Problems Dissolve Before Wave of Solutions

I’ve had another exciting two days.

The house I live in is wonderful, and the previous owners did a great job taking care of it. Unfortunately, they made a lot of bad landscaping choices. One example was the choice to leave a large oak tree standing 10 feet in front of the house. At some point, they cut it, and they didn’t have the stump ground. When I arrived here, I had a two-foot-wide stump taking up valuable landscaping space, and it had octopus-like roots extending in several directions.

I have fiddled with the stump for quite a while. I put drilled holes in it and filled them with saltpeter. That softened the wood so it was like a very tough cork. It didn’t get rid of the stump, however. Saltpeter is supposed to cause stumps to rot very quickly. Barring that, it’s supposed to make them very flammable, so you can apply kerosene, set them alight, and watch while they burn down into the ground. I didn’t get those results.

The saltpeter didn’t do everything it should have, but it made the stump vulnerable to conventional attack, so yesterday and the day before, I took a sawzall to it. I had come to understand that a lithium sawzall was a phenomenal landscaping tool. I cut a bunch of roots, and then yesterday, I got out a 4-foot prybar and a maul, and I went to town on the stump.

I would estimate that I worked an hour, spread out over two days. I tore out what must have been 150 pounds of oak, in big chunks. It was fantastic. Cutting and removing the roots gave me access to the stump itself, and it surrendered in a short time.

The stump is now gone. I loaded it in my cart and dumped the bits in the woods. Now I have an area where I can plant another peach tree. I don’t know if my first peach tree needs a pollination partner, but I would like to have two varieties, in case I don’t like the one I already have.

I also fixed the ground under the eave of my workshop. For some inexplicable reason, there is no gutter on the roof, so rainwater runs straight off the roof and down onto the lawn, digging a trench in the ground and splashing dirt onto the workshop porch. I learned about the virtues of melaleuca mulch this week, and I picked up 18 bags. I used several of them to fill in the trench the rain dug. Now when the rain pours off the roof, it will land on a bed of what is supposed to be the most stubborn plant-based mulch on earth. Melaleuca mulch binds together after you put it in place, and it’s also heavy, so it won’t float or wash away.

I may put some sort of plants in the mulch. Not sure yet. I put raspberry plants there in 2017, and the rain obliterated them. Weeds seem to grow really well there, though.

I have another area where the old pine mulch was nearly gone, so I blasted it with glyphosate, hacked out a flowering bush I never liked, and dumped a thick blanket of melaleuca mulch on it. It looks much–or mulch–better now. I also installed a hummingbird feeder hanging from a brand-new shepherd’s hook.

I finished trimming my hedges today. Oops…that’s not true. I finished one more side of the house. But it’s a big percentage of the total hedge burden. I can’t say the hedges look neat now, but at least they look like someone tried to put them in order. That’s a gigantic improvement.

I vacuumed and brushed the pool and got some liquid chlorine. Tomorrow I’ll backwash it and shock it. The pool is still recovering from my recent gutter-cleaning adventure. Lots of roof grit and leaf compost dust went into the water. I was starting to get a little algae, so today I nipped that problem in the bud.

I trimmed a couple of trees today. I have a tree with hanging branches, like a willow, and they interfere when I try to mow. I used to put up with it, figuring I wasn’t supposed to cut the limbs. I assumed the droopy effect was one of the tree’s features. Today I thought about it, and I remembered that I own the house now. I don’t care how the person who planted the tree feels. I can do what I want. I hacked out the limbs that were in my way. Now the tree looks much better. I have another tree with limbs that touched the pool enclosure. It occurred to me that a mouse could climb the tree and walk out onto the enclosure, providing him with roof access. I don’t need that headache, so I cut the tree back just to be sure.

My blackberry and grape plants live in an area bordered by a ludicrous ornamental rail fence, and the fence is not sturdy. The rails have a tendency to pop out and fall. Today I took a long 1/4″ drill bit and drilled holes through the posts and rails, and then I used an impact driver to run long hex screws through them to hold them together. I intend to keep running screws until the rails quit flopping. It’s a great solution. It’s unobtrusive, and the whole job of installing a screw takes 30 seconds.

The blackberries are doing very, very well. The bugs here just don’t like them. Today I bought trellises for them. They will be installed tomorrow.

I ordered more batteries for my 18-volt Makita toys. I figure a total of 6 batteries will be enough to make it highly unlikely I’ll ever have to quit work because I’m out of juice. I considered buying no-name Chinese batteries, but there is some question as to how long they last, and you can find great deals on real Makitas on Ebay, so I didn’t take a chance.

I researched strawberries. Someone suggested I put strawberry plants in the planter that used to house the annoying pygmy date palm I dismembered. It’s a great idea, because the planter is by the pool, screened in. The squirrels won’t be able to get near it, but they WILL be able to hang on the screen and stare at the berries they will never get, and that serves them right.

I put glue rat traps in my storage room. I hear funny noises coming from that area at night. I think it’s just the air conditioning moving doors around, but why gamble? If it’s mice, they will soon come to realize the folly of their decision to trespass in my realm.

I wish the day were longer. I want to kill everything in the poolside planter and dump it in the woods.

Getting rid of the stump is a huge blessing. It was like a Satanic stronghold, right in front of my door. It was as if it were taunting me. When I first came here, it was like cast iron, and I saw no hope of removing it without paying someone. Now it’s out in the woods in pieces, and the front yard has lost a major eyesore.

I’m just getting started. I’m going to kill and remove my citrus, which is all mortally ill. I’m going to get my garage wired up for machine tools, and I’m going to move my lathe and mill up here. I’m going to get my truck painted. I’m going to get the driveway resurfaced. This place is going to look like a civilized human being lives here.

Every morning, I keep asking God to help me fix this place so people who look at it will know there is a God in Israel. Christians shouldn’t do everything in a half-assed way. People shouldn’t be able to point their fingers at us and say, “Look at the third-rate care their imaginary God takes of his children.” Our lives should be in order. We should be examples to everyone else.

My hot rod leaf blower arrives Wednesday, God willing. The crud that has been sitting on my driveway since I pressure-washed it is about to be blown halfway to the property line. The leaves that have suffocated my yard will be lucky if they land before they reach Orlando.

Things are good. God is faithful. Christianity works. Don’t give up.

Barriers to Property Sale Collapse

Last year in May, God gave me this phrase: “Extremely effective.” I took it to mean he was going to change me so I got things done faster. It sure looks like that was correct. I have been getting things done right and left since my dad died.

Today I got my cattle lease signed. I drew it up a few days ago. A local man is going to put about 18 cows on my property. They will keep the weeds down, produce lots of useful manure, and kill my property tax bill. They will also make the place look less like Edward Scissorhands’ dad’s winter home. When a man lives alone on a big property, the atmosphere can get creepy.

Today my tenant Homer showed up and worked on the fences. He says the cattle will be here next week. Probably. I put new locks on all the gates he will be using, and when he shows up next week, I will hand him a key.

Yesterday and today, I solved some problems with the title on a property I’m selling. The person my dad bought it from had some little problems, and they popped up when the title insurance people did a search. The first three issues were unpaid fines relating to very stupid and untrained dogs that didn’t behave. That was no problem. A phone call fixed it. The fourth problem was bigger, and it involved a law firm that deals with debt.

At first, I was told I couldn’t resolve anything without consent from the person who was named in the documents, but I knew better than that, being a lawyer and all. I pointed out that I could make an offer to pay without poking my nose into the particulars of the matter, and of course, the attorney was fine with that. He didn’t go into his unsavory line of work because he hates money. Payment is payment, regardless of the source. We worked it out, which really means I agreed to pay him whatever he wants. There is no way to get a reduction in the time I have available. I will be paying on Monday. As it turns out, I am in a situation that will allow me to get reimbursement without making demands or suing anyone (or getting permission), so I won’t be out any money. It will cost the dog owner some cash. Nothing I can do about that, and the truth is, I don’t care.

I am getting the property I live on under control, fast. I fixed all the hedges in front of the house this week, and I will be doing the rest of the house shortly. I put a peach tree in the hole where my lightning-blasted maple used to stand. I ordered some Tupi blackberry plants. These are great warm-climate plants with thorns. Maybe they’ll discourage squirrels. If you buy blackberries in a grocery store, chances are they’re Tupis. They’re big, and the flavor is good. I’m thinking I should sow some in my pasture, to crowd out and kill the disappointing native berries.

I got some info on mulch. It appears that the best possible mulch comes from obnoxious melaleuca trees. These things were brought to Florida from Australia. They’re like eucalyptus trees, sort of. They’re the trees we get tea tree oil from; there is no such thing as a tea tree. They have overrun a lot of South Florida and destroyed much of the awful Everglades (as if I care). The mulch repels bugs and lasts a long time, and killing melaleucas is a mitzvah, so it’s a win-win kind of thing. Melaleuca mulch isn’t available everywhere, which is amazing because it’s such a great idea, but my local Lowe’s happens to have it, so I plan to load up. Much of my mulch is worn out, and I think melaleuca is just the ticket to cover my weeds.

I got a new blade for my lithium Sawzall. This is important because I have a big stump in front of my house, and it has long roots. You should never use a chainsaw on roots, because dirt dulls a chainsaw instantly. A Sawzall is a great tool for cutting roots and branches, especially if it’s cordless. I picked a 9″ wood blade. I can’t wait to get rid of the roots around the stump. The core should come out with the tractor after that.

I found out which extension agent I need to talk to, concerning yard maintenance. I have given up on getting advice from other sources. Forums are useless. I need someone with deep local knowledge because the climate here is so weird. It’s not tropical, and it’s not temperate. We have monstrous weeds, plus gophers, armadillos, and horrible oak trees with destructive leaves. We also have thick algae here that grows on driveways and houses. I have to have information in order to deal with this mess. On Monday, I will hook up and dominate.

My car had a problem. I inherited my dad’s Ford Explorer. It has a moonroof, which is one of the dumbest features a car can have. It gives you all the maintenance problems of a convertible, with none of the style or fun. It amazes me that people like these things. Moonroofs have drain tubes that get plugged, and when they get plugged, water rises in your roof and kills your moonroof motor. In order to unclog the tubes, you have to open the moonroof, so basically, you have to replace the motor before you can clear the drains.

This week I spent a very hard day lowering the headliner in the car. I found the motor, and I have a new one on the way. It’s actually easier to replace the motor than the moonroof fuse. Ford used to put fuses in a convenient panel near the door, but now they hide the indoor fuse box under the dashboard. To get to it, you have to remove a trim panel, lie on your back in the foot well, and twist to your right. It took me over an hour just to find it, and I had directions. Actually changing a fuse would be so hard, it would be physically dangerous. I could tear a muscle. Unbelievably bad engineering.

In any case, the damage to the car was limited to a motor and some dampness on the carpet by the passenger seat, so I’m happy. I would have had to pay hundreds to get a mechanic to fix it.

It’s annoying that car makers don’t warn people about moonroof problems. When you buy a car, you know you have to change the fluids, buy tires, fix the brakes periodically, and get things lubed. You know you have to get front end alignments. No normally aware person will just assume there is an easily blocked tube in the moonroof, which has to be blown out periodically with compressed air. People find out about it after their cars start to smell and their moonroofs stop working.

Some owners have problems much worse than mine. The gaskets around the rear moonroofs go bad, and then water pours into the well where the spare tire sits, filling it to the brim and taking out a stereo speaker in the process. The tire well doesn’t have a drain in it. Nice work, Ford. Good thinking.

I wish I could have my moonroof welded shut. It’s an idiotic product. People who like moonroofs must not know what real convertibles are like.

I’m pretty sure I disposed of some other lingering problems this week, but I can’t think of them offhand.

I hate to say it, but life without my dad is a thousand times better than life with him. Things are going better for me because he’s gone.

I have two dads to consider: the old one, and the new one who appeared 7 weeks before he died. I am still recovering from the damage the old one did, even as I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the new one. He was full of love and generosity. He blessed me every time I saw him. Unfortunately, he was just too ill to continue living.

I love my dad very much, and I can’t wait to be with him again, but that’s the new dad. The old dad was a radioactive weight that held me down.

It’s very odd, being glad to be rid of one version of my dad while missing and loving another version.

Every day, I pray for God to keep killing my old self and giving life and dominance to my new self. I learned that from watching God work on my dad.

I think I’ll get the Sawzall out before it gets completely dark.

Get the unequal yokings out of your life, give yourself completely to God, beg God for correction every day, and worship him physically when you talk to him. Don’t just sit there. Lift your hands and tell him you’re worshiping him. He expects you to make physical gestures of worship, it and pays off.

God will give you peace and victory, but you have to do things his way. Until you give in–as long as you insist on making God work within your own unfortunate version of Christianity–you won’t know how beautiful life can be.

Diabolical Leaves Yield to God’s Favor

God keeps helping me break through barriers.

Today I broke the oak leaf barrier.

My property contains thousands of useless oak trees. They’re not white oaks, red oaks, black oaks, or chestnut oaks; those species are useful. They’re live oaks and various scrubby, crappy oaks which produce bad lumber and drop horrible leaves that kill everything they land on.

Ever since I moved here, I’ve been trying to get rid of oak leaves. I bought a leaf blower, and when I aimed it at the leaves, they actually moved closer to the ground. They refused to be blown away. I bought a mulching kit for my 60″ mower deck, and the leaves ignored it. I bought a 50″ sweeper, and it only removed loose leaves. Leaves that were farther down in the crud column refused to move. Also, Spanish moss kept wrapping around the sweeper’s axles and immobilizing them.

Recently, I bought a harrow. This is a heavy steel thing you drag. It’s like a net made of 3/8″ steel rod, with tines protruding downward from it. It loosened leaves so the sweeper would actually pick them up.

This was a big development. It meant I had some hope of getting rid of packed-down leaves, as long as I was willing to stop the sweeper several times an hour and pull Spanish moss off the axles with pliers.

Today I ran the harrow and sweeper, and then I decided to get out one of my leaf blowers. Miracle of miracles…the leaves moved. The harrow had loosened them to the point where they could no longer grab the dirt and hold on. While laughing at me.

I blew a tremendous amount of leaves into the woods. I was able to see grass, or bare dirt where grass used to be, in many areas. I can see my driveway. I worked for about four hours.

The blower isn’t ideal. It’s a one-hand blower with a gas engine. It would be perfect for a 1/4-acre lot with reasonable leaves, but I need something more powerful. I have a much stronger electric blower, but the battery only runs 20 minutes, and a second battery is $200+.

I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to buy a gas-powered backpack blower that could knock a truck over. Echo makes one that puts out over 1000 cfm. That’s almost twice what my electric blower puts out.

They say the big Echo is so strong, you can dig holes with it. That’s what I’m talking about.

It’s amazing that my yard requires a tractor, a harrow, a sweeper, and a high-end blower to clean up the leaves, but that’s how it is when successive generations of landowners fail to cut undesirable trees and replace them with better ones. If I had hickories and pecans instead of oaks, I could get rid of my leaves with a rake. I’d also have valuable timber.

I may also buy a peach tree. The man who built my house made some bad plant decisions, and one bad choice was a maple tree 15 feet from the house. Here, maples grow maybe 80 feet tall, and sometimes we get tropical-storm-force winds. Hello? Fortunately, I guess, lightning hit the maple about 15 seconds after my dad closed on the house, and in March, it keeled over and landed in my driveway. I need something to replace it.

I will not even consider citrus. People who buy citrus are in denial. Citrus greening is going to kill every single citrus tree in North America, except for a few varieties. It’s a done deal. When you buy citrus, you’re investing in failure. Besides, I don’t want to be reminded that I’m in Florida. I want my property to look as much like Tennessee or Ohio as possible. The other day I cut a healthy pygmy date palm in pieces and put it on my burn pile.

I have considered buying a peach tree before, but the only varieties that work are strange creations that come from the University of Florida. I figured they had to taste bad. There had to be some sacrifice, in order to get a peach that will produce in hot weather. A friend tells me I’m wrong. He lives in Kissimmee, and he grows good peaches.

He got his tree at Home Depot, of all places. If he can do it, so can I.

I don’t know about the peach tree, but I’m definitely getting a blower, and if things work out, in a month, I may have a yard that looks like a yard. Maybe God will show me how to kill the awful weeds. Maybe he’ll help me find a type of grass that resembles a real lawn.

The interior of the house is very clean. I even got the bird cages clean, which was impossible in the past. Now the order is spreading to the yard, the pasture, and the woods. It’s too much. I love it.

I don’t know why I couldn’t get all these things together before. It must have been my unequal yoking with my then-non-Christian dad. I partnered with a person who chose to live under curses.

I’m on a roll. Thanks to God, every single day is good.

God is Relocating People

A few years back, I had a dream about my dad. At least I thought it was about my dad. Sitting here writing about it, I think it may have been about him AND the church.

I was in his bedroom. In front of me, a devil who resembled a young black man was dancing. He was short and frail. One punch would have rolled him up like a sock and shattered most of the bones in his upper body. Several spirits that looked like owls were dancing around him. They were suspended in the air. They were located precisely so their positions formed the corners of a rectangle around the devil. Each had an assigned place.

I took it to mean that these were the spirits that ruled my dad. I knew owls were symbolic of evil spirits.

I’ve been thinking about it over the last day, and I think the owls represented spirits of false wisdom. Athena was the false goddess of wisdom, and her symbol is an owl. Before he gave himself to Jesus, my dad was extremely conceited about his intellect, and he said he was too sophisticated to be a Christian.

When God cursed the world, he cursed women with difficult childbirth. One big reason childbirth is difficult is that human babies have very large heads. It makes sense, because confidence in our big brains makes it hard for us to enter the kingdom of heaven. God cursed humanity with problems that reflected the curses humanity had laid on him.

Jesus said, “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” The path into this world is tight, and so is the path into the next world.

Yesterday morning, I dreamed I was on a ship. I was looking for my dad. I found his quarters. It was a large apartment. The same devil was there, dancing. Instead of owls, he was surrounded by dancing roaches. I would say they were around eight inches long. They hovered in the air with their wings spread and their abdomens bent forward, in threatening postures. Other types of vermin crawled toward my feet, but they didn’t climb onto me.

I went into my dad’s bedroom. It stank. It was filthy. His sheets were green with fermented sweat, urine, and other things. He wasn’t there. I somehow knew that he liked to lie in the stinking bed and take drugs.

God talks about casting rebellious people into beds of harlotry.

For some reason, I needed clothing, so I went to the closet. I found a pair of pants that were clean, and I put them on. I fell on the bed briefly, but I managed to roll off without coming into contact with the filth.

I believe the ship was the church. In Genesis, God put his people in an ark and lifted it above the waters of the world. I believe the devil was the spirit that runs the church. He’s not Satan; he’s lower in the hierarchy. He’s black because Africa is the source of a great deal of demon worship. The roaches were spirits that turn preachers into spiritual roaches who destroy and spread spiritual disease instead of building people up. Think of Benny Hinn or John Gray.

My dad represented the preachers who let me down. They were like bad fathers. Never around when I needed them, and when they were around, they caused more problems than they solved. I could not respect them or rely on them. They were dangerous to me, like lepers.

I had a relatively brief engagement with churches. I got a little authority, but I was rejected, so I didn’t get covered in the filth that coated the preachers I served and listened to. Pants are clothing, and clothing is authority. Rolling off the bed without getting dirty represents me moving into churches and then being moved out by God before too much harm could be done. The worst thing that could have happened to me would have been to be honored and made comfortable, because I might have stopped seeking and exposing the truth.

I’ve been asking God to tell me and other people the future. The dream seems to have been about the past, but I suppose it also tells me not to expect or desire any kind of promotion from churches during the remainder of my life. That’s good, because I am fed up with churches. The last thing I want is some backward preacher’s bit between my teeth.

In other news, I just saw an interesting Perry Stone video. He uploaded it in August of 2016, and in it, he quoted an alleged prophecy that was given at one of his events in 2015. The title of the video is “What is About to Happen in the United States,” so I had to watch to see if he had been right or wrong.

Perry Stone has many amazing teachings, but he also wanders off into pride from time to time, and he associates with some unsavory people, such as Steve Munsey, so you can’t assume everything he says is right.

Here is what he said in 2015, as related in the 2016 video:

There is coming a sign in this country. There is coming a sign. It’s in the very near future, and the righteous will discern it, but the unrighteous will not. And you will know it when you see it, because it will be something that is so significant that it will grip your attention, because the Lord is going to do his best to wake up America one more time. And he does this because he loves this country.

Listen to me; I’m hearing it. The widow women have given for missions and for the gospel, and the little women have kept the rural churches alive by baking pies and cakes and the such. People with minimum wage incomes have given to help poor people. America is a giving country. If you don’t believe that, let a disaster happen anywhere in the world; who shows up first?

It doesn’t matter what the country is. If it’s a Muslim country, doesn’t matter. Indonesia? Doesn’t matter. Taiwan? Doesn’t matter. Japan? Doesn’t matter. Who shows up?

And I hear the Spirit of God saying this:

“I remember the good that my people have done, and I will give you another chance because of what you planted in the past. It now comes up before me. What you’ve planted in the past, it will come up before God one more time, and you’re going to see pockets.

As men speak of pockets of selective judgment, so, likewise, there are pockets of selective revival; areas where people will pray and pray and worship and pray until the glory is seen. And it will not be the type of meeting which will make attention from coast to coast, but in that region and with those people.

The town will know that there is a visitation from heaven going on here, and it will be known as the rural revival because people will begin to leave the large cities, not in droves or in masses, but they’ll begin to pull away and not know why into the mountain areas and into the smaller cities because of the danger and the fear of mobs and robbing and looting and stealing, and they’ll be drawn to where the good people are, where they hear people love each other and they care for one another.

And some will come, and they will have no background in the word–they’ll have no background in the things of the Spirit–but they’ll be drawn here because of the mercy of God, and he will draw them to places of mercy of the people of the Lord for his people, and the good people who know their Lord and know their God shall teach them the things of God one more time because the Lord says he still has more than a remnant in this nation.”

Of course, I find this interesting, because it describes exactly what happened to me. I was desperate to get away from Miami, but I couldn’t seem to get free. In 2016, I started looking for a new home in earnest, and in July of 2017, my dad bought the rural home in which I now live.

I’ve been writing about the danger of leftist mobs for years. I know Miami and other big cities will eventually be ruled by crowds of trashy, cruel, underdeveloped, grasping people who have decided to be no better than apes. This is where leftism and hatred of God lead. Perry Stone must have been hearing from the Holy Spirit, because he described my flight from Miami as well as my reasons for leaving.

He also says people are going to move to mountain areas, and he talks about Appalachia and specifically mentions West Virginia and Tennessee. Even though I’ve been here less than two years, I feel a tremendous drive to move to Tennessee. I keep talking about how much I miss Appalachia. I have sat and stared, with thirst, at Youtube videos and real estate websites, just to get a look at mountain properties.

When I decided to watch this video, I expected to be disappointed, but it looks like this was a real prophecy. I hope God sees fit to move me to Appalachia.

God has been helping me get on top of my responsibilities. He has used the revived pressure washer to change my life. The house is getting clean outside, to match the inside. Today I used the pressure washer to clean my birds’ cages. Those cages have frustrated me for years. They are impossible to clean well by hand, without extreme effort. Today I blew the crud off of each one in a few minutes. I was amazed. Anyway, this property is being whipped into shape, and I wonder if I’m getting it ready to live in, or to sell.

It appears that my farm has increased in value since I bought it. There is new construction going up in my area, so the appreciation will probably continue. I may be able to sell without losing anything.

Toward the end of the video, Stone started telling the young people around him about the passage in Joel that says young men will have visions and old men will dream dreams. He interpreted it to mean the kids should have the vision to help him build the ministry he had dreamed about. This is where he got off the Holy Spirit bus. God doesn’t want a bunch of young people to devote their lives to promoting Perry Stone. He wants them to be important in their own right. God didn’t put us here to serve Perry Stone. He put us here to serve God himself.

You can see why I’m a little cautious about Stone. He’ll do great for a while and then veer off into the bushes.

When Joel wrote of “visions,” he was talking about visions. A vision is a supernatural experience in which a person sees things that are not present in the natural realm. In 1984, I woke up in the middle of the night, and my bed had turned 90 degrees. An angel was standing at the foot of the bed with her hands up in worship, and she was bathed in a light that came down from heaven. That’s a vision. John saw visions which he recorded in the Revelation. Ezekiel saw visions. The kind of “vision” a preacher has for building something is a completely different thing. It not a vision at all. It’s just an idea.

I am concerned about people I know who are going to be trapped in cities when things get bad. They don’t listen, so they will have unnecessary problems. I wish I could help them.

Jews insist on living in big cities. They will be easy to find and attack.

I hope I get to visit Appalachia again soon. Maybe I’ll be able to find time.

Mooooooooooooooooo

It looks like I’m a farmer.

I have been working with the property appraiser’s office, and they hooked me up with a guy who mows farms and bales hay. If I produce hay, I’m a farmer, and I can get an agricultural exemption that will cut my property tax. They also gave me a number for a forester. I might be able to get credit for growing timber. Such as it is.

Today the hay guy came by and looked at my farm. He said he wanted to put cattle here instead of mowing and baling.

The more he told me about it, the more I liked it.

If I sell hay, I’ll get nothing. He’ll bale the hay and keep it, and the county will cut my taxes. I’ll still have to maintain my fences and so on. If I put cattle here, he’ll have to pay me for a lease. He’ll keep the fences in order. The cattle will keep the weeds down. I’ll get free manure, too.

It sounds like a good deal.

Right now, I’m trying to find out what to charge him. It doesn’t sound exciting. I am hearing figures ranging from $300 per year to $3285 per year. Based on the information I’ve accumulated, the lower figure is more likely to be correct.

I would be happy to let him put cattle here for nothing, but you can’t do business that way. When you have something of value, you have to charge for it. It’s irresponsible to give things away to strangers. I would have made the deal today, but I had to have a figure to give him.

I also need to look into the legal side of the lease. Do I need a contract? If so, where will I get a form?

When I talked to him about leasing, I made sure he understood I plan to continue shooting and making other use of my land. He understood completely; you don’t want to buy a big farm and then be unable to use it.

I always pray for God to give me and the people on my prayer list property in areas where his people are strong and the spirits against him are weak, and I ask him to send people to take care of what we have and to help us spend our own time serving him. Looks like he chose to grant this prayer with respect to me. I could raise cattle myself, but I would be out there all the time fixing fences and doing other chores.

If I go through with this, I’ll post photos of my new roommates. Never say my life isn’t exciting.

This is Definitely not a Tree of Life

Christians are taught that the Holy Spirit will put joy in them. We’re taught this, but not many of us believe it. If we did, we would be considerably more excited about it than we are, and we would be trying to find out why almost none of us are filled with joy.

It sounds selfish to ask God for joy, but God has made it clear that he wants us to have it, so it’s obvious that we displease him by failing to pursue it.

Joy is an important thing. Joy makes us strong, so without it, presumably, we are weaker than we should be. How do I know joy makes us strong? Because God says the joy of the Lord is our strength. God doesn’t talk just to hear his head rattle. He means every word he says. If God says joy is strength, then joy is strength.

If we really believed the things God says, we would behave a lot differently.

Humans are full of it. We say a lot of things we don’t mean. Christians are big offenders. We talk about how much we love God or other people, for example. Usually, what we really mean is, “We’re SUPPOSED to love God, so I’m saying I love him, even though I’m not sure he’s there and I don’t really have feelings for him.”

People write and utter all sorts of pleasant words that mean nothing. We are used to hearing hot air from human beings, so when God says something, we treat it like hot air. God says he will heal us, but how many Christians believe it? Maybe 5%? Who do most of us go to first when we need healing? Other Christians? Of course not. We go to doctors first. That’s completely backward. Prayer should always be the first thing you do when you need help.

The Holy Spirit offers a whole bunch of gifts. Love, joy, and faith are among them. If you lack any of these gifts, something is wrong, and you should be trying to find out what the problem is.

I’m writing about this because the joy of God has been all over me lately. Maybe it’s because I’m not unequally yoked with my dad any more. I wake up and look forward to the day. I feel reluctant to go to bed, because there are still things I want to get done.

Joy is connected to accomplishment. If you lack joy, you will be lazy. If you have joy, you will have energy to get things done.

I thought I had a lot of energy in the past, but I have much more now. I’ve been putting out old fires right and left. Tasks that used to fill me with dread don’t intimidate me as much now.

Today I did something nuts. I got on my roof with an 18-foot pressure washer lance and blasted the crud out of my gutters. I also bleached the whole east side of the house. It was a miserable job, from the natural standpoint, but I was raring to go this morning.

I went to Walmart and bought myself 6 white T-shirts and some white painter’s pants. Yesterday I got bleach on my Carhartt jeans while pressure washing. That’s not going to happen again. Now I have a uniform. I also tried to buy a cheap straw hat with a strap, but the lady at the register couldn’t find the price, so I let it go. Just as well. It turned out to be a Corona beer hat.

I had to extend the lance, lean it on the pool enclosure, go upstairs, and climb out a window. I pulled the lance up and went to work. It kept catching on things. The job took well over two hours, and I had to go up and down the stairs over and over.

The gutters were disgraceful. I admit it. They filled up during Hurricane Irma, and ever since, I had been hiding my head in the sand. I had to do something, because I had a pretty respectable tree growing over one downspout. When I tried to pull the tree out, I had to fight with it. The root system was about 4 feet long. The tree was tiny, so I had figured there were a few little roots attached to it. Not so.

I was amazed to see dirt in the gutters. I can’t figure out how it got there. I can see how leaves would rot and leave some kind of organic mush, but sand? How does sand get into a roof gutter?

When I blew the junk out, of course, a great deal of debris went through the screen and into the pool area. I had to pressure-sweep the patio, apply bleach, vacuum the pool, skim the pool, and backwash. I was extremely tempted to put it off until tomorrow; it was about 5 p.m. when I got started on the pool stuff. Something inside me kept saying, “Christians have to shoot for excellence.”

That idea came my way via Derek Prince. He complained about the way Christians underachieved. He said that when found out a firm that was helping him publish a book wasn’t run by Christians, he said, “Thank God.” That really hit home. Christians have a reputation for slacking. No one wants to rent a property to a church or contract for services with one, because they are pretty likely to miss rent payments or run out on bills. Christians have a reputation for refusing to tip; even worse, some leave gospel tracts instead of money. I, personally, have learned never to give anything to a church. You can give them money, but if you give them something like a vehicle or a musical instrument, they will destroy it or give it to the pastor or some other idiot in his family.

We’re supposed to do things conscientiously, as though we were working for God. Ouch. I don’t think God liked my roof tree.

I had a spirit of acedia cast out of me once. Acedia is a condition which includes things like laziness and apathy. For quite a while afterward, I got a lot done. It was wonderful. Then something went wrong, and my new joy left me. I think being unequally yoked must have interfered with my deliverance. Non-Christians are oppressive to be around. When you’re yoked up to a non-Christian, you will always have a lot of ideas shot down, and that leads to a state of chronic discouragement. Maybe that’s the problem.

Anyway, I am very grateful for joy. I feel it inside me now, like fire in a steam locomotive. I need strength in order to live correctly. I don’t want to people to look at me and say, “If that’s how Christians live, what good is their God?” I want to be on top of things.

It’s startling how useful a pressure washer is. I buy several things a week to help me get more use out of mine. I have a pressure-adjusting device coming, so I can wash the car safely. I just received a special attachment for cleaning gutters. I installed a new muffler protector today, because I felt bad about the way my dad and I had let the old one rust. I’m going to buy a replacement pump so I’ll have it ready to go when the old one dies.

The pressure washer cleans the house and my car. It also cleans my concrete. On smooth surfaces, it’s better for moving leaves than a blower. I’m thinking I may take the bird cages out and blast them with it; there are things on them I have not been able to dislodge. Every home needs a pressure washer. There are a number of jobs no other tool will do as well.

Tomorrow I hope to get the remaining side of my house clean, and I can start on the workshop. I’m also going to call some people about mowing my hay and managing my timber so I can get tax exemptions. After that, I may climb Mount Everest and swim the English Channel.

Joy is good. Joy is necessary. Joy is better than caffeine, because it doesn’t keep you awake all night. I recommend it.

Thomas Hobbes Would Agree

I’m always interested in reading accounts of people who claim they’ve been to heaven or hell. Some of them are true, and you can learn useful things from them. Even if you learn nothing new, you can get confirmation of things you already know.

I just finished reading a very old account. It surprised me to find it existed. The author is a man named John Bunyan. He wrote books during the 1600’s. His most famous work is a novel called Pilgrim’s Progress. The story of his visit to the supernatural world is called Visions of Heaven and Hell.

Bunyan decided to kill himself. While he was on the way to the place where he planned to commit suicide, an angel appeared to him. He took Bunyan to heaven, where he met and spoke with Elijah. Afterward, they visited hell, where Bunyan saw Satan and a number of damned individuals, including the famous philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Bunyan had known Hobbes.

I think Bunyan’s book is true. It seems very consistent with scripture and with other credible accounts of similar visits. It’s also consistent with my own revelations and supernatural experiences.

The first thing that impressed me about the story was Bunyan’s description of Earth. As he and the angle rose toward heaven, Earth started to look like a small dark spot. Bunyan said it appeared to be something to be despised. The word “despised” means “contemned.” People think it means “hated,” but that isn’t true.

Bunyan thought about the way people strove to get domination and promotion on the little dark spot, and he realized they were throwing their lives away, including their eternal lives, for something of no value at all.

That’s consistent with what Jesus preached. He said, “He who loves his life will lose it.” Bunyan quoted Jesus: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Jesus meant what he said very literally.

Bunyan also learned something that conflicts with Catholicism: the dead in Christ don’t know what’s going on down here. They have general information about developments in the church, but Mary, your mom, and your dad don’t know you have cancer or that you need an A on your Spanish exam. Praying to them is pointless, because they don’t hear you.

How could heaven be heaven if people there were constantly assaulted with knowledge of the bad things that were happening to their living friends and relatives? One of the purposes of death is to give us finality and peace. How could that purpose be served if there was worry in heaven? It’s not possible. We are concerned about living individuals while we are here, but once we’re free, we’re really free, and they are on their own.

He confirmed something which continually amazes me: the symmetry of the supernatural. I’ll provide some examples of things I have noticed. Christians and Jews who are saved have Yahweh; everyone else has Satan. God has righteous angels; Satan has fallen angels. Christians are inhabited by the Holy Spirit; everyone else is inhabited by demons. God takes us to be with him in a place of eternal joy; Satan draws us down to a place of eternal torture. God lowers heavenly virtues to people on earth; Satan raises the iniquities of hell into them. Christians pray in tongues; others chant or meditate on Satanic mantras.

Lately, I’ve been asking God to help me to have treasure in heaven. I believe most people think “treasure in heaven” means some kind of wealth, like piles of rubies and diamonds. It actually means people who are saved. If you help someone receive salvation, you will have that person with you in heaven, and he or she will be a treasure to you.

I’ve also been asking God to minimize my garbage in hell. Hell is a garbage dump, which is why Jesus compared it to Gehenna, Jerusalem’s dump. It’s why Judas fell into Gehenna. People who die unsaved turn themselves into God’s garbage. If I lead someone to hell, then I’ll have garbage in hell.

Bunyan’s experience confirms what I believe. He said people in hell desperately want people they know to be saved. The reason isn’t that they care about them; it’s that the people they corrupt will be their enemies, or at least reason for more torment, in hell. They will make their influencers suffer. No one in hell loves anyone else. They just want to minimize their own suffering.

If you have treasure in heaven, you are surrounded by people you love very intensely, and they bring you great pleasure. If you help someone fall into hell, that person will be with you forever, hating you and accusing you. It’s a symmetrical arrangement.

Imagine the throngs of enemies damned rock stars and actors have.

I believe Satan will be the most tormented person in the lake of fire, because every damned spirit there will hold him responsible for what has happened to him or her.

Bunyan and the angel had a number of conversations with residents of hell, and they discussed things between themselves, too. A damned spirit who fell from heaven argued that man did not deserve more pity than he did. The angel refuted him.

The premise is that if you sin without being tempted, you don’t deserve pity, but if you are subject to temptation, you should be able to get mercy. The fallen angel said he had been tempted by Satan, like man, yet he had been damned as soon as he sinned, with no hope of recovery. He implied that men were no better than he was, and that they deserved no sympathy.

The angel who escorted Bunyan called the fallen spirit a liar and said he had been damned because of pride.

“O you apostate, wicked, lying spirit! Can you say those things and see me here? You know it was your proud heart that made you rebel with Lucifer against the blessed God who had created you with glory! But since you proudly exalted yourself above your blessed Creator, and joined with Lucifer, you are justly cast down to hell. Your former beauty has been changed to your present horrible form as the just punishment of your rebellious pride.”

This makes sense, because the Bible says Lucifer was damned for the iniquity of pride, not the sin of rebellion. God will not permit anything evil to enter heaven, and when a person has an iniquity, he is imperfect and therefore evil.

Scripture says Lucifer was damned for a thought, not an act.

Look:

For you have said in your heart:
“I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will also sit on the mount of the congregation
On the farthest sides of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,
I will be like the Most High.”
Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol,
To the lowest depths of the Pit.

The damned spirit who argued with the angel brought pride into heaven, so he had to go.

Satan wants to bring the iniquities of the flesh into heaven, and God wants to bring the perfection of heaven into the earth while we are still flesh. Symmetry.

Bunyan wrote about the presence of God. In his book, Elijah says that in heaven, we can be in God’s presence continually, whereas here on earth, there have to be interruptions. He also says that on earth, “love is mixed with fear, and fear has torment, but here love is perfect, and perfect love casts out fear.”

Elijah also said there was no temptation in heaven. He said, “Not only are the saints here free from sin, but also from any temptation to sin.” He said, “In the earth below, the best and holiest of souls groan under the burden of corruption. Sin tries to cling to all that they do, and often leads them captive against their will.”

I have often wondered how I’ll avoid sinning in heaven. Satan hovered over God’s throne as his pampered servant, yet he still sinned. It’s a comfort to read that I will not have to worry about falling.

For a long time, I’ve been calling God an ocean when I praise him. For example, I’ve said he was my only infinite sea of perfect peace. This comes from my memory of what I felt when Jesus visited me. Limitless peace, love, and joy shone through me and surrounded me. In the book, Elijah uses the same metaphor.

The ever blessed God is an unbounded ocean of light and life, and joy and happiness, still filling every vessel that is put therein, till it can hold no more.

To me, this is evidence that Bunyan really visited heaven, because I know God is like an ocean from personal experience. No one told me. I didn’t hear it in a Benny Hinn sermon. It sounds like Elijah and other people in heaven experience what I did, on a bigger scale.

Speaking of things shining through people, Bunyan’s book says that in heaven, everything is transparent, and the presence of God shines through all of it. Another person who says he visited heaven has said there were no shadows there. It’s common to hear people say things in heaven are transparent, and I doubt they’ve all read Bunyan’s book.

The earth is a place of corruption and secrecy, so it makes sense that we have shadows and darkness here. They would serve no purpose in heaven. You would expect the light of God’s presence to be everywhere.

People who have visited hell say it’s extremely dark.

I could go on all day. I guess I have.

I enjoyed the book a great deal, and I plan to read it again in the future.

I Feel Almost Competent

I have to blog again. I have fixed the surging on my Homelite pressure washer. I feel invincible.

I found the answer on one of the most useful Youtube channels imaginable: Steve’s Small Engine Saloon. The proprietor took a carburetor just like mine, opened up the access to the pilot jet, and reamed the ethanol crud out with a 0.013″ wire gauge drill bit.

It’s so simple a swing voter could do it.

I ordered the drill bits he recommended, and today I spent 10 or 15 easy minutes opening up my pilot jet.

Now my engine doesn’t surge at all. The next time I use the pressure washer, I’ll actually know what to expect from one second to the next.

Here’s another one of his videos. This one got the pressure washer running. The one about surging made it run correctly.

Ethanol is so destructive; why doesn’t everyone know about wire gauge drill bits? I’ve thrown out a number of Harley jets I could have saved, had I known what to use.

You always hear people say you should use carb cleaner or Sea Foam to fix clogged jets. That stuff never works. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t, anyway. I don’t think I’ve ever seen carb cleaner fix a carburetor. I put Sea Foam in some tools with clogged carbs, and while it improved things, it didn’t solve my problems. A mechanical device like a drill bit gets in there and gets it DONE. It doesn’t make excuses.

I have a generator which is acting up. You better believe I’m going to yank the carb. I’m positive I can fix it. Once I get that done, I can MIG weld again. I’d like to build a mobile base for my giant table saw, but I can’t do it without MIG.

If I had known about wire gauge bits, I would have used them to fix my Echo CS-590 chainsaw instead of wrecking it and then paying a repair shop $135.

The outside of my buildings should be pretty clean 7 days from now. It’s a dream come true.

Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.

Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

That about sums it up.

No More Shades of Grey Here

Success is clinging to me like a bad smell.

Today I finally figured out how to clean my house. I don’t mean the inside of the house. I mean the outside. I have had algae, mold, and other things trying to take over ever since I moved here. The house is supposed to be white, but some parts are grey, and others are green.

Last week I got my dad’s pressure washer running, and I started pimping it out. I put a new hose on it, and I got an 18-foot lance. I even ordered some totally unnecessary chromed parts to replace rusted ones the Miami weather had messed up.

I used the washer to clean part of the driveway (special attachment), and I tried the narrow spray nozzle on the sides of the house. It turned out to be useless for this purpose. That surprised me.

I started Googling and reading.

I learned that there are products you can put in a pressure washer’s soap tank, to make it clean various things. Some of these products are detergents. Others are fungicides. Some contain bleach. I didn’t want to use bleach, because bleaching my house seemed like a good way to damage it, so I looked into other chemicals. The more I looked, the more I read that bleach was the way to go.

I also read–and I don’t know why this should surprise me–that you should never use bleach in a pressure washer. Apparently it eats the seals in the pump, as well as the O-rings in the hose and wand. Never, never, never use bleach in a pressure washer. That’s what they say. Unfortunately, they also say a pressure washer will not get a house clean without bleach, so everyone uses it.

I found out about a product called Mold Armor EZ House Wash. It contains bleach. It comes in a bottle that attaches to a hose. Reviewers said good things about it. They said you could stand on the ground and hose down your second story. That sounded good to me. Pressure washers can be hard to control, and I didn’t want to bleach myself as well as the house. I bought some Mold Armor EZ House Wash and tried it. I have incredible water pressure, so I figured it would work great.

It turns out this product will, in fact, reach the second story of your house. Provided you live in a Barbie Beach House. I found that it sprayed about 8 feet. I could barely reach my first-floor soffit. What a ripoff. Who writes these bogus reviews?

It’s also weak. It didn’t do a great job on the things it managed to hit. It’s also awkward to use. It’s not easy to aim it and turn the bleach flow on and off without hitting the wrong things.

I decided to give the pressure washer a try. I made a solution of about 4 parts water and 1 part 10% pool chlorine, along with a generous squirt of Dawn. I put it in the pressure washer’s tank and blasted the side of the house It shot all the way up to to the roof of the second story. No need for the 18-foot lance, and no need to climb out an upstairs window and walk on the roof. Nice.

It was beautiful. I bleached the house, and in a few minutes, the area I sprayed was nearly white. I was able to use the rinse setting on the pressure washer to get the chlorine off the wall and my plants.

It was so easy, it was ridiculous. When I was done, I needed to empty the soap tank, so I sprayed the driveway. Bonus! I can use the pressure washer to improve the driveway after getting the bulk of the crud off with the hard surface attachment. You can apply bleach to a driveway with a mop, but the pressure washer will do 150 square feet in one minute.

My neighbor paid some dude $300 to wash his house. I figure I can do my house in an easy three hours.

Now…what about the pump? Won’t the chlorine eat it?

Maybe the pump will die, but guess what a replacement pump costs? I’ll tell you: $80. Hmm…pay some guy $300 every time I see mold, or spend $80 on a new pump every three years. Tough call.

If you go to a ripoff parts site to get the pump, it runs $163. Forget that noise. Ebay!

The washer has a great Honda motor with Easy Start, and the pump is easy to replace, so I see no reason why I shouldn’t be able to keep it running a very long time. I can go ahead and buy a new pump now, and when the old one dies, I won’t have to wait for shipping.

Here’s something I didn’t know: unless you spend four figures on a pressure washer, you should expect the pump to crap out in a couple of years. They don’t put this information on the box in big orange letters. They expect homeowners to use their machines very little, so cheap pumps are standard. It’s really sneaky. They give you a great Honda motor so you feel like you bought a quality machine, but they don’t tell you the motor will outlive 10 pumps.

I also bought a pressurized can of pump protector. It’s a greasy substance–possibly grease–you’re supposed to shoot into your pump every time you store it for a long period. This is another thing they don’t mention on the box. I decided I’m going to use it every time I use bleach. Can’t hurt, and it cost 6 bucks.

A better pressure washer will run a grand or more. The one I’m using cost $300, and it works great. I can go through 7 pumps before I reach the point where I’ve spent what a better machine would cost. A better machine would pump more water, and it would be adjustable, which would be nice, but at the moment, my washer is doing everything I want it to.

I feel like keeping this washer alive far past its time, just to make a point.

The carb is still surging, which is annoying, but today my wire gauge drill bit set arrived, so I should be able to clear the carb today or tomorrow. If I can’t manage it, I’ll have to spend the princely sum of $15 on a Chinese replacement.

Unreliable sources say American Indians came up with the saying, “It is a good day to die.” I would counter with, “It is a good day to live.” When your pressure washer is working and you have a new set of wire gauge drill bits, it’s hard to lack enthusiasm for life.

In even better news, I managed to fix problems with a deed to one of my properties. It has now been accepted and recorded, and the property in question is officially out of my dad’s estate, bringing me one step closer to getting probate over with. Yeah, baby!

Tomorrow I’m hoping to contact a couple of people who can help me get agricultural tax exemptions for my house, and if that works, my property taxes will be cut in half. I’m eager to get that over with.

The 23rd psalm says, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” When I spend time with God in the morning, I recite that, and I say, “Today is one of the days of my life, so it must apply.” It says “ALL the days of my life.”

Can’t wait to see the rest of the house brightened up.

Welcome, Loving Father

I truly believe God is helping me get it together in the natural, now that my dad and the spirits that swarmed around him are gone. I keep finding new ways to improve things around me.

I have always hated waxing cars. Because I hated waxing, which involved sweating in the Miami sun, I also neglected washing. I would run vehicles through a gas station car wash once in a while, but that was it.

This week, I got my dad’s old pressure washer running. A fantastic Youtube video showed me how to get the ethanol crud out of the carb’s main jet in a hurry, and I bought a new hose and an extended wand for cleaning my house. I even have some new metal parts on the way, to make the pressure washer look better. I may remove the frame and paint it.

The first thing I cleaned with the pressure washer was the pressure washer. I knocked some decals off, but I can live without them.

Once the machine was running, I thought about the SUV I inherited. It’s not very old, and I would like to keep it in good shape. I’ve learned a lot of things about pressure washers and cars.

First, a gas-powered pressure washer is not too strong for car washing. Some people say otherwise. Yes, it will damage your car if you hold the nozzle too close. There is a way to avoid that. Hold it farther away.

Second, you can use ordinary car wash soaps in pressure washers. I found that people liked Turtle Wax products. They wash and wax at the same time, and they’re not expensive.

My machine dilutes soap at a ratio of 20:1. The soap should be applied at 128:1. That means I have to dilute the soap at around 7:1 before I put it in the pressure washer’s tank. It will work. Other people do it, and the people who make car wash soap endorse it.

Do you just load the machine and blast away? NO! You need a foam cannon. This is an attachment that turns soap into heavy foam. You cover your car with the foam, wait a while, and blow it off. Job done. I suppose you can work on details after that, but the foam will get the basic mission accomplished.

I can handle that!

I needed a foam cannon that could handle 3100 psi, and Amazon had one, for around $20. I’m all set. Now I don’t have to wash by hand. I don’t have to wax by hand. I don’t have to drive to a car wash and pay to use their pressure machine. I don’t have to drive to a hand car wash and sit for 90 minutes.

Simple.

The wax probably can’t compare to hand-applied wax, but who cares? I can wash the car twice a month with very little effort. Even bad wax will look good if you apply it twice a month.

The pressure washer surges a little. Oh, no! What will I do?

1. Chinese carbs sell for under $20 on the Internet, and replacing a carb takes less than 10 minutes.

2. The same guy who did the video about cleaning main jets did a video about cleaning idle jets. Ethanol crud in the idle jet causes surging.

His channel is wonderful. He introduced me to a new tool called a wire gauge drill bit. These are tiny bits that bend. You buy a 0.013″ bit, put it in a pin vise, and ream out your idle jet. Just takes a minute.

It’s not easy to get information about wire gauge drill bits. I’ll save you time. There are two main types: carbon steel and high-speed steel. HSS (as we tool nerds call it) is a superior material because it stays sharp longer, but carbon steel is what you want for a carb, because it bends without snapping.

I already have a bunch of carbide bits in small gauges, but they’re very brittle. I don’t want to have to retrieve a broken bit from my carb.

My bits will arrive today or tomorrow, and then I’ll be ready to fix the carb. If I fail, $15 or so will get me a new one.

I’ll link to the set I bought. It comes with bits and a pin vise. Here it is.

A pin vise is a pen-shaped tool that clamps onto pin-like objects such as drill bits. It’s sort of like the body of an X-Acto knife.

While I was fooling around with the bits, I decided to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I bought some special tools for working on electronic devices. I already have a lot of electronics tools, but they’re for old-fashioned products. Newer things like smartphones and tablets require weird new tools like spudgers and suction cups.

There is a great website called Ifixit. They have a forum. They are “right to repair” fanatics. Manufacturers (*cough* Apple) like to make products hard to work on so we give up and buy new ones instead of fixing them. Right-to-repairers are fighting them. They’re even getting lawmakers to protect the right to repair without voiding warranties.

Ifixit has a neat set of electronics tools. Unfortunately, it’s worth about $25, and they charge $60. I found several items which were better and cheaper. When combined, they will do what the Ifixit kit will do, much cheaper.

Example: the Nanch precision screwdriver set. I already have precision screwdrivers, but this set has a bunch of tiny weird bits to help you remove fasteners Apple and Samsung and the others use to keep you out of their products. The Ifixit set has screwdrivers and bits, but people complain that the bits fall apart. This set has better steel.

I also ordered a couple of suction cups. My 2016 Samsung phone came apart easily. The new phone I had to get is different. It’s full of goo. In order to waterproof it, Samsung glued the shells together. To get them apart, you have to put a suction cup on each side and pull. Many phones and tablets work this way. If you want to replace the battery, you have to open the phone, scrape off the old goo, and put in new goo. You can buy new goo online. A goo-based gaskety sort of thing for my phone is readily available.

My phone used to run for 24 hours with no problem, but it seems to be losing its stamina. Replacing the battery costs $70 locally, and the tech would keep the phone for a while. Now if I get tired of the battery, I can fix it myself for about $20.

The pressure washer carb gave me an excuse to get more tools, so color me happy.

I’m also planning to have my pickup painted. It’s in great mechanical shape, but Dodge paint is not very tough. Two-part paint is garbage, if you ask me. The stuff they used in the 70’s lasted forever, and you could repaint your car yourself if you wanted. The new stuff lasts exactly 7 years in the Florida sun, even if you wax, and once the clearcoat cracks, the whole car has to be sanded and painted.

I figure the SUV will need paint by 2023, but I will probably be ready to buy something else by then.

Let’s see. What else has changed? My arms were starting to hurt from holding my cell phone. I get a lot of long calls these days. Friends want to talk about God. There is something about the shape or size of a smartphone that makes it unpleasant to hold for long periods; it puts strain on the muscles around the elbow. I finally ordered a Bluetooth rig. I was going to get a Plantronics for somewhere in the area of $100, but I found a Chinese job everyone raves about for $20, so I’m giving it a whirl.

I never thought I would talk on the phone so much it would be a problem. Historically, my cell phones have gotten very little use apart from texting.

I’m spending a lot of money this month, but with a few exceptions, it’s all stuff I should have bought long ago. I may even upgrade to fixed wireless Internet, since my current service is about what the Flintstones had. You tell the mammoth whose head sticks through a hole in your wall that you want to see cat memes, and he tells a pterodactyl, and the pterodactyl flies off and tells a guy who chisels memes on slabs of rock.

I’m also getting rid of some things. I’m canceling my dad’s newspaper subscriptions. I can tell God doesn’t want me reading or watching the news right now, and the unread papers keep piling up. I’ve been looking into ways to get newsprint for my birds, and it looks like rolls are cheaper than newspapers.

UPDATE

I started writing this blog post on the 26th, but I forgot about it. I am here to continue.

My Amazon foam cannon was a failure. It’s Chinese, so no surprise. Sometimes Chinese products just don’t work. I’m returning it. I found a new one at Lowe’s. The packaging says it’s good for 3700 psi, and my machine is 3100, so the high pressure of the machine should not be a problem.

The Lowe’s cannon cost $35, and I’m not happy about it, but I don’t want to spend the next month sending foam cannons back to Amazon.

I keep learning new things about 2-cycle tools.

I thought ethanol, all by itself, was the thing that ruined engines. Now I’m wondering. Ethanol is unquestionably poison, and it cuts fuel storage life in half, but the Youtube guy I watch claims that even ethanol-free gas is bad. He says it contains olefins, which create varnish, and benzene, which ruins diaphragms.

Saw makers sell ethanol-free premixed fuel for $20 and up per gallon. The Youtube dude claims this fuel doesn’t contain olefins or benzene in significant amounts. He says you should fill your saw with Gucci gas before you store it, run it for 5 minutes to get the bad gas out, and then put it away with the tank full.

Question: why put it away with the tank full? The gas in the tank won’t get into your carb, so it can’t help your engine. A cynical person would say the manufacturers just want to make sure you spend a hundred bucks a year on their products instead of 6 dollars.

Where I live, there is no such thing as “winterizing.” I am equally likely to use a saw in any season. I might put a saw away three times a year. I’m not spending $10 on Gucci gas every time I do that. In my case, it adds up to $30 per incident, because I have three saws.

I’m thinking I may spend 6 dollars on a small can of super gas and run one ounce through each saw when I think I’m not going to use it for a while. If one ounce won’t work, neither will half a gallon.

Alternatively, I could use an ounce of Sea Foam. It can’t turn into gum, so it’s probably better than Gucci gas. You can run a saw on 100% Sea Foam without problems.

I have reached another conclusion: when you buy a new chainsaw, you should remove the carb, sell it, and buy a Chinese carb. You can make a $60 profit, and Chinese carbs are better, because they can be adjusted and they are easier to repair. The original carb will probably be Chinese, too, so the quality is the same. You should keep the old carb long enough to get past early warranty issues, and then you should pull it.

There is no point in playing along with the hippie nanny-state ethanol/emissions drama any longer than you absolutely have to. Some day, we may have practical saws that run fine on bad gas and don’t pollute unnecessarily (or we might wake up and get rid of ethanol), and that would be great, but until then, you may have to break the rules unless you want saws that sit unused or require repairs that effectively boost their prices by 30%.

While I’m bloviating, I found what may be the most amazing Harbor Freight tool ever: the circular saw sharpening machine. For the pre-coupon price of $55, this thing will sharpen any blade up to 16″ in diameter, whether steel or carbide. Reviewers love it, although it takes some effort to make it work right.

I have a ton of blades, and I’ve always felt that paying a big percentage of a blade’s price to have it sharpened was a bad deal. I have a 14″ dry cut blade, and when I lived in Miami, I would have had to mail it to someone. Imagine the hassle and expense. I’ve been putting up with a moderately dull blade. Sharpening was a pain, and a new blade was $140. If I buy the tool, I can fix the blade myself, right here.

So there will be some redemption in this blog post, I will relate a couple of words God gave me this morning.

1. Thank you for freeing me from the world.

I feel that very bad supernatural events must be coming, because I am disconnecting from the world more and more. Fiction movies and TV shows seem juvenile to me; people who run around in spandex pretending to be superheroes look especially undignified. I no longer have newspapers coming to the house. I’m extremely grateful because I don’t have a regular job, in which I would be coerced to go along with the system. I’m very glad I am less dependent on the Satanic world we live in, but I am concerned for everyone else.

I used to wonder if it was right for God’s people to flee areas and let Satan’s people have them. This week, I thought about that, and I realized it’s a very Biblical thing. Noah and his family fled, and they were saved. Lot and his daughters fled. Abraham fled. Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt. God has a history of pulling his people out of places, and sometimes it precedes disaster and judgment. If God is moving people like me to the country, to areas where Christians predominate, it seems likely that some kind of supernatural catastrophe is coming to areas the ungodly control. My guess is that demonic activity, including persecution, will explode soon. We’re already seeing signs.

2. Thank you for humiliating the losers.

Satan is a loser. He is the “god” of all losers. He is the father of all losers. He is the biggest loser there is. He is an outsider and outlaw. His crowd is like the family at the end of the street with the lawn that never gets mowed, with a living room full of stolen goods and a backyard full of marijuana plants. We all know what losers are like.

These days, we think it’s cute to call yourself an outlaw. In the old days, it was like being called a maggot. It was a huge insult. It should be, still.

The spirits that serve Satan are losers. They threw their futures away. Now they come after us, just as human losers do, selling their tired, stinking wares, hoping we’ll become losers, too, so God will suffer.

I’m very grateful that God is humiliating the losers in my life. I want these spirits to be degraded and abased all the time, and I want the Holy Spirit to be honored and empowered.

God showed me something today. All Christians know that demons want to enter and live in bodies. While I was watching Derek Prince this morning, he taught about God’s desire to make us his temples, and I realized the Holy Spirit wants bodies, too. He doesn’t want to control or ruin us, but he wants to live inside us, just as demons do.

I already knew this, but somehow God has given it new emphasis in my heart.

The symmetry of the supernatural is amazing. Satan copies everything from God. He is the China of spirits.

Over the years, I invited losers to live in me and turn me into a house gone to seed. Now God lives in me, and the losers are being humiliated and evicted. This is what God wants for us.

The losers have no future but pain and humiliation. I’m very glad to see God break them. I wish I had gotten on board sooner.

That’s all for today. I may go foam my car.

Step Away From Cursed People

My dad and my sister shared some problems. They both hoarded things, and they didn’t take care of what they had. My sister destroyed a house by failing to do normal maintenance and cleaning, and my dad would have done the same thing to his own house, had I not stepped in from time to time. They drove filthy cars. My dad didn’t take care of his boat, so it was normal to have problems when we took it out.

My dad used to get very angry with my mother and me when we talked to him about taking care of things. If one of us pointed out termite droppings or wet spots on the ceiling, for example, he would raise his voice and ask if we wanted to pay for the repairs. It was very unpleasant, so we both adopted the same strategy: keep quiet until there was a disaster. When the ceiling fell in, he was willing to let me call a roofer. Before that, talking about roof leaks was a bad idea.

My sister’s house had a water leak under the floor. She said her monthly water bill was between 300 and 400 dollars, but instead of hiring a plumber, she just paid the bills and lived with the termites, ants, roaches, and rats the water attracted. Her living room floor eventually caved in. At some point, a hot water connection under her kitchen sink broke, and the house filled with steam. When the steam dissipated, she assumed everything was all right. Of course, the steam was gone because the water heater couldn’t keep up with the flow. The interior walls of the house turned black with mold within a few days.

My dad kept junk that served no purpose. He printed out thousands of emails and kept them. After I took over his office, I threw out maybe 200 pounds of useless papers. My sister could not walk 30 feet in a store without picking up something to buy, and her house was so full of unneeded things, it was hard to walk in some rooms.

I don’t like saying negative things about my dad these days. I used to get relief from it. I vented. He used to gaslight me a lot, and when people gaslight you, you vent in order to confirm your own sanity to yourself. I don’t need to vent now. When my dad died, he was a wonderful father, and he loved God. I don’t enjoy criticizing him, but sometimes I have to say unpleasant things in order to make a point.

I was unequally yoked with my dad. I chose to stay with him when I went to law school, and I chose to work with him afterward. I believe God sentenced me to spend years dealing with him because of my bad choices. Eventually, I understood that it was wrong to be so close to someone who hated God, and I wanted to be free. I kept telling God I would never have another unequal yoking. I hoped that once my yoking to my dad was over, I would be free of some of his curses.

I believe my dad and my sister were cursed. Hoarding and letting things fall apart around you are abnormal behaviors. Their problems went beyond these things. Their property suffered unusual damage and wear, and it was hard to fix things when they went wrong. Contractors ran off with their money and didn’t do their jobs. Repairs turned out to be unsuccessful. Things that shouldn’t have gone wrong, did.

For a long time, I have hoped that I would not have to deal with these curses after my dad’s death. I managed his affairs, and even though I was a Christian with a good prayer life, it was hard to take care of his property. Bad things kept happening. Problems resisted correction.

When he bought what is now my house, a bolt of lightning destroyed a maple tree by the driveway. The main air conditioner in the house had to be replaced right away, and it leaked water that buckled some flooring. Three weeks after we moved in, Hurricane Irma knocked trees down all over the property. I had surprising difficulty in moving trees and burning them. My chainsaws got gummed up. My generator clogged up. I also had terrible problems with the lawn. I bought an expensive sweeper to get rid of oak leaves, and I installed mulching blades on the mower. These things didn’t help. I searched the Internet, and I asked many people for advice. I got nowhere.

I also felt a powerful sense of dread when it came to getting going on fixing things. I holed up and let many things go. I had to fight the dread every day. I felt great resistance.

I felt that the problems had to be related to our unequal yoking. My own belongings usually fare pretty well. The record isn’t perfect, but I am not a hoarder, I take fairly good care of my things, and I don’t think I would ever let a house get condemned.

Now that my dad is gone, things have changed a great deal. A chainsaw I could not get fixed is finally okay. My pruner’s carb was clogged up, and I found a $15 Chinese carb on Ebay that was actually superior, so I didn’t have to pay anyone to fix the old one (I listed the price incorrectly as $11 in an earlier post). I got rid of a horrible overgrown tree in a concrete planter beside the pool; it had been ruining the patio. I got my dad’s old neglected pressure washer out, and when I looked for information on fixing it, I found a Youtube video featuring the exact same machine with the same problem. I fixed it very quickly, and yesterday I blasted all sorts of crap off the patio. I even found I could remove green discoloration from the screen enclosure; that had been driving me crazy.

I finally found out how to avoid the problems ethanol gas causes with small engines. You would be surprised how hard it is to get that information. The advice you get through casual Internet searches and from reading product manuals is wrong.

I couldn’t get anything to grow here. Now I have three healthy grapevines and two strong blackberry briars growing by my garage.

The tax collector’s office is going to connect me with someone who will mow my pasture for nothing and reduce my property taxes; I’ll get an exemption as a hay producer. I bought a harrow to loosen the oak leaves in my lawn, and now I’m removing and dumping leaves and other debris at a very fast pace. My lawn is going to come back.

I got an 18-foot extension for the pressure cleaner, so I’ll be able to clean the entire house. I found a great video on pressure-washing concrete. It showed me I need an accessory that will make all my pavement look great.

Before my dad died, I could not get rid of the house my sister used to own. It seemed like it was impossible to sell. Now I have a contract on it, and two other buyers are waiting in the wings. I could not figure out what to do with my dad’s old house, but now I’m in the process of listing it.

I was planning to mow the swale by the highway to my east, to keep weeds and trees out. Yesterday I was driving home, and I saw that someone had just mowed it. I assume it was the county. Beautiful.

My house is very clean. It’s considerably cleaner than I’m used to. I have never had the kind of gross habits my dad and my sister had, but I was not neat, either. I love living in a clean house. I still need to order it, but that’s happening.

Before my dad accepted Jesus, I had a great deal of stress in my life, and I had problems that seemed impervious to my natural and supernatural efforts. When he moved to assisted living and started praying with me, things improved dramatically. Now that he’s gone, I sleep well. I don’t worry. Problems keep dissolving. I feel God’s joy in my heart. I marvel at my happiness and how well God is treating me. It may seem strange to hear that an old man who lives alone on a big farm could be enjoying life so much, but it’s true. I wish I had gotten rid of my unhealthy relationships earlier in life.

I also keep feeling that God is going to put me together with a lady I know. I have been wrong about things like that before, so I won’t predict anything, but I keep seeing surprising confirmation.

Unequal yokings are extremely destructive. Let them go. God wants you to pray for your enemies; he does not want you to live with them, marry them, work with them, be close friends with them, or partner with them in business. If you choose unequal yokings, you will pay. There is no way around it.

I recall a Christian writer saying unbelievers were like black holes. Boy, is that true. God is like a sun that shines and makes us grow, and strong Christians also feed and help those around them. Unbelievers who won’t listen seem to suck light in and deprive the rest of us. They waste and destroy. The things you do for them impoverish you and don’t help them. Being around them drains you.

Don’t make the mistakes I made. Clear your life of toxic people as soon as you can. You may be stuck with a spouse or a minor child, but you can get free of a boyfriend, girlfriend, fiance, fiancee, brother, sister, partner, or friend who is corrupting your life.

I had a visit from a Christian friend yesterday, and he asked about someone I knew in Miami. I had to relay some bad news. My Miami “friend” had been cut loose. I realized I only heard from him when he wanted something. He took advantage of me and people I knew. He treated people disrespectfully. He would do things like borrowing tools and letting them sit in his yard in the rain. He used racist language.

When I took him fishing, while the other guests cleaned up the boat, he came and stood beside me at the fish-cleaning table with a beer in his hand, chuckling because he had left them with the hard work.

He was envious; he could not be trusted to borrow tools and not damage them “accidentally.” He blew up and threw tantrums. He had a lot of bad ideas, but he always had to be in charge.

I’ll tell you a story about him. We used to give each other birthday presents. I always got him nice things. For example, I got him a big Forschner knife for use while barbecuing. One year, he gave me a plastic toy. It was a big pink pig in leathers, sitting on a plastic Harley. When you flipped a switch, it oinked, and lights flashed. He said, “It’s YOU!”

This was probably something from a store like Tuesday Morning, where they sell junk other stores couldn’t unload. As soon as I got home, I threw it on the trash pile by the street. I did not open it or even take it inside.

On another occasion, he asked he if he could take a look at a cigar I was smoking. I handed it to him, and he threw it down–on my patio–and made a remark about how I shouldn’t smoke Cuban cigars.

This person, who was not accomplished or admired by people who knew him, always tried to make me feel ashamed of myself, as though I were inferior to him. I was highly educated and had a number of things going for me, but I felt bad nearly every time I was with him.

When God showed me I was only negatively impacted by this person, I let him go, instantly. I never explained. I never regretted it. It was great to be rid of him, because I felt so much better. I used to pray for him, but I don’t even do that any more. He’s a grown man, and he knows what he’s doing.

You may have someone like this in your life. Maybe they like to say they love you, and you believe it. If a person loves you, he will treat you well. If you’re not being treated well, you are selling yourself cheap, and you need to cut the cord. God told me it’s more important to weed the wrong people out of your life than to include the right people.

It can’t think of anyone I regret cutting out of my life, but I can think of a lot of people I regret including.

Derek Prince spoke about our value, and he made a good point. A thing’s value is whatever someone will pay for it. Jesus allowed himself to be tortured to death so he could have you, so you must be very valuable.

Who is a mere man to tell you you’re not valuable, or that you should live in constant shame? Without the Holy Spirit, a man is just a rat that walks on two legs. Would you let a rat shame you?

Ask God to help you get rid of your unequal yokings. Repent. Apologize for forming them. If you want God’s help and his joy to flow in your life, you need to get rid of the immature people who stop you up like gallstones.

On another note, God showed me something very good this week. He gave me a phrase: “I forget what I was.”

Often, I forget that I used to be a real idiot. I have made fun of people who believe in the prosperity gospel, but in the 1980’s, I believed it, because I hadn’t heard otherwise from the Holy Spirit. I have been very hard on people who think Steve Munsey’s awful teachings about Jewish holidays are sound, but I gave money in one of the Munsey-based drives Trinity Church in Miami mounted. I knew very little about God until I was 40, and what I did know, I threw away. I wasted years.

All the revelation I’ve had is just that: revelation. It’s an inheritance, not something I earned. I didn’t think any of it up. When I used to try to figure God out, I got it wrong. I didn’t know much of value until the Holy Spirit came out and told me. I still have to resist the feeling that I came up with these ideas myself. It’s a delusion.

Psalm 1 says a man is blessed if he doesn’t sit in the seat of the scornful. Who has been more scornful than I? I have been cruel to people who knew less, even though I used to be one of them. I thought ridicule was a good thing.

If I understand the Bible correctly, it says we have to be charitable to people who sin, because if we are not, we may fall into temptation, ourselves. I don’t want to be a slave to sin. Also, I don’t want to be an obnoxious person who drives people away from God with a self-righteous attitude.

I’m going to keep this new information in mind. I want to be improved.

One benefit of ridding yourself of unequal yokings is that you will be free from pressure to be part of today’s culture of cruelty and ridicule. You will tend to become like the people you associate with, and these days, everyone loves pride and cruelty.

I hope God keeps blessing and correcting me. I really want to get rid of those awful oak leaves.

How Good Can Life Get?

My dad’s story is not over. I’m starting to wonder if I’ll be writing about it 10 years from now.

I have a friend. She is married. I got to know her husband through her, and now he’s a friend, too. She keeps praying God will help him get closer to God. He’s a Christian, but he’s somewhat less gung-ho than she is.

She texted me and said he told his Mormon sister about the get-together we had when my dad died. People who tried to attend had injuries. My friend totaled her husband’s truck in her driveway. He told his sister something was trying to prevent people from coming, and she said she agreed. So now my dad’s story is reaching Mormons. Also, the person who told the sister was my friend’s husband, so he has been affected.

Mormonism is not Christianity. Mormons believe in salvation by works, and one of their “prophets” called salvation by faith a heresy. There are many, many problems with Mormonism. They think Jesus and Satan are brothers, and they believe God is an alien who lives on another planet. They believe black people will turn white when they start pleasing God. The Book of Mormon contains Hebrew-sounding names which, unlike the real Hebrew names of the Bible, are actually gibberish.

Mormons believe American Indians are actually descended from Jews. DNA testing proves there is no relationship. Jews and Indians share absolutely nothing. They look different. Their cultures are completely different. Indians worship strange spirits; Jews do not. Indian culture is illiterate; Jews have been literate for thousands of years. I feel silly arguing that Indians aren’t Jewish, because it’s so obvious.

Joseph Smith was a known confidence artist. Before he started his religion, he was arrested for charging people for his services as a diviner. He claimed he received the Book of Mormon from God, but when a lady stole his first version and he was forced to dictate it again, he warned that he might not dictate the exact same book. He promoted a hoax called the book of Abraham. He took an Egyptian writing about preparing bodies for death and claimed it was about Abraham, and Egyptologists have since debunked it thoroughly.

Mormon doctrine excluded blacks from the priesthood until 1974. Christianity is very different. Simeon, called Niger, was a prophet in the book of Acts. “Niger” means “black.” Jews have never excluded blacks from their religion or from religious office.

It’s frustrating to deal with Mormons, because they insist they’re Christians. Every real Christian denomination rejects that audacious and unfounded claim.

Including Jesus in your religion does not make you a Christian. There are certain fundamental beliefs you have to accept, and Mormonism doesn’t meet the standard.

Anyway, it would be nice to see Mormons awakened by my dad’s testimony. I have Mormon relatives. I don’t want to see them miss out on the real thing.

There are lots of nice Mormon people out there, but generally, they are not very open to Christianity. There is a real pride thing going on.

The big danger is that a Mormon who heard my dad’s testimony would say, “Wow, that’s definitely God’s hand. He is reaching out to you non-Mormons to bring you into the fold.” I can’t do anything about that. We aren’t responsible–not even a little bit–for the way other people receive things.

I don’t know who will be reached next. I look forward to finding out.

This morning I thought about it, and I remembered the story of Satan. He fell from heaven and drew a third of the angels down with him, with his tail. They chose him over God. My dad seems to be having the opposite effect. He is drawing people to heaven.

Speaking of heads and tails, God keeps confirming things he has told me. America is becoming an extremely foolish country, as everyone with any common sense knows. Increasingly, our leaders are silly people no person of quality would want to know. In the church, we now have “leaders” who wear $6000 sneakers and tell their flocks they need private jets.

For years, I’ve been telling people that a preacher who teaches lies is the tail, not the head. A preacher is supposed to lead, not follow. Prosperity preachers don’t listen to God. They listen to the crowd. The crowd wants to hear that God will make them rich in exchange for offerings. It wants to hear that God’s purpose is to make a man’s stupid, carnal plans come to pass. A preacher who hears from the Holy Spirit will never repeat these lies.

I looked at Isaiah 9 today, and saw this:

For the people do not turn to Him who strikes them,
Nor do they seek the Lord of hosts.
Therefore the Lord will cut off head and tail from Israel,
Palm branch and bulrush in one day.

The elder and honorable, he is the head;
The prophet who teaches lies, he is the tail.
For the leaders of this people cause them to err,
And those who are led by them are destroyed.

Therefore the Lord will have no joy in their young men,
Nor have mercy on their fatherless and widows;
For everyone is a hypocrite and an evildoer,
And every mouth speaks folly.

God was speaking of Israel. Notice how he punished them. He took away their wise leaders and gave them fools. Not only that, he said, “the prophet who teaches lies, he is the tail.”

It shows how powerful prayer in tongues is. I’ve been telling people this stuff about the head and the tail for years, and I didn’t get it from Isaiah. If you want knowledge and understanding, you really need prayer in tongues.

Your typical charismatic preacher thinks being the head means being in a position of dominance, so you can push people around and rule your enemies. It means owning several mansions and driving a G-Wagen. They are extremely ignorant. They don’t realize a person who is the head is a servant. When you’re the head, you carry the obligations of a leader. Leadership is a burden as well as a blessing, when it’s done right. All the money-lovers care about is control and wealth.

John Gray is ignorant. T.D. Jakes is ignorant. Paula White is ignorant. Kenneth Copeland is beyond ignorant; he appears to be deranged these days.

Take a look at this clip of Copeland and Jesse Duplantis, another greed preacher. They’re trying to justify buying multi-million-dollar jets. Describing the difficulty of getting to various places on commercial planes, Copeland says, “You can’t get there from here.” YOU CAN GET ANYWHERE FROM HERE, regardless of whether you have to use airlines. Everyone knows that. These men aren’t just wrong; to intelligent people, they look like mental cases. The Bible says God sends people “strong delusion.” There is no other way to explain the video. No one could be this crazy without supernatural help.

Paul traveled in random ships with ordinary passengers, and God used him to convert millions of people. Copeland and Duplantis can’t match that with private jets. They don’t even work for God. The people they “convert” don’t know God, and they may not even be saved.

I don’t want to spend an entire blog entry on criticism. My intention is to let people know that God is real and that his ways work. Prayer in tongues works. It’s very powerful, and you need to try to get it. It will protect you from people like Kenneth Copeland and John Gray. You may go off course, but prayer in tongues will bring you back.

I feel funny criticizing John Gray, having spent a considerable amount of time with him and having gotten along well with him. People really like him. He charms everyone. But look what he’s doing. He was known for premarital chastity, but he broke his marriage vow right away, and he then bought his wife a Lamborghini SUV. When people complained about the car, he wasn’t truthful about the reason he bought it, and he tried to shame his critics. That’s gaslighting; one of Satan’s biggest tools. He angrily, proudly resists correction. He keeps teaching the false money message. He is a mess. I wouldn’t go in his church to use the toilet if I had the stomach flu. I’d be afraid someone would recognize me.

You don’t have to end up like John Gray or Jesse Duplantis. Prayer in tongues will help you stay on track. No one can resist deception without the Holy Spirit. The Bible isn’t enough. The world is full of Bible scholars who are wrong about everything.

I’m sorry to see how things are going for American Christians on the whole. I’m very happy things are going well for me and for many people I know. Sometimes you have to sit on the ark and watch other people sink. That’s how life works. It can be hard to enjoy being blessed while observing the cursed.

My situation keeps improving. I feel more peace these days. I have days when joy fills me. I’m getting over the emotional damage from being a caregiver to an unsaved person, the grief of living with a loved one with dementia, and the grief of losing a beloved father, all at once. Life is suddenly full of open doors, and God is helping me get closer than ever.

I keep asking God to kill the old Steve and make the new Steve, modeled after Christ, thrive and take his place. It works, and it makes life much, much better.

I believe things will continue to improve.

Last night I had a dream. I was traveling with relatives. At some point, I found myself looking after my dad.

We were staying at a hotel. I had to accompany my dad on some kind of side trip. When I mentioned it to the staff at the hotel, suddenly everyone there wanted to go. We ended up in a long line of people.

I noticed my dad didn’t have his cane with him. I asked him where it was. He didn’t need it, though. We were in a line on an elevated platform we had reached via steps, and he was fine.

When we arrived at our destination, we found ourselves at the base of a very high wall that looked like the white limestone used in Jerusalem. While I was keeping an eye on my dad, I got a cell call. I answered it using the name of our old firm. A male with a sinister voice said he was about to tell me something, and I knew it was going to be bad news, like a threat. I waited, but he didn’t say anything more. I gave him a little while to speak, and I hung up. Something had prevented him from following through, and I didn’t care, because I didn’t want to hear his nonsense anyway.

I looked out at the horizon, and I saw 4 little tornadoes, like waterspouts. Waterspouts are usually slender and weak. They don’t cause the kinds of problems terrestrial tornadoes cause.

The tornadoes were coming toward us, and the started dividing. Eventually, there were maybe a dozen. I wasn’t particularly worried, but I took a precaution. I lay down at the base of the wall with my side against it. I knew that was the best protection in the area. I told my dad to lie down, too. He seemed oblivious, but he was cooperative.

The storms disappeared. It was as though the moved from this world into another dimension where they couldn’t hurt anyone. They dissolved into it. They never even got close.

I believe God was showing me that a surprising number of people will be drawn into the kingdom through my dad. They may not develop tremendous power and wisdom, but they’ll be able to walk with God without me having to carry them and spoon-feed them. Satan will try to threaten me, but God will prevent it. Problems may arise on the horizon, but they won’t reach me or the people God reaches through my dad.

The temple in Jerusalem is now represented by a single wall. Jesus referred to himself as a temple. I see using the wall as a refuge as putting my trust in Jesus and having him protect me.

It makes sense that God would use tornadoes to symbolize threats. A tornado is not like a hurricane. You can’t see a hurricane coming. In fact, the weather before hurricanes is peaceful in a creepy way. A tornado can be seen approaching you, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. It may wander this way and that, and you will be at the mercy of the winds that direct it. If it reaches you, it will be extremely destructive, and many man-made shelters aren’t strong enough to protect from tornadoes.

When a tornado approaches, and you see it, you have time to pray and repent.

Can it be that things will really go this well? I accept it. The Bible doesn’t say every Christian will be miserable. For that matter, many people in the Old Testament had good lives. Moses didn’t have a lot of problems (personally) after he was sent to confront Pharaoh. David’s life was pretty good, once he was established. John died peacefully at a very old age. He was boiled in oil, but he didn’t feel it, and he wasn’t hurt.

As far as we know, Jesus only had one bad day.

Psalm 23 says, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”

I expect persecution, but I don’t think of that as defeat or continuous suffering. God can give you a pleasant life in the midst of persecution. Psalm 23 says, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” It may be that the Antichrist’s people will murder me eventually, but if you have years of happiness followed by a relatively quick execution and entrance into heaven, can you really say you had a bad life?

Psalm 91 says, “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shall thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.”

Things look pretty good.

I’m not sure what’s next. I’m not sure why I’m here in this big house by myself. I think God may use it as a retreat. When people I know want to get away and connect with God, maybe they’ll come here and get help. That would be fantastic.

I am still thinking about Tennessee. The other day, I felt like I had to move there as soon as possible. The feeling was very strong. I went to Youtube and looked for videos shot in Appalachia, just so I could see the hills and creeks and mountain laurel and so on. I looked for rural properties that were for sale, and I drank the photos in.

Is it God or something else? Seems to be God.

If I move, I know I’ll love it. If not, I’m in a very nice place right now.

Plus Ham

Today has been a very good day.

Yesterday, I finally gave in. Rib roasts have been on sale for about two weeks, and I was tired of passing them by. I grabbed a small one, and this morning before breakfast, I seasoned it and coated it with butter and garlic. It sat at room temperature until not long ago, and now it’s cooking at 250 degrees.

After I prepared the roast for cooking, my cousin called, and we had a long conversation about God. I helped her out with some information and Youtube links. Very productive. I think she, her mother, and her son are going to get a lot closer to God.

We also discussed other things. For one, my grandmother’s country ham recipe. My aunt had it. My cousin sent me photos of the cards my grandmother wrote it on. I am in business. The nearest grocery has already confirmed that they will sell me an uncured ham.

While I was on the phone with my cousin, my neighbors invited me to Easter lunch. I enjoyed free food and good conversation. Among other things, those assembled discussed our shared hatred of squirrels. I said I never lifted my foot off the accelerator when I saw one on the road. My neighbor’s wife said she always tried to hit them.

Nice.

After lunch, her husband took their grandchildren out in their front yard for some healthy childhood activities: shooting a compound bow and a BB gun. He put some clay pigeons on a cardboard target and let his grandson and granddaughter do their worst. I took a photo.

Naturally, like any red-blooded American male, I sensed a challenge. I talked some smack and said I could do better. Then I pulled my Glock, put the laser dot on the upper clay pigeon, and graced my hosts with a mag dump.

The kids protested that they were only 7 and 9, but I wasn’t having any of their excuses. Then I told them the Easter Bunny wasn’t real.

Actually, I stood back quietly and told them they were doing great. They did pretty well with the bow.

In any case, I was inspired. I got out my VZ.58 and giant Chinese laser and shot 60 rounds in my pasture.

People have a lot of different strategies for home protection. Many choose pistols, which seems ridiculous. It’s easy to miss, or shoot yourself, with a pistol, and they don’t hold much ammo. And the ammo is weak. My current solution is a folding semiauto rifle with a laser, shot from the folded position.

Everyone says you shouldn’t shoot from the hip, but with a laser, you don’t really need to see the sights. That’s my theory.

I took the gun to the pasture in bright sunlight, and I found I could shoot a pretty tight pattern at 30 feet with very little effort. I’ll put up a couple of targets. The third target, which I shot first, isn’t quite as good (because I wasn’t trying at all), but the rounds still landed within a five-inch circle.

I feel like my theory makes sense. Keep electronic hearing protectors by the bed with your rifle. Put them on when you realize you have guests. Use the laser to pop them from 30 or 50 feet away. Your average criminal would be lucky to hit a cruise ship at 30 feet, so even if they shoot back, you have a huge advantage.

I don’t know if I would actually choose to shoot another person in a situation like that, but I feel I should have the choice.

The laser is easy to see in bright sunlight at 30 feet, so it’s impossible to miss inside a house. Even if you manage to find 100 feet of open space, you will still have no problem seeing a green laser.

I like it. I think it’s a great idea. My guess is that 0.01% of the shooting world will agree with me, but then they love dumb ideas that defy common sense. They tell women to carry crummy little revolvers instead of compact Glocks, for example, as if women are just too stupid to work semiautos. They take pistols seriously as home defense weapons, when there is no conceivable reason to forgo the superior performance of long guns in the home.

Pistols are for carry, period. That’s the whole reason they exist. A pistol should only be used when you can’t have a long gun. When you’re in your own house, you can carry a bazooka if you want, so there is no reason to settle for tiny guns that fire small numbers of weak rounds with poor accuracy.

In a famous 1998 shooting, a war veteran with an M1 carbine shot a deputy with a pistol 10 times, and he shot from the hip part of the time. The deputy emptied at least one magazine and only hit him once. Using a long gun, the criminal disabled the deputy with accurate shots to his limbs, and then he was able to approach him and execute him with a shot to the right eye. It was a complete mismatch.

If you want to see why I don’t like pistols, check out the video below. Two trained cops armed with pistols take on a nut armed with a pistol, at close range. Many bullets fly. Not one hits a human being. What else can I say?

Tell me that would have happened if one particpant had had a long gun.

I guess you could say I have an opinion.

People have told me you can’t fire a shotgun from the hip. Well, I’ve done it, and it works just fine. I fired a Saiga-12 at 50 feet using a laser, and I didn’t shoulder it. No problems at all. I don’t know where people get their weird ideas.

They say you can’t reacquire a target with a shotgun if you fire from the hip. Like it’s easy when you fire from the shoulder! And if you have a laser dot telling you where to shoot, reacquiring targets is not hard no matter what you’re shooting.

I like lasers and rifles for home protection. What can I tell you?

I hope your day is going as well as mine.

Antifa Gas Costs me Another Day of Work

This week I finally got some use out of my big Echo chainsaw, which had been out of commission for months. What a relief.

I screwed the saw up in a number of ways. First, I used Democrat gas. I used 10% ethanol fuel, which ruins small engines. There is no way to defend this stuff. It doesn’t save us money on fuel. It’s not really good for the environment. It makes food and animal feed more expensive by removing corn from the market. It’s bad, bad, bad. It’s stupid. And the motivation for making it is greed, not a desire to improve the environment.

I left socialist gas in my saw for something like two months. My understanding was that you had to leave it a lot longer before it would clog a carburetor. I was mistaken. My saw would not start. I tried all sorts of things. I took it to an authorized repair place, and they kept it 4 weeks, did nothing except put an ancient carb on it to replace my new one, and then returned it to me in a non-functioning state.

I replaced the carb at my own expense, and I sort of got the saw running. Unfortunately, I wrecked it while trying to get the new carb adjusted. The problem–and this is only a guess, based on faulty memories–is that I revved it a lot with the brake on. This caused a bunch of failures. It warped the clutch drum. I am told it melted a line which supplied oil to the chain. I am also told it ruined the clutch springs.

I was told about the oil line and clutch springs by the people who finally fixed the saw.

When you rev a saw with the brake on, you engage the centrifugal clutch with a drum (which is also a sprocket) which is locked in place. The drum can’t turn, so the clutch rubs on it and heats it up. Then the drum warps. After that, disengaging the brake doesn’t work, because the new bulges in the drum rub against the brake whether or not the brake is on.

A chainsaw’s chain carries heat away from the hot parts. When you rev the saw with the chain locked, heat builds up where it should not. I think this screwed up my oil line, assuming the repair people were being truthful when they said it was melted.

Anyway, the place that finally got the saw running was another authorized repair center. They took 4 weeks, but they managed to repair the saw. Unfortunately, they did things I didn’t want done. They claimed they sharpened the chain, and they also said they put Loctite on the saw’s screws. I can sharpen a chain in 5 minutes, and I don’t want screws I can’t remove. Sometimes Loctite is too much.

I took the saw out this week and did some work. It ran well, although I’m not sure it’s running wide open.

When I looked at the wood being ejected from the saw, I was not happy. It looked fine, which is to say, it did not look coarse. When a chain is sharp, it will produce big chunks of cut wood. When a saw sprays dust, it’s dull.

I sharpened the saw today, and I got really big chunks and curls of wood. Happiness. But what about the money I paid to have it sharpened?

I was also disturbed to see that the bar looked dry. It oiled fine before I wrecked the saw. I had to adjust the oiler, which makes you wonder how much the repair guy knows.

I was still reasonably happy with the repairs, until I put the saw down today, turned it off, and then returned and tried to start it. Three of the screws around the starter cover had vibrated out, in a pasture. They are gone forever.

What about that Loctite? If it was there, it didn’t work.

You don’t actually need Loctite to hold screws in a plastic saw case. You just need to tighten them correctly. Someone didn’t do that. Now I’m wondering: did the repair guy loosen those screws? They said they Loctited screws, but did they mean every screw on the saw? Maybe they didn’t work on the starter cover, so maybe they never intended to Loctite those screws. It could be my fault. Perhaps I put the wrong screws in (some are shorter than others), or maybe I left them loose.

Seems to me that when you work on a saw for money, you tighten every screw that holds the covers on. It takes 30 seconds, and it’s common sense.

Now I can’t use my saw.

I found new screws on Ebay. I was going to talk to the repair people, but they close at noon on Saturdays, so they’re at home drinking beer when I need them. I’ll have the screws on Thursday. I ordered two sizes. The ones I’m sure I need arrive Thursday (or sooner), and the ones I MAY need arrive Friday. I ordered enough so I’ll have spares.

I’m feeling some guilt about the screws. I learned what they were on a parts website, but I got them from Ebay. I don’t feel right about getting information about a product from one company and then buying from another, unless there are special circumstances. I’ve bought things from the parts site in the past. The main reason I went with Ebay was time. They’re faster. I’ve waited a long time for this saw to work, and I really need to get some trees moved. Maybe I should put in a token order from the parts place to soothe my conscience.

In case you’re wondering, Echo Timberwolf saws have a number of M5 20mm and 16mm T27 Torx bolts with a tapping thread. That’s what you need. You don’t need Echo-brand screws, which are obscenely overpriced. Stihl saws also use these screws.

The big saw will be offline for several days, so I’m not cutting tree trunks any more. I have a 16″ saw for bucking, but it’s just not the same.

Today I cut a big oak that fell during hurricane Irma. It’s in my pasture. I left it alone originally because I liked the way it blocked the view from the road. The leaves fell off, so I had to do something.

I’ve been thinking of getting an anvil, because…anvil. Anvils are cool and useful, and I may want to forge something some day for fun. You can get a very good Chinese 66-pound anvil from Amazon for about $170. Less on Ebay. To use an anvil, you need a stump to rest it on. Today I thought about that while I was cutting the oak, and I decided to make a stump.

The bit of oak trunk I chose was about 22″ in diameter, judging by the extent to which it was too big for my 20″ saw. You would think cutting a stump for an anvil would be simple, but it isn’t. It’s not easy to make a chainsaw cut perpendicularly to the axis of a tree trunk. It will usually be off by a considerable extent. Today I found that it’s possible to do surprisingly fine work, adjusting and massaging a cut with a chainsaw. I ended up with a stump that should work fine.

I read that certain stumps sold for anvil purposes (they exist) are 22-1/2″ tall, so I shot for 23-24″. I got a fairly decent piece cut, and I sprayed the ends with metal primer to slow drying and prevent the wood from checking and splitting.

Why did I use metal primer? It was handy. Nearly any kind of paint will prevent checking.

The stump I cut has spalting (mild rot) around the circumference, but I don’t think that matters. Spalted wood is fairly solid, and the anvil will be sitting on sound wood in the center of the stump. We’ll see what happens. I stood the stump up on the porch of my workshop to keep the rain off of it, and if I go through with my plan, I’ll find a permanent location for it indoors.

I’m sure the stump will work. It’s possible that bits may come off the circumference with time. I’m not worried. It should be fixable, and if not, stumps are not hard to find here.

I was wondering how to make the stump sit on concrete without rocking. I think I have the answer. I can use a chainsaw to shape the bottom of the stump so there are three big parts that contact the floor. Anything with three feet will sit flat on a flat surface.

Marxist gas didn’t just do my chainsaw in; it also choked my Echo pole pruner. I have been working on it for a while. I believe there is varnish in the fast jet. Carb cleaning stuff doesn’t help much. I think the only real answer is to remove the metal plug the greenies have put over the fast jet screw (to prevent it from working correctly), remove the screw, and use carb cleaner on everything. That would be hard, so instead, I bought a Chinese carb.

Echo pruners, like Echo chainsaws, use carbs made by a company named Walbro. A tiny, simple Walbro carb for my pruner costs $100. Amazon and Ebay sell Chinese clones for…wait for it…$11. Hmm. Do I pay the repair people a huge sum to fix my Walbro carb every time Bolshevik gas clogs it? Do I pay $100 for a new Walbro carb every time? Uh…no. I will simply buy a new Chinese carb whenever the saw doesn’t run. It takes 5 minutes to install, and it looks like the quality is no different from Walbro. My guess is that Walbro has Chinese people make its carbs. I doubt there is any difference at all.

I finally have the gas problem under control. I go to Sunoco and buy ethanol-free 91-octane gas for nearly the same price as 89-octane Bernie Sanders engine poison. Then I treat it with Biobor Ethanol buster (Sta-bil doesn’t really work). I put it in a new gas can that has had the dangerous, useless socialist spout and cap replaced with old-fashioned ones from Amazon.

There are so many obstacles to making small engines work, it’s a wonder anyone succeeds. The gas is poison. The cans don’t work. Most fuel stabilizers don’t work. Running the engines dry between uses doesn’t work. Home Depot charges something like $40 per gallon for real gas.

I’m hoping the lessons I’ve learned will work. It’s amazing to me that people aren’t marching in the streets over this stuff. Everyone has the ethanol problem, and most of the solutions we are given do not work at all. It shouldn’t have taken me, an intelligent person, a year to get past the lies and fables. Why not just tell us the truth up front? “This gas is garbage. Only a couple of fuel stabilizers work, and you will find out the others don’t work when you try to start your engine next spring. Running your engine dry in the fall won’t help. Your EPA gas can cannot be made to function correctly, and we don’t care, but you can buy parts for it on Amazon and turn it into a functioning 1980 gas can.”

It’s bad to have people jamming us up, but it’s worse when they try to hide it from us. Just tell us the truth. We’ll pay for your bad gas and accept the fact that its real purpose is to make corn growers rich so they can contribute to political campaigns. We’ll pay for the gas can parts. We’ll pay for additives that work; just tell us which ones they are.

I’ll work with the system. I will not pay $40 for Home Depot gas, but other than that, I am willing to tolerate the farce, as long as I can keep my engines clear.

Arrggh.

My pruner carb should be here Monday, so I can use the pruner on Wednesday. That will be nice. I may go ahead and hack up the old Walbro carb, since Echo’s multi-year warranty doesn’t apply to carbs (the parts which usually malfunction). If I can get the Walbro clean, I can hold it in reserve and save myself $11 when the China carb (the other China carb, not the Walbro) poops out.

Considering the BS I had to deal with, I got a hell of a lot done this week. The oak is ready to burn, and I have the beginnings of a good anvil stump. I only worked maybe three hours. Imagine what I could get done in a world without ethanol.

Bring on the electric era. We’re already starting to see a few electric products that are actually practical. The greenies are making the use of fossil fuel such a torture, I’m starting to look forward to an electric car. As soon as we reach the point where you can get a charge in 5 minutes instead of half an hour or more, I will be ready to join the dance. Make me an electric chainsaw that will run for 5 hours on two batteries and then get out of the way and take my money.

Why Your Life is Just Like Your Mother’s

God gave me some new revelation, so I am here to pass it on.

Yesterday I wrote about the sick trend toward ethnic warfare in the United States. Leftists have had great success in convincing minorities that white people cause all the world’s problems, and now more than a few white people are responding with ridiculous racial doctrines asserting that whites are special and superior. Some white people are calling for forceful resistance to the anti-white racism of the left. That’s stupid. All people should be turning to God in order to be blessed. Fighting other human beings is a waste of time. The Bible says we wrestle with persons without bodies, i.e. spirits.

Today God showed me some things while I was praying in bed. He gave me four sentences.

1. Satan hates inheritance.

2. All strength comes from inheritance.

3. There is no strength without inheritance.

4. Thank you for my inheritance.

The second and third sentences mean nearly the same thing.

Why is Satan stirring up leftists against whites and Jews? Very simple. We have an inheritance, and it makes us dangerous to him.

One of the biggest problems the world faces is the abundance of children who are not raised correctly. Fathers and mothers who don’t know God bring forth offspring who are more like weeds than well-tended trees. I always say I grew up like a weed, because I wasn’t taught much of value.

Leftists love to tell us children are our teachers, but in reality, children are foolish and full of evil. The Bible says so. It says, “Evil is bound up in the heart of a child, and the rod of correction will drive it from him.” Left to their own devices, children remain like animals. They may have some good traits when they grow up, but overall, they are untrained and lawless. They will also be very ignorant, and they will believe damaging lies.

A good parent introduces his child to God. He teaches him the real facts about creation and the way the universe works. He helps him to be baptized. He shows him how to pray. He makes him read the Bible every day, whether he wants to or not. He corrects and guides him. He shares his own testimony. He also shares whatever worldly knowledge and wisdom he has. These good things are all part of a child’s inheritance, and it’s wrong to deprive him of it just because you’re too selfish to put in the time.

A good parent also leaves a financial inheritance to his child. You’re not supposed to go to the casino every week and spend your entire paycheck.

The result of the inheritance system is that each generation is stronger than the last, until further improvement becomes impossible. Your grandson should love God more than you. He should know more about God. He should get better and faster answers to prayer than you. He should be more full of the gifts and fruit of the Spirit. He should have fewer demons to contend with. He should be more full of peace, love, and joy.

Your grandson should also have more wealth than you do. He shouldn’t have to work as hard as you did. You should develop wealth while you live, and you should pass it on, along with the skills and character traits that will help your descendants retain and increase what you give them.

Hard work is a curse. Read Genesis. If two succeeding generations of a family work hard, the family must be cursed. The second generation should live, at least partially, on investments.

Consider the differences between black America and white America. Black men generally don’t marry the mothers of their children. Many black people aren’t certain who their fathers are; it’s the truth, not a racist canard. Right now, I have a friend who doesn’t know who his father is, even though I do know. His brother is afraid to tell him. So many black women kill their babies in the womb, a black baby in New York City is more likely to be killed by his mother than to be born alive. The cops can’t shoot you if your mother gets you first.

Black people are more likely to have bad spending habits and no investing skills. They rent their homes instead of buying. They rent furniture, appliances, and televisions, at exorbitant prices. Whatever they earn tends to end up in other people’s pockets.

Hispanics are better off, but generally, they are also unsuccessful. American Indians are probably worse off than anyone.

White America is different. It’s a mess, but on the whole, whites are more likely to marry before reproducing. They are more likely to try to be parents to their kids. They are less likely to have abortions. They save and invest more, and they pass more on to their children.

The problems with black America were not caused by racism. Blacks in African countries–run by black people whose ancestors were never American slaves–are very like black Americans, except their problems are much worse. Haiti is the most miserable country in the New World, and it has been black-ruled for two centuries. Blacks brought counterproductive ideas with them when they came here, and they also brought witchcraft. They brought a negative inheritance they received from their African ancestors, and it is still hurting many of them now.

Consider literacy. Africans generally didn’t develop written languages, no matter how many centuries passed. Haiti’s language, which is actually a pidgin, had no written form until the 20th century. There is no rational explanation for failing to develop a written language.

Literacy is an inheritance. One generation has to create an alphabet, and they have to teach it to the next generation. Literacy has to be handed down, just as the knowledge of God is handed down. Who knows how many Africans tried to create alphabets? We have no record of it, because Africans were weak on inheritance. Whatever they created disappeared.

Failure to look after future generations made Africans weak. Every generation had to start from scratch. They still do. Meanwhile, Europeans progressed steadily. They started as illiterate, violent savages who worshiped demons. Then they came to know God. They became sophisticated. They built cities. They created libraries. They developed math, science, and engineering. Africans developed nothing. South of the Sahara, you won’t find great cities under the soil, because they never existed.

When I went to school, I didn’t have to invent numerals so I could do math. I didn’t have to invent calculus or mechanics. I didn’t have to invent written English. It was all handed to me. I inherited it.

Europe was evangelized centuries before Africa, and Christianity developed long roots there. God blessed Europeans and their descendants simply because they gave up idolatry and spread the gospel. Even when whites did evil things, they remained at the top of the social pyramid, because whatever their faults were, at least they were propagating salvation.

God looked after the only people on earth who were expanding his kingdom, and that’s why “the problem of whiteness,” meaning the ascendancy of white people, came to be. It’s not because white people were inherently better or more moral.

This phenomenon is even more obvious with the Jews, who have done a much better job of preserving things and passing them on. Jews are intimately involved in their children’s lives. They teach and teach and teach. They correct constantly. They build up wealth, and they teach their kids how to be wealthy. They work to see to it that their children inherit without obstacles, taxes, and delays.

Go to a Section 8 housing project, and look around. What do you NOT see? Jews.

I don’t want to focus too much on worldly success, because it’s a side dish, not an entree. Jesus said we were to seek his kingdom and his righteousness first. But it’s true that God wants us to have financial abundance, and lack is a symptom of a cursed life.

Heirs are dangerous to Satan. He used to be part of God’s family, and he had power and all sorts of blessings. He was safe. He had authority. He threw all of that away, and he can never get it back. God created man, and when Jesus died, men became heirs to God’s blessings and power. We don’t earn anything from God. The Bible says sinners earn; “The wages of sin is death.” We receive every good thing by inheritance. The Bible calls us heirs in many places.

If we inherit properly, we are more powerful than Satan and his angry, murderous children. We are threats to his rotting kingdom. We can help his children join our family and become heirs of God along with us.

Leftists want us to think white people have unfair advantages, but that’s not correct. In reality, God’s children who have gotten ahold of their inheritance have advantages, and as things stand, more whites than minorities have managed to inherit. If things go easier for whites, on the whole, it’s because generations of whites have paved the road for them.

If you’re not white, you can get God’s blessings, too, and you can pass them on to your kids. Your biological ancestry can’t interfere with God’s inheritance, but your beliefs and attitudes can.

Unfortunately, whites are blowing their inheritance. They are turning to atheism and other forms of idolatry, and the inheritance of dominance and abundance is sliding away from them. Instead of lifting other people up, most of us are eagerly joining the cursed.

Christians love to say, “Favor ain’t fair.” That’s so stupid. Of course it’s fair. Jesus was tortured to death so we could have it. He paid dearly for it. Inheritance is a type of favor, and there is nothing wrong with it. It’s the way the world is supposed to work. We are supposed to get stronger, not weaker.

Jesus said those who have will be given more, while those who have little will lose even what they have. You better get something and increase it.

Instead of getting on board and trying to get an inheritance for everyone, leftists are trying to destroy what heirs have. They want to take it and give it to people who only know how to waste and destroy. Instead of saying, “We need to do whatever blessed people are doing, so we can be blessed, and we need to get the sin out of our lives,” they say, “We do not sin, and others have more than we do, so they must have done wrong. They must be punished. What they have is really ours, and we have to take it.”

Leftists don’t understand this: there are people who can’t be blessed, and there are people who can’t be cursed. Give the entire world to a fool, and he will lose it quickly. Put a favored man in the middle of the desert without a cent to his name, and God will provide abundantly for him, and his wealth will increase. Consider Joseph. Consider Jacob under Laban.

The more money the government gives to covetous people who can’t be blessed, the less wealth will exist. The recipients will blow it all on big televisions, expensive cars, and high living.

Inheritance is very important. We should be working to receive it. We should be praying for God to make us his heirs, every day. We should give up the insane concept of the self-made man.

It’s very important for me to tell other people what God tells me, so they can inherit his blessings. It’s also important for me to fix my estate up; otherwise, it will go to someone who will use it for evil and lose it in 5 years.

If you’re not doing as well as your parents or grandparents (or your neighbor), don’t go to God and whine. Don’t say it’s not fair. Of course it’s fair. Ask him what you’re doing wrong. Beg for correction, wisdom, and knowledge. Ask him to make you an heir. He lives for prayers like that, and he will help you.