Fresh From the Time Capsule

Someone on a forum asked for photos of my damaged Powerstat 116 autotransformer. Since I have them, I’ll put up a blog post. Here she is.

It looks so good, it’s freaking me out.

It looked perfect on Ebay. Naturally, the Postal Service was not satisfied with that, and the seller packed it so badly the boys in blue had no problem wrecking it. It must have landed on the socket side, because the rim of the socket was shattered, and the terminal board lost its lower corners.

I have been dithering about keeping it or sending it back. I am told the plastic stuff is Bakelite, which is very hard to mend, supposedly. I got a lame response from the seller, so I tried to put it back together with super glue for plastic. Surprisingly, it worked. Here you can see the mend. The cracks are highlighted because there is excess glue that needs to be taken off.

I couldn’t make myself give up on it, because it’s so strange to see a product roughly 60 years old, looking this good. And I paid about 20% of the cost of a new one.

Actually, there are no new ones. The models that came after this have three prongs. I can get a replacement terminal board, but they don’t stock these old 2-hole sockets. I’m going to have to modify a Home Depot receptacle and cram it in there. I hope the machine still looks pretty when I’m done. I shouldn’t care, but come on. That’s a neat-looking variac.

Antisocial Media

The seeds of violent anti-Semitism have been sown. The economy is heading down the toilet. Jewish names like Madoff, Stearns, Salomon, and Geithner have been associated with financial misconduct and incompetence. Entitlements are going to dry up, simply because the money won’t be there. Flash mob riots have given the leeches and worthless people a new tool they can use to overcome the police and impose their will. And most Jews live in urban areas and refuse to own guns. How long have people like Louis Farrakhan been telling the poor that Jews run the world? I promise you, there are millions of people in the US who see Jewish houses as big pinatas full of stolen loot.

The mobs are hitting Europe right now, but I’m sure they’ll be here before long. Why wouldn’t they be? We have a sea of spoiled individuals who live off the government and who believe their low economic status was caused by conspiracies and cliques. Even our President tells them this; he wants them to think corporate jets caused their poverty. They think they’re entitled to commit crimes, including personal violence, because they’ve been systematically cheated. They have computers. They have cell phones. They have Twitter and Facebook. Add it up, and it spells “time bomb.”

I realized this last night. I don’t see any journalists or government officials taking the phenomenon seriously; as usual, they’re behind the curve. I felt I should put up a blog post so at least a few people would be aware of the threat.

Obviously, Jews are not the only ones at risk. Anyone who lives near a big city and owns a home will be a target. If you don’t own weapons, this would be a good day to start buying them.

As I’ve noted before, one reason Sodom and Gomorrah were burned in a rain of flaming sulphur was that they had a practice of committing mob crimes. A mob would fall on a business, and each criminal would take something small, and the business would be ruined. This is what happened in Lot’s time. Jesus said it would be “as the days of Lot” when he returned, and suddenly, we’re seeing the same type of crime. He said it would be “as the days of Noah,” when God was infuriated by sexual immorality and marriage between humans and animals, and suddenly we have a President who supports gay marriage.

Look out.

I think the Holy Spirit is warning me, so I’m trying to warn others. I have a long pattern of being right about things like this, and God’s record is considerably better than mine, so think before you dismiss me.

The Pharaoh Who Knew Not Joseph

Our President just chose Tisha B’Av, the most dangerous day in the Jewish calendar, to criticize God’s nation for building apartments in East Jerusalem, its God-given capital.

Unbelievable.

Disasters tend to hit nations whose rulers do stupid things like this. The Japan earthquake and the Joplin tornadoes are recent examples.

I am praying God’s judgment passes over Americans who serve him and support Israel.

Nerd Resurrection

I’m practically giddy.

First of all, I got my Garnet Herzog clone working. The Herzog people released a couple of schematics which are widely available as a PDF. If I had to guess, I would say the originals were drawn on cocktail napkins, and they were intended to be practical jokes. The one I used was just plain nuts. But I worked hard on it, and I got help from experts, and I prayed over it, and now the amp runs. That’s astoundingly cool.

Second: I just received my Schaum’s Outline of Basic Circuit Analysis. Ohhhhh…this is too much.

You can’t imagine what it’s like to decide, at the age of 31, that you want a degree in physics. This is especially true if you don’t know algebra very well and failed math in high school. Not that I know anyone like that. I feel like I climbed Mount Everest in a greased sleeping bag tied to a junk car. There is no way to describe what I went through, sitting at home with an algebra outline and a calculus outline in front of me while I tried to do my calculus homework. And getting into grad school…that was like parting the Red Sea. Granted, I got brain-fried and quit. But the fact that I was there to begin with…inexplicable. It’s as if the Jamaican bobsled team took a bronze.

Really, if you haven’t been there, you can’t imagine. If you think you know something because you got an A in calculus, you’re like a mule that thinks it can run in the Kentucky Derby. To a physicist, first-year calculus is only a little more impressive than addition and subtraction. It’s the kindergarten of real math.

I made it to a top grad school and then crashed. I have never felt so cursed, before or since. Nothing I did went right. Almost no one helped. People at the University of Texas worked against me, if anything. They were as unrelenting as stones. I believe they were eager to see me quit. And when I tried to pray, I felt as though my prayers bounced off a brass ceiling.

Of course, I was not much of a Christian at that point. I had the baptism with the Holy Spirit, but I rarely prayed in tongues, and I had no real relationship with God or Christians. I believe God blighted what I was doing; too many things went wrong.

I went to law school and graduated cum laude without doing much of anything. I had a great time. I drank a lot. I hung out in the law school courtyard, shooting the breeze with friends. When I got out, I enjoyed practicing, although it wasn’t my dream. It was definitely better than digging ditches, and had I gone on to become a full-blown patent attorney (possible because of my physics background), I could be charging $400 an hour right now. In fact, I could still do that if I had to.

I felt that physics was behind me, and that my opportunities in that direction had been crushed. The time and study had been wasted. The shocking amount of information and skill I had crammed into my brain would dissipate and lose its value.

Now I’m building guitar amps. People are asking me to do it for money. I have all sorts of electronics tools. And it all happened because I went to a church where the guitarists were interested in amp-building.

I have to get up to speed on electronics. I only took one electronics course in college, and it prepared me to build things like integrators. Small, useless circuits. I built current controllers and temperature controllers for diode lasers used in gas cooling research, but I didn’t really know that much about the circuits. I have to take the small, crumbling foundation that remains and build on it. Hence the Schaum outline and the REA Problem Solver that will be here later this week.

Ezekiel tells us of the valley of dry bones. The symbolism applies to just about anything God touches. Living water means prayer in tongues and living in the Spirit. Dry bones are Jews and Christians who lack the Holy Spirit. The nation of Israel was dry bones before the Jews returned. I was a pile of dry bones before I turned back to God. Now the flesh is returning. The lost opportunities are being dusted off. Salvage is underway.

I almost feel smart again. Maybe God will help me to recover to the point where I understand math and physics again. That would be amazing.

I have to go get batteries for my HP 32S calculator, for the first time in 16 years. I hope the drugstore has them. I saved the manual. It’s in the garage. I used to play that thing like a fiddle. I may be able to use Mathcad again.

Continue in your own way, which leads nowhere, or follow the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night and cross into your own Promised Land. Whether you act or not, you will choose, and you will live with the consequences.

I am Controlling Transmission

Tonight I got my Herzog clone running. It still has a few bugs in it, but it functions. This is really neat. I never dreamed I’d be doing this. Look at all the stuff God is allowing me to do.

Today I wrote about going through dusty items from my past. One such item is my $50 Hitachi oscilloscope. This is one of the coolest things I own. It amazes me that I know how to run an oscilloscope. I felt I needed it to diagnose the amp.

Here’s my tidy workbench.

You know you’re in full-blown mad scientist mode when you fire up an oscilloscope in your garage.

From the Tomb I Arise

People sue me all the time. I haven’t written about it, but I’ve been sued 5 times over the last few years. Most of it has to do with real estate. All of the lawsuits were ridiculous. None went anywhere. I believe two are still active, but they’re hopeless. I have relied on God to deliver me, and he came through every time.

I have refrained from countersuing and from reporting anyone to the authorities; I believe that if you want God to deliver you, it’s important to avoid getting in there in your own strength and mud-wrestling like a moron. You can’t glorify God by delivering yourself.

I was praying about one of the cases in my truck, maybe in 2009, and I felt a wave of faith rush through me. It was so powerful, I grabbed the center console and held on. I felt as if I were being washed away in a flood. From then on, I knew that suit was over, regardless of how it looked. I mention it now so God can receive his glory. I think it’s extremely important to credit God in front of other people when he helps you out.

I had a dream which I believe was about one of my enemies. In real life, my involvement with this person really got into gear in an event that took place next to the kitchen sink. Seriously. One night years later, I dreamed a big female roach was on a canister by that sink. It was about six inches long. It had two arrays of eggs under its forelegs, like the missiles on a helicopter. It also had a big brown belly which reminded me a great deal of my enemy: a plaintiff with a round pot belly and skin the same color as the roach’s.

I hate roaches, especially when they come toward me the way this one did. I live in Miami, where you will see roaches occasionally no matter what, so I keep a spray bottle full of alcohol handy to blast them. It usually knocks them out so they can be dealt with at leisure. The alcohol didn’t work. The roach was enraged, so it took off (Florida roaches fly) and flew over my head, across the kitchen. I kept blasting it, trying to get it to go away. It refused to let up. It turned and started descending, facing me, and as it did, it dropped slowly toward the back of a fan.

You can imagine what happened. That big belly got sucked into the fan, and the guts went all over me. The roach destroyed itself because it could not leave me alone. I was covered with disgusting roach guts, but I was unharmed.

After that, I found myself wandering through an old apartment belonging to my parents. They’ve never had an apartment during my lifetime; the apartment in the dream doesn’t exist. It was full of dust, and I was salvaging old things that had been set aside and forgotten. Dust poured off of them as I picked them up.

The reason I mention this is that I feel like I have new insight on the dream’s meaning.

I recently ended all involvement with this enemy, at considerable expense. I didn’t have to. I was in no danger. I felt that the Holy Spirit wanted me to. I needed to close the door on a malignant relationship and get rid of any handles that could be used to get me involved again. Part of the reason, I felt, was that God wanted to clear the playing field for a new relationship. And today I found myself rummaging through dusty items from my past, because of new opportunities God is bringing my way.

I started building guitar amps a while back. A friend wants me to build one he can use professionally. I just repaired one of my church’s Vox AC30CC2s. The other day a guy in Texas asked me to build him a Bassman clone. I don’t know where this is going, but it’s starting to look like it means something.

I keep many of my old math and physics books in the garage, on a suspended platform. I got a degree in physics and then went to grad school, but I got burned out and quit, and for a long time, I felt it had all been wasted. Lately I’ve been looking for ways to get up to speed on electronicis, and I’ve been ordering books. Today I had to go out in the garage and make sure I wasn’t duplicating anything I already had. While I was dealing with the dust on the boxes, I remembered my dream.

I used to think the last part of the dream suggested I was never going to recover the potential that was taken from me earlier in life. I was never going to get another shot at the missed opportunities. Now I think I may have been wrong. What’s a little dust? There was dust on King Tut’s tomb, and look at the riches they pulled out of it.

I just ordered an REA Problems Solvers book on electrical circuits, plus a Schaum outline. I got expedited shipping. I can’t wait to dig in.

I know there are very few people who will find this blog post interesting, but I felt I should put it up and let God have his glory. If you don’t document these things, no one will listen to you later on when they turn out to be from God. Never predict the past. God gets no honor from that.

The symbolism of the roach eggs is not lost on me. I could have been in real, lasting trouble, but for God’s protection.

If you have ears to hear, take something away from this. If not, sorry I wasted your time.

God Does Not Need Your Mud Pies

I haven’t blogged in forever. I guess the bug left me.

Life continues to improve. All sorts of stuff is happening.

As regular readers know, I belong to a prayer group at church. Most of us are not too pleased with the lack of Holy Spirit moves in the main services, and our church has hosted some preachers who left us disappointed and annoyed. Our answer has been to increase prayer in tongues and listen to the Holy Spirit.

Things keep ramping up. More people are joining the fight. More people are coming to the group and telling us how prayer in tongues has changed them. They’re getting revelation from God. They understand the Bible better. Good things are happening to them. Their lives seem guided. It’s exactly what I knew would happen, if they would listen.

We’re even seeing it in services. Our pastor has been allowing the congregation to spend times praying in tongues, as a body. That’s phenomenal. It proves God is listening, and that the things he has us doing in private are not a waste of time.

A week or so back, someone came in and tried to convince us tongues were not for everyone. He cited 1 Corinthians 12:

4 There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. 6 And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all. 7 But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all: 8 for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same[b] Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills.

That’s the Bible, all right. But he went beyond the plain meaning of the words. It says God manifests himself through each one as he wills, but it does not say prayer in tongues is not for everyone. The Bible says the gifts belong to the Spirit, not to us, so the Spirit decides when to use which gift, and through whom. That doesn’t mean you can’t exercise all of the gifts, at various points in your life. In all likelihood, Paul was simply reminding us not to be disappointed or impatient because we don’t display all of the gifts equally all the time.

In the New Testament, there is a pattern. Over and over, people receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Robert Morris has pointed out that every time–no exceptions–they began to speak in tongues that were unknown to them. And the scriptures (both testaments) are loaded with references to tongues. Many of the references are symbolic. Example: instead of saying, “You will pray in an unknown language,” Jesus said he would give us “living water.” Concerning singing in tongues, the Psalms say the kings of the earth (his sons and daughters) will sing in the way God shows (Psalm 138), and that God will put a new song in our mouths, “even praise unto the Lord” (Psalm 138).

The name “Beersheba” is a prophetic reference to tongues. The “sheba” part comes from the Hebrew word for “oath” or “seven.” We know from the Revelation and from the shape of the lamp in the Holy of Holies that seven is the number of the Holy Spirit. The “beer” part means “well.” At Beersheba, Abraham found water provided by God, in the middle of the desert, because he trusted God. The earth is a desert, and tongues are the living water, provided freely by our creator. Beersheba was a place where God spoke to people repeatedly, in revelations, as the Holy Spirit reveals himself through his gifts.

That’s just one example.

In the New Testament, we are repeatedly encouraged to pray “in the Spirit,” which means “in tongues.” If you read the passage in Ephesians about the “armor of God,” you should not ignore the last part, which makes it clear that prayer in tongues is the way to go about putting on the armor: “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints (Eph. 6:18). And what about the passage in Romans which says things work out for our good? Look at the whole thing. It’s about people who have been baptized with the Spirit, and who pray in tongues.

Rom 8:22-30
22 We know that until now, the whole creation has been groaning as with the pains of childbirth; 23 and not only it, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we continue waiting eagerly to be made sons — that is, to have our whole bodies redeemed and set free. 24 It was in this hope that we were saved. But if we see what we hope for, it isn’t hope — after all, who hopes for what he already sees? 25 But if we continue hoping for something we don’t see, then we still wait eagerly for it, with perseverance.

26 Similarly, the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we don’t know how to pray the way we should. But the Spirit himself pleads on our behalf with groanings too deep for words; 27 and the one who searches hearts knows exactly what the Spirit is thinking, because his pleadings for God’s people accord with God’s will. 28 Furthermore, we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called in accordance with his purpose; 29 because those whom he knew in advance, he also determined in advance would be conformed to the pattern of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers; 30 and those whom he thus determined in advance, he also called; and those whom he called, he also caused to be considered righteous; and those whom he caused to be considered righteous he also glorified! “(CJB).

I can testify about this, personally, and I can tell you my friends will agree with me, because they’ve been there, too: when you pray in tongues a lot, God guides you like GPS. He may not take you where you think you should go, but he will put you where you should be, and things will work out in ways that amaze you, over and over. One tongues proponent–Glenn Arekion–puts it this way: when you pray in tongues, the Spirit prophesies about your life. He tells what will happen. He arranges your future. Call it prophecy or intercession or what you will; it happens.

I believe that when John spoke of Spirits denying or admitting that Jesus came “in the flesh,” he was referring not to the initial incarnation of Jesus, but to his reincarnation in us, through the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Nearly everyone, atheists and Satanists included, admits Jesus lived as a man, so surely this can’t be the admission Job was talking about. If a Satanist says Jesus lived as a man, does that mean the Spirit of God is in him? Come on.

The indwelling of Jesus through the Holy Spirit (Jesus coming in our flesh) is what the Spirit of Antichrist fears, and it’s what he fights the hardest. It makes us powerful, as Jesus himself said it would. It replicates Jesus here on the earth, producing little copies of him to afflict Satan’s kingdom. It’s like Agent Smith in Matrix Revolutions.

Satan doesn’t like it when we receive salvation but remain powerless. But he really hates it when we get salvation in the next life AND power in this life. So the Spirit of Antichrist rises up in people who are not baptized with the Spirit, and it leads them to criticize prayer in tongues. This is probably what Jesus was referring to when he said you could not be pardoned for “speaking against” the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12).

The guy who tried to tell us tongues were not for everyone made it clear he thought we were exalting ourselves because we had the gift. He said it didn’t make us “better Christians” than him. I think that reveals the motivation that led him. He projected pride onto us. This is probably what Cain did to Abel.

He could not have been more wrong. When you pray in tongues and listen to the Holy Spirit, you’re not exalting yourself. You’re humbling yourself. You’re telling God you’re a welfare case. You’re saying you can’t do what he wants without his help at every step. You’re admitting you have virtually no power and no righteousness of your own.

We never knew he didn’t pray in tongues until he told us. He had given us the impression that he had the gift. I don’t know how we could be accused of thinking we were better than he was, when we thought he was just like us.

I do not believe God gives tongues to special righteous people. I believe he gives them to people who have faith and who will submit. After all, from God’s point of view, we are all on the same level. Jeffrey Dahmer and Billy Graham…both so far from God’s righteousness, they might as well be the same person. It’s like the Tower of Babel. It looked like a big deal from earth, but from heaven, it looked like a pimple. No more impressive than an outhouse or a bordello. So the idea that God only gives tongues to super-good people is crazy. One of the purposes of tongues is to help us become good, through God’s charity. Why give it to people who are already good? If you’re so great you can keep the law on your own, go for it, but you have to do it perfectly. The rest of us need to have the law written on our hearts.

I think some people who take a long time to receive tongues may be suffering from an insidious type of pride. They feel bad about what they are (as we all do), they feel they have to work and suffer to make it up to God, and they don’t feel entitled to his help. So they can’t let go and let him speak through them. “Never mind, God. I don’t deserve you. Let me do this for you.” The problem is that no one ever climbed up to heaven. You have to be carried. If you think you can do things for yourself, you may think you’re penitent or unselfish, but in reality, you’re proud. You believe you can do things only God can do, and you think you can do it your own way. That’s my best guess. You have to be willing to let go, take a chance on making a fool of yourself, and let your lips start moving.

I ask God for things constantly. “Help me open the refrigerator door. Help me turn on the TV. Help me shave. Help me breathe.” God WANTS us to be dependent, because a dependent person can’t have pride. God is not busy. He is not offended when you ask him for things. The thing that offends him is the illusion of self-sufficiency. Read the Bible; see how Saul got cursed. Look what happened to the Levites who brought strange fire to the altar. What was the Tower of Babel about? Man doing it for himself.

God doesn’t want your help, believe me. He will not owe you. You are to owe him.

I knew this kind of attack would come; it always does. It succeeded in removing the power of the Holy Spirit from the church about 1800 years ago. It will fail this time, but it’s still going to be with us. Satan is going to use sincere Christians who think they are doing God’s will, to stop the spread of the power of the Holy Spirit. But when he cuts off one of Jesus’s fingers, three more will grow in its place. It doesn’t depend on us; it depends on the God who empowers us. We are disposable. We are like seeds. Plant us, and more of us grow.

Here’s something really weird. Surely you know religious Jews don’t buy ANY of this. They are extremely hostile to Jesus, at least in private, so it would be crazy to expect them to believe in the gifts of the Spirit. But Perry Stone met one who had a surprising attitude. His name was Yehuda Getz, and he was an Orthodox rabbi who lived in Jerusalem. Did he have a good reputation among religious Jews? I have no idea. For all I know, he was a nut case. But one day Perry Stone mentioned tongues to him, and he said, “Ah, yes. The language of God.”

Stone asked him to explain, and he said that on Yom Kippur, when the high priest entered the Holy of Holies, the priest would speak directly to God in an unknown language. I had never heard of this before. I still don’t know what to make of it. I have never seen anything in the Old Testament which refers to tongues literally. Metaphorically, sure. But not literally.

My cup runs over. I don’t have time to talk of all the things I’ve seen lately. If you want to live this life, you can’t experience it through me. Get ahold of it for yourself. You don’t need me.

The Guess What

The Herzog clone is moving right along.

I shouldn’t call it a clone. It’s based on the Herzog schematics that are available on the web, but those schematics are pretty pathetic. I’ve had to fill in gaps, and there are things I want to do differently.

Here are the schematics, in case anyone out there wants to build a Herzog. Good luck.

HERZOG SCHEMATIC AT BUILDTHEMUSIC.COM

As you can see, there are two different projects. Here is what I’m told. The one on top is the first Herzog, and the one below is an improved version. The top one has a manual switch, and the bottom one is rigged for a footswitch.

There are many holes in these schematics, and there are things I just don’t like. I want to be able to use this machine as an amp, so I want a tube rectifier. That blows out all the diode nonsense in the bottom part of the screen. I want a footswitch, but I also want a manual bypass so I don’t need the footswitch when I’m using the Herzog as an amp.

Here’s how it looks at the moment. The board is in, the tubes are in, and the pots and jacks are ready. The components are not soldered yet, and there is no wiring. The tubes may be oriented incorrectly. I stuck them in there for mockup purposes, so it doesn’t matter if the pins are where they should be.

I have to run to Radio Shack to see if they have 5V relays, and then I have to go out in the garage and start tinkering again.

One nice thing about using bad schematics is that you have to learn about the circuits you’re building. If everything were going smoothly, it would be monkey-see, monkey-do. Now it’s more like monkey-figure-it-out.

I have some nice aviation wire on order. Hoping it will be here tomorrow. That would allow me to finish the amp without worrying about replacing wires later on. I want good wire in the heaters and any areas that are sensitive to noise. I have some RG174, but it’s small for heater wire (26 gauge).

I have to come up with a base for this thing. I may put perforated metal inserts in the ends (matte black) and mount it on some nice walnut or mahogany.

And finally:

The X-1 Needs to Cool Down

I’m making great progress on the Fender Champ/Garnet Herzog cloney thing.

Today I made the screw holes for the power transformer (I already had a hole made for it to sit in), and I installed the rectifier socket and output transformer. I also made a circuit board from scratch.

Sadly, I made a little boo boo while making the socket hole. I have a new unibit that goes up to 1 3/8″, and I was all excited about using it. I fired it up and drilled a pretty nice hole, and then I remembered…the correct size is 1 3/16″.

The hole was bigger than the socket.

I had to spend an hour an a half remembering how to use the lathe. Then I made the little tube platform you see in this photo.

Most people don’t know anything about tube amps. They’ll think there’s a scientifical reason for that platform. AND I INTEND TO LET THEM BELIEVE IT.

It looks very cool, so I’m not complaining.

This thing should be running by tomorrow night, if I can figure out what kind of relay to use for the footswitch. I may have to bypass the footswitch stuff until someone clues me in.

Anyway, it’s beautiful.

More

I figured out what the platform does. It repels microfleems that aren’t subradiante.

Nothing of Interest Lies Behind Me

If I had to name the strangest thing the Holy Spirit has done for me, I think it might be this: he has made me into a morning person.

I have never liked mornings. For most of my life, I didn’t really wake up until noon, and I felt most energetic late in the evening. I hated getting out of bed.

These days I don’t leave the bedroom until I’ve spent a long time in prayer, much of it in tongues, and I feel God’s presence come into me, and I sense that he has prepared a victorious day for me. I feel invigorated and eager to get up and see what’s ahead. That is just crazy.

The Holy Spirit is doing great things at my church. This is a welcome change. We’re supposed to be charismatics, but I don’t recall seeing the gifts of the Spirit in action in our services. It’s my understanding that some things have been prohibited, because of the danger of scaring off new people. First limitations were placed on exhibitions of the Spirit’s power. Then they disappeared entirely.

I guess I’m overstating what has happened. Sometimes someone who is teaching says something that clearly came from God. And I have seen some “prophecies” which I think came from adrenaline, not God. But the general rule is that the services are scripted down to the minute, and we try to make each weekend service exactly like the others.

The problem with this is that God has to be unpredictable. It’s great to try to have order in your life, but God has to have room to do things we don’t expect. One of his great strengths is his knowledge of the future. His enemies don’t have that. So it’s a tool he uses to frustrate them, and the only way he can do that is to do things that can’t be predicted.

The crucifixion is an example. The disciples were crushed when they learned it was going to happen. But look how it turned out. It restored us to our positions as governors of the earth, and it saved us from hell. Some of us, anyway. God did the unexpected, and he even tricked Satan into helping.

It seems like the sermons are getting less powerful over time. We hear the same kind of stuff apostate churches teach. “Try hard.” “Be good.” “Pray a lot.” But behind the scenes, among a few people here and there, the Holy Spirit is working a counter-revolution.

I’ve persuaded a bunch of people to start praying in tongues more, especially in my prayer group. Wild things are happening. I used to come in and try to tell people what I had learned about the Holy Spirit. Now they’re telling ME. I learn wonderful things from them. I feel built up when they testify about what God is doing for them and their families. And our numbers are growing.

We have a guy who has only shown up twice. Once a long time ago, and again this past Saturday. His wife is Jewish. To her, a cross and a swastika are pretty much interchangeable. I believe she’s an atheist, so her objections are not based in Judaism.

He says he has been hiding his Bible from her. He put it in a box covered with foil, so she won’t know what it is. He reads it when she’s not around. He’s an outcast in his own house.

She made him go into psychotherapy. She chose the doctor. He’s a Jewish atheist. He tells my friend the Bible is full of lies. Surely that’s unethical. He ought to be turned in to the Department of Business and Professional Regulation.

His wife believes Christianity is a mental illness, and it sounds like his doctor is in the same camp. Mind you, my friend is not bothering her. He’s not telling her what to believe. He’s not trying to force her to go to church or become a Christian. He’s just praying and reading his Bible, and she is treating him like a lunatic. She even told him to choose between her and the Lord. Fortunately, he said he would choose the Lord.

Here’s the great thing about his story. God baptized him with the Holy Spirit, even though he wasn’t free to go to church or associate with Christians. He started praying in tongues one day. No one laid hands on him or prayed for him. It’s like what happened to me a long time ago. God has a purpose for this man, and he is not going to let the man’s wife get in the way.

We started reminding him that he is the priest of his home. The man is the head of the woman. He is supposed to lead, not follow. We told him he had to quit hiding. If he reads the Bible in the living room, his wife’s head isn’t going to explode. It’s not going to hurt her. Let her be unhappy, if she so chooses; it’s not her place to tell him what to do.

I don’t know what my friends in the group would have told him a year ago. Probably useless things. “Tough it out.” “Christians are supposed to suffer.” “Stop complaining.” Instead, because they’ve been building themselves up in the Spirit, they told him the right things. Take charge, obey God, pray in tongues, associate with other believers, and let God work it out. Don’t let the tail wag the dog. And I told him he needed to go see my Messianic friends. He’s not Jewish, but he knows what it’s like to be shunned by a Jewish wife. They would have unique insights to help him succeed.

Maybe she’ll leave. She has free will. But if that happens, her husband should be able to say he provided a clear example for her.

I wish I had time to talk about the way God is unifying my friends and me. I’ll give an example. Yesterday an illegal alien showed up with a newborn baby and started begging in front of the church, holding a sign. I had to deal with her, in my capacity as a security volunteer. I needed someone who spoke Spanish. There are few Cubans in my church. Nearly all Cubans speak Spanish. We have some Puerto Ricans, but they generally speak Spanish poorly. We have a pastor who speaks Spanish, but he didn’t want to do it. Guess who God found for me? A young man who sees me as a source of Biblical knowledge. Someone who takes my Facebook stuff, without telling me, and reposts it on Twitter.

We went and talked to her and took her to the church’s cafe. I felt like God wanted me to do something for her, so I ordered her some food, and I agreed to do other things the Spirit seemed to suggest. While I was at the cash register, my friend Alonzo came out behind me with his credit card out and told the cashier he was paying for whatever I was having. I said, “It’s for someone else.” He said, “It doesn’t matter. I got it.” Later he told me the Holy Spirit told him to go up and pay for what I was ordering.

We heard a sermon about the power of words. The pastor mentioned two things. He said the Bible says we conquer through the blood and the word of our testimony. He also discussed the story of Moses at Meribah, where he struck a rock with a stick to open up a spring, instead of speaking to it, as God had commaned.

While I was working in the sanctuary, Alonzo came up, and I started telling him what I believed the true significance of these things was.

I said I thought the Meribah story was about the baptism with the Holy Spirit and prayer in tongues. Water, wells, and springs usually symbolize the Holy Spirit inside us. “Beersheba,” for example, means “well of seven,” and seven is the number of the Holy Spirit, as symbolized by the seven lamps in the Holy of Holies.

We are supposed to get the living water flowing, pray in tongues, and take on God’s nature and his power. We do this instead of struggling to please him with our own puny tools. Apostate churches, however, claim tongues are from the devil, and they tell us we have to earn our righteousness and our favor from God. Jesus bought it all with his blood, but we have to earn it!

When Moses struck the rock, he was using human effort. He tried to “help” God. Instead, he deprived God of his glory. His punishment was that he was kept out of the Promised Land, which symbolizes the kingdom of God. Spirit-filled believers have God’s kingdom inside them; a believer who rejects tongues and will not listen to the Holy Spirit will not enter the kingdom.

I told Alonzo this was my take, and he started telling me he had told his wife the same thing. And we had a remarkable conversation about it, in which we confirmed each other’s conclusions.

I said I believed the passage about the blood and the word of our testimony referred to salvation (the blood) and tongues, in which the Holy Spirit testifies using our mouths. This is the word of God. It’s the sword of the Spirit. Scripture is the word of God, but so is anything God says today. And of course, Alonzo was right there with me. He said he believed the same thing.

The unfortunate thing is that the sermon didn’t connect the Holy Spirit and tongues to the power of words. What we received was a shallower interpretation. “Be careful what you say, and make sure you speak positive things in God’s name.” That’s great, but it’s the tip of the iceberg. We should have received the whole thing. People came for a meal, and all they got was a roll and some parsley.

I have had concerns that I haven’t been listening to the Holy Spirit lately; not as much as I should have. So I’m trying to do a better job.

A week or two back, in our prayer group, I felt that the Holy Spirit was telling me to make a big sacrifice in order to put a complete end to a terrible relationship. I was involved with the wrong woman, and the relationship failed, but I got stuck with a worldly connection to her. I feel that the Holy Spirit has told me to get rid of it. Why would God provide me with someone new, while there are still strings tying me to someone else? If I were a woman, and I married a man, I wouldn’t want to see him writing alimony checks or doing anything else to indicate he had a relationship–even a dead one he regretted and thoroughly repudiated–with someone else. So I plan to listen to the Holy Spirit. He will wash this person out of my life for good and clear the way for someone else.

When I do what I’m planning to do, I will be wronged to a certain extent, but it’s better to be wronged than to wrong. God repays. He repays you, and if they don’t change, he repays the people who wrong you. We are not supposed to jump in the mire with the pigs and mud wrestle. We fight principalities and powers, not people.

“Meribah” means “bitterness” or “quarreling.” I don’t want to get bitter because I got stuck fighting someone with earthly tools. Bitterness may rest in those who wrong me, but it will be rinsed out of me by God’s cleansing waters. When I think about the things that have been done to me, I have my crabby moments, and sometimes I give in a little, but I know that the future is sweet, and this garbage will soon be too far behind me to see.

Monster Wattage is the Answer

Life just gets better and better.

I received the parts for my new 5-watt Herzog/Fender Champ clone, and today I started working on it. I had such great results with the heavy aluminum channel on the 5f6a clone, I decided to use 4″ aluminum square tubing for the new project. And I’m using a tube rectifier, just in case it makes a sonic difference when I use the rig as an amp. I’m told it won’t, but it will still look cool, and that’s important.

The next photo shows the chassis after I trimmed it with a table saw. I just made a rectangular hole for the power transformer, using the milling machine, but I’m too lazy to take a photo. Now I’m waiting for my giant unibit to arrive so I can drill the tube holes instead of using a hole saw.

My buddy from church settled on an amp: the Trainwreck Express. This is one of those legendary small-shop amps, like the Dumble Overdrive Special. A little outfit in the Northeast made them, and then the maker died. Now people go over them with microscopes and try to copy them.

It’s supposed to be a high-gain amp with a temperamental circuit. They say the overdrive goes nuts with a small twist of a guitar pot. It’s said to be better for rock than blues, but my friend says it’s what he wants.

Next week we’ll order parts.

I’ve learned a ton since I made the 5f6a, so this new amp will have new intelligent features in it, like heater wires that are arranged correctly to minimize hum. I’m referring to the Champzog. The Express is another story. People are telling me to do exactly what everyone else has done, if I don’t want trouble.

Here’s something amusing and possibly useful. The Express is a head (like all Trainwrecks), and it’s traditionally made of lacquered hardwood. Someone found that you can go to Woodcraft.com and order a nice dovetailed cherry drawer for $56, in the exact dimensions of an Express cabinet. Good info to have.

I love it when new amp parts arrive. I want to pour them out on my bed and roll in them. But I’m not that mental yet.

I’ll bet anything I end up making more amps for the guys at church.

Time to unwind with a Coke. This has been a phenomenal day.

5 Pounds of Sustain

I’ve decided on my next tube amp project. I wanted to make a low-powered Bassman 5f6a clone, but my 40-watt amp sounds so beautiful at low volume, I think a smaller one would be a waste of time. I decided to do something a little more unusual: a Herzog.

This is the effect Randy Bachman used to solo on the Guess Who hit “American Woman.” You get a creamy, compressed, overdriven sound with infinite sustain.

How did he do it? Amp maker Garnet Gillies took a single-ended 5-watt design similar to the Fender Champ, slapped a resistor across the output, and ran it into the input of an ordinary amp.

There are two well-known Herzog schematics out there, and neither one really makes sense, but they are authentic. I pored over them and asked other people for help, and today I ordered parts based on my conclusions. I plan to make a 5-watt amp head which can be turned into a Herzog effect with the flick of a switch.

I know there are other ways to get this effect, but my guess is that they don’t sound the same. The Herzog has two tubes in it. I would be surprised if you can duplicate their sound with solid state electronics. I’ll bet the analagous pedals are not quite as good. And they definitely won’t drive speakers.

The Bassman is beyond amazing. I can play it with the volume at 2 and get beautiful, warm sound. It loves pedals. It sounds great on its own. It’s perfect. Better than I hoped.

I’ve noticed that the dynamics go way past any other amp I own. It’s actually a problem. If you pick lightly, you get a very quiet sound. If you pick hard, you get popping notes that fracture your skull. The trouble with this is that it exposes every mistake. Things I used to get away with are suddenly right out there where everyone can hear them. My other amps evened out the volume, and I didn’t know it.

This is a great quality for an amp to have, because dynamics are a big part of playing well. Nat “King” Cole was an astounding jazz pianist, but he played everything within a very narrow volume range, so he never got the kind of acclaim Oscar Peterson got. Vladimir Horowitz doped the hammers on his Steinway so he could cheat and get a wider dynamic range. Art Tatum could go from a whisper to a roar instantly. Variations in volume keep the listener engaged. They make music less boring.

The amp makes a little noise, but still, you can hear tiny details. If I run my finger up and down a wound string, you can hear every winding.

I can see why so many amps were based on this circuit. My guess is that if you don’t care for metal death distortion, this is as good an amp as you can get.

It’s a little hard to think of new projects after hitting a home run on the first try. But I’ll keep going. After all, there wasn’t a whole lot of original thinking in this amp. The physical design is completely unique; I did all that, apart from using old circuit board layouts. And I chose the components. But the actual circuit is 95% Fender. And Ma Bell’s engineers designed it before Fender got ahold of it.

My blues guitarist friend now says he wants a Trainwreck Express clone. Whatever. Once he figures out what he wants, we’ll build it.

Homebrew Amp Sends Sino-British Combos Packing

I took my new amp to church yesterday? The verdict? Amazing.

One of the guitarists asked if he could use it during services. Mind you, he was going to be putting it up against the lead guitarist’s $1200 Vox AC30. At the end of the day, the guitarists were telling me how great my amp was.

The sound is warmer than the Vox. It breaks up nicely. It sounds way better at low volumes. It has plenty of juice. They didn’t have to turn it past 12 o’clock, even with a single 10″ speaker battling against the Vox’s 2×12.

I put a new part in it: a humdinger circuit suggested in Merlin Blencowe’s book on power supply design. This is a trimmer pot between the heater feeds with the wiper connected to ground. It allows you to balance the voltages in the feeds so they’re identical. This gives excellent hum cancellation. Now the amp is really quiet.

I’m planning to build an amp for one of the guys, and he was leaning toward a Super Reverb, but now he’s thinking two amps, because he likes this one so much. It looks like I can do it for around $400, unless he goes for a Gucci tone-snob transformer set. That will add $300 to the job.

It amazes me that I can use this amp to practice in a small room. And look how God has given new value to the physics education I thought had been wasted.

Two of these would completely solve my church’s guitar amp problems, but I guess they’re stuck with the Voxes. They’ll never sell them and use homemade amps. People don’t like to rub their mistakes in their own faces. When you blow that kind of money on amps, the natural thing is to struggle to make use of them.

Life is sweet. The next project will begin as soon as I can get parts.

Amp Virtually Finished

This is too cool not to blog

Last night I got my Fender Bassman clone running! Here’s a photo. It’s gorgeous. I call it “Thick Al.” I asked for advice on a forum, and I referred to it as a “thick Al chassis,” referring to the aluminum, and someone thought I was giving the amp a nickname. Sounds good to me.

This is a 40-watt amp powered by 6L6 Sovtek Svetlana tubes. It has a 12ay7 preamp tube (V1), and then the signal goes through two 12ax7s (second stage and phase inverter). The rectifier tube is a Chinese GZ34, and it’s backed up by 4 4n1007 diodes.

It’s the exact circuit Leo Fender used, except that I didn’t follow his practice of always using the cheapest components, and I omitted the ground switch, added variable outputs, and used a 125V pilot light. If I had it to do over again, I would omit the standby switch, as a noted authority has convinced me that they are worthless.

The chassis is a 20″ length of 6″ Aluminum Association channel. I machined hollows in the back to make it easier to mount things. I made the circuit boards using a table saw and drill press. I polished the chassis with an orbital sander and 220-grit sandpaper.

It still needs something to cover the bottom.

A day or two, I did the “smoke test,” firing it up to see if it worked. I kept blowing fuses, and that’s when I learned that the cases of electrolytic capacitors are electrically connected to the innards. I had the filter caps mounted so the leads touched the cases, and that caused shorting. Hey, I don’t make capacitors. How would I know?

I got that fixed, and I built a current limiter to conserve my remaining fuses, and I found that the amp was very quiet and distorted. It took two days to find out that I had put 470K resistors where I needed 470 ohms. Two were on the screen grids, and one was on the phase inverter. I also had a 250pF capacitor where I should have had a 250uF, and I had the volume pots wired so they turned backwards.

Last night I got it running, but it was too late to try it out. Today I turned it on, and I had lots of noise.

I learned a lot about grounds. I had to move a whole bunch of them. In the process, I rewired the volume pots and also the presence and EQ pots (which, I now know, were wired correctly at the time). I replaced various bits of cheap stuff with good stuff, I put a tube shield on V1, and I turned the amp on again.

Still noise.

Then I turned on my Fender Blues Jr. Guess what? It was considerably noisier. That told me I had made it. I got some great suggestions for reducing the noise further, but it’s great right now.

I played the amp using my Epiphone Riviera P93 with Lollar pickups, using a Holy Grail reverb and the following distortion pedals: Plimsoul, Blues Driver, and Fat Sandwich.

The amp is amazing. The sound is very sweet, hot, and detailed. It has lots of punch, so you get a big reward for picking louder or softer. It’s less muddy than the Blues Jrs. Apart from the residual noise, it’s the perfect amp. And the volume actually works! A lot of amps go from 0 to 10 in ten degrees of rotation. On this amp, 3 means 3! It sounds good at practice levels! I don’t need my Firefly now!

I play it through a homemade cabinet with a 12″ Weber Signature speaker (super cheap). I can’t turn it up because the speaker is rated at 25 watts, but so far, it sounds beautiful. I just received a 10″ Eminence Ragin’ Cajun, and I plan to make a cabinet for it tomorrow. That will give me 75-watt capability, so I’ll be able to fire the amp up for real (probably with ear plugs).

I never expected to be able to use this amp. I built it in order to learn. But it’s extremely useful. A keeper. The ideal blues amp.

I just wish the selector switch on the Epiphone wasn’t going out. I have to get that fixed.

I love the way the amp looks. I was going to put some kind of roll cage on it, but I don’t really need one at home, unless I plan to get drunk and sit on the amp.

Now I need a new project. The guys at my church complain that their Vox AC30 amps are too loud; they can’t crank them and get good tube sound without blowing up the church. Maybe I should make an 18-watt EL844 based amp and see if they like it.

It’s amazing how God is taking the old threads I dropped and weaving them into something meaningful. This is a blast.

God is the Same Size Everywhere

I get flak for criticizing denominations to which I don’t belong, but these days I think it’s fairly obvious that I spend a lot more time criticizing my own branch of Christianity. In that respect, I’m a lot like Jesus and John the Baptist. Jesus was probably a Pharisee, and John was the son of a priest, but they said horrendous things about the religious establishment. Does that mean we should look for opportunities to insult religious authorities? Clearly not, but it has long been understood that the right to criticize increases with the target’s proximity to the critic. Messianics tell us that as religious Jews, Jesus and John could get away with criticizing their own kind. I think that principle still applies, as long as you don’t venture into pointless or malicious gossip.

An organization with no critic is like a circuit with no negative feedback. If you feed an amplifier a signal, and there is no way to limit the amplification, you can get positive feedback which causes the amp to go way overboard, ruining its performance. Similarly, when a church has no one to stand up and say no, it will tend to wander into theological minefields and commence to dance.

The prophets were critics. I can’t think of a single Old Testament prophet whom God raised up to tell the Jews they were doing a good job. Yet our modern charismatic churches preach that anyone who says anything “negative” (they don’t use the term “constructive criticism” much) is sowing discord and gossiping and so on. It’s true, some people do gossip in a malicious way. I know someone who calls my pastor “Judas”, and I’ve been told that another local pastor with a radio show calls him a “white plantation owner” because he runs a church which is mostly black. That’s all gossip and slander. But what if you go to John Hagee’s church, and you notice that he teaches that we shouldn’t evangelize the Jews? I know that makes Jews happy, but we’re not Jews! We should be up in arms. And we’re not. Mainly because John Hagee collects tons of money and has a TV show (we believe all rich televangelists are blessed and super-holy), but also because we don’t want “discord.”

Don’t even get me started on the pastors who claim we can command or “release” angels. Even Jesus did not presume to do that. He said he could call out to Jehovah and have a huge number of angels sent to help him; he didn’t say he would command the angels personally. The Bible tells us very clearly that dealing with angels is dangerous. Scripture vilifies those who worship “the host of heaven.” It says some angels fornicated with women and raised up a race of giants. Jesus told us to ask the Father for things; he never told us to ask angels. In fact, an angel offered to serve Jesus and allow him to fix the world’s problems as its ruler. That angel was Satan, and Jesus told him to get lost. The Bible contains no examples of godly people who told angels what to do, yet suddenly some pastors think it’s a good idea.

Essentially, they are telling us to practice voodoo. In voodoo, you try to command the souls of dead people, and you pray to strange “saints.” In reality, these beings are either imaginary or just evil spirits. A spirit who serves God–we call them “angels,” but not all are angels–is not going to listen to an order that comes from outside the chain of command. So if any spirit listens, it has to be a rebel spirit. If you’re a Christian, and you try to tell angels what to do, you are no different from a santero or voodoo priest. This is obvious to anyone who has read the Bible and who has a basic familiarity with spirit worship, yet now this garbage is pouring out of our pulpits.

Charismatic churches have endemic faults, and one such fault is a tendency to create personality cults. We claim to worship God, but in reality, we exalt teachers and pastors and musicians, as though they were somehow more holy than the rest of us. We even pamper them at the expense of our families and the poor. When they do revolting things, we say, “Judge not!”, as though Jesus had issued a blanket prohibition on speaking about other people’s sins. Paul told us to correct people, and he said that if they refused to change, we should denounce them before our entire churches. Was he wrong? If so, who has the authority to take a blue pencil and delete his errors from the New Testament? If such a person exists, I haven’t met him yet.

Every pastor has sins and iniquities, and it’s wrong to shun a man of God merely because he does something wrong. But what if his iniquities endanger his flock, and he has no remorse and no intention to change? If I found out my pastor spent some nights looking at porn or drinking himself silly, I would be concerned about him, but if I knew he didn’t defend his behavior, and that he was working to overcome it, I would still be on his side. But what if he said what he did was okay? What if he fired another pastor who was in exactly the same boat? What if he invested in a strip club? What if he twisted doctrine and claimed he had proof that the things he was doing were not sinful? A guy like that needs to be exposed and removed. End of discussion.

Self-righteous criticism is a sin. Malicious or vengeful criticism is a sin. But exposing a bullheaded person who is leading others into a pit is not sin. It is something we are obligated to do, according to scripture. When a religious leader’s errors get sufficiently grave, and I have to balance loyalty to man against loyalty to God, God is going to have to come first.

I don’t look to cause trouble, but I am never going to let a friend walk into a trap without saying something. If that means I get asked to leave a church, it means absolutely nothing to me. I pay to go to church; they don’t pay me. I serve the church. It doesn’t serve me. I’ll take my power to bless somewhere else, and I’ll still be blessed. Like Jesus said: “Shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them.” He never said, “Hang around and be abused and mocked and taught false doctrine until you die.”

I know a few famous preachers I truly admire and listen to without hesitation. On the other hand, preachers disappoint me all the time. The main things that offend me are ingratitude and arrogance. I don’t like a preacher who feels entitled; as though he’s a rock star. People like this are “stiff necked” in Biblical terms. They are like clay bottles which are already fired and can’t be altered by the potter’s hands.

I know about a preacher who was invited to preach at a major event. Somehow, he got separated from a piece of clothing he wanted to wear on stage. It turned out he always wore this type of clothing. What would you do? I’d wear something else. Seriously, are we superheroes now? Do we have to have costumes?

Volunteers at the event had to find and buy a replacement garment. That shocked me when I heard about it. It’s like something that would happen at a Jennifer Lopez concert. “Make sure all the bottles of Evian in the green room are turned so the caps face southwest.” It reminds me of Hillary Clinton’s famous rule that no one in the White House was allowed to make eye contact with her.

How can this happen? It’s not like this guy was wrong about a minor point of doctrine. He was very obviously way out of line. And he was allowed to preach and receive money! Man, that’s creepy. I don’t want my offerings going to a person like that. I don’t want to hear what he has to say, because “of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.”

I’ve seen arrogant preachers. I’ve seen greedy preachers. I’ve seen preachers who were obsessed with naming the utterly ungodly celebrities they knew. I’ve seen many preachers whose messages were defensive propaganda intended to keep people from leaving bad churches and cutting off their tithes. The fact is, many of the people who make it to the stage are not great servants of God. They’re just ambitious and desperate for attention and admiration. We don’t know who the real servants are. At judgment, we’ll find out, and I guarantee you, there will be a lot of big-name clergymen and megachurch pastors who get humiliated, while obscure people who sat in the backs of their churches receive praise. Now that I think about it, maybe we do these clergymen a disservice by failing to speak up when they blow it.

When a church cuts off the right to question and exalts a mere man, it becomes a cult. God is utterly humble; you can say absolutely anything to him if your heart is right. Somehow, we’re supposed to give men more honor and deference than that. Does that make sense to you? The Bible says, “Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly, but the proud he knoweth afar off.” It says, “Him that hath an high look and a proud heart will I not I suffer.” It says, “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.” God actually fights the proud. And remember, “grace” means power, not mercy. If you’re humble, God will give you power. Real power. Not just a sweet gig running a megachurch.

Some people teach that Satan broke the church into denominations. The more I think about it, the more I think Jesus did it. He wanted us to be in unity, but he also wanted us to listen to the Holy Spirit. When a church hardens its heart against the Spirit, it becomes part of the natural world, and Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Maybe he reluctantly inspires people to leave and form new, healthy churches.

Maybe the story of the Tower of Babel symbolizes the church. In that story, man used his own limited brainpower to create an astrological observatory intended to give us control over our fate. Man didn’t listen to the Holy Spirit or choose to walk by faith; he chose to bypass God’s plan and do it on his own. In response, God divided man with different languages. Churches that cast out the Holy Spirit work the same way. They think they can improve the universe by doing what seems good to them, and they ignore the Holy Spirit. So maybe God responds by dividing them into new denominations where reform can persist for a while.

We are now being reunified by a common language: the language of tongues. The Tower of Babel story is proceeding in reverse in some charismatic churches. The Holy Spirit, not some central church body run by homosexuals and bureaucrats, is knitting the dry bones back together.

I utterly reject the policy of speaking mindless positivity at all times. I think serious, concentrated prayer is always the first step when a man of God screws up, but after a while, you may have to open your mouth, and you may have to leave. That’s not you being a bad Christian. That’s you getting free of a sick environment and absolving yourself of your share of the collective guilt.

If I ever get in trouble for speaking the truth, so be it. Any church I go to will get more from me than it will give me, so I don’t think I will ever leave a church in bad odor with God, and it’s not like I’ll lose any earthly blessings. I’m not like a person who depends on the church to provide me with a job that far exceeds what my competence merits. Worst case scenario: I get to spend more time doing things for myself and my family. I can serve God and bask in his presence in a cave in the desert. It’s good to go to church, and you should try to put yourself among believers, but my real church is any space I occupy. If ever end up without a church, it will be temporary, and God will go right on taking care of me.

I hope the charismatic churches get it together. Otherwise, we will be the obsolete churches of the 21st century, making rude gestures from the platform while the train pulls out without us.