Welcome to my Cleaner, Quieter House

My dad is in an ALF, and my first day of freedom has begun. Or has it?

Yesterday, I got him situated, and I didn’t get home until around 7:30 p.m. His bedroom still contained a pile of laundry that needed to be washed. I just got around to it this morning.

We have a very modern washing machine, and that means the machine is not very good. It’s slow, and in order to make sure clothing really gets washed, you have to use the “bulky” setting. I also use bleach on his sheets, and I include a pre-wash cycle. One load takes over 90 minutes.

When I got up, his breakfast dishes were still by his chair in the living room. He had covered the plate with newspapers, so it wasn’t visible, and he has…had…a habit of leaving his water glass and coffee mug on the TV table all day, so when we left for the ALF, nothing had been put away. I just put it all in the dishwasher.

I have to shampoo his bedroom carpet again. I will need to clean his bathroom several times in order to feel confident about it.

I am reminded of the days following my mother’s death. I got her clothing out of the house as quickly as I could. I didn’t want there to be a disturbing shrine full of useless things that only served to make us feel bad about her dying. I tried to fix things so it looked like the family had moved on. After a person dies, certain reminders can hurt like a finger jabbing an old sore.

If you want to honor the dead, keep some photos and videos and leave it at that. Redecorate their bedrooms. Do not buy an urn and keep ashes on the mantel. You shouldn’t drag other people into a never-ending festival of conspicuous, demanding, off-putting self-pity. When I’m sure my dad is never coming home again, I’m giving his bedroom furniture away as soon as I can.

Am I cleaning up after the dead again? It feels that way.

I didn’t think I’d miss my dad very much. For one thing, he was making me miserable with selfishness and groundless anger, and for another, I expected to visit him several times at the ALF. Nonetheless, now that the pressure is off, I can feel things it was masking. It feels strange to know he isn’t here. This is a big house. We needed it in order to make caregiving bearable. Now it feels a little cavernous. When I walk by his bedroom door, I feel as though he should be in there, and then I remember that he isn’t.

I’ve been thinking about what I’m feeling. Most of the time, when you have an unpleasant emotion, it means there is a problem that needs to be fixed, so I’ve been looking for a problem. Did I do the wrong thing by moving him instead of getting a CNA? Did I pick the wrong ALF? I thought about my feelings for a while, and I had a realization: what I feel is grief, and grief tends to generate denial. I may not have made the best choice, but what I did was okay. I can always make changes later.

Among painful emotions, grief is exceptional, because it doesn’t mean somethng needs to be fixed. You’re not supposed to look for the cause and make it right. You’re supposed to experience it until it goes away on its own. It’s not a disease to be cured. It’s as normal as birth and death. Maybe it’s a good thing. It reminds you that you have a heart, and it helps you remember how very serious life is.

If I brought my dad back, maybe some of the grief would go away. He would have to go back soon, though, and while he was here, I would still have some grief. A demented person, though breathing and speaking, is partly dead. A lot of a dementia patient is gone forever, which makes sense, because parts of my dad’s brain have, literally, died and disappeared. I have been feeling a certain amount of grief over my dad for a year or two.

There are nice things happening. It’s not all bad. I no longer have to go through the house looking for things to clean with bleach. He isn’t touching things and leaving e. coli and other things on them. I can put the flatware back in its drawer instead of keeping it hidden so he won’t lick food off of it and put it back. I’m not wondering what kind of hygiene crisis will occur today. I’m not dreading unpleasant conversations, except for the one we may have when I visit him later.

Maybe I can take down the little signs I’ve put everywhere. “DO NOT WASH ANYTHING BY HAND.” “DO NOT USE THESE DISHES.” “DO NOT LOCK ME OUT.” They are disturbing reminders of his illness and his absence. If I take them down, though, am I not nailing him into his coffin, in a way? To take them down is to say, “You’re all finished. You’re not coming back.” Leaving them up makes me feel like I can resurrect him.

Things would be much better if he were a self-aware person. He insists on clinging to denial. He says he doesn’t believe he has dementia. You can say that’s the dementia talking, but he said the same thing back when he was still mostly sound. The year he retired, he knew perfectly well he had dementia, and he told his doctor and me that we were wrong. He is still sharp enough to know what his problem is. He doesn’t know his address, he can’t use a computer, and other people show up to bathe and dress him. To put it harshly, even to a demented person, those are very good clues.

Because he won’t admit the truth, he has to look for explanations he likes better. My selfishness is high on the list. He brings that canard up, and then later, when he feels better, he tells he what a great son I am. He seems disappointed when I don’t hug him and break into tears, but then I’m the same guy who was accused of the worst kind of selfishness earlier.

I wish he would say, “I know I have a very serious problem. I know you can’t take care of me, and that I have put you under great stress. I know that if I stay in the house, you will be a prisoner, and you won’t be able to get anything done. Don’t feel bad about it. It’s not your fault. I know you didn’t cause my problem, and you have done a great deal for me already. I understand.”

Thank God I’m not caring for my sister as well. Two denial-and-accusation artists would be too much. She is much, much worse than he is, and she also hates me and wishes she could erase me and my memory from the earth.

Some people rely on God to fill their needs, and others use other people up, discard them, and look for fresh hosts. There is literally no limit to the suffering my sister would allow me to experience in order to prevent her from having to accept the consequences of her life of toxic words and actions. My dad is not as extreme, but he would be willing to live here and let me pour myself into him until my life was ruined.

I’m going to quit writing so I can run out to the ALF and spend some time with my dad. I don’t know if it will go well, but I want to find out if the move will improve our relationship, as I am hoping. If not, it will be his choice, not mine.

I plan to take him a Bible. Can’t hurt.

Rebellious Parent’s Collapse Progresses

My dad, the man who was an elite attorney less than 5 years ago, is sleeping in an ALF memory care unit right now.

I took him there this afternoon. I signed a paper, took him to his room, brought in his luggage, put away his clothes, and then went to run errands to get things he needed. I didn’t get back for over two hours. When I returned, I noticed there were no visitor cars in the lot. I had expected to see a few. My dad was sitting in the dining room with a lady who is probably about 75.

I thought maybe he had made a friend, but for all I know, they were seated together for the convenience of the staff. I put the things I had brought in his room, and then we sat and talked.

I was not too happy with the dining room. The first chair I tried to sit in had corn and fragments of meat on it. The second one needed to be wiped down with Windex or something. The floor was a mess. Some of the residents are problem eaters, so I suppose a lot of things end up on the floor at every meal. I can understand why there would be some fresh food on the floor during meals, but there shouldn’t be any old food remnants anywhere.

The food smelled very bad. At first, I was upset about it, but then I remembered that my dad had no sense of smell. He had eaten his dinner, and he was not complaining. When he was in his forties, he collected wine and enjoyed good restaurants. Maybe I should try not to think about that.

He started talking about going home, and I reminded him that he had promised to stay a week. He was incredulous. He had forgotten. He asked if I would go to his room to discuss it. I told him I would go, but that I could not take him home.

When we got to his room, it looked somewhat better than it had when I left. I had added a new pillow, his familiar alarm clock, four photos from home, and his back scratcher. A friend suggested putting some of his belongings in the room, so that’s what I did. It helped.

I also brought him Oreos, a bag of Kit Kats, and a raspberry coffee cake.

Before we could talk much, an employee came in. She changed him while I waited. She could not have been nicer. He cursed at her once for no reason. That was awkward.

After she left, another lady came with some pills, and he took them. I mentioned his sleeping pills. I said I thought he needed to have his dose cut in half because they were so strong. She told me she had just given him one. It was about 6:00 p.m., so I was surprised. I guess I need to talk to them about that. Also, I don’t think they should give them to him every day. He should only have them when he has trouble sleeping. I don’t know if that’s going to be a daily thing or not, however.

He started talking to me about coming home. He tried to tell me taking care of him wasn’t much work. He said he would look after himself. I had to remind him he could not do that. I said I was sorry about the way things were going, but there was nothing I could do.

I don’t think he should be getting sleeping pills at 6:00 p.m., but today I was glad he did. I did not want to have to leave while he was still arguing. I knew the pill would end the conversation before long.

A friend called while I was sitting with him. I was grateful for that. I stepped out to take the call, and I knew it would put me closer to the time when my dad would fall asleep.

I didn’t know what else to do. I completely understand why he wants to live at home. This property is wonderful compared to the ALF. I just can’t do anything about it.

Another friend called today, and we had a long, productive conversation. She told me not to feel guilty about feeling relieved. I don’t feel guilty. I am really stuck, here. I can’t pull the Waltons or the Osmonds out of my ear to help me shoulder the burden of my dad’s care. There is no big, supportive family to call on.

My dad had two kids, both are single, and one is a sociopath. That’s what we have to work with. I don’t feel guilt, but I wonder if I’ve picked the correct solution. Should we splurge on a fancier ALF? Should I try to get by with 8 hours of CNA care per day? That would cost about as much as the ALF, and he could stay here, but I would be chasing the CNA all day, and he would still holler for me every 15 minutes.

Then there would be the hygiene disasters that would take place between CNA shifts.

It would be better than what I was dealing with up until this afternoon, but I don’t think it would be sustainable.

I’m not happy with the way things turned out for my dad, but I don’t feel like a bad son. In fact, I feel as though God is protecting me from irrational feelings of guilt.

Today my friend told me about adrenal exhaustion. The idea is that a person who lives under stress keeps producing adrenaline, and the body gets worn down. I wonder if it’s true. I know that when a period of stress ends, the body sort of caves in. It leaves one feeling drained. Maybe that has something to do with adrenaline. Anyway, I have been living like a bellhop for a couple of years now. I don’t rest very well. I always anticipate the next crisis, the arrival of which can’t be predicted. It’s hard not to be wound up most of the time, and I can’t keep it up indefinitely.

Most of the people at the ALF seem very nice, including the patients. I felt good about that. There was one old guy who looked strong and fit for his age, and he was a little aggressive. He was walking around looking at things like furniture and door handles, as though he were a maintenance man. While I was on the phone in the hall, he started fooling with a door handle and asked me if I had a knife. I gestured to indicate that I couldn’t help him. He got angry, and he said, “I said, ‘Do you NEED a knife?'” I told him I did not. After all, I had a great big one in my pocket. He was the only person at the ALF who seemed irritable, apart from my dad’s outburst. He cursed as he walked the hall.

I don’t know why he wanted to borrow a knife and then decided he wanted to lend me one. He didn’t have a knife, of course. ALF patients can’t have them. He walked and talked with great purpose, and if you didn’t know he was demented, you might think he was busy doing important things, but he was in his own world. At one point, he walked up to a little table, picked it up, put it on its side, and banged it on the floor. He left it there, as if he had accomplished something. I guess it meant something to him.

Before I became familiar with the modern use of the term “dementia,” I thought it meant “insanity.” Then I learned about disease-engendered memory and judgment issues and so on, and I thought about dementia differently. Now I’m back where I started. Regardless of the clinical mumbo-jumbo, dementia patients really are insane. They may not see imaginary friends or believe actresses will date them if they assassinate presidents, but they are not sane at all.

A lady came out of her room, stopped in the hallway, pulled down her pants, and continued with her pants down below her diaper. I don’t know if there was a reason, or if it was just a dementia thing. She was not self-conscious at all. In that respect, she was like my dad.

Healthcare people call adult diapers “briefs” or “pull-ups.” I call them diapers. I feel strange trying to make them sound like something they’re not. Maybe I should go with the flow to spare people’s feelings.

Why were there no cars at the ALF? I saw one lady dropping someone off, but that was it. I was hoping younger people visited often. That’s what I plan to do. My dad is difficult, and I can’t look after him, but he’s not a parcel to be put in storage. I’m hoping we’ll get to have some social interaction now that I won’t be cleaning messes all day.

What if I misunderstand the way ALF’s work? Maybe they really are dumping grounds, and society merely pretends otherwise. I guess no one is going to print a brochure that says, “Come abandon your parents at Vista del Baño.” No one will show up at an ALF and say, “Can you help me warehouse and ignore my mom until she dies?” Are these the types of things people are secretly thinking? Perhaps everyone but me understands this. What if there’s a tacit conspiracy?

Are the people at the ALF truly nice, or is that just an act for the children of residents? I suppose they really are nice, because many of the patients have the faculties to nark on them if they act up. Besides, this is Ocala. People here are freakishly gentle and pleasant.

There is so much uncertainty. Good information is hard to come by. Maybe you have to be on your third demented parent before you really know how things work.

I asked the sales lady how far gone a person has to be to be moved out to a nursing home. She said as long as they can put food in their mouths and swallow, they’re fine. Then they go to “skilled nursing” facilities. I only saw one person who appeared to be a near-vegetable. The rest appeared to be interacting and enjoying each other’s company.

My dad belongs there. It’s hard to swallow even though I know it’s true. In some ways, he’s still very smart. He thinks he’s nothing like the others, but he fits right in. I wish he understood. He has never been self-aware at all.

He was still talking about alternate strategies when I left. He was starting to conk out from the sleeping pill. He wasn’t belligerent during our conversation, except to the CNA. He really tried to be reasonable and patient. That was strange and new. It didn’t help. There was nothing I could do. Sometimes I have to tell him I’m not a genie; I can’t fix everything. I didn’t say that tonight, but it would have been apt.

It’s easier to be firm with him when he’s insulting and rude. Sometimes I almost miss it for that reason.

That’s it for today. I’ve been trying to relax since I left. I didn’t eat lunch until around 7:30. I did something I do about once a year: I ate Papa John’s awful pizza. For some strange reason, on rare occasions, I want it, and today was such an occasion.

I firmly believe that what happened to my dad is what happens to people who don’t listen to God’s repeated warnings. A couple of years ago, I felt that God told me he had cut my dad off. The evidence bears out that impression. I don’t think any of this was necessary, and I know I could not prevent it, because I was not the cause.

Tomorrow I clean and try to get on top of my responsibilities. I still don’t know exactly how things will pan out, but substantial progress has been made.

ALF Stretch Starts Today

I am getting ready to drive my dad to the ALF. He is not thrilled. We just had a visit from his hospice social worker, and she tried to help me convince him it was the right thing to do. As usual, he insisted that caring for him was an easy job. I told him about the nasty cleaning chores I have to do, and he asked me to show him, so I showed him some pretty gross stuff which is in line to go in the washer. He said he couldn’t believe it, as though that meant he didn’t have to!

The social worker had some good advice. His advance healthcare directive says I can take over when he suffers from incapacity. We just need an attending physician to sign off. The social worker took a copy of the directive, and she will contact the doctor.

I have a neurotic fantasy that he’ll have a lucid day, call a lawyer, and raise all manner of hell. If it weren’t for that, I would have forced him to move already. It will never happen, and if it did, he wouldn’t get anywhere. I need to stop being overly cautious.

Our deal is that he only has to stay a week. I don’t want to be a dishonorable person, so I plan to abide by that. It doesn’t mean I can’t turn around two days after he leaves and have him driven back. It would be silly, but I would rather do something silly than break a promise.

I already knew about the provision in the directive, but I was reluctant to use it. I had my excessive caution holding me back, and I hate to force someone into an ALF at the end of a cattle prod.

It might be better for me if he resists today, because then I wouldn’t be bound by my promise. I could install him tomorrow, using the health care directive. The hospice people would even drive him to the ALF.

One way or the other, I plan to have him moved permanently by the first of the month. It will happen.

I don’t know what to do with myself. Freedom will be hard to absorb. I feel like getting a pizza on the way home and spending a couple of hours on the couch, decompressing. Maybe I should wait until the mess goes into the washing machine, though.

I’m about to start living, and my dad is about to be confronted with the fact that he is dying. What a mix of emotions I have. I can’t help feeling glad for myself, but I feel very bad for him, too.

Honestly, I hope he doesn’t last long after this. There is nothing good to look forward to except heaven. If he adjusts well to the ALF, we may end up with a healed relationship, but what are the odds that he will choose to adjust?

I can’t fix everything. Even Jesus lost people; he did everything as well as possible, but he still had to give up on most of the Jews.

This would have been a thousand times easier with a Spirit-led Christian.

I’m off. Pray for us both.

Misgivings are Inevitable

My dad’s transition to the ALF may be happening tomorrow. We’re buying a one-week trial that I intend to turn into a permanent stay if at all possible.

I’m not all that thrilled with the way things are going.

They offered two choices: plain old ALF care and memory care. I want him in plain old ALF care because memory care is not as appealing to new residents. The other patients are in worse shape, and there are doors that keep the patients from wandering around. It would be easier to sell him on the main area, and he would enjoy it more.

I thought the best thing was to put him in the main area at first. Then, if necessary, he could be moved to the memory care unit. They didn’t agree. Evidently, his last stay gave them the idea he might run off, so they want him in memory care from day one.

Memory care covers a wide spectrum of mental states. Some patients are nearly vegetables. My dad is in bad shape, but he can talk and read. He knows who he is. He’s not rolling a wheelchair in circles, repeating the same nonsense syllables over and over. I think he would be fine in the main area for at least a few weeks.

I’m afraid the memory care unit will hit him in the face like a brick. Passing through their special red doors may feel like walking past the sign at the entrance to Dante’s vision of hell: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

I don’t want him to suffer. On the other hand, I cannot continue caring for him by myself. I can’t exchange my life for his.

I find myself wondering if there is a better place. I suppose I’m grasping at straws. I should think about what I’ve told other people: I have learned that there is no good solution, so I need to be satisfied with the least bad solution available.

He could stay here a bit longer. I could spend $15,000 per month on 24-hour assistants until he finally sank to the point where there was absolutely no choice. Am I wrong to choose not to do it? It’s his money, after all.

I would still have no life, though. I would be policing the assistant every day. I would still have to put him in respite care over and over in order to travel for business, and he would fight. And there would be the extremely unpleasant experience of having employees share a house with us.

The big problem isn’t a lack of money. It’s a lack of relatives to share the burden. Maybe a gigantic sum of money could overcome that, but based on what I’ve seen of the elder-care industry, I doubt it. I think if you spent a hundred thousand dollars per month, hired help would still give you the same problems you get for three thousand. They just don’t care as much as relatives.

It seems I’m stuck with the ALF. There is a nicer one farther away, but it seemed impersonal, and the drive will make visiting him inconvenient.

I want to visit a lot. I hope to go every other day. Since he agreed to try it, I have come to realize his departure gives us an opportunity to have a normal relationship. Right now, he misses me even though he lives downstairs. I come down to clean up messes, drive him to appointments, and be insulted and yelled at, and then I go back upstairs. I don’t spend any more time with him than I have to. Once someone else is doing the dirty work, I’ll be able to sit down and have a normal lunch with him. We’ll be able to have conversations of a sort. Today we went for a short walk, and the sensation of novelty and relief made me realize how abnormal our relationship has become.

If it doesn’t work out, I can always look for another way.

It doesn’t matter that much. He keeps declining. If memory care is overkill right now, the situation will probably be very different in a month or two. If I make a bad choice, it probably will not affect him for long. That which is overkill today may be completely appropriate in March.

This stuff seems very real now. I used to read about the short life expectancy and the severe problems that come with the progression of the disease, and I believed what I read, but it’s different to see it coming to pass. It’s as if a long, hot summer I thought would never end is over and the first frost has come.

This is a nasty illness. It’s better to go from cancer or a heart attack. Where is the closure with dementia? You never settle anything. You battle the disease and the patient, all the way to the end.

This is how it is. It’s not good, but I accept it, and I’m glad I won’t be a full-time caregiver any more. I can’t prevent other people from reaping what they’ve sown. I’ll do my best, and if there is pain involved, I’ll keep on living. I’ve seen misfortune before.

I’ll keep reporting on things as they develop.

Hoping ALF Visit Becomes Permanent

It looks like today might be pivotal. I am certainly hoping so.

My dad’s sleeping pill prescription failed to arrive yesterday, so he didn’t sleep all that well last night. He got up early and interfered with my breakfast routine. He was confused and not sure what to do. He asked me what time it was maybe a dozen times. He started asking me if I were angry with him.

I’m generally a little annoyed when I deal with him, because he refuses to do the right thing and he continually says things that aren’t true. He says he’s sorry for imposing on me, which obviously isn’t true, since he has the option of helping me out, as he should, by moving to an ALF. Still, I do my best to be polite. I don’t bark at him. I guess he thought I was mad because his conscience was bothering him.

I told him I wasn’t angry, but that I was not going to be happy with our situation until he moved. I told him the job was too much for me, and that it was making a real dent in my other responsibilities.

To my surprise, he said he would agree to a trial stay at the ALF. That was all I needed to hear. I’m working on setting it up right now. I want him in there TODAY. This afternoon, he may change his mind again.

I’m not going to get his baggage ready. I’m not going to do anything except put him in the car and GO GO GO. The little stuff can be handled once he’s there.

Man, this would be great. I can’t even remember what it was like to have a day when I wasn’t cleaning up disgusting messes or being shouted at. I’m sorry the end of his life has to involve this stressful and unwanted scenario, but the problem has to land on him or me, and it’s not right for me to throw my life away so he won’t have to face his problems.

Whenever I want, I’ll be able to go see him. Then I’ll be able to go home, in a clean car, to a clean house. If I need to travel for business, I’ll just lock the door and leave. I won’t have to worry about finding him walking around at night or in the morning, looking for something to do and spreading bacteria.

If it doesn’t happen today, it will still happen soon. Wonderful.

I have told God that if he unyokes me from this mess, I will never again let a non-Christian get close to me. Never. It’s as dumb as taking up smoking or heroin. You have to be a fool to keep doing it.

If you’re getting old and sick, and your kids aren’t in a position to care for you without having their lives ruined, my advice is to man up and move out. You didn’t reproduce so you could use your kids as prosthetics and slaves. It’s better for you to have a couple of less-than-ideal years than it is to force your kids to carry your burdens for you.

Caregiving Saga Draws to a Conclusion

I am going through an interesting time in my life. My dad is well past the point when he should have moved to a facility, and I am working on getting him installed in one, but he is belligerent and says he will not go.

I’ve written a few unpublished pieces about this. I decided not to post them because I had concerns that I was venting instead of saying constructive things. I also thought I might be dishonoring my dad. I have done that in the past. God is against people who dishonor their parents.

English-speakers do a poor job of distinguishing between “honor” and “respect.” God wants us to honor our parents, but we are not actually required to respect them. There are at least hundreds of millions of parents no intelligent person can respect. To honor someone is to treat them as though they deserve respect, whether they do or not. I guess it’s what military people mean when they say, “Salute the rank, not the man.”

I doubt the marines who used to watch Barack Obama get into Marine One respected him, but they still saluted him.

I know my dad’s shortcomings. I can’t respect him, because respect has to be earned. I can still show him honor. That doesn’t mean I have to pretend he’s perfect or collaborate with him when he says things that aren’t true.

The question of whether you’re dishonoring a parent becomes cloudy when the parent is a gaslighter. Gaslighters lie constantly. A gaslighter will beat his wife and then convince her she made him do it. He may cheat on his wife and then convince her she’s insane to believe the evidence she has seen. Gaslighters slander their victims to others. Because gaslighters promulgate lies against the people they use, they are different from other adversaries. Their lies have to be countered publicly, just as they were disseminated.

My dad is a huge gaslighter. He used to blame my mother’s cooking for his weight problems. He blamed her for a number of his own misdeeds. He says he was a great father and husband, and that the rest of us wrecked the family. These days he tells me a number of things that aren’t true. I’ll list some.

1. “You don’t love your father.” He says this because I want to put him in an ALF. He hopes I will feel guilty when he says this, but I don’t. It annoys me and reminds me of the difficulty I have had respecting him.

2. “I would do it for you.” That’s not true. My mother died from cancer, and he didn’t take care of her. He drove her to medical appointments and so on, but he never did what I do. He used to go on business trips and leave her by herself, against her wishes. He and his sisters put his mother in a facility. He didn’t care for her. He only visited twice. He didn’t do anything for my sister when she had cancer. He has two children, and he has never changed a diaper.

I should also add that caring for demented people is much harder than caring for cancer patients, because they can’t help or cooperate, and they may be ungrateful and cruel. My dad fights with me for selfish reasons, even when he knows it’s wrong and that he’s making me suffer unnecessarily.

My mother was a breeze to look after, all the way to the end. People complain about the way they suffer when they care for cancer patients. Compared to dementia caregivers, they have it easy.

3. “You owe it to me because you’re being paid well.” Not true. I was the only beneficiary in his will a decade before he became demented, and there were no strings attached. He would have left me everything anyway, and this is what a parent is expected to do. It’s not a favor.

A person who earns wages is an employee, not a beneficiary, and nobody pays anyone else to be a son.

If my dad were merely a difficult parent, I wouldn’t need to mention his failings to him or anyone else very much. Because he mounts a constant propaganda campaign, I have a need and an obligation to debunk the things he says. He needs to hear the truth, and I need to hear myself say it so I don’t get poisoned.

I’m very direct with him now. I say things like, “You can’t make me feel guilty or manipulate me. It’s a waste of time to try.” I say, “This situation isn’t my fault,” and, “I’m not the problem.”

He doesn’t just yell at me because I don’t cooperate. He scolds me for problems I have nothing to do with, including dementia itself. He asks me about the disease, and when I tell him the facts, he says things like, “You certainly make it sound wonderful.” He thanks me sarcastically. When he does that, I have to say things like, “I didn’t make this happen. It’s just life.” I shouldn’t have to say that.

I remind him that he has never taken care of anyone, including his children and wife, so he doesn’t understand what I deal with. I remind him that an inheritance doesn’t make me a servant for life or obligate me in any way whatsoever. I have told him I don’t actually have to do anything for him.

It makes him angry to hear the truth, but I’m not responsible for his anger. I don’t consider it a serious problem or something I need to address. It’s something he chooses. He can stop whenever he wants.

I do feel bad about his future. He is at the point now where the ALF people are talking about admitting him to memory care, which is not as pleasant as the main facility. They have special red doors which stay locked from the outside. The atmosphere in memory care is not as nice. Some of the patients are a real mess. In the main area, he could tell himself things weren’t so bad. Behind the red doors, he would be reminded of the truth all the time.

It sounds bad, but there is no choice. His wife is dead. His daughter is a sociopath. His other relatives will not do anything for him. He has no friends. I am the only person on earth who cares about him, and I can’t do the job alone. It’s not just that I prefer not to. It’s impossible. I have to be free to take care of business. I have to be free to travel and get things done. I need free time to look after the house and myself. If he had 5 married sons and a bunch of grown grandchildren, sure, we could do it. He didn’t invest in family, though, so I’m all he has.

He made an uncomfortable bed for himself, but he’s trying to make me lie in it.

On the one hand, it’s stressful going through this period of transition. Things will be unpleasant until he’s out of the house. On the other, good things are happening. The more he slips, the more freedom I get in certain areas.

He can’t walk up stairs now. That means the upper floor of the house is all mine. He can’t come up here and get things dirty or mess with business papers. He can’t barge into my bathroom while I’m showering and demand that I do things for him. If I don’t want him to touch or know about something, I just bring it upstairs. When I decide I’m not going to continue a conversation, I walk upstairs, and it’s over.

I can read newspapers now. I got out of the habit because he used to get the papers so filthy. He would throw them on the dirty floor by his toilet. Now he gets up no earlier than 10:30. I get the papers. I read them. I do the puzzles. It’s wonderful. He likes doing crossword puzzles, but in 2018, he started taking a very long time to finish them, so now they back up on him. We get three puzzles a day. As long as I leave him 4 or 5 every week, he’s fine.

I don’t have to go to restaurants or take him on errands. I used to take him to lunch several times a week, and he liked to go to the grocery store. It would take him 10 minutes to get to a restaurant table now, and walking grocery store aisles is out of the question. Also, there are severe hygiene issues that make travel in the car something he only does when there is no other choice.

I’m sorry he’s not doing well, but it’s wonderful to know I can go where I want and walk at a normal speed. I like eating at home, where I’m not confronted with menus full of 1500-calorie entrees. We’re also saving some money.

He forgot how to cook, so I prepare everything he eats, and he doesn’t mess the kitchen up the way he used to. It’s getting cleaner and cleaner. He doesn’t care what he eats, probably because he has no sense of smell, so I buy frozen food and microwave it. It’s fast and easy. He used to stand in front of the pantry, eating Raisin Bran out of the box, and cereal went all over the floor. Now I can decide where he eats, so there is less mess.

He gets upset because we don’t eat together. Unfortunately, that’s a necessity. Because he yells at me so much, and because I spend so much time cleaning horrifying messes and looking after him, I leave him on his own for long periods so I can recover and attend to other things.

I have explained this to him. I told him that because he’s not in assisted living, the time I spend with him is not normal time. We don’t get to socialize because I’m too busy doing very unpleasant things. It’s a choice he made, so I’m not going to suffer for it.

He has always liked to put people on the spot and make them feel awkward. He likes to pressure people to tell him he’s right and that everything is fine. When I was a kid, he would do very ugly things and then sit us down and say, “Now smile. Smile, damn it!” It wasn’t enough to tolerate the things he did. He insisted we tell him we were enjoying it.

The other day, he said it seemed like I didn’t enjoy his company, and then he asked me if that was the case. He was trying to make me feel guilty. He thought I would be cowed, and that I would say something to make him feel good. I did not enable him. I told him it was true; I did not enjoy his company. I said that when I was with him, I was always working or being yelled at. I told him that if he were in assisted living, other people would take over for me, and then I could visit and do other things with him.

I don’t know if I sound like an ogre or what. I suppose it depends on whether the observer is an enabler. Enablers have always been very hard on me; they used to be very nasty to me when I stood up for my mother against my sister. Sometimes my mother herself interfered. She was the queen of enablers, and my sister squeezed her like a tube of toothpaste until she died. I don’t have any respect for the opinions of enablers.

It’s easier to attack a reasonable person than an abuser, because you know you won’t get a cruel, sadistic response. If you can get an abuser’s target to accept guilt and go along, it makes things easier for the rest of the crowd. It’s a vile sin, however. You should never sacrifice the innocent to make the guilty give you peace.

“Just take her to the drugstore one last time so we can have peace.” “Tell him whatever he wants to hear so we can all go to bed.” “Cover the forged check and say you wrote it yourself.” No. You may have to do things like that when you’re young and powerless. When you’re an adult, you confront. It’s the only way out.

I have a friend whose mother is mentally ill. The mother is a control freak and an abuser. You would not believe the things she has said to my friend. When my friend was admitted to Harvard, her much-older brother sat her down and convinced her to stay home on their Florida farm and wait on her deranged, spoiled mother and her growing collection of sick, hoarded “rescue” animals. He didn’t want to deal with the hassle, but he was willing to sacrifice his little sister’s life. He will be judged for that.

I’m not my friend. I’m not powerless. I can tell the innocent from the guilty, and I will not devote my life to enabling. I was happy to help my dad while I could, and it was the right thing to do. Now it’s time for tough love, and that’s what he gets.

As soon as I can work it out, my dad will be in an ALF, and my life will be completely different. I wish he could be part of it, but due to the existence of free will, that’s how Christianity works. Some people listen and get in the ark, and the others stand outside with their pride and claw on the hull when the water rises. You may feel bad for them, but you’re not supposed to jump over the side and join them, and you can’t pull them in with you.

A few weeks ago, my dad had a better attitude toward ALF’s. Something has happened since then. I assume it’s demonic. Doesn’t matter. Demons were put on this earth to lose.

Now you know how things stand here. It’s like I’m in labor. It’s not much fun, but it will end soon, and then things will improve tremendously.

Danish Evangelist Savaged by Ankle-Nippers

It had to happen eventually. Torben Sondergaard and The Last Reformation are experiencing heavy persecution.

I’ll post a video in which Sondergaard explains it, but I can summarize: he made the mistake of cooperating with a documentary crew, and they convinced TV watchers in Denmark that he runs a destructive cult. Why he cooperated is beyond me. Everyone knows the secular media are run by leftists Satan.

I found out he has Youtube trolls. A user calling himself TLR-is-a-cult has posted some ridiculous videos consisting of short pieces of TLR footage with bizarre accusations spliced in. He accuses TLR of using “fake doctors” to confirm healings. He claims Torben tells people to throw their medicine away. He says Torben is a child abuser because he prays for kids to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. He even suggests Torben caused a man to have his leg amputated, although he doesn’t explain how that worked.

Every Christian who accomplishes anything knows what it’s like to have crazies pursue him. I’ve had nutty, unattractive single women set their sights on me, and I had one highly eccentric person force eighty dollars on me and then post weird messages on Facebook, criticizing me yet refusing to say why. My last pastor had a screaming fit in a church parking lot because he was angry at a friend of mine for talking to me. The pastors at Trinity Church in Miami had secret meetings about me after I left.

I know what cults are like. I can tell you a few things they do.

1. They push you to join.

2. They demand large sums of money and/or free work.

3. They attack everyone who points out their problems.

4. They tell you who to associate with, and they make a special effort to separate you from members who have left.

5. They glorify human beings. Cults that are churches may worship pastors or false prophets.

6. They restrict your behavior with excessive rules.

7. They put down the competition. I used to go to Trinity Church in Miami, and the pastors there saw other churches as competing businesses. They also suppressed sub-pastors who were not members of the family that owned the church corporation.

I’m sure cults have other qualities. This list is something I came up with on the fly.

At my last church, we were expected to give the pastors big cash offerings on their birthdays, and the head pastor actually chewed us out because he thought our offerings were too small. He told us we had to give money to his son, who was a drug dealer, a self-proclaimed atheist, and a disrespectful punk.

Talk about pastor-worship. I didn’t go along.

I have been to one TLR event. I can tell you how it differed from a cult experience.

1. They didn’t care if I joined or not. They gave us the option, but that was about it. Membership consisted of being put on a list and an Internet map.

2. They took a couple of brief offerings, but they didn’t beg or manipulate. Unlike Rich Wilkerson of Trinity Church, they didn’t tell us we were going to miss out on blessings if we didn’t pay them. They didn’t threaten us with curses. They didn’t ask me to do one single thing for them. Trinity is so greedy for free work, they have interfered with prospective marriages in order to keep volunteers free.

3. They didn’t spend any time vilifying their detractors. I would guess that Torben said one or two things about criticism he has received, because he spoke to us for hours, but I don’t recall any of it. He criticized bad doctrine other churches embrace, but that’s his job. Bad doctrine is supposed to be exposed.

4. They never tried to tell us whom to associate with. The topic never came up.

5. They didn’t glorify human beings. It’s true, Torben got a lot of attention. He runs the show; God put it in his hands. That doesn’t make him an idol. The whole purpose of the event was to raise up other people to do what Jesus did. Torben wasn’t trying to make himself a unique messiah. He was trying to raise up new people to go out and do what he was doing. He refuses requests to baptize people personally, because we need to know that any Christian can baptize. I was baptized by a couple of young men. It wasn’t Torben, and they were not members of his immediate family. Cults keep people small so they will serve and pay. Torben was trying to bring people up to his own level and beyond.

6. We were not given any oppressive rules. Torben talked about the way we were supposed to live, as a preacher should, but we weren’t told we had to give up pork like the Seventh-Day Adventists, wear funny costumes like the Black Hebrew Israelites, or stop drinking hot drinks or wear special underwear like the Mormons.

7. Torben never put down the competition. He never slammed other charismatic groups that do what he does. Again, he criticized bad doctrine, but that’s not the same thing. Torben and his cohorts are doing their best to increase the number of independent workers who do what the disciples did.

I don’t communicate with TLR. I will never join. I gave them a small offering which was less than a tithe, because I was grateful and I knew they had spent a lot of money. That’s it. They don’t care. They leave me alone.

The notion that TLR is a cult is ludicrous at the moment. It could become a cult later, especially if Torben falls into error or leaves, but it hasn’t happened yet. The potential is there. They have a school in Denmark, and they have a course of videos posted online. Things like that can turn a good ministry into a carnal cult over time. It has not happened yet.

Here’s something weird: the slander videos receive lots of supportive comments from anonymous people. Some of them seem to share similar writing styles, suggesting it’s actually one nut with many accounts. They agree with the cult accusation, but none of them mention any facts.

Torben says Danes are sending him tons of hate email. He says TLR is being attacked on social media. It looks like the documentary worked.

He believes the documentary makers want to get a law passed, preventing evangelists like Torben from ministering to children the way TLR does now. No baptism with the Holy Spirit. No tongues. No casting out devils. No healing prayer. I don’t know if Denmark’s laws would permit such a ban. It would not be a surprise, because Europeans live in hidebound nanny states.

Denmark has a state church. Talk about an oxymoron. It’s an inversion of authority. God is supposed to be above kings and national assemblies. When lawmakers who know nothing about God pass laws regulating churches, they invariably cripple God’s servants. Torben says Danes are upset with him because he does what he does outside of the state church. They seem to think he needs a license. He’s not a trained priest. He’s a baker.

David was a shepherd. Amos was a farmhand. Peter was a fisherman. Jesus was a carpenter. It’s a good thing none of them had to get licenses from the Danish government.

Long ago, God told me that when I saw things that didn’t make sense, I should look for supernatural causes. The nutty, ignorant, dishonest, rabid attacks on TLR do not make sense. It’s a bunch of nice people who go around praying and baptizing, free of charge. They’re not the Medellin Cartel. There is no natural reason why people should hate them. Clearly, Satan has stirred up his peanut gallery, also known as the Beast, against TLR.

It’s a very positive sign. If Satan isn’t attacking you, how can you think you’re doing what you’re supposed to?

Persecution isn’t fun, but it’s an honor, and it’s certainly better than being attacked for real crimes and sins. I would rather be Torben Sondergaard than Jim Bakker or Jimmy Swaggart.

I was persecuted at Trinity Church and New Dawn Ministries in Miami. I was flattered. I didn’t deserve the honor.

It’s funny, but churches are huge centers of persecution. At the event I went to, Torben said his problems came from other Christians. I can relate. When I was a church volunteer, I had almost no problems with people who merely attended. It was the pastors and volunteers that went after me.

I hope the people at TLR will not be discouraged. They should be encouraged instead. They should realize that the attacks are evidence that they’re doing the right thing.

Self-Destruction is Fashionable

The other day, I saw something distressing. I was reading about one of our celebrity witches.

For those who don’t know, there are a number of performers who take part in witchcraft. It’s not all that new. I recall Dan Aykroyd talking about cursing people and sending them “hell energy.” Sammy Davis Jr. was a Satanist; most people don’t know that, but you can look it up.

Singer Katy Perry (or as people my age call her, “who?”) took part in a “witch walk” in Boston. Singers Lana del Rey and Azealia Banks practice witchcraft openly. Heather Graham helped cast a spell to get Obama elected. Cybill Shepherd was a pagan in the 90’s. Fairuza Balk ran a store that sold witchcraft supplies.

Remember Madonna’s strange dance number from a few years back? She was surrounded by male dancers wearing horns. Madonna is a student of kabbala, which is a Satanic corruption of Judaism.

We always hear that religion is in decline in America, but that seems completely false to me. Christianity is in a very sharp decline right now, but false religion and self-worship (soft idolatry) appear to be more popular than ever, and they’re also considered chic.

To get back to my point, I was reading about a feud between Azealia Banks and Lana del Rey. Del Rey (creator of the new album Norman F___ing Rockwell) threatened to give Banks a beating, in profane terms. From there, I somehow ended up at Teen Vogue’s site. Teen Vogue is a sort of Bible for girls looking for validation and attention.

I don’t understand why women and girls crave attention and admiration so much. Men like attention, too, but it’s not the same at all.

The article I read was a how-to piece for girls who wanted to become witches. If you Google “witchcraft” and restrict yourself to the Teen Vogue site, you will find that Teen Vogue has published a number of articles endorsing witchcraft and providing tips for beginners.

To understand how weird that is, try to imagine Teen Vogue publishing articles that help girls become Christians. Imagine an article about casting out demons or praying in tongues. Of course, articles like that don’t exist.

Teen Vogue is not alone. Other magazines aimed at women also push paganism (same thing as witchcraft).

Women’s magazines have always been corrosive, stinking puke, but they are reaching new depths these days. Many of us, especially men, are completely unaware of the propaganda being spread right under our noses. We don’t read women’s magazines. They’re unbearable. They’re fatuous and full of self-pity and smugness. The subject matter is all about self-worship and self-indulgence, along with a big dose of male-hating. It’s amazing that women can stand them.

The reason I’m writing about this is to point out that we have gone evil-blind. We can’t perceive evil any more. We’re so used to swimming in evil, we think it’s normal. We don’t understand how close we are to the moment when God will give up on humanity. When we get so filthy and unteachable that the cost of keeping the world running outweighs the benefits, the trumpet will sound, the saved will leave the earth, and the torment of mankind will begin in earnest.

God keeps correcting me. He keeps showing me how I’ve embraced filth. Over time, I let more and more bad things go. I’m not a good person yet, but I am better than I was, and when I look back on the mess that I was even a few months ago, I realize I have been evil-blind all of my life. Evil was all around me, and I was part of it, and I didn’t even know it.

I’ve been trying to get cleaned up for years. There was so much accumulated rot, it has been a long journey. I was serious about Christianity as far back as 11 years ago, but I am still getting new revelation about inner evil that has to be fixed. If I’m in this state after all this time and prayer, how messed up are people who haven’t even asked for salvation yet?

The world is a death camp. It’s the roof of hell. It’s a disgusting place of torment and failure. It’s too bad we’re so used to it. We can’t see that we need to be rescued.

Any world in which every single living thing eventually withers and dies can’t be running normally.

What would have happened if a mainstream girls’ magazine had published how-to articles about witchcraft in 1950? People would have stormed their offices. Now we sit back and do nothing. We tolerate this outrage, and we are going to tolerate and actively participate in things that are much, much worse.

Here’s a prediction which will definitely come true: we will move from criticizing Christianity to criticizing Jesus himself. Right now, idolaters like to claim they love Jesus and his values. They tell us his message was that everyone should be nice and refuse to talk about sin. They see him as a sort of gay Buddha figure. They give Jesus lip service while abusing his children and reviling his teachings. In the future, the pretense will fall away. They will admit that Jesus is against them, and they will revile him, personally.

Eventually, we will see a world in which Jesus is like the Goldstein of 1984. He will be public enemy number one. Instead of denying his divinity, people will admit he is God, and they will work to dethrone him.

It will happen. Don’t doubt it for a second.

Homosexuals will be a big part of it; they already are. As a bloc, they already hate Christianity. Among themselves, they admit it.

I’m not saying all homosexuals want to destroy Christianity, but many do. They see it as a major factor in the problems they have with society.

We need to start emphasizing love and self-sacrifice. We talk about imaginary man-made rules all the time. We condemn people. We wrestle with human beings instead of the spirits that deceive them. It’s not a good situation. If we want God’s power, we need to put his priorities first. We do an extremely poor job of helping sexually confused people right now, because our self-righteousness, anger, and selfishness restrict God’s power in us. All over the US, people are working hard to shut down ministries that try to change homosexuals. They wouldn’t be getting anywhere if those ministries were accomplishing a lot.

We should be delivering homosexuals, gluttons, addicts, the covetous, the angry, self-righteous Christians, and everyone else who is dominated by demons and the flesh. We should be healing more people of illnesses. We don’t have as much power as we should, because we, ourselves, are stuck in selfishness, stubbornness, and pride.

Many sinners love sin and would work very hard to avoid being delivered from their bad habits. Many others would crawl to us on their knees to get help, if they thought we could really do anything for them.

The only reason God leaves us in this miserable place is to reach others. How many Christians are even aware of that?

Things are worse than they seem. The end is closer than it seems. We are doing a worse job than we think. That about sums it up. I hope God will help some of us to get it together and do what we were created to do.

One More Thing I’ve Done Wrong

I am repeatedly amazed at God’s ability to surprise me by telling me things I already know. How can such a thing be possible?

Last night during prayer, I thought about the problems in my life, and I wondered what I was still doing wrong. I’ve been baptized with water and the Holy Spirit. When I was baptized with water, I committed to dying to the flesh, so I believe I did things correctly. I have a strong prayer life. I have been getting a lot of help with sanctification; God has given me the grace to give up a number of things that were holding me captive. I’ve also been asking God to change me so his love flows through me; Christians barely mention love these days, but it’s God’s top priority.

God gives me phrases from time to time, and here is what he gave me last night: “I forgot about the sacrifice.”

While I was at a Last Reformation event a little over three weeks ago, Torben Sondergaard criticized what he called “the American gospel.” It works like this: if you figure out what you want to do with your life, God will help you do it. It’s selfish, and if it worked, most of us would end up in the wrong situations.

It reminds me of something that happened when I was a kid. Teachers would ask me and my classmates what we wanted to be when we grew up, and the boys always said they wanted to be cops, firemen, or Superman. The girls said they wanted to be ballerinas. Think how stupid our society would be if we got the choices we made as children.

Christians want high-status jobs and lots of money. We also try to turn our desires into tempting packages for God. A Christian will say, “Make me a famous singer, and I’ll sing about you all the time,” or, “Give me a big, wealthy church to lead, and I’ll serve you all of my life.” Feel-good preachers tell us God will honor our choices.

What does the Bible say?

“He who loves his life will lose it.”

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”

If you want God on your side, you have to be on his. You have to put everything on the altar. You have to look at all the things you cherish, including ones you don’t yet have, and let God know you are willing to give up every last one of them in order to be put on the path he has chosen.

Many of us think we’re dying to self and crucifying the flesh when we stop fornicating and doing other things that are obviously wrong. There is more to it than that. You have to offer God your dreams. You have to be willing to give up your career plans. You have to tell him it’s okay if you never marry or have children.

You can be a teetotalling virgin who is nice to everyone while still turning your own desires into idols.

The Bible says God will give us the desires of our heart. How can that be true if we have to put them on the altar? First of all, his promise doesn’t apply to all of our desires. If your desire is to be a successful pimp, don’t expect help. If you have a set of desires when you decide to follow Jesus, God will only help you with the ones he approves of. Second, God will give you new desires as you grow, and he will definitely fulfill those desires.

I told God he can have whatever he wants. If I’m supposed to die single, fine. If I have to give up activities I love, like writing, music, STEM pursuits, shooting, and using tools, I will go along with it. If he wants me to live in a place I wouldn’t have chosen, I’ll comply.

I also told him there was no possible way I could give up my plans and cravings without his help. The Bible says we put the deeds of the body to death by the Spirit, not with our own strength.

A Christian is supposed to be the head, not the tail. God told me this: “The head sees things, and reaches them, first.” If you’re the head down here on earth, you will have to lead, and that means you will have greater obligations than everyone else. You can’t look at other people’s lives and tell God it’s not fair that they get things you don’t get. They get trivial things. If you serve God, you are on track to receive great things of eternal value. If you complain about what you have to give, you have to consider what you stand to receive.

Your friends who don’t give much up for God will not get as much from him as you will.

Jesus gave up wealth, longevity, popularity, and family. He was our head. He sacrificed himself before we did, and he gave up more. Now he sits in heaven beside the father. That’s a pretty good return on 33 years of service. If God asks you to give up more than your neighbor, it’s because he intends to give you more.

Today I read about Yitzhak Perlman, the violinist. He discussed his childhood. He struggled with practice. You can imagine what it was like. He was indoors with the violin, and kids he knew were outside having fun. It sounds rough until you compare their futures. The other kids went on to become ordinary people with ordinary jobs, and Perlman became a famous and wealthy musician.

In some ways, this life is like a childhood full of violin practice. There are movies you can’t watch. There are things you can’t say or do. There are emotions you can’t allow yourself to have. There is a lot of deprivation. The payoff comes later, and while you’re here, you’ll have a life of peace, fulfillment, and miraculous help.

I know God doesn’t take away everything we put on the altar. That’s a comfort.

I already knew I was supposed to “die to the flesh,” but until last night, I didn’t have a deep, heartfelt understanding of it. I don’t know how I could have been wrong, since it was so obvious.

We will see what God takes and what he leaves behind. I will keep posting updates.

No one is Wrong all the Time

I saw an interesting story today. Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, warns that the Antichrist will use the tightening web of technological gadgets to control us. I’ve been writing about this idea for a long time.

I’m always amazed when anyone from a typical blinded mainstream church says anything that makes sense. I’m not naive enough to get the idea that it means a lot. It’s hard to be wrong about everything, even when you aren’t in touch with the Holy Spirit.

Kirill says the information gadgets collect will be used to control us. That’s not terribly perceptive. It already controls many of us. Say the wrong thing in a tweet or while someone else is filming you with a smartphone, and you can lose your job in under a day.

One of the weird things about technological lynchings is that there is no way to recover. There is no mercy. Once you’ve been targeted, you can’t get forgiveness, and you can forget about getting your life and career back.

I should not be surprised. Technological lynchings are generally performed by leftists, and leftists are intolerant and ruthless. They will forgive rapists and killers and demand their early release, but they never forgive people who disagree with them.

He says, “Control from a single point is a harbinger of the coming of the Antichrist,” and, “The Antichrist is a personality that will be at the head of the world wide web controlling the entire human race. Thus, the structure itself presents a danger.”

Will the Antichrist run the worldwide web? Yes. Any global dictator would have to run the worldwide web. Failing to take control would be gross incompetence. It would be like taking over a country without taking charge of the military.

We already see authoritarians taking control of the web in some countries. China is a great example. They ban many western sites, and the government hacks into accounts and deletes things people write. The Antichrist would have to be an idiot not to use the same tactics.

It’s strange that we accept surveillance with eagerness. For me, it underscores something I concluded a long time ago: people don’t really have a burning desire for freedom.

In America, there is a cherished myth that says people will do anything to get their freedom, but it isn’t true. When people flee countries where there is no freedom, most of the time, they’re not fleeing oppression. Most are fleeing lack of financial opportunity. Some flee political or religious persecution, but their desire isn’t for general freedom; they just want freedom from certain aspects of authoritarianism that impact them disproportionately. Many people are happy as clams in authoritarian nations. As long as they’re not the ones being rounded up and tortured, they are more than happy to exchange freedom for peace and relative prosperity.

When colonists in North America threw off British tyranny, they didn’t do it because tyranny itself bothered them. They did it because British tyranny conflicted with certain pet interests they had. Some wanted relief from burdensome taxes and a bigger piece of the economic pie; money is always a big motivator. Had the British been fairer to them in financial matters, they probably would have stayed loyal to the crown.

The royals were tyrants before the colonists arrived, and they remained tyrants for many decades after the colonies were established, but the colonists didn’t make much of a fuss until well over a century had passed.

The English were just as oppressive at home as they were in North America, but there was no revolution in England. If human beings had a universal desire for freedom, English subjects would have joined us in rebellion.

Castro was extremely popular in Cuba. Exiles get furious when they hear that, because he confiscated their wealth, but it’s a fact. Castro murdered, tortured, and imprisoned people who disagreed with him, and his laws were extremely oppressive, but Cubans were very sincere when they mobbed his personal appearances and listened to speeches that lasted as long as several movies. They still line up to visit his grave.

We don’t mind oppression until it affects us personally, in ways that are hard to bear. That’s the truth.

It amazes me that there are people who find Alexa tolerable. I can’t imagine having an eavesdropping machine in my home; my phone is bad enough. We love anything that makes us say, “Gee, whiz!”, and we love convenience, so there is no limit to how deeply we will let the technological tentacles penetrate.

There are people who want to connect their burglar alarms and all their major appliances to the Internet. I can understand the logic with regard to burglar alarms, because you need to be able to react to burglaries when you’re not home, but why on earth would you pay for a refrigerator that tells you what’s in it?

We are addicted to excessive electronic connection, so there is no point in complaining about it. The battle is already lost. It’s going to get worse and worse. The government will know exactly where you are all the time. You will have a self-driving car that won’t take you where you want to go if the government disagrees (and it may take you places you don’t want to go). You will be on video every time you walk outside. You will have a social media account you’re not allowed to cancel.

All of these things are inevitable. When we find out we can do something, we feel we have to do it, regardless of whether it’s a good idea. We created atomic weapons because we could. The USA and the British knew the Nazis and communists would build them whether we did or not, so we built ours first. There is no legitimate use for a nuclear weapon apart from violence. Doesn’t matter. We had to build them because we are too much like monkeys for our own good.

We can change technology, but we can’t improve ourselves so we are capable of using it ethically. That’s the sad thing. Man is the same fool he was 4,000 years ago. He has no more sense than he did then, but now he can build bombs that can make cities evaporate. It’s remarkable how technology advances while we remain frozen in adolescence.

The only thing that can change our hearts for the better and bring unity is the Holy Spirit. Our own efforts have produced very limited results. In fact, we are degenerate. We are not as good as we were 50 years ago. Every day, real life looks more like the movie Idiocracy. Watch a clip from this movie, and then think about Rashida Tlaib.

Mr. Kirill or Father Kirill (whatever the correct term is) is right. The Antichrist will be too stupid and weak to communicate with everyone in the world simultaneously through a spirit, so he will have to use technology. It will be easy to put the bridle on us, because we will welcome it. We already do.

He also says we need to avoid too much central control, “if we don’t want to bring the apocalypse closer.”

He got something right, and then he wandered into error. He believes the apocalypse is something we should try to put off. In reality, we are supposed to pray God will hasten it. Look what Peter wrote:

Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

We should be eager to see the end come, and we can make it happen faster. The end will be painful for many people, but it’s better than having the messianic age put off forever. This world is a mess, and we need to get the present age behind us.

Why doesn’t the head of the Russian Orthodox Church know this? Shouldn’t he be an expert?

I have started praying for God to speed up the end of this age. I should have been aware this was a priority with him, but I wasn’t.

I hope I will never have an Internet fridge or an oven that tells me what to do. I hope I never get that snowflaky. Some technological ideas are just plain stupid.

It’s nice to see a church leader acknowledge the reality of prophecy. Maybe some of the people who listen to him will think about it and realize they need better knowledge than what they receive from crippled denominations.

The Mustard Seed Keeps Growing

I haven’t been up very long. I woke up a little before 8:30, and it’s about 9:22. I already have a testimony.

If you’re wondering why I get up so late, the answer is that I wake up in the middle of the night. It happens almost every night, so in order to avoid sleep deprivation, I turn off the alarm clock and go back to sleep when it’s over.

This morning when I woke up, I did what I usually do. I gritted my teeth and checked the news. I always feel a certain amount of dread when I look at the news, because it’s so filthy. I read about disasters and catastrophes, and I see venomous people, including beloved performers and politicians, tearing at each other like unsupervised children in a schoolyard. There is also the danger of temptation; certain “news” sites throw revealing photos of women up all the time.

I should not have gritted my teeth. Reading the news is different today.

I used to fight anger when I read disturbing things about venal, cynical celebrities. I didn’t want to let them annoy me, but they succeeded. Look at the people who get obsessive favorable media coverage today. Some examples are Kathy Griffin, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Tlaib, the Kardashians, Alec Baldwin, Jim Carrey…they live to provoke people. They’re good at what they do.

I fought something else when I saw revealing photos posted by outfits like The Daily Mail and The Sun!

These days my experience is not what it used to be. For example, when I read that Christian Bale thanked Satan for inspiration in playing Dick Cheney in an attack movie, I didn’t get irritated. I didn’t have any problems with the publicist-submitted photos of morally lax actresses, singers, and models.

I’m not saying I felt nothing at all; just that things were very muted compared to what I would have experienced a month ago, and I was able to feel goodwill toward the misbehaving people in the news.

As I realized what was happening, I felt joy running through me. I’m not a teary person, and I think men who run around crying are silly and disgraceful, but I was not that far from tears today.

It’s good to resist negative urges and feelings. It’s much better not to have them in the first place.

I think I understand Luke 2:14 now. Here is what the angels sang when the birth of Jesus was announced: ““Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” Jesus died partly to enable us to have goodwill toward each other instead of anger. Many of us enjoy anger and don’t want to part with it, but there are also many people who have a habit of anger and want to get rid of it. You can’t just make it go away by concentrating. You have to run off the spirits that drive it, and you need the Holy Spirit’s joy and love to flow in you, to fill the place anger and other negative things used to occupy.

Yesterday I wrote about the joy I had started feeling, and I said I didn’t know if it was permanent. I’m into my second day. That’s all I can tell you.

Most Christians (not including the fakers) are obsessed with improving themselves with effort. We have the idea that we can please God by working very hard to restrain and compel ourselves. We think God wants us to earn things from him. That’s completely wrong.

Over and over, the Bible calls us “heirs.” An heir inherits something someone else worked for. As for wages, the Bible says, “The wages of sin is death.” Sinners get what they earn; believers get what Jesus earned. If this were not the case, the Bible’s emphasis on humility would make no sense. If you could change yourself and earn a ticket to heaven, you would have every right to be proud.

In numerous places, the Bible tells us to give God the credit for things. Why would he want credit for what we do? It would be absurd. He wants credit for what he does. He is the one who changes people.

The Bible says Jesus carried our sins, iniquities, and physical problems on the cross. In the Bible, Jesus did things like making withered limbs grow back. He never charged people. He never told them to earn their healings. He gave it to them for nothing. He never charged for forgiveness of sins, either. If forgiveness and healing are free, why is the third thing–relief from iniquity–something we have to earn? It’s not. God removes our iniquities supernaturally and replaces them with his virtues.

To make sure people understand what I’m talking about, I’ll define “iniquity” again. An iniquity is a sinful habit, not a sin.

Taking heroin is a sin. A heroin addiction is an iniquity. Hitting someone in anger is a sin. Wrath is an iniquity. What God is doing in me is the supernatural destruction of iniquity. The fruit of the Spirit are God’s answer to iniquity. When iniquity is removed, the fruit of the Spirit are supposed to replace it.

God calls our own puny righteousness “used menstrual rags.” That’s how highly he esteems it. How would you like it if you tried to send your son to a tailor to get a custom-made suit at your expense, and he saved the money and came home wearing used menstrual rags? Would you be pleased?

When we puff ourselves up with fake righteousness through hard work, God is not pleased at all. It’s just another form of iniquity.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to see myself being improved. I feel like I’ve waited forever for this. It’s like going to heaven. We all think about it, but it’s such a blessing, it’s hard for us to imagine it as something that will really happen. When God removes iniquity and replaces it with the fruit of the Spirit, it’s hard to believe.

It makes sense that I would be moved to compare it to heaven, because “the kingdom of heaven” refers to something we’re supposed to have inside of us. Heaven is a place; the kingdom of heaven is not. The kingdom of heaven is a state of being, in our hearts and minds.

The Bible calls us ambassadors. I’ll go further. We are living embassies. The ground inside an embassy belongs to a foreign country. The inside of a Christian should be part of heaven. It should be a place full of love, peace, faith, and joy. If you’re not full of the fruit of the Spirit, your insides are like hell. You’re full of lust, anger, covetousness, and so on. You may fight these things. You may know they’re wrong. They’re still there.

I don’t know what to do with myself. The blessing is overwhelming. I feel like I just received a pallet of gold bars.

Can it really be that God wants the rest of my life to be like this? Would he do that for me? How can it be?

We call the gospel “good news,” and then we hand people a bunch of burdensome rules coupled with anger and self-righteousness. That’s not good news. Good news is something that makes you want to exclaim. It’s good news when you get healed of blindness. It’s good news when God resurrects a dead child. It’s also good news when you realize the inner shackles you could never hope to cut have been taken off.

I want to hold onto this, and I want it to increase. I don’t care what I have to give up. It’s just like Jesus said: the kingdom of heaven is like a pearl a man would sell everything he has to own.

I can tell my recent baptism broke a stronghold and made these changes possible. That’s exactly what I was hoping for. Before I was baptized correctly, even though I was trying to get God’s help with inner change, I was doing things out of order. I needed to go back and fix my foundation. God had given me this sentence: “I have built on a rotten foundation.” I didn’t know what he meant at the time, but now it seems clear.

In some ways, God is completely inflexible. He didn’t give us dozens of ways to become like him. He only provided one, and if you don’t accept it, you will only end up spinning your wheels. Baptism, meaning full immersion accompanied by intelligent repentance and dying to the flesh, is mandatory. You may get to heaven without it, but you will always be a stunted Christian.

I learned something fascinating the other day. The Bible has a “hidden verse.” It’s Acts 8:37. Many translations omit it. When the Ethiopian eunuch asked Philip if he could be baptized, Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” That’s what the verse says.

Old copies of the New Testament only go back so far, and the oldest ones omit the verse. That’s the excuse that was used for removing it. The problem with this logic is that the verse was quoted in works written before the oldest existing copies of the New Testament. The verse was quoted in about 180 AD, not long after the New Testament was committed to writing, and that establishes its validity.

Why would scholars remove the verse? Because they had concluded, wrongly, that babies should be baptized. They wanted to support this false doctrine. A baby can’t understand baptism, and without understanding, baptism is just a pool party, as Torben Sondergaard says. The verse says God only permits baptism for those who believe, and that excludes babies.

By creating the institution of invalid infant baptism, the old churches removed baptism from the church. They replaced it with something that is not baptism. As a result, generations of unbaptized Christians never reached maturity, and all sorts of bad doctrine grew up around them like thistles. Generally, Christians were not baptized, and they didn’t receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit, so naturally, we entered an era of heresy and apostasy.

It’s amazing how much damage Satan did by taking baptism away from us. It was a master stroke.

I feel tremendous, and because this business is just getting started, I expect to feel even better in the future.

If Christianity actually works, what do we have to be worried about?

If you’re reading this, I strongly suggest you get yourself baptized correctly. You don’t need a priest or a preacher; just a Christian who is full of faith. You don’t need a church. You can use a bathtub or any container that will allow you to go completely under.

You have to examine yourself and repent. You have to make a quality decision to give your life to Jesus and forget the goals your flesh has turned into idols. You have to be baptized in the name of Jesus, not the Father and the Holy Spirit. In the Bible, believers were not baptized in the name of the Father or Holy Spirit.

When you do it, ask for the baptism with the Holy Spirit so you will be able to pray in tongues. If you can’t get it to work, ask yourself if there is anyone you need to forgive or any sin of which you need to repent.

Ask God to rid you of iniquity and fill you with the fruit of the Spirit.

God has given us tractors, and we are still plowing with arthritic mules!

That’s it for now. It ought to be sufficient!

No One Ever Promised Us Instant Results

I continue to chronicle the changes I experience in the wake of my December 19th re-baptism under the authority of The Last Reformation.

I had a remarkable experience last night and this morning. I didn’t want to write about it until tonight, though, because I wanted to make sure it was real. I can explain.

My dad has chronic back pain. I am in charge of his pain medicine. His doctor has never seen him, and I have never spoken to her. I work through a nurse, and I don’t get as much information as I would like. It’s hard to get coherent guidance on what to give him and when.

He has two pain medications. Both are opioids (mild ones), so apart from blocking pain, they may have other effects. Everyone knows about opioids. They can make you euphoric, sleepy, dizzy, unnaturally relaxed, and so on. Also, different opioids work at different rates. Some work fast and last a short time, and others take a while to kick in and work longer.

My dad isn’t awake all that much these days. He usually sleeps over 12 hours per day. That’s fine at this stage of his life, but it can make it difficult to space out his prescription doses. I need his pain pills to work soon after he gets up, but the dose he takes before bed doesn’t have to start working quickly.

Because I am concerned about his balance and the timing of his doses and so on, I decided the best thing was to try one dose of each of his two painkillers. I figured that would tell me what he was experiencing. I took one dose yesterday and another earlier today. Now I have a better idea what the effects are, and I think I know what to do.

I don’t understand how people get hooked on these things. They give you pleasant feelings, but they also cause constipation, liver damage, sleepiness, and so on, and you also risk addiction, a total breakdown of morals, poverty, prison, and death.

It may not be strictly kosher to do things like this, but I am pretty much on my own, and I have zero interest in recreational use, so it seemed like a good idea. I don’t think they’ll put me in the pokey. Anyway, because opioids can affect your mood, and because my testimony involves the way I feel, I had to be sure what I felt wasn’t related to the pills. Now I’m sure, so I can proceed.

One of the things every Christian should know is that it’s important to hold onto the tools God gives you. The people who teach us doctrine are generally ignorant, so at this point in history, you have to go to the Holy Spirit himself if you want to learn anything. God has shown me a lot of things that have helped me a great deal, but I tend to forget to apply them when I need them.

Years ago, God showed me something about getting prayers answered. Unless you get an instant result, you should continue thanking God, in the name of Jesus, in advance. If necessary, thank him over and over for hours. Sometimes prayers are answered gradually over a period of time, and if you quit early, you may cut off your help because you are under the mistaken impression that God has denied your request.

Even Jesus failed to get instantaneous results on occasion, and we are not better than he is.

I have received some miraculous healings, and some involved prolonged prayer. I got a couple of blisters to disappear that way. I kept thanking God and commanding my body to be healed for maybe 45 minutes each time. It worked.

I have had a very slight cold over the last few days. It’s so weak, I haven’t had to blow my nose. It annoyed me, though, because it caused headaches, tiredness, and mild depression. I always find that things like colds and the flu have psychological effects. For example, a cold can cause a very bothersome increase in the sex drive.

When I started getting sick, I attacked supernaturally, praying and speaking defeat and casting out the spirit and so on. I got some results, but I wasn’t totally healed. I felt pretty good, so I didn’t push through for complete healing. That was lazy of me, and I think it goes against God’s will. I think you should always push through to the end. Otherwise, it’s like giving place to Satan, and we are not supposed to do that.

Last night, I felt bad about failing to follow through, and I was tired of the faint symptoms I was having, so I got back to work. I thanked and praised and so on for a long time. I didn’t get an instant healing, but I got tremendous peace, and I felt a lot better. I didn’t sleep well because my nose was a little stuffy. I woke later and started up with the supernatural tools again.

When I got up, I felt wonderful. I still had some minor symptoms, but mentally and emotionally, I felt very free. I felt free of anger and worry. I felt great about the future. I felt God’s joy, which is supernatural, flowing in me. God’s joy is one of the fruit of the Spirit. You can look it up.

I’ve felt great all day. I have had energy. I have felt more love running through me. I have felt physically strong. That’s no surprise. The Bible says the joy of the Lord is our strength, and when God said that, he meant it literally. We blow off scriptural statements as flowery words and hype, but God hates idle talk. He means what he says. We forget that. Being insincere, we are in the habit of assuming others flap their lips like we do, without meaning what we say.

God’s joy is not a special present we get occasionally for being good little boys and girls. It’s mandatory, and it’s supposed to be an everyday thing. We need it. We should be pursuing it. It sounds selfish, but we need strength in order to persevere, and joy gives us that strength. Turning it down isn’t unselfish or admirable. It’s dereliction of duty.

The book of Galatians says the fruit of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, kindness, and self-control. Wouldn’t it be great to have these things? The good news is that you can, and you are expected to.

I wasn’t praying for joy and deliverance from anger and worry. I was trying to get rid of a cold. I received the other things anyway. I don’t know how that works. My experience suggests that when you fight one demon, others in the area may take off, too, perhaps because the spectacle discourages or scares them. Perhaps that’s what happened to me.

I feel great relief. Over the last few years, I’ve had problems with worry, fear, and anger. Longer than that, I’ve been frustrated at the difficulty of getting God’s love and joy to flow in me. Christians love to talk about the peace and happiness God brings us, but how many of us are telling the truth? I have times of great peace and happiness, but my times of stress have been longer. I’m hoping that what I just received is permanent and will increase.

Joy and love will make me feel good, but they will also make me more helpful to others. Love is our proper source of motivation. It drives us to forget about ourselves and make sacrifices that would be very hard to make purely out of duty and willpower. Joy keeps us strong. It kills discouragement.

I want to add something. My circumstances didn’t change. When I got up in the morning, I still had the same worldly problems I had when I went to bed, apart from the change in the cold symptoms. I felt better anyway. If you think you’re unhappy because of your circumstances, you’re wrong. It’s a lie from the devil. Unhappiness comes from us and the demons that live in us. The Holy Spirit can give us happiness and peace that can’t be affected by our earthly problems.

I can’t promise anyone that the change I feel will last. Like I always say, I’m just documenting things.

Last night, I had what I think is a revelation from God. Remember how Paul and Silas were freed from prison? They were beaten and jailed, and midnight found them singing hymns and praising God. Their chains fell off, and they were set free. I believe they were praising and singing because they knew what I know: if you want to have a prayer answered, you keep thanking and praising until you see the result.

I think they prayed to be released, and they knew they had to keep going until they got their answer. I think their persistence is what made the chains fall off, and God has shown me the same “trick.”

They probably prayed for the jailer to be saved, too. They knew unforgiveness blocked answers to prayer. After they were freed, the jailer and his household baptized. They must have prayed for the other prisoners to be freed, because their chains came off, too. Praying for other people is a good way to get God’s power to flow through you so he helps you with your own problems. They knew that.

I hope I can continue bringing you good reports, and that what I have learned is even more helpful to you than it has been to me.

All True Leadership is by Consent

I keep thinking about what Paul said about women keeping silent in the church. It’s amazing how we resist it.

Is scripture the true word of God? If so, isn’t the first book of Corinthians the true word of God? If so, wasn’t Paul correct when he said this?

Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church.

If you disagree with this, then you disagree with scripture, and you are not a Bible-believing Christian. Most people who claim to be Christians don’t believe the Bible is true, so you are not alone, but you can’t expect to impose your beliefs on Christians who trust the Bible and consider it the word of God.

If it’s a man’s duty to lead, and to shield his wife from conflict with other people, and to protect her from the world, why would he not be expected to be her spokesman in church?

The more I think about it, the more incidents I recall in which women caused turmoil in churches or introduced error.

During my time at Trinity Church in Miami, we had a “pastor” I will call Betty. She was a leftist, which tells you she was not on the same page as God. She was highly valuable to the church because she was able to apply for and receive government grants. I don’t recall anything in the Bible about making churches dependent on the government, but this is what she did. God didn’t bless the church financially, so they came up with their own solutions instead of asking what they were doing wrong.

“Pastor” Betty also taught yoga in the church. Not in a mall. Not in her home. Not in a park. In the church. Yoga is part of a demonic religion, even if you think you can separate it from its roots. Yoga is evil, and it leads to increased involvement with Hindu and Buddhist practices.

Betty’s husband was sort of a pastor, too. He rarely spoke. She overshadowed him completely. He taught wing chun, an Asian martial art, in the church. Asian martial arts generally involve spiritual teachings as well as things related to fighting, and they are dangerous to Christians.

The head pastor was married to an aggressive woman with a grating voice. She taught from time to time, and it was unpleasant to listen to her. She was very ambitious, and she her teachings were worldly, not Christian.

When I got driven out of my last church, the pastor’s wife was the one who did it. The church’s members used Facebook a lot, and “Pastora” would pop up from time to time, criticizing what I had written and/or demanding, in capital letters, that it be deleted. One day she blocked me without warning, and I was still a deacon at the time. I never went back to the church.

She was a very brassy woman, and her husband was extremely lazy. They only worked three or four hours a week. He put her in charge of the church’s Facebooking because he was too lazy to do it himself. His wife was not wife enough to ask him to talk to men with whom she disagreed. When his wife misbehaved toward me, he was never man enough to talk to me about it. Like Ahab, he let his wife do his fighting.

I have had aggressive and even unstable women set their sights on me in churches. I have only dated one aggressive woman in my life, and I would never make that mistake again. I find aggressive women repulsive as objects of romance, but I got targeted anyway. I think one of them drove off a sweet girl who would have made any man a wonderful wife. It’s great to have female friends, but when people start seeing you with one too much, they will assume something is going on, and it can cost you opportunities with suitable women.

I had two assertive women push me out of the kitchen at Trinity Church. They were cooking school graduates, but their food was not that great. The food I cooked was very, very good. I stood up for cleanliness and order, and the church sided with them against these things. We had drawers full of mouse excrement, and the church used food preparation surfaces for storing random objects. Trinity was a hypocritical church where problems were denied as a matter of policy, so the ladies got their way, and Trinity lost a profitable pizza enterprise. I could not teach anyone else to get it done.

The kitchen problem went beyond lost profits. I don’t care about the money, because I now realize a church should not operate a business. The main problem was that I was no longer to teach the kids who worked for me. I had been instructed to try to help ghetto kids learn productive habits, and to teach them about God, and when these women and the pastor who ran the kitchen dishonored me in front of them, the job became impossible.

God hates a punk. That’s the truth. He hates someone who shows contempt for a person who has been placed over him, and he hates those who contemn masculinity. I don’t know if he hates punks personally, but he definitely hates what they do. Psalm 11 says God hates certain people, so maybe he does hate punks.

In 2 Kings, God had 42 children torn up for making fun of Elisha. You should look it up. He sent two bears to maul them. In Deuteronomy 21, God instructs the Hebrews to kill their disrespectful sons when they become too burdensome. In Deuteronomy 25, God said that if a woman squeezed a man’s genitals in order to make him lose a fight, the Hebrews had to cut her hand off.

God commanded the Hebrews to kill witches. A witch is a person who sets himself up against God.

God hates disrespect. I should really call it “dishonor,” because respect is something you feel, while honor is merely something you display outwardly. You can’t respect certain people, so God would never ask you to try, but you can honor anyone. God hates it when we dishonor people of authority wrongly.

Women who dominate men and make it impossible for them to exercise authority are out of order, just like Eve, Jezebel, and the kids who made fun of Elisha. Modern women hate to hear this, but that doesn’t make them right. They’re just manifesting the curse of Genesis 3, which says women will desire to rule their husbands.

God created a chain of authority, and it looks like this: Jehovah, Jesus, Holy Spirit, man, wife, children, evil spirits. Jehovah is the supreme authority. His authority runs through the rest of the trinity to husbands and fathers. From them, it runs to wives and mothers, and children are at the bottom. Among children, firstborn males are at the top. In a healthy family, evil spirits are beneath every human being, as are pets.

When you see a family in which people are made miserable in order to accommodate spoiled pets, you know evil spirits are in charge. It shows there is an inversion of authority. The same is true when the wife is the king.

Preachers spend a lot of time cajoling and persuading when they talk about this. I’m not going to. I don’t have to sit up and beg when I tell grown people who are in rebellion obvious things about God. Helping people believe is God’s job, not mine. Believe it or deal with the consequences.

Everybody is under some kind of human authority, and healthy people don’t get upset about it. The Bible says envy is rottenness to the bones. If you are miserable because someone else has been set over you, you are the one with the problem. Envy leads to rebellion, and rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, according to the Bible. If you would not buy voodoo dolls and cast spells, you shouldn’t spend your time trying to bring down people God has put over you.

I don’t mean you can’t criticize a bad president or pray for him to be replaced. I don’t mean you have to let a husband beat you every night or that you can’t pray for God to take an evil boss away from you. I mean you have to be content with your normal place in life. If it bothers you that you’re not the highest and most powerful, you are messed up.

A man is supposed to be the head of his family. That doesn’t mean he gets to be an arrogant dictator who oppresses his wife and kids. It means he has to be responsible for them, get guidance from God, and tell them what they should do. Leadership is service. It’s a burden. People hold leaders responsible for their own welfare.

You can’t lead if your wife is an emasculating harpy who thinks men have to be managed. You can’t pastor a church or lead a ministry if you have to contend with manipulative feminist women who don’t know their place. Brats are even worse. Nothing is worse than being humiliated by children.

In a family or a church, leadership can’t be imposed without consent. If your wife and kids, or the women in a church, ridicule you and disobey you, you can’t lead them no matter what you do. You can’t do the job God put you there to do. It’s not possible to chain them to walls and force them to obey. The only option is to leave. If you’re married, you may not even have that option. God help you.

Human beings didn’t permit me to do what God wanted me to do in churches, so he had me leave. The people in those churches had free will. He couldn’t tame them without taking it away, and God will never take away free will, even if it means sending you to burn forever.

Men need to take their proper roles in life, and women need to stop trying to tear them down. Women in churches need to start following instead of trying to take over.

I’m so glad I didn’t marry an unbelieving, manipulative woman. Life as a single man seems hard sometimes, but a bad marriage is a thousand times worse. I know what life with a rotten woman is like, because I know so many married people, and I thank God I didn’t get caught. I always say that having the wrong woman is worse than having cancer, and I stand by it.

I recently made a comment on the Internet about giving up on depraved people. I shared a revelation involving a command from the Holy Spirit. I told about the way God had told me to stop praying for my sister because it was a waste of time. Some woman popped up and threw Matthew 7:1 in my face, as though she had the right. Many Christians think this is the only verse in the Bible, and they almost invariably use it to try to shut down correction. It’s the verse that warns us “judge not” and so on.

God gave me a wonderful revelation, and I revealed it while pointing out that it was a revelation, and a woman popped up, thinking she had the authority to correct me. She should have been silent, as Paul said. She hadn’t heard from God at all; in fact, she was fighting him.

When God gives you a command, it’s not condemnation (the proper word to describe what Matthew 7:1 refers to). It’s just a command. If God tells you someone is beyond reach, it’s not condemnation that comes from your own backward heart. It’s just a word of knowledge.

Within four or five minutes, I had a long list of scriptures that demonstrated that she was wrong and out of line, and I listed them in reply. I knew what to say, because I knew the Bible had more than one verse.

Jesus himself was heckled by a woman who tried to give his glory to Mary. Satan rose up in this lady, and she yelled, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts which you have sucked.” She had no business speaking up in a religious gathering, and she was driven by the spirits that caused the Jews to worship false female “gods.” She was probably a worshiper of “the queen of heaven,” as the Jews called Ashtoreth.

Modern Catholics still worship “the queen of heaven.” It’s what they call Mary. Not a coincidence.

Jesus wouldn’t have it. Knowing Mary-worship was going to be a huge part of Catholicism and the Orthodox churches, he said, “On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.”

He did not say, “even more blessed are they,” as some translations put it.

The anti-correction movement in the church is largely driven by women. Women are very self-righteous these days. They are convinced that they are inherently morally superior and more loving than men. They push touchy-feely concepts that aren’t found in the Bible. Compared to men, they are huge supporters of homosexuality. They figure prominently in witchcraft and militant vegetarianism and environmentalism. There is a female-driven movement to convince us that anything that is nice is Christian, and anything that isn’t nice is evil. You have to wonder what they think of God, who puts people in hell, where they burn in flames which are powered by his anger, not Satan’s.

Women are a big force behind the PC movement which has crippled discourse in much of the west. That movement has hit Christianity like a torpedo. Oddly, it’s a hit with women, even though it’s not “nice” at all.

Leadership is a masculine concept, like it or not. There is a reason why God is called “the father,” Jesus is called “the bridegroom,” and the church is called “the bride.” When a nation becomes feminized, the result is a disgusting maternal tyranny that turns everyone into nannies and children. We have the snowflake phenomenon today because of the long siege of masculinity.

I see why there has to be a rapture. Humanity has been striving to emasculate God and his servants ever since Genesis 3. In doing so, we have made ourselves increasingly ungovernable, like brutal, stupid teenagers in a school given over to ghetto values. When people become ungovernable, God withdraws his servants. He puts up with a great deal of dishonor, but in the end, he pulls the plug and gives his servants rest.

I’m not going to apologize for saying what is correct. When people are headstrong and wrong, their hurt feelings are their own responsibility.

Love of Food Still Suppressed

I don’t know if my spam filters are deleting legitimate comments. It’s hard to tell, because I don’t see the same things readers do. When I want to find out what’s happening, I have to log out and make comments. The system seems to be working. If it’s killing your comments, you can email me and let me know.

I’m blogging today about my baptism experience. I went to Clearwater to have my water baptism redone correctly, and it produced clear results. The problem with receiving supernatural help from God, though, is that it doesn’t always last. We are ignorant about things like miracles, healings, and deliverance, so we aren’t good about holding onto the changes God makes in us. People get healed and then relapse. Addicts get delivered and then fall back into addiction. You have to be careful not to be too quick to assume you have a lasting result.

On the day of the baptism, before I even went to the tank, I got re-delivered from the love of food. It happened before lunch, and the baptism took place later in the afternoon. My eating habits changed. I felt as though an inner voice was rising up in me to counter the drive to obtain and consume food and drink.

As of today, it’s still working. In fact, I have something interesting to report: I seem to be in danger of eating too little.

Yesterday I had breakfast and lunch, and I figured I was pretty well set for the day. Later on, though, I started to feel like lunch had not been big enough. I felt like my blood sugar was on the low side. It seemed that I needed to eat something more. I had a nearly empty container of ice cream in the freezer, so I took it out and finished it off. After that, I was fine.

I’m very happy about it. A person who had to be reminded to eat is very blessed.

Skinny people love to call fat people undisciplined, but the truth is that nearly all of them weigh less because they don’t like food as much. We all know skinny people who are irresponsible and weak. If people like that really liked food, they would be as big as houses.

Think of all the thin celebrity drug addicts and alcoholics. Here are a few: Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse, Robert Downey, Whitney Houston, Keith Richards, Jim Carrey, Shia Laboeuf, James Taylor, and Jackson Browne. Not models of self-control. If these people had loved food, they would have been morbidly obese.

We know of drug addicts who also became obese. Think of David Crosby, Robin Williams, John Belushi, Jim Morrison, Oprah Winfrey, James Gandolfini, Chris Farley, Elvis Presley, and Artie Lange. John Belushi used to go to restaurants and order entire fried chickens, somewhat like his character in The Blues Brothers.

Many people simply don’t care that much for food. It’s a great thing. It’s completely positive. It doesn’t lead to starvation, because even though they don’t care much for food, their bodies drive them to take in what they need. It just keeps them healthier, more fit, and better-looking than the rest of us.

I love the idea of not loving food. It will bring me a lot of things I want. Who doesn’t want their clothes to fit better? Who doesn’t want to avoid having two sets of clothing: the fat clothes and the “real” clothes? Who doesn’t want to be able to go up a set of stairs without breathing hard afterward?

I’ve never been huge, but I don’t want to be fat at all.

Here’s something interesting: the Bible is very hard on lovers of pleasure. Take a look at this:

But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!

Paul criticized lovers of pleasures in the same sentence with blasphemers. Wow.

The kind of pleasure he is talking about is the selfish pleasure of the flesh, not pleasures like the good feeling you get from being in God’s presence or doing good.

Let’s check the Greek.

It comes from the same root as “hedonism,” and here is what Strong’s says about the pleasure involved: “pleasure, a pleasure, especially sensuous pleasure; a strong desire, passion.”

It’s not what you feel after a good prayer session or a miraculous healing.

These days, I find that I sometimes try not to cook as well as I can. I’ll be working on a dish, and I’ll think it’s important to get the very best ingredient or use the best method, and then I’ll correct myself. Food doesn’t have to be sublime. Good is sufficient. Why should I make food that intoxicates me? I don’t need that, and it usually takes more work. I don’t need to be my own drug pusher. The food I make is so good, I may be able to overcome my deliverance if I tempt myself too much.

All the things I’m writing apply to temptations like sex, covetousness, and provocation to anger, too. In modern America, we yield to temptation as a matter of course, but we should be toning it down. You don’t need the best sex possible. You don’t need the nicest car made. You don’t need to be around people who provoke you; it’s not really necessary to have a Twitter account.

Food isn’t the only thing I resist better now.

So far, the baptism seems to have been a big success. Our ignorance about baptism may explain why Christians are so much like other people. We divorce just as much. We look at porn. Many of us are as fat as pigs; we even follow obese preachers who are clearly controlled by their flesh. The Bible says we’re not supposed to be slaves to sin, and it wouldn’t say that if God hadn’t given us the tools to get free.

In order to stay free from an addiction, I believe you have to refrain from tempting yourself with occasional plunges into self-indulgence. I believe you also have to go easy on other people with the same problem, because if you’re self-righteous about it, God may let you fall back into your old habit.

I’m about two and a half weeks into it. I can’t tell you where I’ll be a year from now. I feel very hopeful.

The outfit that baptized me is called The Last Reformation, and I found them on Youtube. I had a habit of looking up street healers and watching their videos. Here’s something strange: I found a number of healers before I found TLR, and now I’m seeing Youtube comments that indicate that they know the TLR people. Some of them have attended TLR events, and some are just friends of TLR veterans.

I think God is knitting people together outside of churches, just as I have been predicting for years. I believe God told me it would happen.

I will never join TLR. I’ve said that before. I’m all done following men and movements. I won’t join a church, either. I know TLR will eventually fall into corruption unless Jesus comes soon, and I’m sure they’re not correct about everything. I don’t want to be part of the mess if they fall. Nonetheless, they seem to be part of a very solid quasi-denomination that has arisen without much human planning.

Once you put a name on a movement and name officials, things start to go south. I suppose it defines a target for Satan and gives him a choke point to attack. It’s normal, and it should be expected. It has never failed. I don’t want to be permanently identified with anything that is likely to fail, but TLR does very good work for the time being.

I will keep reporting on my status. If you want help with your own compulsions, consider getting yourself baptized properly.

Missing Piece Looks at the Puzzle

Yesterday I spoke to my cousin “Martha” for the first time in 4 years. This is the cousin I wrote about a few days ago. She is my father’s sister’s stepdaughter. My father’s family is highly dysfunctional, and our own branch has been pretty well shut out of things, so I don’t know any of them very well.

If you heard this woman tell her story, it would break your heart. Her birth mother and her father were divorced soon after she was born. Her mother hit the road and didn’t look back, and her father married my Aunt Norma, who brought an older daughter to the marriage. My uncle brought–I have to count them because I can never remember who they are–three older boys plus Martha. My aunt gave her own daughter a great deal of love and affection, and she rejected and beat Martha.

Sometimes Martha had to share a bed with her older stepsister, “Lulu.” Martha says that because Lulu was heavier, Martha slept on a sort of hill and had to hold onto the bed. My aunt would come in at bedtime and kiss Lulu and so on. In order to do this, she would lean over Martha, who was on the near side of the bed, and ignore her.

Imagine that.

Norma encouraged Lulu to be cruel to Martha, and Lulu complied readily.

Martha was not allowed to go to the doctor when she got sick or hurt herself. She had to pay for her own clothes or wear hand-me-downs from her brothers. She had to do the cooking while holding down jobs. She had to do most of the work of raising her younger sister, who showed up when she was 11.

Norma had a paddle made from a 4-inch-wide board, and she used it on Martha a lot. If she broke a dish while cooking dinner, she got the paddle. If she got home late from her paper route, she got the paddle. Norma hit her hard enough to leave marks.

My Uncle “Melvin” was no help, because he didn’t care for Martha. He let Norma do as she pleased.

When Martha finished high school, her parents (a full professor and a tenured teacher) abandoned her. A relative scolded them for refusing to help her pay for college, so they sent her $35. One wonders how they arrived at that figure. It was their entire contribution to her college education.

The story gets considerably worse, but I can’t reveal everything.

When Norma died in 2014, I was at the funeral. I don’t recall much. I wasn’t all that excited about the trip. I don’t remember a great deal about what was said at the graveside, although I know I heard some stories which portrayed my aunt and uncle as childish. I remember hearing about them rolling on the ground fighting about something.

My cousin Judy, whom I don’t know, supposedly got up and spoke pretty bluntly about the rotten way Norma and Melvin treated Martha. As I understand it, she didn’t get up and call them rotten parents. She merely made sure she recounted memorable events that included facts that should have shamed them.

You can get away with a lot at a funeral. If you have a smile on your face while you speak, and you behave as though what you say is intended to be funny and nostalgic, you can really drop some bombs. Sometimes airing out dirty laundry is the right thing to do, if you do it with the correct motivation. Abuse victims are usually portrayed as whiners and liars, so they need public affirmation, and it’s also important to expose unrepentant abusers publicly.

The weird thing about all this is that Martha is the family’s best product. She is full of love and kindness. She and her husband are successful college graduates, and she has four successful married kids. She was rejected by three parents and four out of five siblings, yet she is the only member of the family I have the slightest interest in knowing. I don’t dislike the others, but it would be like accosting random strangers.

One of her older brothers died young. Another is crabby and mean, according to Martha. The third seems like an okay guy, but he divorced his first wife. I don’t know what Lulu is up to, but she was cruel when she was young, and the youngest daughter has supposedly inherited some of her mother’s temper.

If her parents had a saving grace, it was that they taught her to be responsible and independent. They did it out of selfishness, but it still paid off for her. My dad was abusive, but he taught me to be lazy and to avoid confronting things. When I was in high school, I was not allowed to have a job, because it would interfere with my studies.

Of course, there were no studies. I did my homework between classes, and although I was probably the smartest person in my class, I had a B average. I think my class rank was 29th out of about 100.

Even if I had been allowed to work, I could not face people well enough to go out and apply. I felt crippling shame and self-consciousness all the time. I suppose that’s what systematic verbal abuse does to a person. When people insult and criticize you all the time, you eventually start insulting and criticizing yourself, silently. Also, there is the demonic aspect. I’m sure demons of shame and self-hatred were all over me.

At some point a long time ago, I realized my life would probably have gone better had my father died when I was a kid. That’s terrible. A parent’s function is to make his children better than himself in every way. They should live in a way that makes their children thank God for them and look for ways to repay them.

People should cry when their parents die, instead of shrugging and feeling relieved of frustration.

When my mother died, people were very sad. When my aunt died, people were very sad. When my cousin’s husband died in a plane crash, people were very sad. When Norma died, the small crowd at the funeral seemed pretty cheerful. I don’t think they were glad she was dead, but I’ll bet they don’t miss her much. It’s hard to touch a person’s heart by taking.

On the whole, abusers who make their kids work are probably less toxic in the long run than abusers who don’t teach their kids good habits. Martha and her brothers were ready to fend for themselves when they left home, because they had to fend for themselves as children.

Keeping a child soft, irresponsible, and afraid of the world is a great way to extend control. You know what they say about keeping your enemies close.

I don’t know what to make of my dad’s family. It truly looks like there is a streak of sociopathy that won’t quit. My grandfather beat his wife, my dad and his sister are abusive, and my sister is abusive. Martha is lucky she isn’t related to me. She might have given birth to a clone of her mother. Or four clones.

I found out what happened to Norma, who was killed by dementia. She had a major stroke while she was visiting Brownsville. I don’t know why she was there. If I have my facts right, three months later, she had another major stroke. Imaging showed that pieces of her brain were destroyed.

For the last two years of her life, she didn’t know who her husband was.

I have wondered why she died younger than my dad will, and I may know the answer. She continued smoking cigarettes years after my dad quit. Cigarettes cause strokes. Also, Martha thinks it’s likely that she didn’t pursue good medical care.

Martha told me how Melvin is doing. He is my dad’s age. He has a girlfriend who resembles Norma. That news really hit home. My dad could never have a girlfriend. If you put him across the highway from our house, he wouldn’t be able to find his way home. If he met a lonely woman today, he wouldn’t know her tomorrow.

Melvin is still playing golf. I gave my dad’s clubs to the Salvation Army without asking him.

My dad has often complained that he had no paper calendar. As a lawyer, he used a calendar constantly. He wants one so he can track his appointments. I won’t get him one. Twice, calendars have arrived in our newspapers without my knowledge. My dad took them out and started writing things on them. I threw both of them out without asking permission, and he didn’t notice. When he has a calendar, he badgers me constantly about things I’m already keeping track of.

Melvin and my dad live in different worlds.

It’s strange that Martha has done so well and appears to be so blessed, given that she and her husband are Mormons. Mormonism is unquestionably wrong in very vital ways, and the history of Mormonism is full of glaring warning flags, yet her family appears to be blessed. Martha is very religious. She believes Mormon doctrine. She has worked as a paid instructor. Why would God permit a family to appear to do so well, when they are caught in a supernatural trap?

It’s not because Mormonism works better than Christianity. Her dad is a Mormon, and he ruined his family. Her brothers are Mormons, and they didn’t turn out all that well.

Mormons have a somewhat lower divorce rate, and many do well financially, but they have problems just like the rest of us. They seem to work harder than most to paint pretty pictures of their lives. Appearances seem very important to their church. They are very aggressive about promotion.

A pleasant life can deceive you into thinking your relationship with God is fine when it isn’t.

A life of stress and disappointment can bring you closer to God. Suffering provides motivation.

I don’t know what would happen if Martha found my blog and learned how I feel about Mormonism. She knows I don’t agree with it, and I told her I don’t bother people about their religion, but I say whatever I think is right on my blog, and I will always do so, no matter who cuts me off. God comes first. I don’t think she’s the kind of person who would get offended and write me scorching texts.

I wish I could go back in time, round up the problem parents in our families, and give them a good slap. It wouldn’t do them any good, though. Sociopaths see correction as aggression. Correction doesn’t do my dad much good today, and it has never done my sister any good, so going back in time and lecturing people would be a waste of effort.

I’m not going to develop real relationships with my other cousins. I’m glad I can communicate with Martha, but I’m not going to get drawn into awkward reunions and Christmas dinners with the rest of the bunch. I hope none of them get the idea that they owe me anything, because they do not. Our family turned out a certain way, and we were young and powerless when the course was set. We didn’t cause the problem.

I still have two uncles and an aunt. I’m not going to their funerals unless my dad is dead or in an institution. He’s definitely not going. I would have to hire a special van and a traveling nurse.

I feel like I’ve reopened the book on Martha and closed the others. Good enough. I expected nothing at all, so I’m happy to get anything.