Victory is Here

The best father a man could ever want escaped the confines of this earth at about 2:00 p.m. It was very peaceful. I was beside him. Now he is with our Lord and my late mother, in a body that will never fail, with a mind that will always be clear and sharp.

Thanks to all who prayed for us and gave me support.

Dad Refusing Food

A few days ago, my dad prayed for salvation again. We were listening to Derek Prince, and he suddenly blurted, “I’m on the verge!” He said he was on the verge of salvation. I reminded him that he had already prayed for salvation, but he said he had had reservations, so we did it again.

Now he is not eating.

It’s hard to get straight talk from care providers. I have never had a provider give me anything resembling sufficient warning of a loved one’s impending death. It seems like they never say, “Your relative only has days to live,” no matter how obvious it is. You have to figure it out yourself. My common sense tells me that if he’s not eating, he can’t survive more than a few days.

My feeling, which may be wrong, is that his spirit kept him going because he needed to make a good solid agreement with God. Now that he has done that, it may be that his spirit has decided it’s okay for him to leave.

I will not have him force-fed. Death is normal. Shoving food down a dying person’s throat is not. It’s an act of desperation and denial. If he will not eat, and there is no physical cause which can be treated without unnatural efforts, I intend to control myself and let him go. I don’t know how I’ll stand it, but I’m sure it will be less painful than taking futile actions in a state of panic.

While I was working on getting his DNR in place, the people at the ALF told me what resuscitation was like. They manhandle the patients, pumping their chests and trying to revive them. If it takes half an hour for an ambulance to arrive, that’s how long it goes on. Then they go to the hospital, where they are connected to machines whether or not they’re truly alive. The staffers had been through it before, and they wanted no part of it. Once they had described it to me, I agreed.

I don’t know what more God could have done to give us a graceful and peaceful run-up. He reconciled us to each other, with no lingering reservations. He reconciled my dad to him. He prepared my dad’s estate and showed me my errors. He helped me get the documents in order to assure that my dad would not be tormented by care providers. One of the hard things about being a Christian is figuring out exactly how much God is willing to do for you. This experience has shown me that I have underestimated him.

My old friend Mike had a bad experience this week. He learned he had MRSA in his left big toe, and the next day, it was amputated. Now he’s on IV antibiotics. He has been observing my dad’s progress. He told me how much it moved him. His mother died suddenly, in a car wreck. When his dad died, many things were not resolved. I can understand how my dad’s story would affect him. Anyway, he told me he had been planning to fly down to help me. He was going to go with me on the drive to Kentucky. That’s real friendship. It may not come to pass, but it shows how things are working to make this passage go smoothly.

I’m going to call and look into cremation today. I suppose I should call the funeral home in Kentucky. I don’t want to get caught flat-footed.

I wish my dad had gotten to know God 60 years ago. So much has been wasted. I wish we could have attended church together and prayed together for years. I wish my family had lived in an atmosphere of love and safety instead of darkness and torment. Nonetheless, God has done astounding things with the poor materials we gave him. As the Bible says, the end of a thing is better than the beginning.

When I think of my dad, all I see is the frail, gentle, loving man I know now. It’s hard to picture him as he used to be. I’m grateful for that. I want to remember the wonderful dad I have now. The weakness of his image doesn’t bother me because I see his new heart.

Maybe he’ll get better. Maybe he’ll start eating and live another five years. I’m going to prepare anyway.

I’m going to miss him like crazy. I already do. But our parting will go gently, and my regrets will be overshadowed by my awe and gratitude for the way God has helped us.

New Cough; no Appetite

My dad seems to change every day.

Today I went to see him. He was seated for dinner. His food and drink were untouched. I thought maybe he had just arrived at the table. He told me he didn’t want to eat, so I rolled him out to the courtyard so we could talk.

He has been losing weight rapidly for four months, but he has also been eating normally. It’s hard to get solid information on his changes. I know that it’s normal for people who are nearing death to lose weight because they stop eating, but there is less corroboration out there for the notion that heart failure patients who are nearing the end lose weight while eating normally. His cardiologist seems to think it’s normal. She said she thought it was heart failure combined with his other problems, which she termed “co-morbidities.”

He was losing weight while eating normally. Now, at least at the moment, he is not eating normally.

He also had a cough, and it sounded like things were rattling around in his lungs, the way they would if he had chest congestion. He said he had a lump in his throat that wouldn’t go away, and he mentioned a burning feeling. Later on, he had a good cough and said the lump was gone. It’s hard to know what the truth is or whether he knows what it is.

I called the hospice, and they said they were sending someone. I don’t expect them to cure him, but they might be able to fix the cough or do other things to make him feel better. I’m sure they will call me when they look him over.

We listened to Derek Prince again today, but my dad didn’t remember the things that happened while we listened yesterday. He didn’t remember praying for salvation or saying he felt emptied. He didn’t remember giving up his reservations. I suppose that’s all right. He still said what he said and did what he did.

Today while we listened, he didn’t get as engrossed as he usually does. About 10 minutes before I expected to quit, he announced that he wanted to go to sleep. He never does that. I took him to his room and turned down the covers, and then I went home.

It made me a little nervous when he got agitated and prayed yesterday. I was concerned God might be getting him ready for his departure. Today I took care of a minor estate detail that needed to be handled, and I had the feeling that I was handling something that had to be gotten out of the way so my dad would be able to leave. The more wrapped-up his affairs get, the more imminent his death seems. It makes me reluctant to move into his bedroom and do other things that confirm the finality of his situation. Day before yesterday, I finally threw out a quart of half and half I bought before he left. I don’t use half and half, but I felt like having it in the fridge somehow kept him alive.

He may be having new heart failure symptoms. He may have pneumonia. If it’s something infectious, he could be gone by Sunday. I am never sure what’s happening.

He looked more frail than ever today. I think he’s still wasting.

I could not ask God for a smoother transition. His estate is in order. He has a burial plot and an urn. He keeps drawing closer to God. We have had a beautiful reconciliation. I don’t know what God could do to make things better.

I’ve answered the phone and learned that a close friend shot himself in the head. I’ve watched my grandfather die over three days after a sudden heart attack, intubated so he could not speak in order to get closure. My mother lost consciousness unexpectedly, and I didn’t get to say goodbye while she was awake. Until now, I didn’t now what death was supposed to be like. It can go smoothly, with joy and minimal suffering. It can bring peace and increased togetherness.

We almost always do it wrong.

At the age of 85, my great grandmother, a fanatical charismatic, told her kids she was going to die. She seemed fine. She got in bed, and she passed away. My grandfather wasn’t there. He said she had indigestion. He didn’t believe her. I think we really need to learn how to die. We are suffering a lot because of our ignorance.

I can’t predict what the weekend will bring, but my dad and I are prepared if the end comes, thanks to God. We have an amazing testimony now.

New Testimony

My dad was a contemptuous atheist for about 75 years. He developed dementia. I put him in an assisted living facility at the end of January. In February, he forgot his atheism, and since then he has been very enthusiastic about God.

I always try to include a little background, so a person who comes here and only reads one blog post will have some idea what’s happening. If you want to know more about my dad’s change, you can read other posts here.

Things have been changing over the last week. I used to bring him brownies and cookies to eat during my visits, but he started turning them down, so I stopped bringing them. Day before yesterday, I started to feel guilty about not bringing him his newspapers. I had assumed he was not able to enjoy them, but three days ago, I saw him with a recent paper someone had given him. I brought him his newspapers again, and he looked at them and asked me what he would want with The Wall Street Journal. I took the paper back, and I realized there was no point in bringing newspapers any more.

Over the last few weeks, his habit has been to talk a great deal, asking me the same questions over and over. He stopped doing that. To fill in the time, I started playing the audio from Derek Prince sermons. Youtube is full of them. Instead of complaining, he listened intently, in spite of his diminished attention span. He took them in like a dry plant at the end of a drought. His thirst was obvious.

Yesterday, I wheeled him to a quiet place, and I played another sermon. He relaxed and seemed to sleep. This is how he always reacts. The sermon, if it matters, was about love.

Maybe 30 minutes in, he made a sudden exclamation. He said, “I’m on the verge!”

I didn’t know what that meant. I thought he might be referring to death. I asked him to explain.

He said he was on the verge of accepting what he was hearing. He was very excited, and he wanted to do something about it in order to get relief.

He prayed for salvation last year in October, but he backslid later and denied it. He has prayed for salvation since then at the ALF, and I had felt he was sincere. I didn’t understand why he was starting over again, but I realized he might have held something back.

I got up, laid one hand on him, raised the other in worship, and led him in prayer. I explained all the things he needed to believe and affirm. He had to believe Jesus was God and that Jesus had been crucified for his sins. He had to admit he had sinned. He had to ask for forgiveness. He had to expressly forgive every person who had sinned against him, and he had to ask God to forgive them. He had to ask God to fill him with the Holy Spirit. I’m sure there were other things. He complied, enthusiastically. “Desperately” is a better description.

I had him raise his hands in worship, and I had him say he was worshiping.

I asked him how he felt. He said, “Emptied.” Then he said, “I feel emptied, and Jesus Christ is my Lord and savior.”

I didn’t tell him to say that.

Then he said, “I had reservations.” He said, “Now they’re gone.”

It’s very strange to watch God do these things. I’m not pushing my dad. I barely do anything. I play audio and sit. I encourage him, of course, and I try to tell him useful things, but the effort is minimal.

On the one hand, there is something disconcerting about having God take over. It makes you feel a little bit like an attendant running a carnival ride, paid to sit in a chair and push the same button over and over. You don’t get to use your gifts. You definitely don’t get much credit.

On the other hand, I want God to take over, very badly. I don’t want to carry heavy loads any more. I don’t do a good job, and it’s an unpleasant way to live. I want to sit back and watch God act. Whatever disappointment I feel when I consider my lack of involvement is negligible. It means nearly nothing to me.

I don’t know why God gave me gifts. That’s a puzzle I can’t work out. They are clearly unnecessary. I enjoy them, however.

The Bible doesn’t say, “Get out there and fight, and let me know if you need help.” It doesn’t say, “Lift yourself up by your own bootstraps.” It says, “Sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.”

As of yesterday, my dad has started to slur his words. I don’t know if that’s a permanent thing. It could be a new symptom, or maybe he was just tired. In any case, he’s kind of a rush job. He has to prepare for death before he loses the ability to think. Yesterday, he tied up another loose end.

I don’t know why we are so blessed. Maybe it’s because my dad’s hostility toward God was sown in him by a preacher. The pastor of the church he attended as a child told his sister to tell everyone her father had died from drinking moonshine, which was true. It’s strange to me that God worked for such a long time to save someone who was such a hard case. I can see how he might take accountability for offense caused by a foolish servant.

My dad’s sister was two years older than he, and she didn’t receive salvation. She developed dementia, lost her mind entirely, and died an atheist. Why didn’t she change? She was a cruel sociopath. My dad had a black heart when he was in his prime, but she was worse. Maybe the preacher wasn’t the reason for her unbelief. Maybe she was lost before her father died.

I made sure I worshiped in my dad’s presence. I lifted a hand while we listened to Derek Prince, and I lifted a hand while I prayed with my dad. I can tell it makes a difference. Every Christian should do this.

I wrote about worshiping the other day. I related an experience in which Jesus visited me. I fell asleep in his presence and then woke up with both hands raised in worship. I told about a friend of mine who was hospitalized. He had an episode in which he awoke with his hands raised. This morning, I listened to Derek Prince’s testimony, and he said the Holy Spirit raised his hands, too. He raised Prince’s hand at an altar call while he was seeking God for the first time, and later, when Prince tried to contact God in prayer in order to get to know him, the Holy Spirit raised his hands in worship.

Worship is very important. It’s like connecting a wire to a power source.

I believe failure to worship sufficiently was the blockage that caused me to plateau and suffer anxiety over the last few years.

It wasn’t because I didn’t give away all my wealth and wear a hair shirt on a street corner. It wasn’t because I didn’t go to Africa to preach to primitive people. It wasn’t because I wasn’t behaving well enough or confessing and repenting enough. It was a simple misunderstanding of the way things work.

I like to pray in tongues while I drive, because there is no better way to redeem the time. I’ve started holding one hand up while I do it. I turn it to the side when other drivers approach, so they won’t think I’m trying to signal them. Instead, they’ll just think I’m eccentric, which is fine, because it’s true. I combine prayer with worship when I can.

In other news, two days ago, I had an unexpected conversation with a lady I dreamed about twice in recent weeks. Not sure what’s up with that, but it shook me.

I don’t know what God is going to do next. I feel much better than I did even a week ago. I feel like important parts of the puzzle have fallen into place.

Give this stuff a try. If it works for me, it will work for you. God didn’t go through the crucifixion so one person could get a bunch of blessings while other people who were no worse got nothing.

Plus the Ease of Moving in God’s Will

God keeps adding to my testimony. Yesterday, he did something extraordinary.

My dad was an atheist from 1943 until this winter. He was contemptuous of Christians. God changed him recently, and he forgot his doubts. We began praying together every day. This week, I started playing Derek Prince audio for him at the assisted living facility, and to my surprise, he loved it.

I started doing this three days ago. I played audio from a few short videos. I couldn’t do it day before yesterday, because my dad was asleep when I arrived for my visit.

Yesterday, I had problems when I went to see him. He was halfway undressed for bed. We always sit outside during my visits, and it was cool, so I tried to find one of the two new jackets I got him. I couldn’t find it. They were gone. I couldn’t find the new T-shirts I got him. I had to settle for taking him to the ALF’s activity room, where it was warmer.

I should add that our visits have been changing. He used to talk a great deal. He would ask me the same questions over and over, taking up time so I didn’t have to think of ways to keep the conversation going. He stopped doing that a few days ago, and he also stopped eating the cookies and brownies I brought him. I didn’t know what to do. The questions and the food had been helping us pass the time. Derek Prince’s videos replaced the questions and food. When my dad stopped talking so much, it gave me the opportunity to play audio for him.

We got to the activity room, and I set up the bluetooth speaker. I played a bunch of videos. I wondered how far I could push my dad. Could I get away with videos that were 5 minutes long? How about 10? How many could I play before he objected?

I played something like 45 minutes’ worth of video. He leaned his head back, and his mouth fell open. He looked lifeless. I actually looked at his chest to make sure he was breathing. When I saw that he was breathing, I wondered if he were awake.

When it came time to stop so we could pray, I went to him and nudged him. I asked if we were asleep. He said, “I heard every word.” He had been resting in God’s presence.

God is really taking over for me. This is how successful ministry works; you don’t have to push it. You don’t have to chase unwilling people down and beg and bribe them, the way most–MOST–big churches do now. God will put people in front of you when they’re ripe. He will show you where to cast your net. If you have to beg and bribe, you are out of God’s will, plain and simple. You are not pleasing God. You are disobeying him, and your ministry is not sanctioned.

This is so much better than flailing away with ministry ideas I came up with on my own. That’s what most people do. They may fly off to Africa, on missions God has nothing to do with. They may open orphanages God doesn’t want them to open. Then they struggle and suffer, and instead of realizing God isn’t on their side, they glorify themselves. “I do it all for God.” “Christian life is so hard, but I refuse to quit, because I’m so holy.”

If you have to do all the work yourself, why would you glorify Jesus? Why would he want glory for things he didn’t do?

I’ve been involved in all sorts of carnal ministry ideas that went nowhere. Never again.

In other news, I’ve been writing about the meaning of the word “worship.” Modern Christians think it means playing loud music and nothing else. The Bible does not say that. It describes worship in other ways, including prostrating oneself and lifting one’s hands. Well guess what? I just found a Derek Prince video in which he agrees with me.

He mentions several physical acts which constitute worship: bowing, lifting the hands, and kneeling are examples. I’ll post his video here.

Prince encourages people to kneel. I don’t like kneeling because it’s uncomfortable and impossible to do for long periods, but I will listen to Prince. I still don’t think God wants me to kneel so long it becomes uncomfortable and distracting, but I will do it if God tells me to.

God tells all of his servants the same things, through the Holy Spirit. It’s impossible for two believers to disagree by the Holy Spirit. Impossible. There is no such thing as “healthy debate.” If we disagree, one of us is wrong. “Healthy debate” is like “Christian pride.” It’s an oxymoron, and belief in it demonstrates dangerous ignorance. God told me worship involved physical movements and positions, and he told Derek Prince the same thing. It’s true, and it works.

Excessive Familiarity is Disrespect

Yesterday I wrote about Biblical support for the practice of raising one’s hands to God. I forgot to mention something.

These days, many Christians think “worship” means “music” and nothing else. Instead of calling their bands “bands,” churches call them “worship teams.” It’s a damaging misconception.

The words translated “worship” in the Bible generally don’t describe music. One Old Testament word means “serve.” A Greek word used in John means, more or less, to prostrate or otherwise humble yourself before your god. A Hebrew word used in Exodus means the same thing. These words include things like bowing and falling on one’s face. The worship they describe involves assuming postures physically to honor God, just as yoga involves assuming physical postures to honor demons and fallen angels.

Biblical figures knew they were supposed to make physical gestures of submission to God. Sometimes they fell on their faces when angels showed up. They thought the angels were God, and they knew they were supposed to prostrate themselves in God’s presence.

Obviously, raising your hands to God is worship. You can worship God while music is playing, but there is more to worship than turning church into a disco.

Kenneth Hagin was a well-known charismatic preacher. He had his flaws, and he associated with some oily, dangerous bums, but he knew a few things. He knew the prosperity gospel was trouble. He summoned a bunch of big-time charistmatic preachers in 1999 and told them they were doing the wrong thing. Of course, they didn’t listen.

He invited Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Jerry Savelle, Jesse Duplantis, and others. Copeland, Dollar, and Duplantis have disgraced themselves by asking their servants to give offerings so they can buy jets costing tens of millions of dollars. Copeland is extremely rich. Many people think he’s a billionaire.

Hagin wrote a book about the evils of the gospel of greed. It’s called The Midas Touch. I have a copy somewhere.

Hagin had a healing ministry. I saw him preaching about healing on one occasion, and he talked about working with a person who complained that God wouldn’t heal him. Kenneth asked him if he worshiped God. Then he had to explain. While he worked with the man and prepared to pray, he told him to raise his hands before he prayed, praising and calling out to God. This, to Hagin, was “worshiping.” He considered failure to worship a serious prayer flaw which could block healing.

God is humble, but he still has to be God. He has to be praised, feared, and worshiped. These things open the channel to him.

Speaking of fearing God, a lot of people have funny ideas about it. There are preachers out there who say the words translated as “fear” really mean some sort of warm, fuzzy reverence. That’s completely wrong. Go look for yourself. They mean FEAR, like the kind of fear you feel when you realize a grizzly bear is chasing you.

Fear of God is very important. It’s connected with a lot of blessings, according to the Bible.

If God loves us so much, why would he want us to fear him? I think he helped me understand. Imagine yourself in a restaurant on the top of a skyscraper, sitting hear a waist-high safety railing. You wouldn’t be shaking with fear while you sat in your chair, but you would be terrified of climbing the fence and walking over the edge. That’s how God is. You shouldn’t be in terror all the time, but you should be very afraid to cross him.

We live with all sorts of fears. If you own a gun or drive a car, you fear doing the wrong things with them. You also fear the consequences of committing crimes. You fear things like electric shocks and walking in bad neighborhoods after dark. The fears are real, but they’re dormant, not active. They’re helpful. They don’t produce stress unless you do something wrong.

Healthy kids fear their parents, even though they feel very safe near them.

God may be our friend, but he is not our beer buddy. He is very great. He is the most terrible enemy there is. No one can save you from him when he decides to fight you. Modern charismatics have a tendency to treat him as though he’s a pal. That’s not right. Fear and worship are important.

I believe the notion that I should raise my hands to God came from God, himself. Judging from the Bible, I’m in very good company.

Raise Your Hands for Service

Couple of interesting things today.

First, I have been trying to get my .204 Ruger rifle and ATN X-Sight II night scope working again. I have had a certain amount of success.

The X-Sight is low-end for night optics, and it’s full of gee-whiz features (often an indication of a focus that is not on quality), so I don’t expect the world. I have had a few problems. First, the battery life is so bad, you pretty much have to buy their external battery pack. Second, the battery pack is hinky. Sometimes you have to unplug it and plug it back in to make the scope boot, and you can’t tell when it’s about to shut down for lack of juice. I haven’t upgraded the scope’s software in a while. Maybe they’ve fixed this.

The scope keeps shutting down after very few shots. I bought 200 rounds of ammo, I have used the rifle three times, and I am still on the first 50-round box.

That being said, it’s a pleasant rifle to shoot, when you can shoot it. I am shooting a consistent 2 MOA at 100 yards, including what I think of as flyers. I’ll post a photo of a target representing what I think is around 13 shots. It’s hard to keep count when you’re aggravated.

Will the rifle do better? I have no idea. I can’t shoot it long enough to find out. Also, my setup is not good. I have a rabbit ear rear bag, a bipod, and a cheap Caldwell front rest. Sometimes the target is at a level where neither the bipod nor the rest will allow me to aim at it comfortably, and the bag keeps sliding around on me. I don’t know what I’m doing. I have to work on that.

The ammunition is fairly cheap. It’s Fiocchi, with 40-grain V-Max bullets. Fiocchi has made a lot of inexpensive ammunition, but the quality is excellent. They have a big factory in Italy, with real machines and everything. It’s funny how you can’t assume price is related to quality.

Another “cheap” ammo maker, Sellier & Bellot, has a magnificent factory you wouldn’t believe. You can “tour” it on Youtube. They do it right. On the other hand, CCI, which is an American maker with a great reputation, has a facility that looks like a converted garage.

Anyway, the ammunition is cheap, and I don’t know what it can do. Some cheap ammo is laser-accurate. I use Hornady .17 HRM ammo, and it will do sub-MOA at $11.50 for 50 rounds. You can’t assume anything without experience.

Speaking of .17 HMR, when my ATN battery died unexpectedly, again, I got the .17 HMR out and shot a while. At first, I was all over the target. I was adjusting the scope knobs between shots, so it was not pretty. On the second target, I shot pretty well, with a couple of flyers. I was coping with the sliding rabbit bag and so on. I’m convinced flyers are caused by concentration issues, period, and when the rests slide around, it makes you want to forget about concentration and get the shot over with.

I cheap out on targets by firing off-center. I pick a place where the yellow lines cross, fire a few rounds at it, move to another place, and so on. If you fire everything at the center of the target, you go through targets fast.

I’m thinking of getting a real glass scope for the .204 Ruger. The ATN is fun, but it’s getting on my nerves. I have a couple of Burris Fullfield II scopes, and they seem very nice. I have a Leupold which cost more, and the Burrises seem just as clear. I may get a Burris Fullfield E1, which is a newer model. It has an illuminated reticle.

Magnification is hard to choose. A scope that only has one setting will be cheap, but you’re stuck with that setting and field of view. When a variable scope’s magnification is maxed out, the field of view shrinks, and it makes it hard for you to find animals that are moving around. If you have variable magnification, you can crank it down and see more of the area where you’re shooting.

Some people say nothing more than 9X is needed, up to 300 yards. I can’t believe that, but then I’m used to shooting targets, trying to get sub-MOA accuracy. I want serious detail. When you shoot animals, 3 MOA is supposedly fine. Not sure how that can be true, since it means you would be hitting somewhere in a huge 6″ circle on a little scrawny coyote, but it’s what I’ve read. Seems like it would be easy to miss.

I would like 20X, but I’m thinking maybe I should grit my teeth and settle for 14-ish.

If I knew what I were doing, this would be easier.

My Leuopold is 20X, and it’s not currently on a rifle. I took it off my .308 for some reason. I was planning to put it back on, and I don’t like playing musical scopes, so I would like to have one scope for each rifle. I could put it on the .204 temporarily, but the idea bothers me.

In other news, I seem to have stumbled onto some powerful information about God. Maybe I should say he directed me to it. There appears to be something about lifting your hands in worship that improves prayer.

Generally, God is not overly formal in his relationship with us. He doesn’t want us to buy books of prayers other people have written and recite them verbatim, for example. He doesn’t require us to use Hebrew when we address him. He doesn’t care whether we call him Jesus or Yeshua. Sometimes, however, he expects us to do things a certain way.

In 1986, Jesus visited me. I have written about it. I was trying to sleep, and a beam of supernatural energy shone down on me and roamed around over me. Wherever it touched me, I felt complete peace and joy. The beam was Jesus. I knew it, without doubt.

I didn’t know what to do, and after a while, I fell asleep. I woke up instantly, on my back, with both hands raised in worship. I felt energy running into my palms, like arcs of electricity flowing into anodes.

A friend of mine was an armorbearer at Trinity Church in Miami. His name is Cedric. He went to the hospital for heart problems. One night he had some sort of issue, and he woke up on his back, with both hands raised in worship. Like me, he hadn’t raised his arms, himself. Something raised them while he was asleep.

In Exodus 17, Moses and the Hebrews fought the Amalekites. Moses held his hand up, holding the rod of God. As long as he held his hand up, the Hebrews prevailed. When he took it down, they began to lose. Aaron and Hur put a stone under him to sit on, and they held his hand up. It was acceptable for him to sit, but it appears that human beings had to hold up his hand. Otherwise, they would have propped it up somehow.

While Job was suffering, one of his friends told him to stretch his hands out to God and prepare his heart so he would be delivered. He obviously believed the raising of the hands was important.

In Psalm 28, the author asks God to hear him “when I lift up my hands toward thy holy oracle.”

In Psalm 44, the author defends Israel, saying they haven’t stretched out their hands to a strange “god.”

Psalm 63 says, “Thus will I bless thee while I live; I will lift up my hands in thy name.”

Psalm 68 predicts that a defeated Ethiopia will stretch out her hands to God in submission.

Psalm 88 says, “I have called daily upon thee; I have stretched out my hands unto thee.”

Psalm 119 says, “My hands also will I lift up unto thy commandments.”

Psalm 134 says, “Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the Lord.”

Psalm 143 says, “I stretch forth my hands unto thee; my soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land.”

Psalm 141 says, “Let my prayer be set before thee as incense, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”

Lamentations 3:41 says, “Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens.”

Praising God, Habakkuk says, “The deep uttered his voice, and lifted up his hands on high.”

In the New Testament, believers laid their hands on people to heal them, to impart the Holy Spirit, and to initiate them into leadership.

Obviously, something is going on with hands. God moves power through them. It seems that God wants us to show him our palms when we want his power to flow.

I got this idea the other day, and I tried it. I held my hands up during prayer, for a long time. I could sense new faith and power. It was wonderful. I believe I was doing things God’s way, finally using the lesson he gave me in 1986.

Many preachers tell us to kneel. I don’t do it. I don’t like it. Kneeling is mentioned a few times in the Bible, but it doesn’t work for me.

I have no problem with lying down, sitting, or positioning myself on all fours in God’s presence, but kneeling is uncomfortable, and it makes it hard to look up or raise your hands. Daniel kneeled to pray three times a day, but he probably had a lower center of gravity than I do. Maybe he had a special piece of furniture that helped him.

The Psalms mention communing with God while lying in bed. That’s for me. That or sitting. I want to focus on God, not on effort. Also, when you’re on your back, it’s easier to raise your hands. When you stand, you have to pump blood over a vertical expanse of around six feet and when you lift your hands, you may be pumping blood seven feet up in order to reach them. It’s tiring. When you recline, your heart has less work to do, so you don’t feel burdened.

Anyway, I plan to continue raising my hands for long periods. It seems to make a big difference. I should have realized God was trying to teach me this.

God Will Take it From Here

Tonight I saw some extraordinary things at the home where my dad lives.

For nearly all of his life, my dad hated Christianity and wanted nothing to do with God, but after he moved to the ALF, he forgot about his atheism and became a Christian. It was very startling to me. Now when I visit him every day, I play Christian music while we talk. I also play a recording of Wayne Cochran reciting helpful scriptures. My dad has reacted positively to all this.

When I decided to play audio for him, I thought I needed an MP3 player. When I looked at the current technology, I decided to get a bluetooth speaker instead. I checked various alternatives, and I chose a product called a Wonderboom. It was available locally, it was cheap, and it was sturdy. Here’s a picture of it. It’s dirty because I haul it around a lot.

I guess I don’t have to tell you why I posted the picture. It’s kind of shocking that a tech company would release a product that looks like that.

I didn’t choose it for its appearance. I wanted something else, but this was the practical choice.

A short time ago, it occurred to me that I could play video for my dad. I could take a laptop. I could show him Derek Prince videos.

Derek Prince was a British preacher. He studied philosophy at Cambridge, but his career was cut off when God manifested himself to him. Baldilocks recommended him to me. At first I didn’t listen, because I thought she was talking about Joseph Prince. I should have realized she wouldn’t recommend someone like that.

I watch a lot of Derek Prince videos, and I thought they might appeal to my dad.

I keep forgetting to take the laptop to the ALF, but tonight while I was sitting with my dad, it occurred to me that I could use the speaker to play audio from Youtube. We were listening to Wayne Cochran, and my dad was saying nice things about him, and I realized I could give Derek Prince a try. My dad didn’t object. I found some short videos and started playing them.

I needed to do something. Usually, my dad talks a lot, but tonight he was quiet, so the conversation was slow. Derek Prince was just what we needed.

I am conditioned to expect my dad to reject God. Every time we talk about God, I wonder if this will be the day he’s going to respond with the familiar ridicule and contempt. As Derek Prince spoke, I wondered what was going to happen.

I thought my dad was falling asleep. His eyes closed. He leaned back. I didn’t know if he was listening. Then he started telling me how good Prince made him feel. He wasn’t passing out; he was feeling peace.

He was thinking about the God Derek Prince described. He said, “‘Come on in!,’ he says.”

Somehow, he had decided God was telling him, “Come on in!” That wasn’t in the videos I played.

It made me a little nervous. My dad’s skin seemed to lose color and go to yellow. I wondered if he was drifting toward death.

He said he wanted to go inside, because it was cool in the courtyard. I reminded him I had left homemade cookies in the ALF kitchen. He didn’t want any, but he praised them. He said, “Those cookies are good, and they’re blessed.”

When things like this happen, you realize you’re not pushing the car any more. I had felt alone in trying to change my dad, but God was behind it the whole time, and I could see he had taken over. I never said anything about blessed cookies.

We prayed together before we went inside. I asked what he wanted to pray for. Usually, he lets me choose. Today he said something like, “To truly believe.”

We moved to the dining room, and I put my speaker on the table. My dad’s friend Charles, who talks to him about gambling, rolled over to the table and started talking to us. He’s a very nice guy, but he has delusions. He said something about how we needed to come pick him up later at his house on the mountain.

Charles picked up the speaker and said something about the “cross” on it. It doesn’t really have a cross on it. It has a plus button and a minus button. He crossed himself, and he and my dad started talking about God. I became a spectator at that point. Charles said something about how we have to believe, and my dad said he did. Charles said, “Jesus does’t make it hard for us. He makes it easy.”

Charles really likes both of us, and tonight, for some reason, he was moved. He gave his hand to both of us before he went on his way. He told my dad his hands were too cold and that he should put them between his thighs to warm them up. Again, I wondered if my dad was drifting off.

My dad wanted to sleep, so I wheeled him to his bed and drove home. That’s the end of the story.

I feel like God has taken him out of my hands. I don’t know what’s happening.

I hope I’m right, because I don’t have the power to fix my dad. I don’t want to carry the burden any more. I’m uncertain. I get discouraged. I need to hand my dad off to someone stronger who will take over.

One thing is for sure. I have a testimony.

Nutty Electronic Scope Finally on its Feet

I finally got the .204 Ruger out again.

I got this rifle last year, hoping to use it on coyotes and coons. I bought an ATN X-Sight II 52-20X night scope, figuring I would eventually use the gun at night. I had trouble getting the scope working, and the first time I shot the gun, I only got 12 rounds off before the battery died.

After that, I got disgusted and ordered an external battery. Then I let things slide.

Today I got the external battery working, and I fired a few rounds to see if I could work with it or not. Here are the results.

The shot at the bottom was fired at 50 yards, to see if I was on the paper. The group to the left was fired from 50 yards with a rest. The other shots were fired from 100 yards.

I’m not sure what to think of the ATN scope. As night vision goes, it’s not far from the bottom of the barrel, but then I knew that when I got it for only $600. It’s basically a cell phone in a scope body. It has GPS and Wi-Fi, and it zooms to 20X electronically, not optically.

It shoots video if you want it to. You can program it to run constantly and to save recordings when you fire rounds. If you fire a shot, it saves a certain amount of video before and after the shot. Then you can upload it to your computer.

It’s a neat toy, and you really can hunt at night with it. On the other hand, it’s not as good as a quality thermal scope.

I feel like I got my money’s worth.

Today I shot as it was starting to get dim outside. When I moved back to 100 yards, the picture was very grainy. I could see where I was aiming, pretty much, but I could not tell where the shots were landing.

You can zero the scope, obviously, but you can only do that when you know where the bullets are landing, so I didn’t bother. That’s why I shot so high.

I like the gun a lot. It seems to be well-made, and the trigger is wonderful. The bolt is still a little tight. Maybe that will clear up once I’ve fired more than 50 rounds.

When I got this gun, people told me I would be able to shoot and see the bullets landing through the scope. They said the recoil was so light, it wouldn’t move me off the target. That’s not true at all. It moves a foot or two away from the point of aim. Maybe if I gripped it as hard as I could, it would stay put. I am no rifle expert, but that sounds like a good way to kill your accuracy.

I’m going to go out on a brighter day and try again, and I’ll zero the scope at 100 yards. Right now, it’s zeroed crudely at 50.

My neighbor told me something interesting. He’s a board member or something at Ducks Unlimited, and he went to a banquet. While he was there, he saw an electronic game call. This is a machine that plays sounds to lure animals. He said I could get one and use it to draw coyotes.

It sounded fishy to me, but I went to Youtube, and sure enough, people were using them successfully. They draw coons as well as coyotes. You can lure a number of different animals. It’s illegal to use electronic calls for some animals, but Florida wants to get rid of coyotes, so they allow electronic calls for that purpose.

Needless to say, I ordered a call. It should be here Monday.

Now I’m wondering whether I should ditch the night scope. I don’t think I’ll need it for coyotes, because they are active during the day, and it’s not as nice as a real scope. I could get a 14X or 20X optical scope. I could always use the electric scope when I wanted to hunt coons.

I learned about another good product for coyote hunters: bottled pee. You can buy coyote pee online. Don’t ask me where they get it. Coyotes supposedly love it. Filthy things. I managed to resist, but if the caller doesn’t turn their crank, I may very well make a pee investment.

The ATN scope is very heavy, and it’s a little buggy. ATN makes more-expensive products which are probably less trouble to use.

The battery pack is not a great investment. You can buy the same basic item for less, if you don’t mind a different name on it. It’s a brick-shaped thing that takes a USB cord. They attach it to the rifle with a little bag you strap to the gun’s butt. You can buy pretty much the same bag for less, without the ATN patch on it. I sort of think ATN’s engineers looked around for a battery pack online, ordered a bunch, looked for a buttstock bag, ordered a bunch, and then ordered some patches.

I’m not sure how this will pan out, but I’m going to get the .204 under control tomorrow or Monday, and when the call arrives, I’m going to give it a try. I’ll set my blind up and see what happens.

Coyotes are incredible pests, so I’ll be doing God’s work.

I hope I nail a few. Ought to be fun.

Leftists Get Closer to Saying What They Feel

I read about the Christchurch shooting this morning. Quite a story.

The murderer, a man named Tarrant, is an Australian. He committed his crimes in New Zealand. I haven’t seen any explanation for that yet. He published a manifesto online; maybe it contains the answer. Australia and New Zealand may seem closely related to Americans, but they are separate countries, and New Zealand is about 2600 miles from Australia. Why would a murderer from Australia kill 49 people in another country?

It’s silly to question the logic of the mentally ill, but I will do it anyway. Tarrant killed Muslims at a mosque, referring to them as “invaders.” He, himself, was an alien. Why would he defend a foreign country from people he saw as invaders?

You can say a white man living in New Zealand shouldn’t call anyone an invader. I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know the history of New Zealand. Maybe whites invaded, or maybe the Maoris were happy to see them at first. Perhaps someone will tell me. I am not going to get sidetracked by a Google hunt.

Whites were welcomed to America, and the Indians did not see themselves as a nation with borders, so the notion that whites came as invaders (or illegal aliens) is a canard. The Indians were illiterate and unable to create a real government or its infrastructure, so they had no nation to invade.

The Americas were like the moon. Up for grabs.

No borders, no aliens. That’s how that works.

I can’t find out whether Tarrant considers himself a Christian. He published a manifesto online, but no one seems to have it. These manifestoes usually vanish within a few hours. The authorities, the tech kiddies who run the web (I repeat myself), and a few early birds get to see them, but somehow, they are censored after that. Makes you think conspiracy theorists are onto something.

Journalists are quoting the manifesto online. You would think they would publish it. Maybe they feel the rest of us–the unwashed and the potato eaters–are not mature or sophisticated enough to be trusted with it.

God doesn’t tell Christians to kill other people; he tells us to die for them. That’s the general rule. We no longer have fixed commandments in the era of the Holy Spirit as prime influencer, but I think it’s safe to say that anyone who tells you Christians need to form militias and shoot their enemies is on autopilot. He is tuning into the wrong channel.

In the Old Testament, God told the Jews to kill their enemies, sometimes including their livestock (possibly because their enemies were bestiality enthusiasts). He told the Jews to kill babies and old people. That was a different time. Christianity is the continuation of pre-Christian Judaism, but under Christianity, the requirements God makes on people are different. We don’t have to observe the Mosaic law, and we are required to love our human enemies. We are supposed to fight spirits, not people.

There is a ton of prophecy in the Bible concerning the end times (the Christian era included), and we don’t see anything there about God’s followers rising up and shooting unbelievers. Islam is full of that kind of thing, as well as institutionalized oppression and selective taxation, but Christianity is not.

The New Testament doesn’t contain a single example of God telling a believer to kill another person.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has decided to use this event as a rationale for attacking God.

In the past, we have seen many people use the trite expression “thoughts and prayers.” When bad things happen, they go on Twitter and say they are sending “thoughts and prayers.” I am skeptical. My belief is that most people who say they are praying for other people are not really doing it. I think they say it in order to show they have good intentions and to make the people they’re addressing feel better. I’m not a big fan of the “thoughts and prayers” convention, because I suspect that it’s very empty.

When tragedy strikes, people always say they’re praying for the victims, who are dead. I don’t understand that at all. Once you’re gone, you are beyond the reach of prayer. I have never prayed for a dead person.

I believe that when you say you’re praying for someone, you should do it. It’s also good to say what you’re praying for. It’s even better to pray with them.

Ocasio-Cortez is not in my camp. She is not attacking the expression for its emptiness. She is attacking belief in God.

Here’s what she said: “What good are your thoughts & prayers when they don’t even keep the pews safe?”

Leftists have a history of criticizing Christians who offer “thoughts and prayers” because many of us also support the civil right to own and carry arms. I disagree with them, but I can understand their bent logic. They think our religion bans all weapons (wrong), so they think we should be for forced disarmament, as they are. This is their rationale. In private, they are also against God (generally), but they usually try to keep that out of the conversation, just as they keep their anti-Semitism out of the conversation when they attack Israel and “bankers.”

Ocasio-Cortez is taking the gloves (and mask) off. She is going after God himself. She thinks we’re fools to trust him in a world where some churches and mosques aren’t safe.

It’s a little refreshing to see the openness. I wish more leftists would criticize God openly. I wish they would stop pretending to admire Jesus. They are against him. Jesus was against sexual sin. He was against pride and rebellion. He didn’t believe government (the left’s messiah) was supposed to fix our problems.

Maybe we are seeing a pivotal moment. Maybe more prominent leftists will go after Jesus openly. It would be a good thing. It’s not good that they’re against him, obviously, but it would be good to see them expose themselves as anti-Christian. They fool a lot of weak Christians into voting for them. They avoid abusing Jesus in order to keep those voters in their camp. If they open up, it may wake up some of those who slumber.

It’s going to happen sooner or later. Famous leftists will quit pretending. They’ll run as enemies of Christianity.

In other countries, leftists used to try to shame God all the time. They murdered and enslaved priests and nuns. They banned religion. They used to have a cute trick they used on kids. They would tell schoolchildren to pray for food. Of course, nothing happened. Then they would tell them to pray to Stalin or Ho Chi Minh or some other murderous dictator for food. Then they would wheel in carts of pastries and so on.

It’s strange that so many American Democrats don’t know who they’re in bed with.

As for the disturbing success of Ocasio-Cortez, Isaiah 3 said it best:

For behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts,
Takes away from Jerusalem and from Judah
The stock and the store,
The whole supply of bread and the whole supply of water;

The mighty man and the man of war,
The judge and the prophet,
And the diviner and the elder;

The captain of fifty and the honorable man,
The counselor and the skillful artisan,
And the expert enchanter.

“I will give children to be their princes,
And babes shall rule over them.

The people will be oppressed,
Every one by another and every one by his neighbor;
The child will be insolent toward the elder,
And the base toward the honorable.”

When we mock God long enough, he gives up on us. He lets us have our way. We see it in Romans 1:

For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.

God doesn’t make you sin, but he will let you live in rebellion and failure if you persist in rejecting him. Human parents do the same thing, when they have been pushed too far.

Ocasio-Cortez is ignorant. She is unaccomplished. She is not bright. She is immature. She is impudent. She is extremely arrogant. She is eager to take cruel, draconian action against her betters. She is the picture of the Isaiah 3 ruler.

In saner times, it would be remarkable to see leftists acknowledge her at all. Ordinarily, you would expect even the left to be sharp enough to realize she’s an embarrassment. It’s strange that they would even permit her to rise. For them to lionize her is far worse. They treat her like a sage. They revere her. They call her by her initials, just like FDR and JFK. That’s lunacy. It’s proof that God has allowed them to be deluded, like mental patients.

In 2008, we elected a former Chicago bagman with no discernible gifts and almost no political accomplishments to the highest office in the world. That was bad, but Ocasio-Cortez makes Obama look like Solomon. It makes you wonder what the next level is. Who will succeed her as Satan’s darling? Maybe we’ll elect R. Kelly.

I prayed for her today. She’s not the real enemy. She is the glove. The enemy is the hand. I don’t know whom God will choose. Maybe God can reach her.

We need to avoid anger. It’s true that we are besieged, and it’s true that we are treated unfairly by very low people, but anger isn’t helpful. When people abuse you, they also tempt you. They try to make you like them.

There is a famous saying: “Never argue with a fool. They’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” It’s funny, but it’s true. It’s bad to be provoked and mistreated, but it’s far worse to become like your enemies.

God has been helping me with empathy. It’s not easy to be empathetic in this world. When you are provoked constantly, it’s hard to focus on what other people feel. It’s hard to think of them as small, weak creatures that want and need love, acceptance, and help. I suppose only the Holy Spirit can help us do it.

We need to ask God for empathy every day. It has to be important to us. Otherwise, we’ll be just like the children of darkness. When we see obnoxious people in the news, or we encounter them in our daily lives, we have to consider their status as isolated, fatherless, untaught beings who suffer just as we do. We have to try to feel what they feel. Even if we can’t reach them, we should not stew in our own bile when we think of them. It doesn’t give us revenge on them, it hurts our health, and it puts barriers between us and God.

Failure of empathy is what separates psychopaths from the rest of us.

I’m not saying we should cling to, or enable, our human enemies. Just that we need to avoid being infected by their hate.

Maybe you don’t need this change, but I do. I’m tired of feeling less empathetic than I want. I’m tired of dismissing other people’s suffering because I feel powerless to do anything about it or afraid to get dragged into their problems. I’m sure God will provide empathy, and that he will limit our burdens so empathy doesn’t destroy us. He promised us that his yoke was easy and his burden light.

I used to embrace anger. I thought it was fun. I did myself a lot of harm.

I look forward to seeing leftists speak honestly about their hatred of Jesus. In any battle, you need to know where the lines are drawn. Maybe the body of Christ will be improved once we realize we’re not among friends.

More: The Manifesto is Out There

I found Tarrant’s manifesto. I don’t know why those in power are trying to censor it. There is always a big push to prevent mass murderers from becoming famous, but it’s a sham. News outlets and social media sites promote the daylights out of mass-shooting stories, while shutting down social media pages and refusing to let us see what the killers said. Complete hypocrisy.

His manifesto is called “The Great Replacement,” and it’s a PDF that runs 74 pages.

I will present some quotations the press will not like.

He asks himself, “Were/are you a conservative?” His response: “No, conservatism is corporatism in disguise, I want no part of it.”

The question: “Were/are you a christian?” His response: “That is complicated. When I know, I’ll tell you.” He was not a Christian; you can’t be a Christian without knowing it.

The question: “Were/are you a fascist?” The response is long:

Yes. For once, the person that will be called a fascist, is an actual fascist. I am sure the journalists will love that.I mostly agree with Sir Oswald Mosley’s views and consider myself an Eco-fascist by nature.The nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People’s Republic of China.

So he’s an environmental extremist, which means not conservative at all. He’s also inconsistent. China is a huge polluter.

Journalists claim he supported Donald Trump. Here is what he said:

“Were/are you a supporter of Donald Trump? As a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose? Sure. As a policy maker and leader? Dear god no.”

In other words, no, he does not support Donald Trump. He simply supports using Trump as a symbol of racism.

Here’s another quotation the left won’t like:

“Why do you blame immigrants and not the capitalists? I blame both, and plan to deal with both.”

Not a fan of capitalism.

He includes a little essay on conservatism. Here is part of it:

Not a thing has been conserved other than corporate profits and the the ever increasing wealth of the 1% that exploit the people for their own benefit.Conservatism is dead. Thank god. Now let us bury it and move on to something of worth.

CONSERVATISM IS DEAD, THANK GOD.

He doesn’t like mainstream leftists, either:

To Antifa/Marxists/Communists

I do not want to convert you, I do not want to come to an understanding. Egalitarians and those that believe in heirachy will never come to terms.I don’t want you by my side or I don’t want share power.

I want you in my sights.

I want your neck under my boot.

SEE YOU ON THE STREETS YOU ANTI-WHITE SCUM

He has a short essay about his “green” notions. It tends to support his claim that he’s a fascist. The title: “Green nationalism is the only true nationalism.”

People think “fascism” is a right-wing idea. That’s not actually true. It’s poorly defined, and it can apply to just about any authoritarian government.

He’s out there on the left on the issue of labor. In a bit titled “Break the Back of Cheap Labour,” he says:

Whether that is by encouraging and pushing increases to the minimum wage; furthering the unionization of workers; increasing the native birthrate and thereby reducing the need for the importation of labour; increasing the rights of workers; pushing for the increase in automation or advancement of industrial labour replacement or any other tactic that is available.

In the end human greed and the need for increasing profit margins of capital owners needs to be fought against and broken.

CHEAP LABOUR IS SLAVE LABOUR, REFUSE TO IMPORT MODERN SLAVES

Tarrant is like most people who mistreat others in the name of social causes. He was looking for an excuse to be sadistic, and he found it. It didn’t really matter what the cause was. He would have been just as happy killing for Greenpeace or Antifa as for the ascendancy of white people.

If you want to pigeonhole this man, put him in the “sadist” and “racist” pigeonholes, along with “environmental extremist” and “socialist.” Those are the best fits. “Conservative” and “Christian” don’t work at all.

And we would not know this, if someone hadn’t seen fit to download the manifesto and make it available. We would have to swallow the MSM stuff. Trump supporter! Conservative! Not hardly.

Still More

I looked into the history of New Zealand. The Maoris didn’t show up until somewhere around 1300. There were at least two groups of Maoris, and one pretty much exterminated the other.

Europeans visited in 1642, but they made their big push a hundred years later, and it was peaceful. They got along well with the Maoris.

No invasion.

Osteopath Out; Hospice Doc In

Today I met with the ALF and hospice people about my dad’s future.

It was a good meeting. I had feared that they were going to battle over dominance, but it turned out they were united against my dad’s primary care physician.

My dad’s PCP in Miami was a very prominent cardiologist with his own pavilion at the university. After that, we ended up with a Chinese cardiologist up here, at a local clinic. He left and handed us off to another Chinese cardiologist, and she refused to be his PCP. She was willing to be his cardiologist, but we were referred to a local osteopath for PCP care.

I’m fine with osteopaths. My PCP in Miami was an osteopath, and I thought he was great. On the whole, I feel more secure with MD’s, but you have to look at the individual, and many MD’s aren’t very good.

In this county, you generally end up with doctors who didn’t do very well in school or who went to school overseas. It’s unusual to have a doctor with a name like Schmidt or Flynn. We have a Karavadian, a Luo, a Gaya, and another guy whose name is too complicated to remember; I think it has a lot of A’s in it. Doctors don’t want to work in rural areas, so incentives are provided, and they attract people who have no hope of working at M.D. Anderson or Sloan-Kettering. My dad’s PCP is an American, but he’s a D.O., so there’s still a compromise.

A D.O. degree is a back door into medicine for people who didn’t make it into MD programs.

My dad doesn’t need House, M.D. He has very common ailments with well-known treatments that don’t work very well no matter who prescribes the pills. I think the D.O. is doing a fine job, given what he has to work with.

Anyway, as of this week, it has become too hard for me to take my dad to appointments, and the PCP’s mindset is conflicting with that of the hospice and ALF people. Medicare may start refusing to pay for things the D.O. has ordered. Because my dad is in hospice, he’s not supposed to get life-extending treatment. I’ve written about this already.

The PCP referred him to a neurologist, and the neurologist ordered a CAT scan to see if he had normal pressure hydrocephalus. The hospice people fear that Medicare will see this as an effort to cure him, and that would be correct, but it would not cure him of the thing which is going to kill him. It might clear his mind somewhat and improve his mobility, but it won’t fix congestive heart failure.

Anyway, I got the hospice people to assure me that their doctor would look into it and advise us. I said I was happy to make her his PCP and allow her to do all the referring from here on out. Now everyone is happy, except for the PCP, but he seems to have a very busy practice, so he’ll be fine.

I made everyone understand that I wanted them to speak bluntly and talk about death. I wanted to put them at ease so they would tell me the truth. They spoke freely, and they seem to feel that the problems he’s having indicate that he’s in his final decline. Now we all understand each other.

The subject of resuscitation came up, and I learned something amazing.

They do not want to resuscitate him if he dies at the ALF. They said they will have to do CPR and load him into an ambulance even if he’s dead and cold. Then the doctors at the hospital will put tubes in him, and they’ll wait for me to make my decision. It would be a mess.

I had been under the impression that my dad wanted to be resuscitated, because he said so when I took him to get his advance healthcare directive written. I told the people at the meeting that I had to go by the book, and that as far as I knew, he wanted to be resuscitated. I said I would check his directive and get back to them.

I looked at the directive, and lo and behold, it says he doesn’t want to be kept alive artificially. This is the amazing thing I referred to, above. My best guess is that when he spoke to his lawyer alone, he told him something different from what he had been telling me orally. I didn’t go through it carefully later. I should have, but I was stressed out. I assumed I knew what was in it.

I used to be okay with choosing resuscitation. Because I thought he didn’t have a DNR, I thought he had some extra protection. I thought that if he found himself facing death, he might be kept alive long enough to receive salvation. Now he’s saved, so resuscitation would only cause unneeded misery. I was comforted by my erroneous belief, but now I’m comforted to find out I was wrong.

He’s not doing well physically. He didn’t say anything delusional today, but he fell asleep a few times, and his lips seemed bluish. He’s comfortable, though, and his future is assured.

I took my action camera and shot about 20 minutes of video. It wasn’t Oscar material, but it serves to capture a few precious moments, and it also documents the changes in his condition.

We prayed together, as always. That’s the one thing we absolutely must do during every visit.

Things are going well, taken in their entirety.

Final Approaches Don’t Have to be Turbulent

My dad just slipped a notch. His dementia had plateaued for a few weeks, but plateaus always crumble.

I saw something different in him when I visited yesterday evening. He got sleepy while I was there. That usually doesn’t happen. Day before yesterday, I had to take him to the doctor, and while we waited in the exam room, he fell asleep in his chair, with his head leaned back.

He did something completely new yesterday. He dismissed me. Before yesterday, he had always tried to get me to stay, or he at least expressed disappointment that I was leaving. Yesterday, he decided it was time for him to go back to his room, so he said something to that effect. He let me go.

He also talked about his dementia. He said he was suffering from senility.

Today when I arrived, he was in his room in his wheelchair. He was facing away from the door. He was not wearing a shirt. Usually, he jumps to life when he sees me, but this time, I had to nudge him to get his attention. He turned and said things that didn’t make sense. He said, “Where are you?”

When I’m not there, he wonders where I am, and he forgets that I come every day. I suppose that when he asked me where I was, he was taking a minute to come out of his daily puzzle.

He was not able to put his shirt on without my help.

I rolled him to the courtyard where we always sit. I had to remind him to pick up his feet. His chair doesn’t have footrests. Prior to today, he had picked up his feet without being told.

Tonight he had a strange delusion on his mind. He thought his roommate, Gregory, was trying to stir up trouble. For all I know, this could be true. It’s impossible to enter their little world.

He kept saying we had to come up with a plan to deal with Gregory. He had the idea that we owned the ALF, and Gregory was living in his room without paying rent. His ideas were inconsistent. Sometimes he thought Gregory owned the ALF. He was afraid Gregory was going to sue us.

I kept telling him Gregory wasn’t the boss and that he didn’t have to pay any attention to him. Over and over, I told him we didn’t own the ALF. We traveled in tight circles. I would straighten everything out, and then he would say we needed to go in and outline everything to Gregory. Then I would tell him Gregory was fine and that we didn’t need to talk to him. Then my dad would say we couldn’t just let him live there without paying rent, and the whole process would start over.

He said something very strange. He said the Kardashians were in charge of the ALF. He saw them as dark powers in high places. I can understand that. He thought they would come after us and side with Gregory.

Who knows what’s happening? Maybe I provoked one of the filthy spirits that empower the Kardashians earlier today, when I referred to their television empire as a “TV slut academy.” I asked God if I was wrong to say that, but as far as I can tell, God is in favor of it. In the Bible, people use words like “whore” without flinching, so I suppose it’s fine to say “slut academy” when the shoe fits.

Late last year, I started getting the impression that God was saying my dad would not survive the spring of 2019. Lately, I’ve been feeling that he will pass before April 1st. I’m not certain, because it’s possible to fool myself. Watching my dad today, I felt that it looked more like I was right. The way things are right now, it’s not hard to believe he’ll be gone very soon.

He talked about getting up tomorrow and going to high school in Whitesburg, Kentucky, where he grew up. I had to help him understand that he was all done with school. He went back to this notion several times. He feels he has loose ends that need to be tied up, but there aren’t any. High school is a place of assignments and deadlines, so it’s easy to see how one would associate it with tasks that need to be completed.

Last night, I dreamed of my mother’s father, the man I always felt in my heart was my own father. I was staying at his house. I walked through the living room on my way to my bedroom, and he was on the couch with my grandmother. He had his head in his hand, and he was telling my grandmother he was getting too old. He said he couldn’t go on. He was supposed to get in the car and drive to the courthouse. He was a circuit judge.

He would never have said anything like that. He was as tough as they come, and his self-confidence was unlimited. He thought he would live forever.

I went in the bedroom and read the Bible for a while. Then I came out and walked past my grandparents. I went out to the carport, because I was concerned that there might be ice he could fall on. When I looked at the thermometer (which is now in my workshop here in Florida), it said something like 50 degrees. The weather was nice. He had nothing to worry about.

He asked my grandmother if I was going to go to court with him. I used to do that when I was a kid.

I didn’t know what to make of it, but it may be that God gave me this dream to let me know what was going to happen to my dad. He is suddenly aware he has dementia, and he seems to be shutting down in preparation for death.

I can’t go with him to God’s court, but he doesn’t have to worry. In the dream, my grandfather didn’t have to be concerned about bad weather or falling on ice when he left the house for court, and my dad doesn’t have to be concerned about slipping and falling, or about the cold of God’s absence, when he leaves his house of flesh.

While we were talking about Gregory, I told my dad we had God’s authority on our side. He said, “I wouldn’t push that angle. It won’t hold up in court.” I said God’s court was the only court that mattered.

I prayed with him while I was there. Just in case, I spoke God’s opposition to any spirits related to the Kardashians. You never know.

I told him he was a great dad. I realized I needed to say that. I told him he had no worries because he had plenty of money, and people were looking after him. I said he had nothing to worry about in the next life, either, because if something happened, he would go to be with my mother. He said that was a beautiful thought.

It may be that I have had my last conversation with my dad. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to reach him. Thank God we’ve had so much time to reconcile and pray together. We’re ready, no matter what happens now.

I’m writing this blog entry to have a record. For all I know, he’ll live another year. I don’t mind being wrong, but if God truly has chosen to take my dad by April 1st, and he has been telling me about it, it’s best to say so publicly now, instead of waiting until he passes and then trying to convince people God warned me.

It would really be something if it turned out God had given me that date.

It may be that my dad is simply displaying evening behavior I haven’t seen before. He wasn’t doing this stuff in January, when he was living with me, but I haven’t seen him much in the evenings since then, so I don’t know what his evenings are like now.

Tomorrow I’ll see him at around noon, after a meeting with the ALF and hospice people, so I’ll see if he seems any sharper.

I can’t thank God enough for changing my dad, giving him salvation, and making things go so smoothly. We all have to die, and death often involves panic and turmoil because people are not prepared. We will not have to deal with that.

My sister will get a completely different view of his passing. She will not get closure. She will probably do her best to blame me for that, if she shows up at all. She could have shared in this. She chose not to. She may try to tell people I kept her away from my dad, but that never happened. She hasn’t tried to see him or talk to him in years.

She always tries to take center stage when someone dies. It’s never about the deceased; it’s always about her. No matter who has died, my sister was the deceased’s favorite person. She has a history of offending people deeply during these difficult times. My relatives have said remarkably harsh things about her at viewings and funerals, and no one has ever defended her.

It would be better for her not to come at all than to come and put on another show. It will be too late for her to ruin things, though. She might be able to mess up another funeral, but she won’t be able to touch my dad.

I have a will, and it says she is not permitted to have any part whatsoever in my final arrangements. She is not to speak before the mourners or write my obituary. She can attend if she behaves, but that’s all. I knew I had to spell it out, in order to protect my personal representative and everyone else.

When I think of my dad now, I see him as he is today. Weak and confused, but full of love, faith, and support. It’s hard to remember my old dad, even though I spent decades with him. That’s strange, but under the circumstances, it’s okay with me.

I’ll try to shoot video tomorrow. Whatever remains of him after today, I would like to save a little bit for the future.

Escaping the Pull of Planet Gilligan

Do people get bored when I write about my TV problems? I hope not, but…no, I don’t care. I write what I want.

I killed DirecTV a while back. It was very expensive. The interface was torture. I could not download new programs. The channels were so bad, it was worse than parody. I made a great decision. I will never have another cable or satellite provider. I hope.

I tried the upgraded Youtube. It wasn’t worth the money. I killed it before the auto-renew kicked in.

I tried Hulu with live TV added. It seemed great at first, but after I had been watching a while, I started running into blocks of ads that seemed to take up about half of my time, and they could not be dodged, even with their “ad-free” add-on, which is a farce.

I complained on Hulu’s forum, and they deleted my complaint and lied, saying they had “merged” it with another thread. I asked about the complaint, and they refused to answer.

That wraps it up for Hulu. I killed it today. Actually, I left the cheaper part of it, without live TV (never used it), but I think I’m going to go back and kill that, too.

I have been watching Youtube and Amazon Prime exclusively for a while. I never felt tempted to look at Hulu, so I now realize Hulu is a waste of money.

Why does Hulu treat customers this way? No idea. Youtube’s management of ads is far superior; you can click away from them so you don’t have to hear about Grammarly or resources for AIDS patients 300 times a week. Also, the targeted ads Youtube provides are actually interesting sometimes. My guess is that Hulu’s few advertisers are aware that people hate their ads, so they force Hulu to shove them down our throats.

I don’t know if Hulu can compete with Youtube’s ad system. It may be an unprofitable. Perhaps Youtube loses money because of its ad policy, but Google pumps cash in to keep things working. Hulu wouldn’t be able to compete with a subsidized competitor. I doubt it works this way, because Youtube is paying creators a fortune. There are people who make millions of dollars every year. I don’t think Google would fund that without some kind of return.

There is an alternate explanation, which, of course, is Hulu incompetence. This is the one I’m betting on. When your guess is that someone else’s bizarre actions are caused by incompetence or dishonesty, you will be right maybe 95% of the time.

Youtube gets better all the time, which serves to prove my point, in a way. Youtube now has content which is far superior to the stuff big companies have been feeding us for decades. If the pros were not incompetent, how could little guys making videos in their basements with cell phones stomp them so easily?

When you have cable (let’s lump satellite into “cable”), here is what happens. You sit down and turn on the TV. You find 900 channels. You can’t find anything good to watch. You settle for garbage. There are PPV channels. There are shopping channels. There is an abundance of porn. There are Spanish channels. There are endless sports channels. There are pay channels featuring silly movies and creepy shows. There are Kardashians and Jenners, with their horrifying, incomprehensible TV slut academy. If you’re intelligent and even a little bit moral, there isn’t much out there.

Let’s say you have Youtube, and you want to learn about, oh, the history of Russia. It’s there, trust me. I won’t even check, but it’s there. Shakespeare? It’s there. Sewing? Plumbing? Computer programming? You name it; it’s there somewhere.

If it’s not there today, it will be in a year. Content and creators continually accumulate.

When TV was created, people floated a lot of BS about how it would be a conduit for education. TV was going to make ignorance a thing of the past. Look how that worked out! “Now sit right back, and you’ll hear a tale…” But now that TV has merged with computers, the prediction is coming true, in spite of the strenuous efforts of the hacks who used to control the system. We are also receiving more garbage than ever, but at least now there is some relief.

One nice thing about Youtube is that it’s helping decent people connect. Christians who post videos on Youtube network outside the system now. Also, the people I watch (tool and gun people) are networking. It’s turning out that many of us share a conservative Christian outlook. Sometimes when I’m watching a guy do machining or something, he’ll let the cat out of the bag. He’ll say something that confirms his status as a deplorable. That’s nice.

Leftists don’t seem very interested in tools, although they’re big in IT. Leftists are about taking, not making.

One of the bad things about Youtube is that it’s encouraging good people to rely on it for money. If a famous slut starts a channel and makes money, she can count on getting paid for as long as Youtube exists. Satan runs the Internet, and he is fine with sexual sin and female rebellion. If a Christian or conservative starts a channel, it’s another story. They will eventually ban us. A bunch of guys who thought they had careers will find out they were suckered by Satan. Wait and see.

Youtube recently had an event called “Adpocalypse 2.” It’s very strange. In today’s world, sexual perversion is rampant. It’s like the days of Noah. Perverts who want to have sex with little kids are EVERYWHERE. A bunch of them roam Youtube, making sexual comments on videos. If you post videos, and your young son often appears in the frame, these future inhabitants of hell will gather to make smutty remarks about him. Youtube decided to fight back. They found channels that occasionally featured kids, and they demonetized them. They took away the money. One day, your video is bringing money into your house, and the next day, it’s dead, and Youtube doesn’t answer questions. There is nothing you can do.

Meanwhile, your old job is gone, and you still have to pay for cameras, editing software, and whatever else.

It shows how quickly Youtube can change a person’s life, and with how little accountability.

No one seems to be talking about the risk. Everyone wants to become a full-time Youtuber, but no one asks whether the job will exist in 6 months. It will hurt, crawling back to Tractor Supply to talk to your former boss after giving him the finger and doing doughnuts in his parking lot.

The government has to abide by a constitution and statutes. The tech kiddies are much freer than the government. They can discriminate very freely without having to answer for it.

I’m on a tangent. I don’t know where Youtube is going, but for now, it’s the best source of video entertainment and education, and it’s free with your Internet service. Hulu, on the other hand, is shady and disappointing. It seemed good at first, but I seriously suspect they suppressed their horrible ads until I started paying for the service.

It’s remarkable, how little I miss cable. When I say I don’t miss it at all, I’m not exaggerating. I never feel myself wishing I could turn it back on.

Movies and network TV seem very stupid to me now. When I watch movies and non-reality shows, I think about what’s really in front of me: maladjusted adults playing make-believe, following scripts written by mercenary, cynical fringe nuts whose parents wish they had gotten real jobs.

Harrison Ford has never been on a starship because there is no such thing; he’s just an old man who carries a plastic gun. Robert Downey would be among the most useless people to have with you in a terrorist attack, and his suit is plastic, too (when it’s not 100% CGI). Hugh Laurie isn’t qualified to freeze a wart, let alone cure mysterious diseases, and he isn’t a genius. If Gal Gadot got in a serious fight with a random middle-aged man on the street, she would lose in two minutes or less, and she would need to be hospitalized afterward.

Historically, actors have generally been shiftless, unaccomplished, unscrupulous people the rest of society shunned for good reason. Nothing has changed, except for the way we see them.

Acting talent is extremely common, and it has no relationship to intelligence. There are very unintelligent people who can play smart people convincingly. It’s just mimicry. Birds do it. Many of our actors are of below-average intelligence, yet we esteem them as though they were the sharp, invincible fantasy characters they play.

When you watch a show and see characters living out adventures, it’s entertaining. When you see neurotic, narcissistic ignoramuses playing make-believe, it’s different.

I don’t know how long Youtube will continue to provide good content, but until it poops out, I’m going to stick with it. George Clooney and Chadwick Boseman (“Yes, daddy dresses like a cat for a living”) will have to make ends meet without my help.

I might conceivably go back to upgraded Youtube to kill ads, but that’s as fancy as I plan to get.

Sun Tzu Should have Written Another Book

Today I got an interesting call about my dad.

He lives in a memory care facility, and he also has a hospice that sends people to look after him. The hospice has assigned a doctor to him. The hospice has also given him a social worker who looks in on him. On top of all this, he has a primary care doctor who is still seeing him occasionally and sending him to specialists.

The providers do not communicate as well as they could. The ALF people communicate very well with me, but the hospice people are doing their own thing. They change his prescriptions without telling me, for example.

The hospice social worker called me today, and she wanted to set up a meeting for the ALF staff and the hospice people, to discuss my dad’s care. She wanted to do it on a day when my dad was scheduled for a CAT scan to see if he had normal pressure hydrocephalus, and I told her about the conflict.

When she heard about the scan, she started telling me we might not be appropriate for hospice, because they did not support care intended to improve my dad’s health. They assume he’s going to die soon, so all they do is keep him clean and comfortable and manage his symptoms. Her position was that having him scanned conflicted with their mission.

My dad has dementia, but he was admitted to hospice because of congestive heart failure. If he can be treated for normal pressure hydrocephalus, there is some possibility that it might improve his mobility. For all I know, it could improve his mind. It will not fix his heart, so the notion that hydrocephalus treatment is intended to extend his life is not sound. His heart problems will still take him out before long, so he should still be appropriate for hospice. I explained that to her.

I also told her one of my problems was that I had no prognosis from anyone. No one has said, “We think your dad will be gone in x months.” Obviously, if they think he has two years, the treatment he should receive is different from what he should receive if they think he’ll die in a week. I said I needed to know what was happening in order to cooperate with her.

When I said this, I finally got some information. She said that in her experience, the way my dad’s skin is breaking down is consistent with imminent death. By “imminent,” I mean months, not days. She said it suggested his body was shutting down. She also said they had accepted my dad because they thought it was likely he would go in 6 months or less, and that was about three and a half months ago.

Now I know what the professionals think. Maybe.

It’s hard to know the truth. The problem is that professionals are biased. They make money from my dad, so of course, they have motivation to hold onto him. They can’t do that unless they defend the conclusion that he is likely to be dead soon. Also, in modern America, providers have a pro-death bias when it comes to the terminally ill.

It seems like a conflict. If they’re motivated to keep him and make money, why would they be motivated to usher him out of this life? I think the answer is partly cultural and partly mercenary. Contemporary medical culture is pro-death to a great extent, and I don’t think anyone who works for a hospice has not been exposed to that. Also, even if they will not help him stay alive longer, they know they will make more money if he stays with them than if he drops them.

A muffler shop doesn’t expect to work on your car forever, but they still want you to bring it in.

This is all guesswork based on experience and an old man’s knowledge of human nature.

If the social worker is giving it to me straight, they think my dad is going soon.

The Internet is not all that helpful. Two providers, including a close friend, have told me my dad’s skin weeping and edema are end stage problems, but it’s hard to find corroboration online. Instead, I find symptoms he doesn’t have. Fatigue. Loss of appetite. Shortness of breath. Mottled skin from lack of oxygen.

I think the social worker is right. For one thing, God seems to tell me that my dad is leaving this month. For another, he lost something like 30 pounds between December and March, while eating normally. His cardiologist said his heart problem and “comorbidities” were likely causing him to lose weight, indicating that the end is near.

You can’t lose 10 to 15 pounds per month forever. Even if I’m wrong about what God says, my dad is deteriorating very quickly. He has had a pleasant mental plateau for a couple of weeks, and that has been wonderful, but his body keeps getting worse.

What’s the real purpose of the meeting? If I were an optimist (or young and stupid) I’d say they wanted to confer and come up with a solid plan for the remainder of my dad’s decline, using input from everyone involved and treating every party with respect. Because I am old and smart, I fear the hospice people may simply be planning a smackdown session so they can assert dominance over the ALF people.

When everyone is happy and united, irksome meetings serve no purpose. The hospice must have a reason for bringing us together. With all these things in mind, I think there is a good chance someone wants to put their foot down.

Do they want to assert dominance so my dad can get the best care possible, or is it because they have been inconvenienced or overruled? My old man gut suspects the worst.

I’m happy with the hospice and the ALF. They’re not perfect, but all of our problems have been minor, at least from my perspective. As long as my dad is clean and comfortable and they treat him well, I don’t care who gets to be the top dog. If there is friction, it doesn’t appear to be causing any real problems for my dad or me.

If anyone on either side is hoping for me to side with them and make the other side submit, they will be disappointed. I’m not dumb enough to get involved in a war among a bunch of women. Women are much more quarrelsome and petty than men. Women will kill each other over a parking space.

I’m the customer. Problems are not my area. My job is to be presented with solutions.

It may well be that everyone involved is trying to do the right thing, with little self-interest. I hope so, but I’m not going to assume that.

Whatever. I’m just glad someone finally mentioned death and a time frame. After all, death is what we’re all preparing for. We can’t prepare intelligently if we never mention the problem.

I have to make sure my dad gets whatever treatment is correct, medically and morally. That’s my mission. How the providers go about making that happen is up to them.

I don’t know what the meeting will be like. They must be used to emotional people insisting that their loved ones are going to live forever. They must be used to tears and yelling. They must have seen a lot of people who knotted themselves up and refused to listen when death was mentioned. I’m not going to be a problem. I have been grieving for about three years, so it’s not like they’re going to burst my bubble and throw me into the grieving process for the first time. I am not in denial. When my dad goes, it will not be the beginning of grief. It will be the beginning of the end of grief. It will be very hard, but then the last three years have been very hard.

I’m ready for the end. I don’t want to see my dad live so long he falls completely apart. Things are bad enough already. The approach to death can be very ugly. They amputated my grandmother’s legs, and she died anyway. My hope is that he goes in his sleep, before things get really unpleasant. We are completely reconciled, and he is ready to go live with God. There isn’t much left for us to accomplish here that would justify the horrors of a grotesque and lengthy exit.

I’ll Take It

I learned something interesting from a Derek Prince video today.

I do not trust preachers and teachers. To see crooks and fools, all you have to do is turn on Christian TV or visit local churches. The situation is so bad, it’s a wonder Christianity has survived. Nonetheless, a lot of people are maybe 90% right, and as long as you have the Bible and the Holy Spirit to use as references, you can learn a lot from other people. Derek Prince is very good.

I’ve been watching Derek Prince every morning for a while. Lately, I’ve heard him mention the problem of guilt several times. I heard it while watching different videos, so I started to think God was trying to tell me something.

Here is what Prince says: Satan accuses us all the time. We know this from reading the Bible. He makes us feel guilty and unworthy, and it interferes with our relationship with God. Prince says we should not go around feeling guilty.

I had to think about that. Correction is EXTREMELY important. Confession is INDISPENSABLE. Without repentance, even a Christian can go to hell. At the same time, is it really necessary for us to feel bad all the time? Sure, we deserve it, but then we also deserve hell, and God is eager to save us from that.

I’ve gotten tremendous mileage out of self-examination, correction, and so on. I beg God for these things every day. You can’t grow if you don’t love correction. Still, there is no reason why you can’t have your faults addressed without feeling like dirt all the time.

Prince says the Holy Spirit “convicts” us of sin. That’s from the Bible. He says there is a difference between Holy Spirit conviction and unhealthy guilt. When the Holy Spirit convicts you, he addresses something that needs to be looked at, and when you repent and move on, everything is fine. When Satan condemns you, or you condemn yourself, the feeling of guilt never goes away. It’s with you 24 hours a day, every day.

That’s gold. I had been wondering how to tell the difference.

In Luke 18, Jesus talked about a dirty tax collector who went to the temple and cried and hit himself and begged God for mercy. He said a pharisee also went to the temple, and the pharisee thanked God because he, the pharisee, was so righteous. Jesus said the tax collector, not the pharisee, was justified.

That story makes it seem like self-condemnation makes God happy, but I don’t think that’s the message. The believers in the New Testament weren’t miserable people. Paul had rounded Christians up to be murdered, for the priests who ran the temple, but he wasn’t downbeat. I don’t think the tax collector in the story was supposed to leave the temple and spend the rest of his life groveling and wearing a hair shirt.

God has told me there is nothing good about worry; not one thing. He has said it’s the voice of Satan. It looks like self-condemnation is in the same category.

Christians are supposed to be ruled by their minds, not their hearts. That probably sounds funny to many people, given that we’ve turned the faith into a sobfest dominated by women, but it’s true. Where do most emotions come from? The flesh. Hello? Is that who you want ruling you? Your flesh is an utter idiot. Using emotion to manipulate other people, or yourself, is wrong.

I grew up with a habit of condemning and pitying myself.

My parents were good at making me feel ashamed so I wanted to hide from the world, but they were no good at all at helping me change. They barely tried. If I procrastinated and ended up working on a school assignment all night (happened every time), they could make me feel bad about it, but they never showed me how to create a schedule or organize tasks.

The way they raised me was very strange. They were educated people, and my mother’s parents were educated. My dad’s father had a little education, which he got on his own, and my dad’s maternal grandfather was a very responsible man with excellent habits. Nonetheless, my parents didn’t do the normal things parents do. They didn’t teach me how to do much of anything.

A few years ago, I learned that my dad’s father had paid my dad for getting good grades. That astounded me, because my dad paid absolutely no attention to my schooling, and I had always assumed it was because he didn’t know any better.

My sister condemned and ridiculed me all the time because there was something wrong with her. She was, and is, very sick. She was sadistic and jealous, for no reason at all. She made up nasty names for me and got other people use them. She looked for ways to exclude me from activities.

It’s easy to see how I could grow up with a persistent feeling that I should feel guilty!

I truly do not want to blame my family for my problems. If I had done things right, I would be free of whatever damage they managed to inflict. I have to talk about the past in order to understand things, however.

My mother and father did well in school, but they taught me nothing at all about how to do the same. They didn’t teach my sister, either. How is that possible? Often, Christians suffer from curses that plagued their parents and grandparents, but my sister and I were the first generation of untaught slackers in our family.

An irrational habit of self-condemnation is a big problem. It ruins your social life. It makes you likely to marry badly or to fail to marry (as I did). It ruins your professional life. It will cause big problems for you in school. It may also lead to things like suicide.

I believe Derek Prince is right. A long time ago, God told me two things. He said, “I don’t have to punish myself,” and “I don’t have to condemn myself.” I knew these things were true, and I wrote them down and repeated them to myself, but it was still easy to slide into self-condemnation. It’s nice to see another person emphasize these points and expound on them.

Leftists are big on shaming people these days. Shame may be their biggest weapon; when you have no carrot, you need a big stick. They try to shame people for owning guns, eating meat, admitting that there is no such thing as changing your gender, standing up for God’s position on sexual sin, doubting that a tiny change in levels of a harmless gas which makes up 1/800 of our atmosphere will destroy all life, being male, being white, and wearing red hats.

Satan is their father, and he has taught them well. We ought to recognize the source and name it. We should also refuse to accept the false guilt.

Manipulation is witchcraft, and guilt trips are manipulation. The Democratic Party is the party of virtually all witches. You don’t see witches gathering to curse Nancy Pelosi. They always curse Donald Trump. We should be aware that their manipulation comes from Satan.

Want to be lonely? Become a Republican witch.

Derek Prince made a list of things that are hallmarks of witchcraft. It’s short: manipulation, intimidation, and domination. It’s a good list to know about. It’s hard to find fault with it.

Leftists are passionate about all three items on the list. So are Islamists. The church used to use witchcraft all the time. The Catholic church was the biggest terrorist organization on earth, before it lost its power and had to resort to other forms of manipulation. They tortured. They imprisoned. They murdered. They threatened. It should be easy to tell when Satan controls an organization or movement.

I don’t have to condemn myself. There isn’t a single righteous person on earth. No one anywhere is one bit better than I am. Some have thicker coats of whitewash, but there isn’t one person on earth who has a right to be proud or to look down on me. I work to acknowledge my faults and repent. That’s sufficient. It’s all God asks of me, and every single person who disagrees is just as evil as I am.