Priests are Buffers for People who Prefer to Keep Sinning

As is often the case, today I am freaked out by God’s confirmation.

I generally watch Derek Prince while fixing and eating breakfast. I can’t think of a better way to redeem the time. Today I listened to him talking about the headship of Jesus. It was like listening to myself, talking about the things God had told me.

God tells everyone the exact same things. God does not have opinions. His view is fact. It is correct, which is what “righteous” means. Christians who hear from God never disagree. There is no such thing as “healthy debate.” Opinions are for the ungodly and the uninformed. No one debates in heaven. Everyone knows the truth.

For a long time, God has been telling me the Holy Spirit functioned as a sort of nervous system for the body of Christ. Yahweh (or “Yah”) does the thinking and deciding. Jesus talks to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit talks to Christians who can hear him. Jesus is the head of the body. We are the other parts. This is why the Bible calls us “the body of Christ.”

God told me this: “The head sees things, and reaches them, first.”

Look at Jesus. He was the first to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. He was the first to have the Holy Spirit live in him on a permanent basis, unlike the prophets, who only got visits. He also preceded us in persecution and martyrdom. He expects us to go through certain experiences, but he went through them first, so we can’t say he doesn’t know what it’s like to suffer what we do.

In the teaching I saw today, Derek Prince confirmed a lot of this. He also made it clear that you can’t really be part of the body unless you hear and obey the Holy Spirit (not the Holy List of Rules). How long have I been saying that? The Bible says it, but not many people pay attention. It says, “As many as are led by the Spirit, they are the sons of God.”

It’s not enough to be baptized and claim salvation.

He also said things I know to be wrong. He isn’t right about everything, and that underscores the importance of getting to know God personally. You have to have the Holy Spirit available, if you want to avoid following in other men’s mistakes.

He cited the appointment of Matthias as an example of obeying the Holy Spirit.

Matthias was the disciple who replaced Judas Iscariot. The other disciples didn’t know what to do. The Holy Spirit didn’t tell them who should be appointed. They gave up and cast lots, which is essentially the same thing as rolling dice. The lot fell to Matthias, and he went on to be a very undistinguished disciple. You can look that up.

Not long after Matthias was chosen through gambling, Paul fell down on the road to Damascus, and the rest is history. Paul was the greatest of the disciples, and he was not numbered among the 12.

Perry Stone says the disciples blew it when they used gambling to pick a replacement. He points to the weak record of Matthias.

Prince says God was glorified because the disciples used lots, allowing God to choose Judas’ replacement. That’s clearly not right. Think of the glory God would have gotten had they waited for Paul–possibly their worst human enemy–to join the group. God says we are to be more than conquerors, meaning we are supposed to bring people into the body instead of just defeating them. Paul’s conversion exemplifies going beyond conquering.

Prince has said other things that I know are wrong. He said we should never ask God to help us to be humble, because God would then humiliate us. Way off track. Take a look at Psalm 19:

Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.

Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression.

What about Galatians 5:22? It says humility is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, imparted to us supernaturally.

The Bible tells us to humble ourselves, and Prince thinks that proves it isn’t God’s job, but clearly, if humility is a fruit of the Spirit, God fully intends to help. Galatians 5:22 says God will give us love, faith, and joy supernaturally. Why should humility be different? We are heirs, not galley slaves. God wants to give us things. If we generate them ourselves, the glory is ours, not his. God wants glory, and God is not a thief. If he wants glory for something, it means he intends to do it himself.

What could be more perverse than generating your own humility? If you could make yourself humble, you would have something to be proud of! It makes no sense.

As for Matthias, it should be obvious from his lack of achievement and the ascension of Paul that gambling was the wrong solution. In the Old Testament, God directed the Jews to cast lots a few times, but generally, gambling is a totally unnecessary vice that leads to addiction, covetousness, idolatry, violence, and the destruction of human beings and families.

When I was a kid, I thought it was funny that my great-grandfather wouldn’t allow playing cards in his house, but now I understand that he was right. You shouldn’t gamble in any way unless you have a very clear command from God. I won’t even play Monopoly now.

Matthias was chosen BEFORE the Holy Spirit fell on the church. They weren’t ready to hear from God. They had little authority and little guidance. Jesus told them to wait for power, but they got ahead of God and chose Matthias by carnal means.

Look at the story of Stephen, who was also chosen to build up the church. The 12 disciples told the church to send them 7 Holy Spirit-filled men of good report, and before these men, including Stephen, were appointed, the disciples prayed. They did not roll dice. Stephen went on to glorify God in his life and death, and his story in the book of Acts still reaches people today.

It’s funny, but in teaching about the role of the Holy Spirit, Derek Prince helped me with the things he got right and also with his mistakes. The things he got right confirm that God has spoken to both of us, and God’s correction of the things he got wrong confirms some of what God said: rely on the Holy Spirit, personally, not on men.

There is a limit on what you can teach people about God. He’s like strawberry ice cream. You can go to someone who has never had strawberry ice cream, and you can tell him things about it. You can say it’s sweet and cold and that it has a wonderful texture. You can compare it to ice cream made from other berries. In the end, he’s going to have to try it himself. There are many, many things about the Christian life that can’t be explained through words. Maybe this is why the Bible says, “O taste and see that the Lord is good.”

We depend way too much on human beings, many of them powerless old men in satin dresses. No preacher can save you. Every person is like a man alone in a tiny boat. You can yell encouragement and correction to other people as you sail in the right direction, but you can’t bring them aboard. They have to know God for themselves. Churches tend to discourage personal relationships with God. They turn men into little false gods, and gratefully, we let them handle our Christianity for us, so we don’t have to make sacrifices.

They’re supposed to bring us closer to God, but they act like goalkeepers, keeping us away from him, and we’re grateful for it, because we like keeping our distance.

People make mistakes. They fall from grace. Even if a man does everything right, he eventually dies. If you depend on a man, and then he drops dead, you’re in trouble.

In the sermon I heard today, Derek Prince said we had to become more and more dependent on God. That amazed me, because it was only a few weeks ago that God told me to pray to become as dependent on him as possible.

Things are changing fast for me, and I think it reflects the fact that the world is in deep trouble. I believe God is equipping people like me quickly because bad things are on the way. I don’t believe America is going to recover this time. We are getting very corrupt. We are becoming a nation of angry, arrogant, tattooed, pierced, mutilated, sexually depraved, self-righteous, murderous children who hate good and love evil. We decorate ourselves to look like convicts, witches, and sorcerers. I think we passed a critical point some time ago.

Perry Stone gave a prophecy in 2015, in which he said we would get another chance, and he mentioned pockets of revival, but that was 4 years back, and I think we have blown it since then. That’s what the Spirit seems to say.

Maybe I sound like certain Christians who are obsessed with external events and who can’t wait to see God’s judgment…on other people. I hope not. I focus on myself and on the individuals God uses me to reach. There is no hope for the world or for nations while Jesus remains a spiritual and not political leader. We are not here to build nations. We are here to be used to save individuals. Talk of saving races, nations, cities, and neighborhoods is silly and misguided. That time hasn’t come yet.

Ike Turner had Nothing on Kenneth Copeland

Just when I think I can’t get any more disgusted with preachers, I find there is still potential for more disapproval. Today while searching the web, I saw photos of people like Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer spread across the bottom of the page as suggestions, and I felt slight physical nausea. No exaggeration. These people are poisonous. This must be how a former prostitute feels when she sees her pimp.

The nausea must have come from the Holy Spirit, because I am not that good.

Why am I upset today? Very simple. God has given me a revelation about the baptism with fire.

John the Baptist said Jesus would baptize us with the Holy Spirit and with fire, but the New Testament contains no explicit information about the baptism with fire. People have come up with guesses as to what it is, but most are wrong. The baptism with fire is this: God allows you to go through afflictions and trials in order to free you of things that keep you out of his kingdom. It’s that simple.

People wonder why Christianity doesn’t “work.” Christians don’t live in victory or peace. They don’t have prosperity or health, even though God promises us these things. There are some individuals out there who get miracles and healings and so on, but I would guess that more than 99% of Christians are not in that group. Most Christians don’t think God will heal them or work miracles for them. Many preachers tell their flocks these things can’t happen now, as if God had decided to shut off his help and his love. In truth, Christianity still works, but Christians suffer because they hold onto things God is trying to burn.

At my last church, we had a man who had breast cancer. His name was Ozzie. The pastors called him “Ozzie, healed of the Lord.” We fasted and prayed for him. We thought he would be okay. Then he got brain tumors and died.

While he was alive, I kept telling him it was important to confess and repent in order to get help from God. He was too proud to pay attention. I made people angry. People said I blamed the sick for their problems, which is true. We do cause our problems. Ozzie never took responsibility for anything, and he died, unhealed.

Ozzie was baptized with fire, but he didn’t let go. His pride blocked God’s help.

God does all sorts of remarkable things for me. He defeats people who threaten to cause problems for me. He helps me get difficult things done. He tells me things. He gives me miracle healings. Nonetheless, my life is not perfect. There are some nagging things I still deal with. They started to fall away when my dad went into assisted living, but not all are gone. I know it’s because there are things I need to identify and give up.

God told me to get rid of my blues and rock CD’s, so I did. He told me to get rid of other offensive objects, such as my dad’s masonry garbage and my questionable movie and TV DVD’s. He had me give up cigars. I’ve had to renounce certain behaviors and ways of thinking. Every time I give something up, things get better.

How many Christians are doing what God has me doing? A small fraction. When I used to belong to Trinity Church in Miami, most people around me didn’t even try. The Wilkersons, who own the church, don’t teach about repentance in a serious way, because they love money and flattery. They don’t care about people. They make them slaves and beg them for money, devouring people’s houses, as the Bible puts it. Their followers smoke dope, fornicate, work in strip clubs, and so on, because no one has told them their sins and iniquities block God’s help.

Trinity is not unusual. Many charismatic churches run by prosperity preachers work the same way.

Here’s something God taught me today: the word “pure” means “burned.” It comes from the Greek word for fire. Consider the familiar word “pyromaniac.” The root “pyro” is Greek, and it refers to fire. “Pure” comes from this root.

Greeks pronounce their Y (upsilon) the way we pronounce U. The word “dunamis,” which means “power,” contains a U, but the English word “dynamite,” which comes from the same root, contains a Y. It’s not uncommon for an English word containing a U to come from a Greek word containing a Y.

Burning is still used for purifying metal. We heat it so impurities burn off or rise to the top where they can be removed. In the Bible, God talks about refining us like gold. The parallel is obvious.

It makes me angry that no one showed me this when I sat in church and gave money and did free work. Trinity is a ghetto church. It’s full of cripples, addicts, financial basket cases, and criminals. Most people who attend are poor. Kids who go to Trinity get shot from time to time. There are a lot of sick people there.

Christianity doesn’t work at Trinity, because no one understands the baptism with fire.

The pastors themselves don’t understand it, and they don’t care. Rich Wilkerson, who claims to believe in God’s healing, is sickly and frail. He has new knees. He has a blood disorder. He’s diabetic. He has a disease that makes stones appear in his chest. How can those things be true, when Psalm 103 clearly states that God heals all our diseases? Wilkerson is holding onto greed and false doctrine (which he knows is false), so God’s power isn’t helping him.

Never listen to anyone who has no testimony. If your church’s doctrine is not working for your pastor, it won’t work for you. Rich Wilkerson has no testimony. He’s sick, and his church is in debt. His son has a bloated ego and runs around with Kim Kardashian. He can’t help anyone.

Wilkerson had a young underpastor named Terrance. Terrance is very concerned with appearances. Like many young prosperity preachers, he always dresses like he’s about to make a music video. Very proud guy. Older people can’t tell him anything. He broke off and started his own church. It’s called “COOL Church.” This is the kind of fruit Wilkerson produces.

Predictably, based on Wilkerson’s penchant for appropriating other people’s dubious ideas, COOL Church has a name that was already in use elsewhere. There is a C.O.O.L. Church in Houston. There is also a “Cool Church” in Cool, California. The domain for COOL Church isn’t coolchurch.com, because they couldn’t get it. Someone else took it more than 20 years ago. So much for inspiration, creativity, and originality. God gives Spirit-led people fresh material.

Years ago, Wilkerson came up with a membership-building campaign called “2020 Vision.” It was about saving a certain number of souls by 2020. Go online and Google “2020 vision” and “church.” You will see many references predating Trinity’s scheme. To put it nicely, it was not Wilkerson’s idea.

It rotted on the vine, like many of Trinity’s “long-term” projects.

I don’t think COOL Church will make it. The location is bad, the preaching isn’t exciting, and the response seems weak. No one is watching their Youtubes, and they don’t have a single Yelp review. That’s amazing, since Trinity always hammers away at people, trying to get social media support.

I forgive the people who taught me nonsense, but I have to be open about what they did, because they’re still doing it to other people.

When you give yourself to God, you have to be separated from the world. You can’t keep your pride, your self-reliance, your worry, or your record collection. You can’t keep your friends. You can’t hold onto astrology or yoga, which is demon worship. When you turn to God, you enter a gauntlet, and the way to get through it quickly is to admit fault and give things up.

I have often said that Satan’s world is like a gang. Gangs jump people in, and they jump them out. “Jumping” means “beating.” When you join a gang, they give you a beating. When you leave, they give you a beating to “jump you out.” The baptism with fire is Satan’s way of jumping you out, and God permits it because you have given Satan access.

Remember what Paul said? He said he delivered a sinner to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit might be saved. I’m right. Satan is allowed to touch many Christians who need correction.

I think it’s time for me to dump my jazz CD collection. I thought it was harmless, but maybe it’s not. I don’t listen to it any more. I have no desire to. I shouldn’t be surprised if it’s a problem. It’s the music of addicts and losers. Louis Armstrong smoked dope every day. Bix Beiderbeck drank himself to death. Miles Davis was a wife beater and drug abuser. Thelonious Monk was mentally ill. Chet Baker killed himself. Billie Holiday was a hopeless junkie. It’s not a happy fraternity.

I wonder if classical music is also on God’s hit list. Whatever. Anything he wants, he can have, because he loves me and wants the best for me.

God told me some things. He said I had been raised by demons, which is true. He also said my mother and father had abandoned me. That’s correct. My mother loved me, but she didn’t teach me much about God, and she was a weak and inconsistent parent. God also says this, in a psalm: “When my father and mother abandon me, the Lord will gather me up.” He put “father” before “mother” in that verse because mothers are supposed to submit to fathers.

God told me bad things about my past so I would know he was adopting me.

I am not embarrassed to say I was raised by demons. I welcome the knowledge. You can’t expect treatment and recovery without diagnosis, and diagnosis is not pleasant.

No good father raises a child without correction. Not one. If you’ve never said a harsh word to your child, you are not a good parent. God allows us to be afflicted, but on the other hand, he also fully intends to heal us or otherwise compensate and relieve us, once we’re back on track. No good parent would give a child punishment and then continue it after the child repented.

I asked God to tell me what the baptism with fire was, and now I know. Unfortunately, I am part of the charismatic church, and most charismatics teach that God is their fairy godmother. Very few people will want to hear what God told me. Anyone who talks about the harsh side of Christianity will be attacked and slandered by fools. Persecution is a big part of the church.

Feel-good Christians persecute because correction isn’t COOL.

God told me one more thing today. Psalm 23 is true. It says, “The Lord is my shepherd.” The word “pastor” literally means “shepherd.” When you are in touch with the Holy Spirit, you don’t need a carnal man in a funny suit to tell you what’s what. Listen to men until you get connected with God, and then make him your teacher.

Don’t Let the Monkeys Get You Down

During my recent trip to the pit of ugliness known as South Florida, I spent a great deal of time in prayer. There wasn’t much else to do, because the stereo in my truck doesn’t work, and there were no human beings to talk to. It was convenient and helpful.

God showed me something interesting, so I will pass it on.

The Bible says faith is accounted unto us as righteousness. We find that remarkable, because faith and righteousness seem like two different things. Our understanding seems to be that faith is not righteousness, but God decided to credit it to us as righteousness for reasons of his own.

The truth is that faith is righteousness.

One of the unfortunate things about Christianity is that in our minds, we turn righteous people into bizarre, ghostly, sexless, pusillanimous creatures that float around with addled smiles on their faces. We see them as though they’re not human, as though they belonged to a different species, like angels.

Churches have shoved this notion down our throats for centuries. Look at the ridiculous things clergymen wear. The pope and many priests dress like women, wearing cassocks and robes other men wouldn’t dream of wearing. Many clergymen wear crazy getups with giant hats and satin bibs and so on. When the pope really gets his rig together, he resembles Liberace. Huge miter and so on.

Clergymen who dress up remind me of fictional superheroes. They work too hard to impress, and they don’t fit in with the rest of us. Imagine the Green Lantern trying to go to work at, say, Morgan Stanley, wearing his weird green suit.

Righteousness isn’t a bizarre theatrical act. It just means the state of being correct. If you are correct, you are righteous, even if you’re wearing coveralls and Red Wing boots. It’s amazing that we went from “correct” to full-throttle Elvis mode.

The phrase “politically correct” comes from the Antichrist. It means “politically righteous.” Politics is a thing of the flesh. To be politically correct is to be righteous through the flesh. The Bible makes it clear that we can’t please God through the flesh. Here is Romans 8:8, in case you think I’m mistaken: “So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.”

The flesh is an animal–a “beast” in KJV terms–which is attached to us while we are stuck here on earth. This is why the Antichrist is called the Beast. He convinces people to try to attain righteousness without God, through their tiny, gullible minds.

Leftism comes from the spirit of antichrist. Leftists want to get God out of the way so they can create a righteous, civilized, harmonious world without God, using the power of the flesh.

It’s surprising that so many Christians think it’s okay to be a leftist, or even that Jesus was a leftist. The abolition of religion has been a top priority of the left, at least since the time of Karl Marx.

Think of the positions leftists take. They’re against the unborn. They’re against Israel. They’re against male leadership, which is a pillar of Judaism and Christianity. They’re against masculinity itself. They favor rebellion. They promote covetousness in the form of forced redistribution of wealth. You don’t have to be a genius to see it. They’re against God himself.

People continue to deny it, but one day soon, it will be admitted openly, not just by Christians but by leftists themselves. People will campaign openly against Jesus, naming him in the process. They will tell us we can have a world of love, peace and prosperity without God, and Satan will help them by giving them temporary success.

It was never about creating a peaceful, harmonious, prosperous world. The purpose of our existence is to please God. Look it up. The other things are by-products. Jesus himself said it. They will be added to us if we seek his kingdom and his righteousness–his correctness–first.

Even if we managed to create a seemingly perfect world without God, Jesus would return and destroy it, because it would separate people from him.

This world is like a courtoom, and human beings are the jury. Satan makes his case, and so does Jesus. What’s our primary job? To decide who is right. When we choose to believe Jesus is correct, we show faith. Faith is therefore correct. It is righteousness. It may not be all of righteousness, but it is righteousness.

I have never heard a preacher say these things, but now that God has shown them to me, I see that they’re very obvious.

When Biblical figures praise God, what do they say? A lot of the time, they tell God he’s righteous. They say it over and over. They’re showing their faith, which is righteousness. This is why God likes to be praised. It isn’t because he likes flattery. He has no pride. He can’t be flattered.

If you look at the Bible, you will see that it’s full of passages claiming God is right about this or that. “Lean not unto thine own understanding.” “There is a way that seems right to man, BUT…” “He will direct thy paths.” Look for it, and you’ll see it. Believing that God is right is very important.

Last month, God told me this: “Pride is incorrect.” Three days ago, he said, “Faith is correct.” In April, he said, “Worry is not correct.” Correctness matters.

Recently, he told me something that startled me. I asked him to tell me what my biggest problem was in my relationship with him, and the answer was “worry.” Not pride, lust, anger, covetousness, gluttony, laziness, or any of the usual suspects. I didn’t see it coming. My other iniquities are problems, but to God, worry is the primary issue right now. He told me it blocks his power in me!

If faith is righteous, worry is unrighteous. Worry tells you God is a liar.

He also told me he would show me how to defeat worry and get rid of it, so I am extremely thankful. Knowledge of my problems is a burden and a sentence unless I also receive solutions.

Faith is a big deal. It’s more important than working at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving or buying your church new pews. People often do things like that out of pride. Christians tend to be extremely proud of “good” works they do through the flesh.

You need to give faith priority, and worry needs to be on your hit list, just like pornography and greed. If you get rid of worry, it will cut the root of other iniquities that seem unconnected with it.

This is all surprising to me, but it’s true.

I’ve learned something else: I have to stop reviling myself.

I grew up with abuse. My dad was cruel, my sister was a narcissistic sociopath who lived to make me suffer, and even my mother tended to snap at me and make me feel rejected. Over time, I learned to internalize the abuse I received, so that even when I was alone, I heard it in my heart. Lacking any other abuser, I stood in for them and abused myself. I did their work for them so they could rest.

I knew this when I was of college age. It’s not a new revelation. I knew it, but I couldn’t stop the internalized abuse. I was rejected, and I rejected myself, over and over, every day. I knew about it, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t stop.

I also reviled other people. I got very good at crafting insults designed to cut deep. I thought it was okay. I thought I only went after the deserving. I didn’t question my right to do it.

Lately, I’ve been catching myself insulting myself. For example, I’ll put a pen down, and I’ll be unable to find it. Then I’ll ask God to show me where it is in spite of the fact that I’m “an idiot.” You can’t say things like that about yourself, even if you say them inwardly and you think you don’t really mean them.

How does God feel about me, calling his son an idiot? I’m extremely valuable. God allowed himself to be tortured to death so he could have me with him. Did he do all that so he could enjoy the company of an idiot?

Derek Prince taught me that shame is not part of God’s plan. It’s okay to feel ashamed briefly when a problem is exposed, but to live in a constant state of shame and rejection is sick and wrong. You should not shame yourself (or anyone else) chronically.

Here’s what I tell myself now: “I am no worse and no better than anyone else. I don’t care what they’ve done or what I’ve done. No one on earth is in a position to make me feel ashamed.” That’s true. You’re all filthy. Sorry to inform you. Some people have flaws or sins that are more obvious or disturbing that those others have, but it doesn’t matter. Jesus isn’t here in the flesh, and you’re just a forgiven spirit strapped to a dirty monkey, so get off your high horse. You poop just like the rest of us.

God is perfect. He is extremely good. In comparison to his righteousness, there isn’t a whole lot of difference between the moral states of Jeff Dahmer and Billy Graham. However low you are, God is waiting to lift you up, and no matter how much you think you’ve done for God, you are not significantly better than a pedophile.

Who is the world’s tallest midget? Who cares? Still a midget. The NBA won’t be contacting him any time soon.

I don’t call myself an idiot any more, even when I’m joking. I try not to let any human being make me feel ashamed. What a monkey thinks–even a respected monkey with many Twitter followers and lots of bananas–is not important.

You can see this concept reflected in the Bible. In a parable in Matthew 18, a ruler forgave a man who owed him billions of dollars. The man then imprisoned someone who owed him 100 days’ wages. The ruler withdrew his forgiveness. It shows that our debts to God are gigantic, but our sins toward each other down here are tiny in comparison.

Shaming ourselves and others excessively repels prospective Christians, and God will hold us accountable for that. Our purpose isn’t to screen out applicants for the kingdom of heaven.

I love receiving information from God. I would never figure it out on my own. As God has told me, it’s better to inherit than to earn.

Miami Visit OVER! OVER! OVER! OVER!

If there is any man on earth who is happier than I am right now, I pity him, because I doubt his body and mind can stand the joy. I had to visit Miami, and now I am HOME.

I can’t describe my hatred of Miami. I don’t mean I hate the people, although I don’t want to live around people like them. I hate being there. I hate the thought of being there. Miami is disgusting. Every visit is an ordeal. Every departure is like being lifted out of a septic tank.

I had to go to Miami for business reasons. My dad died in March, and his real estate belonged to a corporation. For this reason, the estate was not supposed to go through formal probate, which is even worse than a visit to Miami. In order to prove the property belonged to a corporation, I needed recorded deeds. The recorder’s office rejected one deed over and over, incorrectly. I had to drive 600 miles, drive to the recorder’s office, and record the deed in person.

The lady who recorded it gave me no trouble at all, and the reason is that there was nothing wrong with the deed. I had submitted it multiple times electronically, and whoever looked at it had rejected it every time. Bureaucracy is always frustrating.

His estate now contains some used furniture worth approximately $200. I think it’s safe to say formal probate will not be needed.

I stayed in my dad’s old house. I don’t think I should do that next time. While I was in town, I picked up my vertical band saw and my Rockwell drill press, plus a bunch of other junk the movers left. I have been giving away and selling things worth considerable money, just to cut the stubborn cord. I would say there is still a pickup load left, plus my machine tools.

I prayed all the way down and all the way back. I asked God if he could arrange it so I only had to go to Miami one more time IN MY LIFE. I believe he granted that request.

My strategy for Miami visits is to go on Sundays. That way, I am less likely to face unbearable traffic on the way in. It’s terrible to get stuck in traffic while visiting Miami, because when you’re done, you don’t get a reward for your suffering. You’re punished…by arriving in Miami. I don’t mind traffic on the way out, because it feels so nice when I cross the Dade County line into Broward.

The drive down was very unpleasant. There was a traffic jam up here, on I-75. It added maybe 45 minutes to the trip. Then I discovered that my electronic toll pass had been stolen. I took my truck to a Firestone location for an alignment on Saturday, and since then, I’ve found that I no longer have the toll transponder or my phone charger, and 4 lug nuts are gone. I live alone in the woods, and no one would dare come to my house to steal a phone charger. No one else drives the car. Naturally, I suspect Firestone.

I stopped at a service plaza and bought a new transponder, and I tried to use their kiosk to activate it and kill the old one. That didn’t work out. Government computers aren’t set up by the best bidders. The jobs go to minority businesses or companies owned by transsexuals or companies that belong to political donors. It’s always social engineering or corruption, not meritocracy. The kiosk was, for practical purposes, useless, so my long visit to the service plaza was a waste of time.

It was dark when I hit town. What an experience. I felt as if I were in a simulation, like the Matrix. It didn’t seem real. It also felt repulsive. I felt the way a former convict would feel, visiting his old prison. Also, and I don’t know why, I felt as though I were driving through my sister’s heart.

My sister is full of hate. She lives in the past, embracing and caressing imagined offenses other people have committed. She is constantly embroiled in drama. When I write these things, I’m assuming she’s still alive. Anyway, I seemed to feel her energy all around me as I drove through the city.

Traffic is worse than ever. The city seems to be significantly more crowded every time I visit. It must be illegals and South American immigrants. I don’t call illegals “immigrants.” Immigration is something you can only do legally. Someone is filling up Miami, and it’s not people of American ancestry. We have been leaving since the Sixties.

While I drove, I rooted for the people who were moving to Miami and building things there. They’re increasing the value of my real estate. “Turn it into Hong Kong!”, I said, aloud. I don’t care if it’s a bad place to live. I don’t have to reside there. I just want to sell at high prices.

Miami is changing, but it’s looking more like Rio de Janeiro or some other South American pit of urban misery than Hong Kong. Very tall buildings with tacky architecture, jammed up against each other. It’s a very Latin thing. That’s fine. Keep it up, my friends. Build it to the sky. Then buy my properties. Cash me out!

My friend Travis is house-sitting for me. The house is peaceful because the only person there is a Christian. It’s not peaceful like Ocala, but it’s an oasis in Miami. Travis helped me load things up.

There are a few big photos and pictures in the house. I was thinking I would grab them on the next trip, but increasingly, I feel like putting them on the trash pile. Sentimental value is a funny thing when your family is highly dysfunctional. The china that reminds you of your mom may also remind you of the time your dad chased her with a butcher knife (fictional example).

Those pictures make me think of the times when I hid behind the bedroom door and listened to my dad abusing my mother. They make me think of the times my sister and I had to check into motels with her. They make me think of the many times my sister got other kids to exclude me from things and call me names she had made up. They even remind me of the times when she got very upset because I was allowed to ride in the front seat of the car. That kept happening well into my forties. Can you imagine a grown woman getting upset because her brother wouldn’t get in the backseat?

When I was about 6, my mom paid a photographer to take a couple of big pictures of my sister and me. I feel obligated to retrieve them, but in all honesty, they disgust me, and I have a strong desire to throw them out.

There are a couple of professional shots of my sister. She would love to have them, I’m sure. She and my dad had a break in their estrangement, and she used that opportunity to comb his house for family photos (and silver). The photos she wanted were all pictures of her. She talked of one particular photo she missed. She said, “I looked so beautiful in that picture.” No sign of awareness that this was an odd thing to say.

This is the person who let junk removers take her college and law school diplomas to the dump, even though they were set out for her so she would not forget them.

While I was loading the truck, part of her inheritance was destroyed. My dad’s mother was a very cold lady who had no interest in my sister and me, and when she died, my dad’s sisters and their families cleaned out her house. We received two objects they chose for us without consultation: a Baccara angel and a porcelain horse. My dad had bought them for her. I threw out the angel not long ago, because it’s wrong to have an idol in your house. In Miami, I set the horse aside so I could save it, but Travis knocked it over and broke it. I was upset for a minute, but then I remembered that it wasn’t mine anyway. And I didn’t really want it. I just felt obligated to take it.

The horse and the angel are all my sister and I inherited from my dad’s mother.

She sent us a couple of afghans long ago. One was a sort of olive drab green. It was depressing to look at. I threw it out before I moved to Ocala. I found the other one on this visit. Olive drab, dark green, and ivory white. Synthetic yarn. Probably flammable. I brought it with me, thinking I might offer it to my cousins, but it’s going to the dump. I don’t want it around me.

I don’t hate my dead grandmother, because I don’t know her well enough to be angry at her, but she had an air about her which was disturbing. Dismal. Empty. It seems to stick to things she owned. Can’t have that. Won’t.

I don’t think there was much to her. She was polite, and she didn’t cause problems for us, but I don’t think it would have meant anything to her if my family had disappeared into a crack in the earth.

The things I recall about her aren’t heartwarming. On one occasion, she called my dad and said she needed money. He sent her $3000. Someone asked her what was wrong, and she said, “He’s got all that money, and I love spending it.” She just called because she wanted to shop.

My dad’s older sister was cruel and sick. I found a framed family photo she sent my dad. It was very small and therefore not expensive. The sister, the husband, one daughter, the son-in-law, and I forget who else. I didn’t recognize my cousins, because I don’t know them well. I picked the picture up. I put it down. I thought. I wanted to take it because it’s natural to preserve things like that, but then I imagined this unwanted picture, sitting in my house on display, full of faces I will never see again. People who might as well be strangers.

I don’t know if I’ll retrieve it on my final visit.

I found a folder full of documents related to a car lease. A letter congratulated my mother on “buying” a Honda. I couldn’t figure it out. Did she have a car I didn’t know about? Not possible. Then I remembered: she got my sister a car to drive to law school. My sister used to park in the school’s handicapped spot, and my mother paid $250 each for the tickets. She paid a lot of money to keep my sister in an apartment, which my mother cleaned, including copious dog poop that littered the carpet.

Sometimes throwing something out can bring you more pleasure than getting something new.

My dad’s other sister died in April, one month and four days after he did. She was okay. I knew her a little bit. I don’t know what her surviving child looks like. She was a math major, so we had that inclination in common. She also created some artwork. I suppose she was a little like me. My dad used to have one of her pictures in his bedroom, on a desk across from the foot of his bed.

I hated that picture. It was a sort of silhouette. It was a young girl sitting on the ground with one knee up. It wasn’t badly done, but the girl was looking down, and the drawing was all black shapes. I thought it was like a demon that stared at my dad while he slept; a succubus. Lilith. I always told myself I would throw it out after my dad died.

I retrieved it on an earlier trip to Miami, and a week or so ago, I found it here in a box. I took a look at it. The only thing I had from her, other than some pictures. I took it to the dump. It was just too creepy.

I tried to pull it out of the frame, but it was glued in, so the frame is also in the landfill.

My aunt seemed to have a darkness inside her. Maybe she did. My dad said that when he was a kid, he and his older sister would fight, and the one who did the drawing would cry.

In the weeks before he died, he started asking about her, over and over. He called her by a nickname his father had made up. “Palsy.” He called her “Palsy-walsy Cat’s Paw.” Very odd. Before he became demented, he didn’t talk about his family much at all.

I found a porcelain owl my dad bought for my mother. I was very glad to find it. I had had a dream in which demons that looked like owls were dancing in my dad’s bedroom. I threw the owl out.

I didn’t know my aunt well enough to grieve when she died. I was a little sad, but it was about like finding out a neighbor had died. This is why I didn’t write about it.

I like her husband. He’s a former NASA engineer, so we’re both STEM guys. I always enjoyed his company. But I could only get so close to my dad’s people. I texted him after she passed, indicating I didn’t want to intrude with a call. He called a few days later. He said things making it clear that he understood that we probably would not see each other again.

I felt genuine sorrow and compassion for him, but that’s not the same thing as grieving for my aunt.

In addition to taking things from the house and recording the deed, I closed my safe deposit box in Miami. Glad to have that over with. One less reason to be there. When it’s time to get rid of the remaining bank accounts, which contain nearly nothing, I can do it from here.

On Monday night, Travis and I got together with a young lady we knew from our old churches, Trinity and New Dawn. That was great. It was nice to be with two young people who are doing things right. I’ll call her Condi. I hope she doesn’t read that. I may get an earful.

Condi is some sort of therapist. I can never get it straight. She’s a professional. Takes care of herself. Isn’t part of the BET/BLM/Kanye West culture. Loves God. Enjoys spending time with the Holy Spirit. She’s also fun to be around, even though she’s a vegetarian.

I know a number of women like Condi. Young, attractive, successful, connected to God, and still single. South Florida seems to be a terrible place for a young black woman to find a husband, especially if she’s a Christian. The culture is just too gross.

I was thinking about it this morning, and I felt like God told me the problem was that the best men had left South Florida. Men have to be leaders. It makes sense that good men would leave a hellhole like Miami before women, in order to set up their lives elsewhere. God can move men out to create Christian homes in other places, and women who are blessed enough to be delivered can then follow them.

Lots of men who love God have left the area. Look at me.

Maybe God wants Christian men to pull women out of cities. It makes sense, because he pulls men out of cities. A man’s behavior toward his wife is supposed to be like God’s behavior toward the man.

It’s very strange, seeing so many extremely eligible women becoming spinsters. It’s like a plague. It’s even worse when they settle and try to turn sows’ ears into silk purses. Missionary dating is like welding yourself to a sinking ship. One of my best friends has two kids now, and the father still hasn’t married her. That’s a terrible situation. Continuing in a sin can send you to hell, and it’s also a recipe for dysfunction.

Trinity Church had a lady who gave up a great deal to serve the pastors. She was a former Alvin Ailey dancer. She was very good-looking. She took care of herself. She was always impeccably groomed. She was pleasant. She was a hard worker. She was pleasant. She loved God. No suitable men in sight. She spent long hours creating costumes for Trinity’s plays. She was an armorbearer and unpaid assistant to the pastor’s son’s wife, whose ministry amounted to nothing. It was as if she had married the church.

She’s in her 50’s now.

It would have been nice if a husband had come along and led her into God’s blessed life. He could have freed her from the Wilkersons and their manipulation.

A man needs a woman to be a helper, and to have someone to practice God’s love on. A woman needs a man to be a leader.

Making it back to Ocala and my home…I can’t make you understand how wonderful it was. My beautiful farm. My beautiful Christian home. Cleanliness. Order. Peace. No traffic. My own shower. My big, clean bed. My tractor! My tools! My wonderful neighbors.

English!

I feel like going to Chick-fil-A for lunch, just to intensify the experience. If you don’t understand that, you haven’t been to Chick-fil-A.

I want to lie here and bask in the relief. I feel like I’m drinking cool water after a month drifting in a lifeboat in the burning sun, surrounded by salt water. But I have to get up and do things.

Ocala is phenomenal. If I move to Tennessee, it will be even better.

I’ll tell you what I think is happening. John the Baptist said Jesus would baptize us with fire and the Holy Spirit, but churches have failed to tell us what baptism with fire is. I believe I know how. Fire burns away impurity. It represents God’s anger. The fire of hell is God’s anger. Sacrifices were burned as though they were guilty people. I believe the baptism with fire is the gauntlet of bad experiences you have to go through in order to become like God.

Receiving salvation isn’t enough. You have to be filled with the Holy Spirit. You have to get rid of iniquity and give up sin. You have to set yourself apart from the world and be changed. Before you turn to God, you burrow into trouble and sin. Afterward, you have to dig out. God will tell you to give things up. He will tell you to take up new things. Do it quickly, or else he’ll bring chastisement.

I believe I have suffered because I was so deep in the world. Chastisement helped me burrow back out. I think my life is more pleasant now that it used to be, because there is much less burrowing left to do.

Miami was in the depths of filth. Ocala is much better. If God sends me to Tennessee, it will be because Tennessee is better than Ocala.

I’m a Fan of Workshop Cabinets

I got even more stuff done yesterday. The good Lord is still with me.

Because my woodworking tools were all over the place, I decided to get a cabinet to hold them. If you want to be cool, you’re supposed to build a cabinet from wood, using your woodworking tools. Luckily for me, I don’t want to be cool. Metal cabinets come prefabricated, and they work just fine. I bought one at Home Depot.

The cabinet I bought is 6 feet tall. Including the bottom, it has 4 shelves, each of which holds 150 pounds. The doors have pegboard, and each board holds 15 pounds. Each shelf has a cord hole so I can put battery chargers in the cabinet if I want. The cabinet fits plate casters, and a set just arrived on my doorstep. What’s not to love?

Here’s a photo. Isn’t she beautiful?

It was about 100 degrees in some parts of the county yesterday. It hit 95 in the shade in my workshop. How was I supposed to build a cabinet under those circumstances? Obviously, I was not. I bought myself a big fan.

I wasn’t sure what to get. There are some truly huge floor fans out there, but they can’t be tilted vertically. If horizontal isn’t the direction you want, you’re stuck. That wasn’t for me. I decided to get a fan on a pedestal. The one I bought moves 8400 CFM, and it oscillates over maybe 135 degrees.

I was disappointed to see that it didn’t have wheels or feet (China), but I can fix that easily enough.

I noticed something disturbing about it. When you work directly in front of a fan in hot weather, and then you walk outside of the air’s path, you feel very hot immediately. I guess that means I’ll have to stay in the air’s path at all times, which is what I planned to do anyway.

I disabled the oscillating feature. I don’t move much.

Once the fan was put together, it was time for the cabinet. I guess it took an hour. The folks at Husky were very thoughtful; they buried the manual and assembly instructions about 2/3 of the way down in the box, under a bunch of steel panels. They need to work on that.

Now I need a beverage fridge. I have a little Rockstar fridge, but it ices up because it’s a cheap design. I’m over it. I need something better. Sadly, beverage fridges are short, and I don’t want to bend over. Ever. I’m thinking I need to build a cart for one. I can put a couple of shelves in it (or drawers), and it will increase my storage capacity.

On a related note, I’ve come to believe that short tools don’t really save space, compared to floor tools. Say you buy a bench drill press. Are you going to use it on the floor? No. You’ll have to put something under it. You still lose floor space. I’m not sure anyone should ever buy a bench drill press, unless the plan is to put it on a cabinet and get shelf space. When you have short tools, you might as well put storage cabinets or carts under them.

Today I should be able to put wheels on the cabinet, position it where I want it, and anchor it to a wall. Not sure what I’ll put in it yet. I’ll put something heavy in the bottom to promote stability.

In other news, I am now a leatherworker. I have a couple of very nice sheath knives, but the sheaths don’t work with suspenders, and I don’t want to add a belt. I want to make pocket sheaths. I went on Youtube and saw people making sheaths. It’s very simple, and the tools are cheap. A company called Tandy Leather sells tools people trust, so I ordered from them. I got leather through Amazon. Of course.

I look forward to having decent sheaths I didn’t have to pay much for.

Leatherworking is not complicated. My friend Mike has a sister, and when she was young, she had a leather shop. It failed, so the tools were moved to her dad’s garage. Mike and I used to play with them, and we were perfectly capable of making simple things like keychains. Stitching is a hurdle you have to overcome, but it’s not hard. For $115, you can get a hand-cranked sewing machine that will do it, but you can also do it by hand. You buy little punches that look like forks. They put evenly spaced holes in the leather, and you put the thread in.

I am a bit tired of folding knives. Take it out. Open it. Use it. Close it. Put it away. Open it. Use it. Close it. Too many steps, and folders are not as strong as sheath knives. They’re also dirtier because they’re hard to clean. In Florida, I can legally carry a sheath knife (or a sword) in the open, so I see no reason not to do it.

In Florida, a concealed knife with a blade over 4″ in length is considered a concealed weapon, and you need a permit for it, but you can walk right into a bar with a samurai sword (or a 9″ switchblade) on your hip. Open carry can keep you out of trouble and give you more options, in addition to providing better ergonomics and a conversation piece.

I plan to make sheaths that are wide so they are held in my pockets by friction. I also plan to install clips on them to add more security. I could just cut bands from innertubes and put them around the sheaths. That would increase the friction. It works for gun holsters.

Making knife sheaths may sound like a wild excursion, but it’s just like buying a tool cabinet or fan. I need the cabinet and fan to make my existing tools work, and I need sheaths to make my knives work. It’s all about tying up loose ends.

Aside from that, it will prepare me for future problems that require leatherwork. I don’t want to pay someone every time I need something.

It will be nice to have functioning tools again.

Now I have to get to work on the oven. I used the self-clean cycle, and now it’s dead. I’ve already discovered the reason. It has a thermal breaker on the back, and sometimes they pop during cleaning. Of course, they put the breaker where I have to pull the 100+-pound oven out of the wall.

If only I could get the tractor into the kitchen.

Workshop Floor no Longer Bathed in Oil

It’s time to update the world on the things God is helping me get done.

I will probably repeat myself a little.

When I moved to the farm, I bought the seller’s machinery very cheaply. I got a Kubota tractor, a John Deere garden tractor, and an E-Z-GO gas cart with a dump bed. The mechanic who checked the machines out said the John Deere had a leak “around the rear PTO,” and he also said the Kubota was leaking from a hydraulic coupler. He felt both problems were easy and cheap to fix, and he seemed confident that I could do it myself.

After nearly two years of refilling the tractors with fluid and watching oil accumulate on the workshop floor, I tackled the jobs of fixing the leaks.

It turned out the garden tractor did not have a PTO leak. It has a hydraulic cylinder at the rear, and that cylinder raises and lowers the mower. It will also move a 3-point hitch. The rear seal was gone, and John Deere’s cylinder did not have removable end caps, so there was no way to change the seal. The ends of the cylinder were welded on. This is why I will avoid buying John Deere products in the future. There is no good reason for putting a welded cylinder on a $9200 tractor (1992 dollars). The only conceivable reason is to force customers to buy new cylinders.

I paid $180 for a new cylinder, and last week, I put it in. It was not a quick or easy job. Even if I had known what I was doing, and I had had help and proper tools, it would have been unpleasant.

The tractor has a steel pan that makes up the fenders, footboards, and seat area. The seat bolts to it. You have to remove it from the tractor in order to get at the front fitting on the cylinder. Of course, I found some guy on Youtube who removed his in 5 minutes. That always happens. Unfortunately, his tractor was not quite like mine.

To get his pan off, the Youtube guy undid 4 nuts, disconnected the seat kill switch (easily), popped the tail lamps out (easily), removed a shift lever (easily), and lifted the pan off. My seat kill switch had a fat cable that had to be fed through a hole in the pan. There was no way to part the cable with connectors. There was another panel on the side of the tractor that had to be removed in order to allow the pan to come off.

The shift lever was not fun to remove. It goes through a hole in the pan. The hole is way too small to admit a wrench, including a crowfoot wrench. The lever has a hex nut built into it at the bottom, so you can remove the upper part of the lever. The hex is below the steel pan, out of easy reach.

The Youtube guy had a lever which was already loose, so he twirled it off with his fingers. Mine was seized with rust.

Obviously, John Deere had no business putting a hex in a location where a wrench won’t go. The hex should have been near the top of the lever, or the lever should have had a T-handle to allow me to twist it. Stupid, stupid engineering.

I had to hold the pan up with one hand and turn the hex–literally–one tenth of a turn at a time. I was amazed. When I finally got it off, I coated it liberally with anti-seize. My plan is to weld a T-handle or a nut to the upper part, so it will come off quickly in the future. Alternatively, I can store the upper part of the lever in a drawer and go get it when I need to shift. I never really need to shift it. There are only two settings, and once you’re on the right one for your property, you can leave it there nearly all the time.

The seat kill switch is a very bad idea. The hope is that if you fall off the tractor, it will stop running. Problem: if you’re doing a job that requires you to get on and off a lot, you have to start the tractor over and over. It’s unbearable, and it can’t be good for the starter or battery.

The obvious solution is a pop-out kill switch on a lanyard. Boaters use these. The lanyard attaches to your wrist. When you fall off your boat, the lanyard pulls a stopper out of the switch, and the motor dies.

Right now, I have the kill switch disabled. I may add a switch to the tractor to bypass it on demand. I definitely need a quick disconnect in the cable.

My switch has a fat cable with a fat connector on the end, and to remove the pan, you have to stuff the connector through a grommeted hole in the steel. This is not bad when you’re doing it from above and have lots of room to work. When you have to shove it back in from below, you have to hold the pan up with one hand and shove with the other. The pan is very heavy. Very unpleasant.

I don’t know why my tractor has taillights. I know some people work around DWI’s by driving their lawnmowers on the road to get beer, but I have no reason to do that, and I’m pretty sure it would not be street legal anyway. The lamps on my tractor sit in rubber sockets that have to be jammed through holes in the seat pan. Very, very difficult. An intelligent engineer would have used twist-lock sockets, but this is John Deere we are talking about, so brute force is required.

I had to wrestle with each lamp for about 10 minutes to get it back in, and I used grease. Hello, John Deere! Have you heard of couplers? Put one on each wire, and you don’t have to pull the lamps. A 20-minute job becomes a 15-second job.

I apologize for bringing intelligence into the discussion.

The seat and pan must weigh 60 pounds. Lifting the assembly is like lifting an ironing board with a fat kid sitting on the far end. I really need to install my hoist in the workshop. I can’t blame John Deere for my lack of preparation. But I want to.

Very long story short: I got it done. Now I need to install the hoist and fix the tractor so it’s easier to take apart.

As for the Kubota, I was intimidated. I didn’t even know which fitting was leaking, and I knew it was coming from a block of fittings situated too close together for the application of wrenches. I figured I would have to take everything apart.

I will not say I got some ideas. I will say they came to me, presumably from God. I realized I needed to clean the block so I could see where the oil was coming out. I blasted it with a hose and wiped off as much oil and crud as I could, and then I parked the tractor over a sheet of newspaper. The next day, there was maybe an ounce of oil on the paper. I couldn’t tell where it had landed, but I could see oil under one fitting, so I figured I knew where the problem was. I had a female coupler facing up, and it was leaking from below, where it threaded into the tractor.

Of course, the fitting did not have a hex on it that would allow the use of a flare crowfoot wrench. It was round, with two flats. Incredibly stupid. I could not use a crowfoot wrench, and if I managed to get an open-end wrench on the flats, I would have fewer opportunities to get a grip on it. When you have a hex, there is a workable wrench position every 60 degrees. With two flats, not so much.

Looking at the fitting, I saw that someone from the MIT/NASA tractor team had already gouged it up with a pipe wrench or something, so I realized it didn’t matter what I did to it. I put Vise Grips on it, and it came out. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I applied Ace Hardware pipe dope to the threads, and I put it back in. I put paper under the tractor and waited a day. When I checked, it appeared that maybe one drop of oil had come out. That was an improvement.

For the heck of it, I tried to get a wrench on it, and it turned out to be in just the right position for me to do so. I was able to tighten it considerably. The leaking decreased even more. I’m not sure it’s leaking at all. I could be seeing drops from oil I was not able to clean off the tractor at the beginning.

I am told that there is a limit to how much you can improve such a leak by tightening the coupler. The answer, if there is one, is to apply more dope. I plan to try that, but in any case, I am done refilling my tractors with oil every week.

Whew.

The E-Z-GO needs work. It burns oil. The answer is a rebuild kit. Looks like I’m going to spend about $400, but I can do the work myself. That will be a relief.

The tractor problems hung over my head for a long time. I’m very grateful to get them over with.

Every day, I’m knocking off nagging jobs that stole my peace. I’m getting my business in order. It’s wonderful to have so much success in my life.

God gave me promises a few years back. He said things like, “I am ending frustration in your life.” I also got words saying the curses on my life were gone. I wondered why things weren’t perfect, after hearing those things.

I have realized that a life is like an oil tanker. When you make a steering correction on a huge ship, it doesn’t turn instantly. It takes a while to correct. If God tells you you have a blessing, or that a curse is gone, don’t be discouraged because it takes a while for you to see the result.

When you put fertilizer on a plant, you don’t stand over it waiting for it to turn green and grow.

I moved a lot of junk in the workshop. I also took the leaf blowers and cleaned it out. I realized I needed more tool storage. My woodworking stuff is everywhere. I looked around and prayed for guidance, and I bought a Husky vertical cabinet. It’s very nice. I looked at a lot of options, and Husky turned out to be the best. It’s almost 6 feet tall. It has 4 shelves, and each one holds 150 pounds. It has pegboard on the insides of the doors. The base is threaded so you can put wheels on it (ordered).

People say not to put wheels on tall cabinets, and I get it. Here is my response: I refuse to lift this thing every time I need to move it or clean behind it, and believe it or not, cabinets with feet can also fall when you move them. I don’t know what kind of final shop configuration I’m going to have, and I insist on being able to move the cabinet. It has a safety strap to fasten it to walls, so it will only be free to fall when I’m moving it, and I’m intelligent enough to roll it a few feet without killing anyone.

The vertical configuration is a blessing because it takes up so little floor space.

I’m planning on getting a big pedestal fan. I already have one picked out. The shop has a tiny ceiling fan, but its only real effect is to amuse. It’s like 12 feet up. You might be able to feel something if you stood directly under it, but basically, it’s useless. A pedestal fan will be very helpful when I’m trying to get things done in hot weather.

Last night, I came up with a plan for a wooden cart. I want to put my belt grinders on one, but I don’t want to spend a fortune on a storebought cart. I have them on a Northern Tool structural foam cart which will supposedly hold over 250 pounds per shelf, and the cart is slowly bending. Northern’s specs are way off.

I’ve seen people build plywood carts on Youtube. Not impressed. Lots of splinters, hard to cut on table saws, and plywood is expensive. For some reason, people here use hardwood (maybe oak) for fencing, and I have a bunch of boards lying around. I have a jointer, a planer, and some saws. I plan to clean up some boards and put a cart together using glue. As long as you glue long grain to long grain, glue joints are at least as strong as wood itself, so there is nothing to be afraid of. You can add a few screws as backup, in case a joint pops, but it shouldn’t happen. I don’t know why people are so afraid to use glue. Ignorance, probably.

I also ordered parts for my table saw’s base. When I moved, the moving company damaged some things, and the base was one of them. Of course, being a Miami businessman, the owner of the company failed to comply when I asked for help in filing a claim.

I believe they dragged the saw on concrete and asphalt. The base has 4 plastic feet, and they were all ruined. They also managed to break a spring in a part called a floor lock assembly. Because of this, the saw has been very hard to move, so I’ve used it as a place to pile junk (which will soon be in the new cabinet). In a few days, the new parts will arrive, and I’ll be able to use the saw again. If I get my generator fixed. I still don’t have 220 in the shop, and my generator is surging because of ethanol-scam gas. Thanks to God, I have the correct tools and knowledge to fix the carburetor.

Lots of good things are happening. My world is opening up, and stress is going away.

I keep trying to prophesy and interpret tongues, and I keep getting the same basic messages: “Don’t worry.” “I will never leave you.” “I am beside you.” I also got, “Your enemies will be cut down before you like wheat before the scythe.” If I understand him correctly, God has said he will teach me how to stop worrying. I need that. I can’t do it all by myself.

I have been troubled because of the overwhelmingly positive tone of the things I’ve heard. False prophets are known for being overly positive and refusing to correct. My last church had a “house prophet” (whom I will call Ernesto) who always told us it would rain puppies and silver dollars, and he was wrong, wrong, wrong over and over. No one ever called him on it, so the church loved lies and invited more deception.

He was honored with a permanent front row seat, even though he was often late to church, and the pastor used to hand him the mike and let him go off for 20 minutes. He would yell as hard as he could, predicting great things, and his predictions failed. Having Ernesto was much worse than having no prophet at all, because he led us into problems.

Actually, we had no prophet at all. At least no recognized prophet people listened to.

I don’t want to have the same problem.

Ernesto lost his job, and his family has serious financial problems. I found that out recently. I don’t know if he ever dropped his defenses and admitted he was not a prophet. Surely that would help.

Telling him would not have helped. I guarantee you that.

A false prophet is like a guy who goes around pulling stop signs out of the ground. Very dangerous. Not to be taken lightly. False prophets destroy lives. What they do is not okay, and it’s not something to be ignored or tolerated. It has to be exposed. The fact that a false prophet means well doesn’t matter.

Ernesto was a problem, because he had pride. He spoke to people with a sort of paternal tone, as though he had authority and knowledge, but he was making things up, and he didn’t hear from God. He didn’t have in-your-face, abrasive pride, but that doesn’t matter. Lots of nice, likable guys are proud and deluded.

Today God finally gave me something negative. He said something bad was going to happen, and I wouldn’t like it. I was highly disturbed. Suddenly the positive words looked a lot better to me. I kept questioning him, and if I have things right, I’m not the person the bad thing will happen to. I know a couple of people who have some spiritual kinks in their relationship, and I believe they are going to have a problem. They already are: medical issues that haven’t responded to treatment.

I am relieved because I’m not headed for a problem, but I don’t want people I care about to have problems, either. But I can see why it’s happening. They haven’t been listening as well as they should have. People worthy of respect have commented on it. When you stop your ears, you invite harder lessons. The more you know about God, the more dangerous it is to reject correction.

Part of me hopes I’m mistaken, but on the other hand, I don’t want to learn that my efforts to hear from God have failed.

It’s not like I’m causing the problem. I have to remember that. I hear what I hear. If I pick up the paper, and it says there was a nuclear accident in Burma, and I repeat the story, I’m not the one who caused the accident.

It has to be a good thing. The purpose of chastisement is to help and correct. God told a friend of mine that whether something was a punishment or a lesson depended on how it was received.

I have prayed for God to give them every possible help to come around and avoid the chastisement.

We will see what happens. Future events and other types of confirmation (or refutation) will tell me whether I heard from God. I’m not going to buy myself a T-shirt that says “Prophet of God,” and I’m not going to do Youtube videos where I go around telling fortunes, like some “prophets” do.

Jesus said to take the worst seat at the feast and wait to be called to a better one. I know a lot of people who took the best seats and defended their right to them and then got pitched into the street. I’m lucky I’ve never had a position of honor in a church. I was an armorbearer, which is one step up from a janitor, and I was a deacon, which meant absolutely nothing and gave me no authority at all, so I don’t have to worry about being flattered and put to sleep by pastors. It’s hard to fall when no one has ever lifted you up.

I have a lot of concerns about pride. I often feel like I have figured out things about the kingdom of heaven, even though it’s very obvious that I could not figure them out alone. It’s very obvious that God handed me whatever I know. I have to be careful not to be scornful of other people who are wrong about various things. I’m no better than any of them.

I should go buy that fan. October is a long way off.

Disks of Decadence

I don’t know if this is good news or not, but I have finally come up with a recipe for perfect pancakes.

Today I looked in the fridge, and I realized I was missing one of the ingredients for a healthy breakfast. I’ve been eating a kibbutz-style breakfast for a while: raw vegetables, pita, hummus, and so on. I used to eat homemade vegetable stew, but I got tired of making it.

One of my vegetables was nowhere to be found, so I figured I had a good excuse to make pancakes.

First, a word about syrup. I will eat two types of syrup: pure maple syrup and syrups that don’t pretend to be maple syrup. I will eat syrup made from blueberries, sugar, and starch, but I won’t eat Aunt Jemima or Log Cabin fake syrup.

I like a strong maple flavor. There are some very weak maple syrups out there, and I don’t think they’re worth the money. Good syrup costs as much as decent wine, so you might as well get something you can taste.

I have been a fan of grade B syrup for years. Grade B is darker than Grade A, and it has a stronger flavor. Supposedly, it’s intended for baking, but I put it on pancakes and waffles.

Back when I was checking out different brands of grade B, I came across Anderson’s syrup, from Wisconsin. As I recall, it was cheaper than Vermont syrup, and I figured it had to be about the same, so I tried it. It turned out to be a top-notch product.

A few weeks back, I saw I was running low on Anderson’s, so I went to Amazon and looked for it. I saw a Vermont brand–Butternut Farms–at a lower price. I thought I should give it a try. MISTAKE! It ruined my waffles. It was watery and bland. It gets great reviews on Amazon, but it’s worthless.

Even though I still had most of a jug of it, I bought more Anderson’s. Now I use the Butternut syrup for things like oatmeal, just to get rid of it.

On a whim, I tried a “dark” maple syrup I found at the local grocery. It was better than Butternut Farms, but not good enough for me. I’m sticking with Anderson’s, which I refrigerate to discourage mold.

That’s the syrup story.

As for pancakes, I had tried a bunch of recipes, and some were okay, but on the whole, they were not nearly as good as my waffles, which were absolutely perfect. Today I realized the obvious: I needed to make pancakes with waffle batter. Duh.

The pancakes were fluffy and delicious. No leathery texture. No heaviness. I might as well give you the recipe. You can decide whether you want to make pancakes or waffles. It makes 3 pancakes or two big waffles.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup biscuit flour (not self-rising)
3/4 cup milk (maybe buttermilk?)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
3 tablespoons fat
1 egg

For fat, I like to use two tablespoons of melted bacon grease and one tablespoon of melted butter.

Melt the fat and add the milk. Warm the milk so the fat stays melted. Not too hot, because you’re going to add an egg yolk.

Separate the egg. Beat the white until it’s stiff. Add the yolk to the milk and beat until foamy.

Combine the dry ingredients. Mix the wet ingredients in. Adjust the consistency by adding milk or flour, if needed.

That’s all there is to it.

I like to put the syrup in a Pyrex cup with butter and nuke it so it’s hot when it hits the food.

I cook my pancakes on medium-low heat, on a cast iron griddle. Turn them after they fill up with bubbles in the middle and the edges start to look dry.

I put my plate under a heat lamp while I cook. I put the pancakes on the plate as they come off the stove, and they don’t get cold.

Making this recipe is not much harder than dumping mix into a bowl and adding eggs and milk, so you don’t have a good excuse for buying a big box of chemicals instead of cooking from scratch.

If you try it, let me know how it works out.

Avenatti Spectacle Still Waxing

I don’t read or watch the news any more, but I can’t seem to avoid seeing little bits of it. The most amazing phenomenon I am currently aware of: the self-inflicted implosion of Michael Avenatti.

I used to think he was just brash and obnoxious. Now I think he’s mentally ill and probably controlled by demons. No human being could be stupid enough to do the things he has done, without supernatural help.

Today I read that he is accused of stealing $300,000 from Stormy Daniels. People call her a porn star; I consider her a prostitute. I don’t think you can be a star and be in porn; porn is for people who didn’t make it when they set out to be real stars. To me, she’s a prostitute, because she has sex for money. The fact that she does it on camera doesn’t make a difference to me. It’s strange that the law doesn’t see porn actors as prostitutes. If you robbed a bank while making a movie, in the eyes of the law, you’d be guilty of robbery.

Anyway, the prosecutor who is handling the case says Avenatti took $300,000 that belonged to Daniels and spent it on his own expenses, including personal expenses.

Bar associations blow off a lot of complaints, but there are some things they take very seriously, and messing with a client’s money is at the top of the list. If Avenatti is found guilty, he can forget about practicing law anywhere, ever again. He’ll probably do prison time.

I know a lawyer who was convicted of stealing about $100,000 from clients. He got 10 years, and in Florida, “10 years” means at least 8.5. He was hoping for some kind of deal to keep him out of prison. No dice. Judges don’t like crooked lawyers. You can kill someone in a bar fight and get less time.

It didn’t help that he didn’t seem to take the case seriously. At a hearing, the judge asked him how far he had gotten in school, and he said, “nineteenth grade.” When a judge holds your future in his hands, you want him to understand that you are deeply ashamed and that there is nothing you will not do to make him happy.

I decided to look at Avenatti’s famous, blustery Twitter account, to see if he had toned his act down after being charged with so many crimes. I learned that he had made his account private. More irrational behavior. Avenatti is a rabid self-promoter, and that’s why he uses Twitter, so why limit the audience? Some of his crazy tweets still leak out, and it appears that a high risk of prison time has done nothing to abate his rage.

What happened to this guy? He was first in his class at a top law school, and now he acts like he’s on bath salts.

I think he’s going to be put away. He has been charged with multiple crimes, and he is not acting like a defendant who feels remorse. Prosecutors don’t file charges they don’t think they can prove, and given the sheer volume of Avenatti’s alleged offenses, something is likely to stick.

I understand self-destruction, because I’ve been guilty of it, but I don’t understand pouring gas on the fire after it starts.

One of my former pastors was exposed as a molester. The victim’s mother told him that if he quit preaching, she wouldn’t try to have him prosecuted. He confessed to the church (after being exposed on Facebook) and stepped down. Then he changed his mind and went back to work. Not long after that, the cops showed up, and now he’s doing three years. Ordinarily, the thing that would amaze me most was that he would do what he did, to a six-year-old. Under the circumstances, however, the thing that stands out to me is that he remained defiant when he knew what would happen.

Avenatti reminds me of him.

When things don’t make sense, look for a supernatural cause. People are getting crazier. We’re just seeing the sharp end of the nail. It’s going to get much, much worse.

I wonder what insane things I would have done, and how much trouble I would have gotten in, had I not decided to let God change me.

I am trying to avoid pride and self-righteousness, so I will pray for Avenatti (again). One has to wonder if prison will sober him up. My guess is that it won’t. Some people are so pride, they are immune to correction.

I’m all About Progress

With God’s intensified help, I am continuing to get things done. I got new accounts set up with the Florida Department of Revenue, which is surprisingly hard. I removed more leaves from my yard; I now have an impressive pile of them out in the woods. I’ve also made real progress on stump removal.

I have several stumps in my front yard. The man who sold my dad this house made a huge blunder. He had stumps sawn off level with the ground. NEVER do this. In order to remove a stump using force, you need to be able to grip it, and you need leverage. The longer the trunk is, the easier it is to pull the stump.

I tried burning the stumps with charcoal. It will work, but it’s very slow. I tried lifting them with my tractor. I tried potassium nitrate. I still haven’t found a universal solution.

Potassium nitrate will dramatically accelerate the speed at which some stumps rot. You can rot a stump in a month or two with it, and because the chemical will penetrate down to the roots, you will end up with a stump that burns easily. Potassium nitrate helps wood burn. I used potassium nitrate to soften a stump near my front door, and it worked very well, but other stumps seem to ignore it.

A couple of days ago, I resumed work on a stubborn oak stump. It came from a tree about ten inches across. I figured it would be pretty easy. I would use the tractor and subsoiler to go around it and rip out all the roots holding it in, and then I could lift it out. When I started ripping and digging, I found that the 10″ tree had a solid ball of wood just under the ground, nearly 20″ across. It wasn’t going anywhere.

I dug so much, I created a moat around it. I used a sawzall to cut many of the roots, and then I got out a Remington electric pole saw. This is a weak electric chainsaw. I didn’t want to put my nice gas saws in the dirt. It dulls the blades quickly and might cause other problems. I didn’t care all that much about the Remington; it was already pretty beaten up. It did a wonderful job. Better than a sawzall.

After that, I got the feeling that God was telling me to get a long pry bar and twist the stump out. The idea was to lodge the bar in the stump, attach a strap to the far and, and pull with a tractor. I saw two problems with this: I figured the bar would snap, and I also thought it was too big to go in the largest hole I could make. I have a 1″ auger on a hammer drill, and the pry bar seemed bigger than that. Nonetheless, I did what I thought I was supposed to do.

While I was looking at the problem, I decided to get a real saw out and cut a slot in the top of the stump, like the slot in a screw. This was easy. I rested the bar in it and pulled with my garden tractor. The bar bent instantly. I wondered if the idea had really come from God.

While I was staring at it, I decided to lower the saw into the moat and cut horizontally. I went about halfway through. Because I had a vertical slot in the stump, I was able to put the prying end of the bar (not bent) into the slot and pry. Before long, I had a bunch of stump chunks out. Big ones. In a short time, I was able to cut the stump off flat, maybe 9″ below the surface of the yard.

I wasn’t done. My drill removes wood much faster than a chainsaw. I took it and drilled vertically through the stump’s remains. I guess I spent 15 minutes doing this. Most of the holes went all the way into the soil. I removed a big percentage of the stump. I can bury it now and not worry about it, or I can go out and beat it with a maul and see how much of it breaks off. If I bury it, it should rot a lot faster than it would have, had I not drilled it out.

I plan to try the maul and see what happens. Can’t hurt.

The pry bar worked out very well. It bent, but it motivated me to do things that led to a better solution, and the bent bar is still useful. It only cost $27, which is fine, considering how much stump grinding costs.

I’m hoping to get the new rockshaft cylinder installed in the lawn tractor. I need to mow this week, and I don’t want the old cylinder shooting fluid all over the yard and garage.

Installing a new hydraulic cylinder is intimidating, but it appears that it should not be hard. SHOULD not, I say. You know how these things go sometimes. The old shaft is held in with two cotter pins. After that, you remove two fluid fittings. You put the new cylinder in its place and start working the hydraulics. The pump will fill the cylinder with fluid. Then I top off the fluid, and everything should be fine. As Jeremy Clarkson likes to say, “How hard can it be?”

I’m not sure how to get the new cylinder to move so it’s the same length as the old one. It will have to be extended to the same degree as the old one in order to fit. If I can’t work it out, I’ll have to find a way to move the hydraulic stuff in the tractor so it fits the new shaft.

It’s not easy to expand or compress an empty hydraulic cylinder. I think it needs to be expanded. Maybe I can tie it to a tree and pull it with a tractor.

John Deere makes this cylinder with welded ends, so I can’t replace the seals. Really rotten thing to do to customers. Rebuilding hydraulic cylinders is easy and cheap, and welding the ends on one is probably not significantly cheaper than putting real end caps on it. John Deere is known for high prices and pushing people to dealerships for overpriced repairs.

This is one of the reasons why all small tractors made in America are made overseas. When a company acts like an ass, foreign competitors move in, and Americans lose jobs. I have no sympathy at all when an annoying company gets Asian competition. It’s like the Mac/PC thing; Apple had a better product, but they treated customers and other companies the way lampreys treat bass, so PC vendors crushed Apple for years. Pffft. Couldn’t happen to a nicer company.

I also conquered a decades-long problem which had never stopped nibbling at me: I bought a new Stetson.

When I was in college, I bought a nice beaver Stetson cowboy hat. I got it for fun, but it turned out to be a fantastic hat. I don’t know if cowboys really wore these things, but they should have. In hot weather, they’re too warm, but when it gets cold and wet, a Stetson is great. A Stetson will keep your head dry and warm, and you will also look sharp.

One day while I was working in the student grocery, a Japanese girl named Kana came up to me, pulled off my Stetson, took a black bandana off her neck, put it on the hat over the band, and put the hat back on my head. It looked very good, and the whole thing was flattering. Kana was very attractive. A bit on the sassy side for a Japanese girl, and she was friendly to me and my male friends. I don’t mean she slept with us.

I don’t know how Japanese Kana was, or if she had ever been to Japan. Seemed like she had a little bit of an accent, but you know how Asians are. Raise them here, and they still have accents for a couple of generations.

When I decided to travel after dropping out, I took the Stetson with me. While I was living on a kibbutz, an Israeli kid asked if he could borrow it, and that was the last I ever saw of it.

Recently, I felt bad about losing the hat, and I started looking for a new one. I keep thinking about moving north, and I pictured myself walking around in cold weather with the wrong hat. Of course, Stetson had discontinued it. I created an Ebay search with email alerts, and whenever a new item was listed, I checked it out. This week, a nice hat popped up. It was the right size and model. It seems to be a tiny bit darker than my old hat, but it was too good to pass up. I bought it for about 1/4 the price of a new hat, and it’s in new condition. Sweet.

Now I just need the right bandana.

I can’t wear it now; it’s too hot. When I move to Tennessee, I’ll be able to wear it maybe 7 months out of the year!

I also had a Stetson “Indiana Jones” hat I bought for fun. As I recall, it didn’t like the rain very much, even though it cost $57.50 in dollars that were much bigger than today’s. It may be that the movie hat was wool and not beaver felt. Wool hats don’t tolerate rain well.

It was probably of lower quality than the cowboy hat. After all, it was made to take advantage of a movie fad.

Today I plan to keep getting things done. I’m going to call the University of Florida and ask for a horticulturist to come out and tell me what to do with my yard. I’m going to get another peach tree, and I have realized I need a mulberry, too. I know just where to put it. Some day, people who visit this property will thank me for the shade.

Now I Really Live on a Farm

Yesterday was a big day. The cows arrived.

I now have what I believe to be 15 cattle on the property, including 14 heifers and a bull who looks very tired, for obvious reasons.

I took the cart out yesterday and greeted the livestock. They stared at me the way male engineers stare when a woman enters their cubicle farm. They approached within about 50 feet. I don’t know what kind of cattle they are. Some are completely black, so I assume they’re Angus. Others have a lot of red on them, so maybe they’re part Red Angus or Hereford. Others are white. Charolais, maybe? I don’t know if any of the heifers are purebred.

I am assuming all of the non-bull types are heifers. It has been maybe 30 years since I’ve spent time with cattle, so I can’t tell a heifer from a steer at 50 yards without seeing it from a few angles.

I wasn’t expecting a bull. Some bulls are obnoxious, so I kept an eye on him. He came near the cart and started snorting and pawing the ground, but it turned out he was just throwing dirt on himself. He seems to enjoy that. I have a big berm in my pasture, and he found a bare place in it and got as dirty as he could.

They spend a lot of time trotting. Not sure what that’s about. Maybe it has something to do with the new surroundings.

Manure production has already begun, so I’m happy about that. My friend Mike was asking me how I intended to collect manure. I said I was going to throw it in the bed of the cart. That didn’t sit well with him. He thought I should use a tub. Here’s how I see it: cow manure is not real poop. I would never throw dog poop or hog manure into my cart’s bed, but dry cow manure is not much different from composted grass clippings, so it doesn’t scare me.

I want to combine it with my copious leaf piles.

I was not happy to see that the heifers liked climbing on my berm. I don’t want them to mash it down. I still intend to shoot out there.

Here’s a great thing about cattle, which I didn’t know until yesterday: they love Spanish moss. I saw them eating it. I figure a cow can reach up maybe 6 feet, so if they do their job, all the Spanish moss below that height should disappear in a few months. If only they climbed trees.

My pasture will be kept trimmed, so I won’t have to mow it. The cattle will eat a lot of the weeds. They’ll eat Spanish moss. Free manure. Tax break for agricultural use. Free fence maintenance. It’s a good deal.

Aside from all that, they improve the atmosphere. A farm should have something going on.

I sent photos to my friends. I was surprised at how enthused these city-dwellers were. One young lady said, “Teach me to be like you.” I told her she needed to be like Jesus, not me. I reminded her to pray in tongues a lot every day, and I said she needed to ask God for correction and get away from the ungodly people in her life. So the cows brought me an opportunity to serve God.

It’s funny, but out of all my grandfather’s grandchildren, it looks like I turned out to be most like him. He had a number of farms, and he had tenant farmers. He had a lot of real estate, and he managed it and rented it. I’m doing all that stuff. The other grandchildren don’t seem to be following in his footsteps. He was especially fond of me, so maybe it’s fitting that I am inheriting his mantle.

I wonder if I’m going to increase my holdings.

Last night, a young friend called to tell me how his walk was going. He’s getting a lot of the same messages I am. He has been surrounded by very counterproductive people all his life. He lived in Miami Gardens, which is a very backward, crime-filled area, and he was happy there. Now he says he has to stay away from places like that and cut off a lot of people. I was glad to hear that. God keeps showing me the connection between joy and ridding myself of unequal yokings.

When you don’t have joy, you lack strength and enthusiasm, so you don’t get as much done as you should. Or you force yourself, and you live in misery.

Today, as usual, I watched Derek Prince with breakfast. He said some things about the sabbath, which is Saturday. God showed me something.

Many Jews say the commandment to keep the sabbath is the most important commandment. A famous zionist named Ahad Ha’am said, ” “More than Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.” They see it as a source of strength.

Derek Prince was talking about Sunday, the day after the sabbath. According to him, Jerusalem goes wild on Sundays. People are rested up from the sabbath, and they go out and attack life. Why is that?

God has shown me that being around beings who are against him drains joy and strength. If that is true, then by the symmetry of the supernatural, being with God and the righteous must increase joy and strength.

I’m not ignorant enough to think that most Israelis spend the sabbath with God. Most are atheists or very weak Jews. Nonetheless, God has a strange pattern of blessing the Jews in certain natural areas, even when they’re in rebellion. He has made them smart, capable, and prosperous, and he has kept them alive. Also, the principle of rest works in the natural as well as the supernatural. Israelis may be keeping the sabbath poorly, but it still produces some results.

The Bible tells us to rest in God. It says to wait for him to act, and things will be fine.

Rest is necessary, if you want to have strength to get things done. The best rest is time spent in the presence of God, trusting him to look after you.

The sabbath must have been a shocking idea in the ancient world. As far as I know, from listening to other people, the ancient world had a 7-day work week. The Babylonians only got one day off per month. It must have been strange for the Jews to have Moses tell them they had to give up 14% of their productive time.

I think God is confirming something to me. If you want strength and help, you have to pull away from the world as much as you can. It’s not enough to sit in church once a week and then go home and watch godless TV and devote yourself to worthless pursuits.

God has a history of drawing people out. It is believed that the name “Moses” means “to draw out.” He drew Enoch out of the world. He drew Noah’s family out of the world. He drew Abraham out of Ur. He drew Lot’s family out of Sodom. He drew the Jews out of Egypt. Now he draws his children out of the godless world, even while we live in the midst of it. Eventually, he will draw us out in the rapture.

“Moses” means to draw out of water. That makes sense. In the Bible’s symbolism, the world is a sea, and the water is voices. We have to be drawn out of, and set above, the water of ungodly voices. Remember how Peter walked on water, as long as he was focused on Jesus? God has used drowning a number of times, to show the way he feels about those who are against him. He drowned the entire human race. He drowned Pharaoh’s army. He drowned the pigs Jesus allowed demons to enter. He also drowns our old selves when we are baptized.

The first psalm says that if you want to prosper, you can’t walk in the counsel of the ungodly. That’s a big deal. Many churches teach the counsel of the ungodly, almost exclusively. They teach positive thinking and meditation. They teach hard work (a Biblical curse). They teach people to have high self-esteem, even though God says he fights the proud.

Synagogues are notorious for teaching worldly counsel. They teach leftism and false “social justice.”

If we rely on the counsel of the ungodly, and we seem to succeed, how can God be glorified? He doesn’t take credit for other people’s work. If you want God to do the work of helping you, you need to stop relying on the world and yourself.

God limited the number of Gideon’s men so he could receive the glory for winning the battle. He used a skinny teenager without armor to kill Goliath, so he could receive glory. He used one weak man–Samson–to defeat the Philistines, so he could receive the glory. He came in the form of a weak man–Jesus–to conquer the world, so he could receive the glory. He made the Hebrews stand by and do nothing while he drowned Pharaoh’s army, so he could receive the glory. He cursed Moses for striking a rock to bring water out of it, instead of merely speaking to it, because Moses deprived him of glory.

If you want power to flow, glory has to flow to God. We have to be completely dependent on him. Otherwise, he folds his arms and lets us fight our own battles.

When you spend time with God instead of working, you give God glory. When the Jews refrained from working one day per week, trusting God to look after them, they gave God glory.

This stuff is important. It explains why God doesn’t move more powerfully in our lives. We want him to do the work, while we credit human beings.

I feel that God also showed me something about harmony.

God has told me there is no peace without authority, and he also says authority comes from time spent in the presence of God. God brings organization. When the Spirit rules people, they never disagree, and they always work together. We have to be baptized with the Holy Spirit in order for God to harmonize us, because God communicates with us and orders us through the Spirit.

Harmony is a necessary ingredient of peace. You can’t have peace without harmony.

Why does God like music so much? Because it organizes people. It unites us. While we sing and dance to the same tune, we are unified. We respond to the same melody and rhythm. It’s a picture of heaven, where everyone is unified, all the time.

Machines do a lot of our work for us now, but back when men moved things with their backs, music was necessary in order for them to succeed. They used to sing songs while they worked. For example, men pulling on an anchor line might sing and pull in unison on certain beats.

Harmony multiplies our strength. When an army walks across a bridge, they don’t march in time. They break step, because otherwise, the power of their unified steps could cause the bridge to resonate and collapse.

Some people who say they have been to heaven claim the flowers there sing. That makes sense. Surely every living thing in heaven is in order, and music is a manifestation of order.

I suspect that even the trees in heaven sing. I’ll bet the trees in the Garden of Eden sang.

Maybe this is why singing in tongues is so much more powerful than speaking in tongues.

I asked God for wisdom yesterday. He has promised to give wisdom liberally to people who ask. It seems that he is piling it on. It’s a little overwhelming.

He’ll do it for anyone, so ask him.

I think it’s time to run the harrow and get rid of some leaves. I hope what I wrote is useful to you.

I am Now a Destination for Christian Tourism

I should start keeping a running list of the things I get done. God’s joy keeps flowing through me, and walls keep coming down.

This weekend I bleached two of the workshop’s exterior walls. I treated some Spanish moss with sodium bicarbonate to kill it. I trimmed some hedges. I finally found out what was making my garden tractor leak, I researched the problem, and I found a new part for it. I treated the yard with weed and feed. I cleaned up a lot of the downstairs. I bought copper sulfate because the sodium bicarbonate didn’t satisfy me. I fixed the rickety ornamental fence my grapes grow on, and I fastened my blackberry briars to trellises.

I can’t recall everything else I did.

Today I listened to Derek Prince, and he taught about joy. He said something I’ve believed for years: Biblical joy is not happiness. It’s not an emotion. It’s a thing of the spirit.

I distinguish between the soul and spirit, and so does the Bible. For example, I believe anger is an emotion, which comes from the soul. I believe confidence and enthusiasm come from the spirit. I believe depression comes from the spirit. There are lots of other examples.

What I feel these days isn’t quite the same thing as happiness, although it seems to lead to it. I feel energetic and enthusiastic. I feel confident and optimistic. That’s joy. It’s strength. That’s why the Bible says the joy of the Lord is our strength.

Depression, discouragement, and laziness oppose joy. When you’re depressed, one of the symptoms is laziness. You find it hard to motivate yourself. You feel that whatever you do won’t be rewarding.

I love listening to Prince because, in addition to teaching me new things, he confirms things I already know. Most of what I hear from him is confirmation, not new knowledge. That tells me I’ve been hearing from God. God…tells…everyone…the…same…things. There is no such thing as “healthy” debate.

People in heaven don’t stand around arguing. They already know the truth about everything. God has told them.

Your opinion doesn’t mean squat in heaven. There are no opinions in heaven.

I devoted myself to Trinity Church in Miami, and then I plunged into now-defunct New Dawn Ministries. Both churches were cults. Most of what they taught was correct, but they taught enough garbage to render it ineffective. The pastors made slaves of people. They manipulated, which (according to sound doctrine) means they practiced a form of witchcraft. They squeezed us for money and free work. They got angry and defensive when people spoke the truth and exposed what they were getting wrong.

While I was pulling away at my oar in these galleys, God told me many things, and I got in trouble for repeating them. Now I listen to Derek Prince, and I watch videos made decades ago, in which he says the same things God was saying to me, and for which I was ostracized and disliked by my pastors.

Anyone who prays in tongues every day will hear from God, and God will tell you what he tells me. If I get something wrong, he will tell you I’m mistaken. You really need to hear from God himself.

I had a wonderful experience this weekend. I have a list of people I pray for, and I’m on it. Among other things, I pray that God will give us our own properties and that he will use them for his purposes. I ask him to make them places where the righteous gather for prayer and so on. A couple of days ago, I saw this prayer answered. Some friends who attended Trinity and New Dawn called, and they said they wanted to visit in order to fix their relationships with God.

Look how my life has changed. People want to to come see me so they can get to know God better.

I need names for these people, so I will call them Archie and Edith. Archie was an armorbearer at Trinity, and he also served at New Dawn. He and Edith have two children. One is a grown woman in her twenties. I will call her Gloria. They have a son who must be about 11 now. Let’s call him Mike.

Archie and Edith left Miami, which is a sign God is trying to help them. They moved to the Pompano area. They ended up at a Calvary Chapel church. Calvary Chapel is an organization which focuses on church growth without promoting the works of the Holy Spirit. They don’t ban things like tongues and prophesy, but they don’t promote them, either, which means they discourage them. You can’t be neutral.

Archie called, and we started talking about their walks with God. We got somewhat worked up, and he put me on speaker so Edith could talk. They both complained that they didn’t feel God’s presence at Calvary. Whatever the problems with Trinity and New Dawn were, the Holy Spirit was active. The pastors were off course, but there were people at both churches who did good work when the pastors weren’t around. I will admit that the pastors at New Dawn promoted the works of the Spirit. Their big problem was that they also promoted greed, pride, and manipulation.

Archie started expressing frustration with churches. I saw where he was going, and I told him God had been telling me that the age of the church was over. Organizations were failing him. The most powerful work was going to be done among individuals who were not assembled in churches.

I told them about the strange little ministries I had seen on Youtube. Individuals are going around healing and baptizing people and spreading good teaching. I told them about my trip to Clearwater, to be baptized at a Last Reformation event. I said they needed to have their own meetings at home; just the two of them.

Edith said she was depressed. This is a problem she has had for years. She said she couldn’t get herself going. I knew what the problem was: lack of prayer in tongues.

Long story short, I told them they were welcome to come up. I said I would show them the things I had been shown. We could redo their baptisms in my pool.

They’re planning to come up in June, for at least two days. I sent them Youtube links.

Gloria is an interesting case. Back in 2012, when she was in her late teens, she took the stage at New Dawn and started teaching. She spoke things that came straight from God’s heart, about how people needed to stop being hypocritical and seek God for real. I was amazed. For a long time after that, I thought she was destined for big things. Nothing happened, though. She didn’t continue. I didn’t understand it.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. I see that now. In the Bible, there were times when people who weren’t very close to God prophesied. It had more to do with the presence of God than their status as vessels. Gloria is very worldly. She is very much a part of the godless millennial culture. We just happened to catch her on a night when God took hold of her. I hope she improves. She has been a burden to her parents.

I’m going to pray for God to help Archie and Edith get here, and for him to help us do what he wants. Satan’s tricks are obvious. He will try to prevent them from coming, and he will try to cause problems if they make it, so it’s time to take preventative measures.

Always Accurate; Never Biased

I have been on a roll for weeks. God has been helping me break strongholds that used to drive me nuts. I had a lot of lingering tasks I could not seem to get done, and they keep falling before me.

Yesterday I installed a new moonroof motor in the SUV I inherited. This was a real problem. I need to go to Miami to get junk out of a house I own, so it can be sold. I don’t want to drive my pickup. Water was coming into the SUV because the moonroof drain holes got stopped up, and it killed the slide motor. In order to unplug the holes, I had to open the roof, so I needed the motor to work. I couldn’t drive the SUV to Miami with plugged drain holes. In order to go to Miami, I had to install the new motor.

The installation was a pain, but being me, I had all the tools I needed, and the most important tool was my knowledge of the supernatural. I prayed and spoke God’s help to myself.

I also got new insurance for a house I’m selling. I applied for an online account so I can pay my corporation’s taxes using my computer. I consulted with my realtor and chose a listing price for another house I’m selling. I established contact with a difficult condominium association which has apparently screwed my account up again, and I got them to commit to working it out with me. Things are moving right along.

I used to think worry was an important motivator. That’s true, IF you can’t get joy. Joy is the motivator you want. Worry is a stick; joy is a carrot. Joy is painless. It’s pleasant. It doesn’t give you ulcers, high blood pressure, strokes, gallstones, heart attacks, constipation, insomnia, obesity, or teeth that are worn out because you grind them at night.

The world is full of options. There are options that are available to God’s children, and there are inferior options for the carnal. Joy is for God’s children. If you can’t get God’s joy, you better get worry or some other source of drive, because if you don’t, you may fall way behind on your responsibilities.

God has been filling me with joy lately, and as the Bible says, the joy of the Lord is our strength. It’s not just a flowery saying that looks good on a greeting card. The joy of the Lord IS strength. It will help you get things done.

I’ve noticed that there are things that dull my joy. One of them is looking at the news. A while back, God told me to quit doing it. I canceled the newspapers my dad subscribed to, and I quit looking at news sites. I still see some stuff when I got to Yahoo to check a throwaway email account, however. I shouldn’t look at it. I need to be serious about it. When I look at the articles, I feel my joy slipping away, and I feel discouraged. The world is disgusting; it’s full of morbid tendencies. The world is failing, like a cancer patient, and when I read about it, I get caught up in the despair.

Generally, you go to a person’s side when he’s dying, and you sit it out. When a person is dying from a self-inflicted problem, and he refuses to change, it’s different. You shouldn’t take part in it. The world is going to succeed in destroying itself. I need to limit my participation in that.

I don’t actually need to read the news. I’m not endorsing ignorance, but right now, the news does me much more harm than good, and let’s face it: I am not going to change the world, or learn anything that will help me or those I love, by reading the news. God guides me every day. He’s not going to let me walk off a cliff just because I ignore the hysterical, biased squawking on Fox and CNN.

God keeps showing me how poisonous unequal yokings are. My dad, my worst unequal yoking, was a terrible weight to me until about two months before he died. He made me miserable for much of my life. Even though he changed tremendously shortly before he died, I am still recovering from the effects of my dealings with the pre-transformation Dad. I’m like a plant that was hidden in a closet; now I’m in the sun, and I’m growing and thriving.

When I was a kid, my sister and I used to push my mother to divorce my dad, and we were correct. He was that toxic. God supports marriage, and he hates divorce, but he permits divorce based on infidelity (and probably other things, under the new covenant), and my dad was unfaithful. We should have cut him loose and moved on. When I was older and had a choice, I chose to stay close to him and try to restore our relationship, and when I did that, I sentenced myself to years of needless conflict and waste.

You would think that when I turned back to God, over 10 years ago, he would have told me to dump my dad and make new connections. He did not. He was very clear. I believe I was sentenced to stick with my dad for a while, so I would get a bellyful and learn to hate unequal yokings. It worked. I absolutely hate them, and I will never permit myself to have another one.

When I sit and read news stories, I yoke myself with the secular world. I concern myself with problems that don’t apply to me. It does not matter what happens to the world; I am not part of it, so I will be fine. God has said, “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.” He has also said, “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.”

You know what? Fox and CNN may be your news, but my newspaper is the word of God. I have a different source of news, and my news is different. Now I see why God doesn’t want me to read the news. It’s as if I were studying to be a pharmacist but instead of pharmacy classes, I went to history classes. It’s not the correct input for people on my path, with my future.

It’s crucial to know and accept your place in life, and your path. You can’t look at what other people are doing and insist that you be allowed to do the same.

On a related note, I watched a neat Derek Prince video the other day, about the gifts of the Spirit. The Bible makes it clear that we are expected to prophesy; it’s a universal gift, and we are told to “covet” it. It also lists interpretation of tongues as a gift. Prince led a group of people in prophecy and interpretation, and I started trying to do what they did.

It appears to work. My only concern is that the messages I’ve delivered seem to have very little critical content. The main criticism is this: he says I have to listen. If I am correct, he says my enemies will be cut down before me like wheat before a scythe. He says he will be with me forever. He says many others have come before him, but he is the only true God.

I wondered who he was talking about when me said others had come before him. He said that over and over. In the case of the Jews, he could be talking about the many false messiahs, such as Moses of Crete or Menachem Schneerson, a former Lubavitcher Rebbe who, though he is dead, is worshiped by many people. There was also a pretender named Jesus Bar-Kochba.

It’s interesting to note that Jews who worship Schneerson, who, by their own criteria, can’t be the Messiah, are still considered Jews. If you worship Jesus, you’re out. I wonder if anyone has considered the seeming hypocrisy.

I’m not Jewish. I never thought any Jewish pretender was divine, so if God talks of others who came before him, he can’t be talking about Jewish false messiahs. On the other hand, I have looked to certain human beings to teach me and save me.

When I was in high school, I used to read philosophy books and self-help books. I read people like Krishnamurti and Kierkegaard. I even read Fritz Perls. He was an old pervert who founded a school of psychology called gestalt. Later in life, I found a guy named Wayne Dyer, who taught a very effective (short-term) method of defeating depression. When you defeat depression, joy rebounds in you, and you can get things done. It changed my life.

I was given an anti-depressant when I was at Columbia University, and I had a psychiatrist. Didn’t help in the slightest. Complete waste of time. My psychiatrist, Dr. Anderson, was possibly the worst messiah of all. He just sat in a chair and asked me questions.

I’ve put my faith in a lot of people who were wrong. Some were able to help me dramatically for a short time, but they always failed in the end. Their teachings were carnal, which means they were divorced from the Holy Spirit and Jesus. They were secular false messiahs.

I even turned myself into a messiah. I thought self-esteem and optimism, which I generated, could save me. Big mistake.

Because I was ignorant about God, I thought depression and low self-esteem were my fundamental problems. I was depressed for most of the first 30 years of my life, and I also suffered depression when I went to graduate school in physics. I don’t get depression any more. It’s actually somewhat difficult to remember what it was like, and that’s fine with me. It just does not happen. I can have a couple of days during which I feel down, but that’s it. God doesn’t cure depression temporarily; he annihilates it and keeps it off of you permanently. It’s one of the benefits of prayer in tongues.

I believe my depression was a demon, or more than one demons. Whatever it was, it could only be removed by God’s power.

I hope I’m hearing from God correctly. I intend to keep trying. God has made it clear that we are expected to prophesy, and I want to do everything I’m supposed to do.

Jesus said this:

And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent?

Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?

I don’t believe God will allow me to be deceived if I ask for things he has told me I’m supposed to have. If he will, what hope is there for us?

The things I hear when I try to interpret and prophesy are far better than anything I would have expected God to give me, so I certainly hope they’re coming from God and not me.

We have to have God’s guidance. If he doesn’t inform us, we will walk into one defeat after another. The Bible isn’t enough. The Bible won’t tell you to avoid an airline flight that’s going to crash. It won’t tell you your neighbor is about to go on a shooting rampage. The Bible is great when it comes to generalities, but for specific, real-time information, you have to have the Holy Spirit.

Pre-Christian Jews inquired of God all the time, and he answered. The Holy Spirit spoke to Christians in the New Testament all the time. It’s abnormal to live without God’s timely, specific counsel, yet somehow, we think anyone who claims to hear from God is a nut and a heretic.

I think I’m going to be living in Tennessee at some point in 2020. I believe that will be my last move. I’ll say these things publicly, and we’ll see how they pan out. I think I’ll be looking for properties in earnest by the end of this year. I refuse to borrow (carnal and not the way you behave when you’re the head), so maybe that means all of my surplus property will be sold by then.

Many children of God are being moved to rural areas where they will live in greater safety and be less unequally yoked. On the other hand, most Christians I know don’t hear from God, and they plan to stay where they are. I can’t help them. I can tell them what I know, and after that, the burden is on them.

I think my black friends are in greater trouble than the others. They have been brainwashed to think they have to help “the community” at the expense of everything else. They think they have to live in urban black neighborhoods and hold onto black friends and relatives who pretend to be Christians yet are steeped in sin.

Their neighborhoods are going nowhere. They will not be fixed. They will continue to rot. Staying there is disobedient, and when bad times come, God’s help will be limited, because they should have known better than to stay.

White neighborhoods full of ungodly people are headed for trouble, and black neighborhoods are even worse off. That’s just how it is. As Lot’s wife could tell you, God won’t reward anyone for stubbornness. When he says “leave,” you have to leave.

I shudder when I consider the fate of Jews who live in or near big urban centers. Blacks and Hispanics, who tend to concentrate in cities, have major problems with anti-Semitism, and before long, they will be free to act on their urges. Muslims also accumulate in cities.

The Bible talks about enemies overrunning Israel and raping the women. When people from a certain area are dispersed, they tend to bring their curses with them to their new countries. It may be that many Jews in America will share the problems Israel faces. After all, Israel is a people, not a place.

Today I have to fix a hedge and work on state taxes. I should also put new gage wheels on the deck of my diesel mower. They just arrived. I might also add some stones to an area I mulched last week. Rain is disturbing the mulch.

Am I getting the property ready to live in or to sell? Looks like both. I hope so. As much as I love it here, I can’t stop thinking about Appalachia.

With an Anti-Semitic Pastor

A while back, I wrote about a Youtuber who calls himself ChuckE2009. He’s an interesting guy. He’s a young man who lives in Texas. He went to welding school, and then he got himself a farm. He makes very useful and entertaining videos about tools and farming.

He got in trouble recently by posting political videos. At first, he stood up for old-fashioned values, and that was nice. Later, he started talking about “precious European blood.” He expressed concern about the fact that white Caucasians were being displaced in America. A lot of people got off the ChuckE2009 bus at that point. Since then, people have been posting videos excoriating him and calling him a racist. To be fair to his critics, it looks like they’re right. He seems to believe that Caucasians of European descent are under attack, and although I haven’t seen him advocate violence, he clearly believes a response is in order.

It is certainly true that white people are under attack. It’s a sick new phenomenon. A big university had an event where white people were told to stay home, and they were clearly intimidated. A Jewish professor got in trouble for going to work. Leftists sided against him. When things like this happen in America, it’s obvious that white people are besieged. That, however, doesn’t mean some kind of carnal response is appropriate. It’s a manifestation of a supernatural movement, and exposure and prayer are the correct reactions.

The word “racist” is poorly defined. Generally, people define it so they can use it to condemn people they dislike or excuse people they favor. Leftists have lowered the bar so much, it’s no longer possible to be anything but a racist under their definition, unless you’re non-white. If you’re non-white, you can’t be a racist at all. A non-white person who murders white people while wearing a shirt that says, “I hate white people and believe they are inferior” is not racist, under the left’s criteria. This is literally true.

On the other side of the spectrum, there are people who say you’re not a racist as long as you’re nice to people of other races. You can join a Nazi group and support anti-non-white causes, but as long as you hold the door for black ladies at the mall, you’re okay.

Here is one type of racism: you condemn individuals without investigation, simply because they belong to certain groups. It’s not racist to choose not to live in a black neighborhood because you’re afraid of crime. That’s common sense, and even black people agree that black neighborhoods are dangerous for non-blacks. It’s racist, however, to assume your neighbor–an individual you have not evaluated–has a criminal mindset because he’s black.

Another type of bigotry is genocidal in nature. It involves slandering a group and refusing to give that group a hearing. For example, if you think Jews cause all the world’s problems, which is clearly far from true, you’re a racist. One of my best friends from high school told me black people were a cancer, and he said they should be taken out to sea and drowned. That’s about as racist as you can get. Obviously, I do not talk to this person now.

It’s wrong to say that every negative thought or feeling about people who are different is evil. For example, feeling nervous around crowds of rowdy members of another group which is known for violence toward whites doesn’t make you a racist. It’s a reasonable response to observed behavior. Believing that some racial groups have higher IQ’s is not racist. In fact, leftist scientists believe this, because it’s true. They are not happy about it, and they are very determined to prove that it’s not rooted in genetics. It surprised me to find out that it was true. I don’t know the reason for the disparity, but it definitely exists, and believing it exists isn’t racism. Denying it would be irrational.

It sure seems to me that ChuckE2009 is a racist. He seems to believe that Europeans are the source of all or most progress and harmony in the world. He appears to be against interracial marriage, too, and that suggests that he has problems with a person’s non-white status, per se, not just behaviors and attitudes that might be expected to go along with it. If you’re against all interracial marriage, you must be a racist, because you don’t make exceptions for the many excellent non-white marriage candidates everyone with any common sense knows are out there.

It’s easy for white people who don’t do their homework to get the idea that civilization was created by Europeans, but it’s not quite true. While Northern Europeans were eating each other and worshiping trees, other peoples were civilizing their parts of the world. Obvious examples are the Jews, various Asians, and the Indians of Central and South America. Apart from that, the Nazis and Soviets prove that blue-eyed white people can do a lot of damage.

I don’t deny that American and European culture are, objectively, superior to most others, but that has more to do with God’s favor than white blood.

When you watch ChuckE’s videos, you can see that he’s a Christian. He mentions religion a lot, and he’s upset about sexual sin and abortion.

When I became aware of his issues, I started wondering how he got where he is, and an obvious answer suggested itself: he had to be in the hands of a church that denied the Holy Spirit. Guess what? I was right. He recently posted a video that consisted mostly of footage from a church’s channel. The church’s pastor is one Steven Anderson, and he is against speaking in tongues.

Didn’t take long to figure that out. Churches that don’t deny the Holy Spirit are notable for their racial tolerance and favorable attitude toward interracial marriage, and ChuckE’s sentiments didn’t fit the profile.

Sanderson is a rabid anti-Semite. He has sermons in which he talks about “the real Jews.” Whenever you hear the phrase “the real Jews,” you know you’re about to hear anti-Semitic slander. He has two sermons titled, “The Jews and Their Lies.” He denies that the Holocaust happened. Charismatics, whatever our faults may be, are horrified by this kind of drivel.

ChuckE’s experience shows what happens when churches reject the Holy Spirit. Doctrine goes haywire. Only the Holy Spirit can limit the craziness of the things the mind of man can believe.

I feel bad for this young man. His pastor is controlled by the spirit of Antichrist, and no one has introduced him to the Holy Spirit, so he has no defense.

It always bothers me when people reject the baptism with the Spirit and prayer in tongues, and ChuckE2009’s experience should help you understand why. It doesn’t matter how nice you are, how smart, or how fair. If you aren’t hearing from the Holy Spirit every day, you are never going to develop as a Christian, and you will always be ignorant and deceived. It won’t help you to read the Bible every day. Many of the greatest religious scholars have been wrong about everything that matters.

The Holy Spirit is not an option, like a convertible roof or alloy wheels. You have to have him. Saying the Holy Spirit is optional is like saying legs are optional.

I’ve been wondering if other Youtube tool guys felt the way ChuckE did. His best Youtube buddy, Stephen Cox, just put out a video in which he clears the air. He says he disagrees with ChuckE, but he still chooses to be his best friend. It appears that he made this choice because he felt that virtuous people don’t abandon their friends just because they have kooky beliefs. Quite honestly, he comes across as self-righteous about it, as though we should admire him.

What Cox says may sound nice, and he clearly has good intentions, but it’s ignorant. The truth is this: unequal yokings are poisonous. Jesus fully expects us to abandon our friends, along with everyone else who pulls us away from him, except for children and spouses. He said he came to pit people against each other.

Paul said a Christian should avoid people who claim to be brothers yet persist in certain behaviors. He said we should not even eat with one who “is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner.” When you start ranting about the Jewish Problem and the importance of European blood, you become a reviler. No question about it.

I would pray for ChuckE; in fact, I do. But I wouldn’t continue to associate with such a person. It’s too much. You shouldn’t have someone like that around your wife and kids. You shouldn’t let people see you with him. It will lend support to what he says.

ChuckE is a Christian, supposedly, and he supports anti-Semitic propaganda. Stephen Cox says he’s a Christian, but he doesn’t know he shouldn’t run around with anti-Semites. It’s remarkable what you can believe and still think you’re on board with God.

It’s amazing that a twisted individual like Steven Anderson could succeed as a pastor in America. His website features a photo of him surrounded by dozens of happy followers. They’re not ashamed to be seen with him. Where do people that deceived come from?

I decided to unsubscribe from ChuckE’s channel. It means nearly nothing; no one knew I had subscribed to him, and if they had, it wouldn’t have mattered. I just felt like disconnecting in whatever way I could. I don’t want to see his updates filling my screen when I sit down to relax with tool videos.

I am against the kook right. I am against the people who blindly defend people like Breitbart and Coulter. Andrew Breitbart was a snake who would have done anything for fame, and Ann Coulter has mental issues. I don’t believe in forming militias and daring the FBI to attack. I don’t believe in antagonizing the police on camera and posting the videos on the Internet. I want no part of violent rallies. Conservatives need to disclaim the small, nutty fringe that feeds the left’s straw man fantasies.

I remember how nuts came to my blog and ranted when I criticized pre-alt-right wackos. I was disloyal! I was a traitor! I’m so glad I said what I did. I would hate to be a friend of the kind of people who insulted me. It never bothered me in the slightest. I’m glad they don’t like me. I wouldn’t want them to. It would embarrass me. I hope I still offend them. I hope they change, but unless they do, I don’t want them on my side.

Conservatism is great, and God is conservative, but Christianity is the only answer to man’s problems. Conservatism is a by-product. When you pursue conservatism itself and ignore the Holy Spirit, you waste your time and make your problems worse. That’s true of any good thing. It’s true of wealth. It’s true of power. They’re not blessings unless they come from obeying the Holy Spirit. The essence of carnality is to pursue superficial blessings without pursuing the kingdom of heaven and God’s righteousness.

It seems like the world is being centrifuged rapidly, to separate a tiny Holy-Spirit-aware remnant from everyone else. The more time passes, the lonelier God’s true children will get. Even nominal Christians are generally against them, and the situation will only get worse.

You Can do a Lot with a Dirt Bike Engine Strapped to Your Back

Today has been wonderful.

My new leaf blower arrived. Finally, I know what a real leaf blower is like.

I got a handheld Husqvarna when I lived in Miami, and it was okay for blowing stuff off the porch, but it wasn’t right for a farm, so when I moved to Ocala, I got what I thought was a serious blower: a 56-volt Ego from Home Depot. The specs were right up there with their big gas jobs, and I wanted to be spared the aggravation of dealing with yet another carburetor choked by ethanol-polluted gas.

I tried to blow my oak leaves with the Ego, and the leaves actually dropped closer to the ground, as if to hang on, when the air hit them. I concluded that my leaves were impervious to blowing. After all, I was using what was supposedly a very strong blower, and the leaves went nowhere.

Last week, I ordered an Echo that puts out about 1100 CFM at over 200 mph. The Ego comes in at 600 CFM and 145 mph. Anyway, I put the Echo together and fired it up, and just as one Internet reviewer said, it was strong enough to dig holes in the yard. It ripped up thick mats of half-composted leaves and blew them through the air. It was mesmerizing. I couldn’t put it down.

It didn’t remove every leaf, but it probably got 80% of them. I ended up with a huge pile in my driveway. It was so big, I quit trying to push the leaves. I got the utility cart and a snow shovel and filled the dump bed. I made several trips into the woods and dumped the leaves there. Beautiful.

In that photo, you can see my little freshly trimmed hedges. They look nearly normal now.

My yard has been ravaged by dead leaves I couldn’t move (without taking a rake and a shovel to the whole place), but now the grass has room to grow, so I expect to see some green soon. I’ve been uncovering areas using a harrow and a leaf sweeper, and they’re already coming back, so I expect the blower-cleared areas to do the same. In any event, the leaves won’t be a problem any more.

The blower is so strong, you can move limbs with it. You have to love that. I was blowing little branches all over the place.

My leaf problem has been a big weight on my back. It was a real stronghold. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get anywhere. Then I had some success with a harrow and yard sweeper, and now I have a blower that makes using the sweeper unnecessary. It may seem strange to see someone so relieved about a yard problem, but I feel like I just got released from prison.

I got that done, and I also sprayed a bunch of Spanish moss with a solution of baking soda, water, and Dawn. I put it in the pressure washer and let fly. I also hosed some algae on my chimney. Now we’ll see if it works. My cattle tenant says copper sulfate will do the trick, so I’ll try that if the baking soda fails.

My last achievement: I took care of some business involving the title of a house I’m selling.

I’m very, very happy. I feel like I’m a Champagne bottle and God just pulled out the cork.

Tomorrow I hope to get my moonroof fixed. God is very kind, and I think he will continue to help me.

Pour it On; I Can’t Get Enough

One of the strange things about being an effective Christian is that you have to love being told you’re wrong. You have to prize criticism. If you look for it, you can see this idea throughout the Bible. For example, Psalm 141 says, “Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head.”

Here on the demon-infested earth, we are taught to deny blame. Worse, we are taught to falsely accuse those who bring our faults to our attention. We learn to avoid accepting blame and taking responsibility. By dodging and lying, we avoid the blessing of improvement.

Jesus and the other martyrs were killed partly because they were critical. Leftist Christians like to portray Jesus as a Pillsbury Doughboy sort of person who went through life hugging people and giggling, but in reality, he was very critical and extremely rude. He knew what was wrong with us, and he wanted us to be saved from our faults, so he told us the unsweetened truth. Those who accepted his remarks were saved. Many or all of the rest continued to rot on earth and then ended up in hell.

When you develop a real prayer life, you will hear from God, and very often, what he says will be criticism. You have to take it the right way. When God criticizes you, it’s as if he were shoveling rubies into your pockets. He is giving you keys that unlock the doors that keep you undeveloped and weak.

You can’t say, “I can’t believe this. I’ve been at this so long, and I’ve been so patient, and now you’re telling me I’m still a mess.” That’s self-pity, and self-pity is a form of pride. God fights the proud; the Bible says so. Do you want God himself to fight with you? You’re guaranteed to lose. You have to say, “Thank you for showing me the way out!”

Yesterday I watched a Derek Prince video, and he talked about carnality. If I recall correctly, he connected it with a desire to be independent of God.

I didn’t think much about what he said when I heard it. I agreed with it, and I figured I was not in deep trouble. Last night I woke up and thought about it more, and I realized the desire to be free of God was in me. It shocked me.

Of course, I was hearing from God. I am not smart enough or good enough to figure things like this out without help.

The desire to be free of God is a characteristic of fallen angels and demons. Psalm 2 says this about them and their children:

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying,

Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.

Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.

I don’t want God to vex me or speak to me in wrath.

People who say they have visited hell commonly say the presence of God is not there. This is supposed to be one of the worst things about hell; it’s probably what makes hell what it is. Every good thing streams from God, so if he’s not around, life is agony and constant humiliation. I know this, but I have still had a desire to live in a world where I could lead a “normal” life without so many restrictions and without putting in so much work in prayer and so on. I have desired to be close to God, but at the same time, part of me missed the days of delusion in which I tried to get by on my own, without choosing God’s side and setting myself up as a target for Satan.

I knew there was no such thing as a “normal” world where people lived “normal” lives, but the concept still sounded good to me.

The desire to be free from the light burden and easy yoke of the Spirit-led life is related to the spirit of antichrist. As Prince taught, “anti” means “against,” but it also means, “instead of.” The Antichrist–the man–won’t just be against Christ. He’ll be a substitute Christ. He’ll preach what I call “the alternative righteousness.”

God is both love and judgment. The Antichrist will ignore judgment and push false love. He’ll tell us we have to be really nice to each other. He’ll say this is all that matters. He’ll say homosexuality and other forms of sexual sin are just fine, as long as we’re nice. He’ll say pride is fine, as long as we’re nice. The Bible says we should be kind, but it also says God himself puts people in hell, which he created, for disobedience. The Antichrist will teach that hell doesn’t exist, and he’ll tell us we can make the earth our heaven.

I always talk about the alternative righteousness, but I didn’t fully understand what it was until a few days ago.

When Jesus walked the earth, many of his followers expected him to put on a crown and kill the Romans. They thought he would lift Israel up above its enemies. In other words, they expected a political leader. He told them they were wrong, but they didn’t understand. He said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” He also said, “My kingdom is within you.” He was not a political agitator. He never complained about the Roman occupation, and he even advised his followers to pay taxes.

The Antichrist will be the kind of leader the Jews of Jesus’ time were hoping for. He will be very political. He will be a military leader. He will go after Christians and Jews. He will convince people he can create a false Eden here on earth.

He will be politically correct. There is more to that ugly phrase than we understand. “Political correctness” is synonymous with “alternative righteousness.”

We have strange ideas about righteousness. We think it means you’re supposed to walk around in a robe and be peaceful and effeminate, more or less. A righteous man, to us, is an asexual zealot who walks around staring up to heaven all day. That’s not righteousness. The word “righteous” simply means “correct.” When the Bible says God is righteous, it’s saying God is right about everything.

Correctness is righteousness, so political correctness is political righteousness. “Political” is nearly synonymous with “carnal.”

There have always been two kingdoms on earth: the political kingdom, and the kingdom of heaven. God discouraged the Jews from choosing a king, because he wanted them to be ruled through the kingdom of heaven, guided by priests and prophets. They rejected his advice and chose the curse of politics. They wanted a secular–carnal–leader.

The secular way is the carnal way. It means living without God’s counsel and commands. It means disobedience to God.

What does “carnal” mean? It means “of the flesh.” Animals are carnal. They can’t understand the things of God. They do their best with their natural abilities. When we choose carnal, political solutions, we become like animals. What does the King James Version call animals? “Beasts.”

Political correctness is carnal, and it’s the way of the Beast.

A few years back, God startled me by telling me I had a spirit of antichrist, so I fought it from time to time. I understood various aspects of it, but I don’t think I understood all of it. Now I see that wishing the universe were different and that we could live outside of the Christian paradigm is an antichristian mindset. It opens doors to spirits that hate God.

If anyone ever wishes to be free from the “burdens” of godly life, it has to be because he has forgotten how good that life is–how good and pleasing God is–and how horrible the alternative is.

Now that I have this revelation, I have something new to repent of, and that’s a tremendous gift. It’s always a relief to find out I’m doing something wrong, because it means there is a way to fix things and improve my situation.

The earth isn’t going to be fixed. Christians who push for that need to pray for correction. The Bible makes it very clear that we are going to lose in the short term. It also makes it clear that our path is not political. We are not going to repair the world by convincing everyone we’re nice, winning their hearts, and electing Christian governments. We are going to be persecuted and murdered, and weak Christians will participate in it. We will be demonized, and people who harm us will think they’re doing good deeds.

You can be repaired. The world can’t. Not until Jesus returns, kills his enemies, and rebuilds the planet.

I’m excited about the correction I received. I know my life will be better in the future because of it. I can’t permit myself to fantasize about a world where I can live “normally.” It gives the spirit of antichrist, which hates me, a foothold.

Today I prayed for God to make me more dependent on him. More, not less.

Things are still going well here. I’m tearing this place up. Yesterday was a slow day for home maintenance, but I mopped the back porch with pool chlorine nonetheless. I backwashed and shocked the pool and identified and bought a chemical for killing Spanish moss. I got keys made for my utility cart. I also got a ton of business matters fixed.

The cheap moss-killing chemical is baking soda. They say it really works. I plan to load it in the pressure washer and spray it on the trees near the house. It would be a dream come true to see that nasty stuff dry up and drop. I’m wondering if it will have any effect on algae. Hmm…a website says it kills algae in lawns. I may have a new treatment for my roof.

Today my new leaf blower arrived. It will be like strapping myself to an engine from an F15. Can’t wait to blow leaves and other junk across the farm. I’ve already done some work today, even though I feel like I’ve barely started. I mopped the back porch with pool chlorine again, before breakfast! It wasn’t clean enough to suit me, but before I’m done, it will be. I’ll pressure-wash it if I have to.

I guess I’ll mix the baking soda with Dawn, to make it stick and penetrate. I bought Simple Green for the first time in my life, and I tried using it in the pressure washer, but it seems weak and utterly useless. Hard to believe it’s this overrated. It doesn’t seem to do anything well.

The motor for my car’s moonroof arrived. I was dreading installing it, because of the hot weather. Even in the garage, it’s hot. Then I remembered that the car had an air conditioner. I can park in the shade and run the AC while I work. Not sure why this wasn’t obvious to me.

My advice is to keep asking for correction, because you’re even more wrong than you thought. Be glad you’re wrong, because if you were doing everything right, and your life was as it is now, you would have nothing better to look forward to.