is temporary, and the things they do will be erased, as though they had never happened. Ten thousand years from now, who will even think about them?

I don’t plan the music I write. The tunes come to me, and I write them down. I don’t think they express some true “voice” within me. They’re not what I expected to write. Maybe God is expressing something through me. I hope that as my skills improve, his music will come through me more clearly and in better quality. I can’t wait to see what’s ahead.

Pray for the trolls. In God’s kingdom, like the fairy tale, a troll can live under a bridge, but she won’t cross it.