I am an Electronics Expert & Tool Ninja

Today I installed the new Shark Guard on my table saw, fired it up, cut a chunk out of some grade XX phenolic sheet, drilled a few holes in a Hammond aluminum chassis, grabbed some hex standoffs and screws, and made…THIS:

That’s going to be a 6021-powered guitar amp. A 6021 is a subminiature tube about an inch and a quarter long.

The Shark Guard is wonderful. It even has a dust port on it, so I can attach a shop vac.

I cut that panel out, taped it to the chassis, and drilled the mounting holes through both items. The holes are perfectly round; I guess the board held the bit nice and steady. So far, it’s beautiful.

I love my tools so much. This was a breeze!

Ps. 37:4; Zech 4:10

I Need to Get Up and Do Something

I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. I felt pretty bad for him until we both met a guy who was just a head. Then all three of us met a guy who was just an eyeball. We decided to go to the mall and buy him a nice monocle.

I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. It worked out okay, though, because chicks dig guys who cry.

I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. He called me a pansy and tried to punch me for crying. But I outran him pretty easily.

I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. I’m glad I wasn’t crying about not having a hat.

I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. Suddenly I felt new gratitude for my vast collection of expensive boots.

I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. I stopped crying and asked if I could have his shoes. Hey, he wasn’t using them.

Help Appreciated

My family on my mother’s side grew tons and tons of cigarette tobacco. My mother’s sister died from lung cancer in 1994. My grandfather died a month later, and his cardiologist suspected the stress of his daughter’s death was one of the causes. My uncle (who smoked and chewed) died of stomach cancer in 1995. My mother died from lung cancer in 1997. My sister was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer last year, but it appears God has healed her.

Yesterday one of my two remaining aunts told my father there were two spots on her x-rays. She smoked for forty years or so. She quit a few years back, but a lot of damage was already done. Please pray that she will be healed, and that God will help her draw closer to him, be filled with the Holy Spirit, and serve him better. Pray that he will glorify himself in healing her. Thanks.

Now this, from Heather:

Please keep praying for my mom, Penny. Since she hasn’t been able to speak, her nephrologist thinks she may have had a mild stroke. However the cat scan did not show this. She was alert tonight and knew me, but ignored the doctor when he was talking to her. Her kidney numbers are getting better, so I know that your prayers are working. Please ask the Lord to restore her ability to speak. Thank you & God Bless!

Finally Grounded

I had another remarkable day.

I’m trying to build a “Powerman” amp. Some tinkerer on the web came up with this. He took the case from an old PC power supply, and he crammed a bunch of amp parts into it, hence the name. I listened to some sound samples online, and I thought they were tremendous. Clear, hot, and sort of shimmery. Just what I want.

Today while I waited for the parts to arrive, I tried to get going on a PCB, or printed circuit board. If you don’t know what this is, it’s a slab of plastic coated with copper. Instead of using wires to connect things like resistors and tubes, you cut away the copper on the board until you have separate electrical paths separated by plastic, and they become the “wiring.” You solder your components to the board in the appropriate places, and you have a circuit that works.

The “printed” part comes from the fact that you can literally print these things. You create some sort of template and print it onto the board, and then you apply a solution that eats copper. The printed stuff protects the copper you want to keep. What’s left is the pattern that becomes your circuit. I don’t know if they do it much differently in factories, but this is the basic idea. I am too lazy to look up industrial PCB manufacturing.

When you do this at home, you have to create a black and white pattern and print it on photo paper. Then you use an iron to melt the toner (I guess) onto the copper plate. You remove the paper, and you’re ready to add the solution (“etchant”). You can also use a battery and a salt solution and remove the copper through electrolysis.

Feel free to correct the details, because there is no way I’m going to do it.

Here’s the hard part: making the diagram. I guess if you really wanted to, you could draw it on a piece of paper, scan it, and print that. But that’s no fun, plus it would be ugly, and it would be tedious. So what do you do? You use circuit design software, and then you use special software that turns your circuits into PCB images.

I spent like 4 hours today trying to understand a free program called PCB Artist. I never did get anywhere with it. I can understand calculus. I can understand physics. Sometimes I almost think I can understand my car insurance policy. But software written for engineers? It tends to be pretty hideous. Engineers have their own culture, so when they come up with new stuff, they kind of assume you already have all the old stuff memorized, because all you do is sit in your room smoking dope and doing nerd stuff. And sometimes they get angry when they have to accommodate normal people who know what the sun looks like. There are probably still engineers who think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs will burn in hell for giving up on command-prompt computing.

PCB Artist has a help file. HAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh, man. Engineers…WRITING. Never a good thing. It has flow charts where it ought to have paragraphs. Even Dilbert would vomit.

So I gave up. But then I made an amazing discovery. I already had free versions of two expensive programs: Multisim and Ultiboard. Don’t ask me how I got free versions. I downloaded them a long time ago. I don’t think they support them now. But they work fine. On top of that, everything is pretty intuitive.

I managed to create my own schematic symbol for the 6021 twin triode vacuum tube. I felt like I had climbed Mt. Everest on roller skates. I haven’t figured out how to get it totally integrated into the software, but I don’t really have to do that. The tubes are going to fit into op amp sockets, so as long as I can come up with a circuit with two sockets in it, I’m fine. The software already knows about sockets.

Very cool.

A bunch of the parts arrived. I have a Hammond aluminum chassis, lots of resistors, numerous capacitors, et cetera. I felt like dumping them in a pile and letting them pour through my fingers. I love this stuff.

Over the weekend, I located an amazing book on vacuum tubes. It was written in 1952, for the military. The great thing about that is that the military EXPECTS you to be stupid. It’s not like university math and science texts, which always have incomprehensible, agony-inducing passages preceded by the word “obviously.” Now I know how vacuum tubes work! Fantastic! I should be done with the book next week. I looked at an awful book on tube guitar amps, and it was as useless as a Honey-Baked Ham store in Pakistan. Totally worthless. But the military book was a breeze. Why aren’t there more books like that?

I’m actually going to be able to do this. Not just this circuit, but circuits in general. Simple ones. And it’s coming together just as the guitar is starting to work. It is now easy for me to do things that were impossible a month ago. My hands are doing things which, I’m pretty sure, aren’t even physically possible. I’ll be brave and say I expect to be able to play “I Know a Little” very well, at 90% speed, without fear of screwing up, in a month.

The nuttiest things are happening. When you pick a guitar, you have to be accurate to within a couple of millimeters on every stroke. The natural impulse is to crab up your hand and move the pick with cramped movements of your fingers. I’m swinging my hand from the elbow, not looking where I’m going, and I’m whacking the strings I need to hit, reliably and smoothly. It’s like sinking a basketball over and over from 50 feet. When you play this way, you can play much faster and more rhythmically than you can by moving the pick with your fingers. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. A person with no fingers at all should be able to flatpick as well as anyone, as long as he can find a way to hang onto the pick.

As I get more accurate, I spend less energy on mechanics, and I have more brain capacity to apply to making the music sound good. I can listen to it and enjoy it. And my left hand feels like it’s swimming in the fretboard. Sometimes I feel like I’m singing with my hands.

I don’t know what’s going on, but a month or two back, I got the definite impression that my life was going to start working much better toward the end of April. I saw it as a pivotal week. I think from now on I’m going to succeed in areas where I used to fail.

This morning, I started feeling that God was blessing me. I felt that he was putting things in motion for me; bringing me wonderful things. It’s hard to explain, but I couldn’t help bending my knees at one point, as if someone were showering me with heavy gifts. I thought I’d blog it. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll be just another crazy, and no one will care. If it does, I will have given God his glory, and unlike most people, I will have done it in advance.

God works. And the ideas I’ve had about him are all panning out. Especially tongues. I’ve only managed to get two people at church on board with it. One of them is using a timer to pray in tongues every day, as I suggested.

I’m going to go on ahead. I’m going to be like Joshua and Caleb. I don’t know how to bring people along with me; I wish I did. Jesus himself had limited success at that. But I have learned that when you get ahold of something good, and you decide to embark on a course of action that will dramatically improve your life, nearly everyone you know will find an excuse to stay behind and rot. The slavery they know looks better than the milk and honey they’ve been promised.

Maybe this is why a good marriage is such a treasure. Maybe the best thing that can happen to a man is to find a woman he doesn’t have to outgrow and leave behind.

I know there are disappointments in this way of life, but they are always disappointments in human beings, not God. I don’t care about those things. Human beings were created to be disappointing. We are told most of them go to hell. If they manage to achieve salvation, it’s a big deal. Asking for any improvement beyond that is wildly optimistic. Most Christians remain babies until they die, just like unsaved people.

I pray sincerely for people to change, and I go on with my progress. There is hope for anyone who will submit. I don’t know who will change and who will not. I hope some of the folks who disappoint me will come around.

If I manage to make a PCB amp, I’ll put up photos. This will be so cool, I may not be able to stand it.

Give me Your Tithes, You Fat Moron

I had an interesting experience last night.

A guy came to our church and preached. He has his own church in another state. He sang some bluesy tunes and got a great response, which makes me wonder why we never have music like that. But the really interesting thing was the sermon.

He spent the majority of the time badmouthing the people at his church, even making fun of them for having big behinds (though he probably weighs 300 pounds). Our congregation went nuts. I don’t think they were thinking clearly. He was funny, and we didn’t show up to worry about his church’s problems, so it’s understandable that people responded to him favorably. But think about it: this man traveled over a thousand miles to go to another church and insult the people who pay his bills! That’s incredible.

He wasn’t reaming out his entire flock. He singled out people who criticized or left the church. Still, they feed his kids, and look at the gratitude he shows them.

He said a lady came up to him and said, “You know what’s wrong with this church?” And he supposedly replied, “You’re IN it.” Am I crazy for thinking that’s not a great story for a pastor to tell? Jesus was generally critical of people in authority but kind to his followers. Did he have it all wrong?

The preacher talked about the Good Samaritan, and he completely misunderstood the story. Here’s how it works. A traveler is robbed and beaten on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho. A priest and a Levite pass by, on the way to Jerusalem. A Samaritan stops and helps him. You know about this. The significance of this is that people often do evil by neglecting human need while pretending to serve God.

The Levite and the priest could not touch dead bodies without becoming ritually unclean. They were on their way to Jerusalem, which was the location of the Temple. They wanted to please God, and they knew that if they became impure, it would interfere with their work at the Temple. Therefore they chose to avoid touching a man who, for all they knew, was dead. That’s what Perry Stone says, anyhow.

The Samaritan did not worship at Jerusalem; that’s one of the things the Jews hated about Samaritans. He was free to help. And by showing his love for his fellow man, he pleased God more than the others.

That’s not what I heard yesterday. I’m not totally sure what the lesson about the Samaritan’s good deed was, but we were told that the dying man got beaten up because he left Jerusalem. And we were told that our “Jerusalem” was our church. And if we left it for another church, we would be open to attack.

The obvious question is: what if I decide to quit my church and go to yours? I guess it’s an evil place, right?

Another question: assuming my church and your church are both good, are you saying all other churches are evil? Sure sounded like it.

Finally, how can you promote the idea that there is only one good place to worship, when the hero of the parable belonged to a group who refused to worship at the Temple? Is that irony or what?

I just read the parable of the Good Samaritan. Guess what? Nowhere does it condemn the victim for having the nerve to travel. In fact, as any Jew or Christian should know, one of the worst crimes in the ancient Middle East was maltreatment of travelers. Traveling, itself, was not wrong. How else could people do business? Paul traveled. Jesus traveled. Come on.

Sometimes it amazes me how we miss the obvious. This guy came to us and proved he was immature and disloyal, and we didn’t even notice.

This reminds me of the old saw: a dog that will bring a bone will carry one. A person who badmouths other people to you will badmouth you to other people. I wonder what this guy is going to say about my church when he goes to other churches. I don’t think my pastor travels across the country and tells other congregations we’re a bunch of idiots. I can’t see him turning on us like that.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to align yourself with someone who mistreats others. You may think you’re special, and that you’ll get the benefit of that person’s bad behavior, with none of the curses. Wait till the tide shifts! Some day you’ll be on the dirty end of the stick. Ask a woman who dates bad boys, or a man who has dated nasty women who make a living on their backs.

I know a woman who likes to verbally abuse waiters and cashiers and so on. People who can’t fight back. Meanwhile, her favorite way to say goodbye to people is, “Have a blessed day.” This is a vicious individual, but if you listened to her talk about how much she loves God, you might take her for a saint. You can’t listen to the things people say about themselves; people are their own press agents. If you want to know them, you have to consider what they do, especially when they think they’re safe from punishment. Like when they’re a thousand miles away from the people they’re insulting.

Christianity has always been screwed up, just like every other religion. These days it seems like one of our worst faults is our tendency to assume that anyone who has a big church is favored by God. I wonder how the megachurch proponents would explain the success of Scientology or the Mormons. God isn’t the only one who helps people succeed, and what we think is success is often a curse in disguise.

He also lambasted people who start small churches “in hotels.” That borders on despicable. What an offensive thing to say about anointed ministers who are giving up their secular lives and stepping out in faith, starting their careers as well as they can. Not everyone has a church handed to him on a platter, as he did. He said he was given a facility. It was a former funeral parlor. He was complaining about it, but I’m sure there are a dozen ministers in Miami who would cry tears of gratitude if someone gave them a funeral parlor or even a warehouse.

I think this guy means well, but if you’re so loud and self-assured you can’t hear the Holy Spirit, you are bound to say foolish things. I’ve certainly done it.

I get tired of having blind guides paraded in front of me. There are a lot of wonderful people at my church, and they want to do the right thing, but what chance do they have when we give a platform to folks who are just plain wrong? Some of them go home and try to put this craziness into practice! How awful is that? They’re worse off than if they had stayed home smoking weed.

No one from my church reads my blog, and I don’t mention names. I guess some day someone will find out that I’m not totally on board with everything that happens there, and then maybe I’ll get a lecture, or I’ll be told to quit working as a volunteer. What can I do? Right is right. When the enemy misleads people and puts them to work with time-wasting nonsense, someone with a little bit of the Holy Spirit’s clarity needs to say something about it. The story of the Good Samaritan shows that you have to be good to men in order to please God, but it does not say you have to PLEASE men.

I try not to be proud. I try not to be self-righteous. I should think about love at least as much as I think about pleasing God. Maybe I go off the reservation sometimes. It’s hard to say.

I believe modern pentecostal churches are developing a phobia of healthy criticism. We keep bringing in people who slander and deride helpful critics. Critics are the tools of Satan! They’re going to be left behind while we go on to victory! Thing is, I’m going on to victory, and most people in the church are not. God does great things for me all the time, and my biggest frustration is that I am leaving people behind, when I want them to go forward with me. What we’re hearing is the opposite of the truth.

A hatred of criticism is one of the tools Satan uses to build impregnable fortresses of evil. Think of the Communists and the Nazis. What happened under those regimes, if you opened your mouth? You were imprisoned, or you got a bullet in the head. So criticism was very rarely heard, and sick, Satanic regimes flourished. Islam is the same way. The church can go the same route.

Look what happened to the prophets and Jesus. Did Al Qaeda get them? Did Charles Manson get them? No, of course not. Their greatest enemies were people who were totally devoted to serving God. Jesus and the prophets didn’t stand around hugging the high priests and calling them “great man of God.” They were extremely critical. Think about this: they were killed for criticizing! It’s the God’s honest truth.

Think about the things they said. Repent, or God will strip you naked and expose your genitals, and you’ll eat your own babies. Your sons will be castrated and forced to serve other kings. Whitewashed tombs. Prisoners of hell. Generation of vipers. One of the reasons the gospels are hard to read is that they are jam-packed with criticism and correction. Positive thinking? Get real. It’s not in the Bible. Faith is in the Bible, but that’s not the same thing. Faith means believing God. Positive thinking means believing in man.

Obviously, you can’t have an effective church when every malcontent feels like he can stand up during services and offer pointless whining and excessive fault-finding. But that’s not the only thing the positive thinkers want to prevent. They want to cut off helpful, vital criticism, and they try to portray it as grumbling and whining, because if you silence a critic, you can go on doing what you want.

In my own church, I’ve seen many, many problems that could be fixed very easily, but I’ve found that I sometimes get scolded for pointing them out and offering simple, workable solutions. That’s not unity. That’s a crippling disability.

Why does this happen? Bureaucracy. That’s a big word that means “looking out for Number One.” When you point out problems, you’re threatening jobs and reputations and wildly distorted self-images. Each person cares about holding onto his territory and his prestige, even if he isn’t a paid staffer, and if you point out failures, you put those territories at risk.

Yesterday I realized that churches are God’s civil service. What happens in the civil service? People get hired, and then they work out a system that protects them, no matter what they do wrong. Churches are the same way. If you want to see how churches run, go look at the Post Office or the DMV. Merit means nothing. Connections and seniority mean everything. So if you’ve been going to a church for five years, and you wonder why the doors don’t work or the hedges are dead or the worst singers always get to solo, there’s your answer. Man’s craving for power and security outweighs God’s desire for us to improve and excel.

Like government employees, people at churches have no one to answer to. As long as they can get people to donate money, they don’t have to do a good job. They don’t have to sell a good product. They don’t have to offer good services. They can show up late, leave early, overpay themselves, deliver bad (or plagiarized) sermons, and ignore the Holy Spirit, as long as they know how to raise cash. This is how people like Robert Tilton survive. In the real world, they’d last ten minutes. Many of them would be in jail. Now that I think about it, some of them have gone to jail.

I know a guy who is utterly, abysmally incompetent. He holds a high position with a church. When people talk about obstacles to progress at that church, his name comes up over and over. He probably thinks he’s doing great, and that anyone who criticizes him is from the enemy. If he ever gets a real job, he’s in for a rude awakening. He’ll be fired in two days. He’ll be flipping burgers, at best. Jesus told us we could think very highly of ourselves though we were actually blind and naked and poor. This guy is a prime example. Because he is shielded from correction, he is never going to grow up or develop into a capable man.

I live for the times when I’m with other Christians and the Holy Spirit shows up and guides us. Those are the events that really bring me to church. That’s what it’s supposed to be about. Generally, this happens at prayer meetings more than services. I wish that atmosphere and that power would take over the sanctuary. I feel God’s presence much more often when I’m alone than I do in services.

Here’s a strange thing I’ve noticed. Although criticism is strongly discouraged in my church, there is no shortage of people who are willing to criticize me. They’ve done it many times. Am I complaining? No way. I’m very grateful. It’s a blessing. I’ve grown because of it. Sometimes people criticize me out of ignorance or arrogance, or because I inadvertently make them look bad. Who cares? Dogs will bark. But often people who point out my mistakes are right, and their criticism helps me. This stuff is gold. Check Psalm 141. The sad thing is that our bad attitude toward criticism is robbing many other people of the benefits I’ve received. Again, I find myself being blessed, and I find myself moving forward, but I can’t seem to drag many people along with me.

Oddly, sometimes the people who criticize me are the same people who preach the anti-criticism gospel.

I was born an idiot, and it took me a disgracefully long time to get on God’s path. He had to beat me pretty hard to get me there. I would never have found it on my own. I think he needs to give churches a good beating, too. He needs to do us an undeserved favor, reaching in and pulling out the folks who are blocking his will. They’re like placques in the brain of an Alzheimer’s victim, preventing the signals from getting through. Man is supposed to fix the world, and that means that when we screw up, we end up with churches that don’t work. It’s our obligation to correct and strengthen churches, and to pass on godly ways. We haven’t done that, so things are a mess. The only solution is for God to step in like the Salvation Army or a social worker and change our diapers for us. Again. If he does, there will probably be a wave of firings, deaths, and prosecutions. Maybe we should be praying for the problem children to wake up and change, before God does the changing for them.

I wish atheists understood that man is responsible for making the world work. Maybe they’d quit moaning about how suffering and evil prove God doesn’t exist.

From here on out, I will take special notice when a preacher insults the people who feed him. That’s a good lesson.

Fat Strings Make for Fast Picking

Well this is weird.

I’ve been working on the intro to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “I Know a Little” for weeks, and I was having a miserable time with some of the flatpicking. There’s a place where you play the first string at the twelfth fret, then the second string at the tenth fret, then the third string at the eighth fret, and then you move everything down a fret and play it again. You do this at 150% of the song’s normal 220 beat per second speed. It is not easy. I’ve been screwing it up over and over.

The other day I took my Strat out of the case. I hadn’t played it in a while. It has elevens on it. My other guitars generally have tens on them (or tens with heavy bottom strings). When I played the Strat, the flatpicking was easier. This was what I had hoped for when I took it out. It’s not surprising, since it’s generally easier to flatpick heavy strings. I decided to consider putting elevens on my other guitars.

The Strat is great, but I can’t cope with the volume knob that sits where my picking hand should be. It forces me to play near the neck, where the strings are wobbly and hard to find. I figured I should try elevens on another guitar and get used to picking fast near the bridge, where it’s easiest. Eventually, I would be able to go back to the Strat and play fast, regardless of the position. I’d get used to picking fast, so the knob would no longer matter. This was the plan.

Today I got a set of D’Addario jazz/blues strings (couldn’t find the normal ones at Best Buy) and put them on my amazing Chinese Epiphone. Suddenly I was able to play that difficult lick! The clouds had parted! You can’t imagine how hard I’ve worked on this, and how little progress I made until I tried the new strings. Suddenly I was able to feel the strings properly with my left hand, and they didn’t run away from my right hand any more. The thinner strings didn’t give my left hand much feedback, and they were hard to find with the pick.

Since then I’ve played “I Know a Little” until I’m wiped out. It’s so satisfying, hearing it work. Now I just have to fix one piece of fretting, and I’m in business. I’ll be able to play the song well at 90% speed and adequately at 100%. That’s a big deal. I’ve never seen anyone else do it. If I can do this, I know I’ll be able to play blues guitar well.

Most people like to use little strings to play fast. It doesn’t work well for me. They bend much easier, and that’s nice, but when you’re really flying, they seem to let you slide around the guitar neck too much, making your fretting inaccurate. When you fret guitar strings, sometimes you actually use one string for support while you reach for another, and that doesn’t work well with nines or tens. And because they’re hard to feel, you don’t always know what’s going on.

Maybe it’s because I learned on thirteens, playing bluegrass. Those things are fantastic for fast picking. You can forget about bending them to any useful degree, and stretches and playing up the neck are really rough, but your right hand will cook, and your left hand will always know exactly what’s happening.

I wonder if this is why Stevie Ray Vaughan liked thick strings. Perhaps when your hands get strong, playing on thin strings gets harder. He played very, very fast, so I can see how thin strings would confuse his picking hand. I’m sure someone will point out that he tuned down half a step, making the strings easier to bend. I think that would make the need for stiffer strings even greater.

This is fantastic. I’m so relieved. When you’re a musician, every time you hit a technical problem you can’t solve, you wonder if you’ve hit the limit of your talent. Now I know I can flatpick the electric guitar as fast as anyone needs to. I may not be the fastest, but almost no material will be off limits to me because of speed issues. That’s good enough for me. It’s the best result I could have hoped for.

It’s also comforting to know my age is not limiting me. I remember watching Roy Clark complain about losing speed, and he was probably five or more years younger than I am. I think he had arthritis. Anyway, when you’re old and you try to develop a skill, you always have to worry that it’s something your body or mind can’t do.

Finally, I’m going to have music in my life, and I’m going to do it well. The problems I had with the piano were extremely disappointing, so I feel like I have a new lease on life. I also have friends who are interested in amps, guitars, music, and serving God, so I won’t be alone in this.

I can’t wait until next week. With this new development, I should be playing this song correctly by then.

On top of that, I found a new tube amp design that I like, so I’m getting ready to order the parts and get to work. I now have two guys at church who want me to build amps for them.

Psalm 37:4!

We Could Get a Few Things DONE

Today I’m thinking about signs that show that a church is successful.

It’s an interesting subject. Sometimes God does things that are impressive from an earthly perspective, and it demonstrates that he’s on the scene, so if your church is big and rich, it could mean God is with you. On the other hand, what if a pastor sees a big, healthy church and decides to make his church big, too, even if he has to cut spiritual corners to get there? It’s like an anorexia victim puffing up her cheeks with air to look fat.

I’m concerned about the trend toward building megachurches. I don’t see the point. How does that please God? What does he care how big your church is? When we say “the church,” we’re not referring to one building. We’re referring to over a billion people, wherever they may be. It doesn’t matter if A church is big, as long as THE church is big.

I can understand wanting to reach as many people as possible, if you have a good message, but what if you’re corrupting the message to reach more people? That’s stupid. You’re defeating your fundamental purpose. You’re like a woman who uses sex as a lure to get a loving, supportive, faithful husband. You’re using catfish bait, but you expect to catch a marlin. That’s nutty.

Here’s the bottom line: the size of a church proves nothing. If you run a big church, you need to realize you may be a much worse pastor than the guy down the street, so think twice before you tell someone else how to make it. You may be leading him straight to hell. TV cameras don’t make you a great man of God. You may be a total zero, headed for a major fall.

How many megachurch TV pastors have we seen, who turned out to be utter failures as Christians? That proves my case. Unfortunately, we can’t see the great pastors who have unknown churches. But they’re out there.

When the Christian church really got started, there were 120 people involved. This was after Jesus had worked for at least three years. That was the net, for the greatest pastor of all time.

It wasn’t a megasynagogue or a megashul. You could put the whole core of the church in two buses. But the Bible says they were all “in one accord.” That doesn’t mean they were muzzled, or that they mindlessly agreed with every mistake their leaders made; it means they were serious. The Holy Spirit rewarded them by blowing into the room and filling them with supernatural tongues. They went out and conquered the world for Christ. Meanwhile, the big religious organization of the day, which was Judaism, went on to stagnate for two thousand years.

Jesus only had 120 people to work with. Would anyone say God didn’t approve of his ministry? Would anyone say that it would have been bigger, if he had been doing things right? Actually, some of the guys on TBN might.

Last year, I was in DC for the National Day of Prayer. Mike and I visited a great Assemblies of God Church. There was no light show when the band played. The music wasn’t deafening. There was no rap. There were no TV cameras. The service was organized, but they were flexible enough to let the Holy Spirit interrupt. While the pastor’s wife was talking, she changed course and started talking about a different topic the Holy Spirit had put on her mind, and it was extraordinary, because what she said was tailored to Mike’s specific need.

The church wasn’t huge. I would guess it held a thousand people when packed. But it was clean and nicely decorated, and the people looked good. It seemed like a very healthy church. The Holy Spirit definitely moved while we were there.

I wish I knew of a church like that near me. I’ll be honest. I love the people at my church, but we are working so hard to attract people, and at putting on a slick show, the place seems to be getting somewhat sterile. We have lasers and smoke machines, but I can’t remember the last time I saw a spontaneous Holy Spirit move on the stage. I don’t think there’s room for it in the schedule. And sometimes we use music by people like Eminem, who wrote about raping his mother. That can’t be good for the kids. I can’t see Jesus coming back and snapping his fingers to an Eminem number while they introduce him.

I don’t recognize crappy rap music when I hear it, but many people in the church do, and they have come to me and commented negatively on it. It has offended people. I was oblivious, because fortunately, I have great taste in music. If they played Lionel Hampton, I’d notice.

Churches imitate the secular world in order to attact members. But that which you imitate, you become. These days, mainstream churches deny the virgin birth, the second coming, the existence of sin and hell, and even the deity of Jesus. They got that way by trying to attract members! Spirit-filled churches are headed the same way. Whether they admit it or not, it proves they don’t trust God to attract crowds. We think we’re better than the mainstream churches, but we are no different. We just found a different way to fail.

What would happen if the church closest to you started experiencing miracles? What would happen if a prophet arose there, and that prophet started saying things only God could know? What would happen if the people who attended the church started changing dramatically, due to the power of the Holy Spirit? What if people started feeling God’s addictive presence powerfully? Wouldn’t crowds show up? Am I crazy? Isn’t this what the world is thirsting for?

You can’t get those things by using the world’s tricks. God isn’t going to show up because you print snazzy flyers and do phone marketing, or because you talk about love all the time and never mention sin, or because you promise people God will give them money. Linus said the Great Pumpkin looked for the sincerest pumpkin patch when choosing the place for his manifestations. Surely God is as smart as the Great Pumpkin.

The prosperity gospel is a problem, because it’s exaggerated way beyond anything God ever promised, and it does not work. Churches promise people more money than they know what to do with, and they give to the church, and the money doesn’t show up. So instead of real miracles, which would raise attendance, some churches deliver promises of financial miracles that never occur. Then what happens when you try to get people to go to church? “My aunt gave away half of her retirement money, and we had to pay for her funeral. Why would I associate with those thieves?” “But God will change your life and fix your problems and heal your family!” “Right, like he fixed my aunt’s problems?”

My church has little prayer cells called GAP groups (“God Answers Prayer”). I belong to one. Every so often, I have to lead it. On those occasions, I refuse to prepare. I used to try to put things together, but then I remembered what Jesus told us about appearing in public. He said that if we were called before the authorities, the Holy Spirit would tell us what to say. He commanded us not to prepare. Was he a liar? Was he stupid? I don’t think so. Therefore I choose to take him seriously; that’s what walking by faith is all about. If he will help us talk to the cops, he will also help us talk to each other. So far, it has been working like you would not believe. I show up with nothing, and we end up with so much to talk about, we can’t finish it.

We also pray in the Spirit, as a group, using a timer to make sure we don’t skimp. And we put on gentle Christian music, because God inhabits the praises of his people, and because the Bible says the Holy Spirit is grieved by clamor. This stuff is working. It changes the atmosphere in the room, and it makes things happen.

We don’t see this kind of thing much in the main area of the church, except during prayer meetings. Maybe the services aren’t always as powerful as they should be. The GAP group makes up for it, to a great extent.

On the one hand, you don’t want to be so supernaturally kooky and obsessed with correction that you drive people away. On the other, you have to acknowledge that what people really want is God, not you or your big giant church. Paul said he hooked people with God’s power, not man’s fancy words.

Maybe we need smaller churches where people are in one accord. A good seed is better than a rotten plant that bears no fruit. The problem with seeker-friendliness is that you end up attracting people who aren’t seekers, and in order to keep them, you have to put their whiny demands above God’s plan. Suddenly you don’t say much about sin or hell. You talk all the time about love, as if God were Oprah. You decide “Thou shalt not judge” is a commandment, even when people are dying for lack of correction. Sin brings curses on people; a pastor has to tell his flock about it. Otherwise, he can’t say he loves them.

It seems to me that if you have to resort to secular methods in order to succeed, your ministry didn’t come from God. It proves he doesn’t want you to make it, so you should quit and try to find out what he really wants you to do. Maybe you were supposed to be a dentist. Who knows? To find out God’s plan, you should start relying on his power. Hey, maybe he can do a better job than you.

Walking by faith works like this: God tells you to do certain things, and you trust him, and you do those things, counting on God to make them work. You don’t cheat. Moses didn’t go down to the shore of the Red Sea and try to push the water back with his foot while no one was looking, and when Elijah burned people alive with God’s fire, he didn’t bring lighter fluid, just in case. In fact, God punishes people who try to “help” him in ways that deny faith. He destroyed Saul’s kingdom because Saul tried to fill in for some priests who were late. He judged Moses for whacking a rock twice to make water pour out of it, instead of hitting it once, as ordered by God.

Either this stuff works, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, God is a liar or a fantasy, and we should all quit and go to a nice strip club and get drunk. If it does, let’s quit adding our worthless, hypocritical nonsense to God’s perfect way.

I’m getting wonderful results. If God ever starts letting me down, I’ll see you at the strip club. Don’t bet the rent on that.

More

Aaron popped up and corrected me. The big mistake Moses made at Meribah was not hitting the rock twice, but hitting it, period. That was what I originally intended to write, but I didn’t trust my memory, and when I Googled it, I got it wrong somehow. Moses was supposed to speak to the rock, not hit it.

The interesting thing is that this makes the citation even more appropriate. Look what Moses was called on to do. He had to walk by faith. Sure, he had to use his natural strength to walk up to a rock and talk to it, but he did not have to use natural means directly related to the goal. In other words, the things he was asked to do were easy things in the natural; he was not called on to work, in any meaningful sense. God didn’t say, “Start digging a well, and I’ll make sure it pays off.” The most important thing was to do precisely what he was told, even though it was not something that ordinarily solves irrigation problems. The intended result was a purely supernatural event: a rock opening up and giving water. It wasn’t an ordinary spring which God simply chose to make productive.

Now, what would have happened, had God given the same order to one of our modern, carnal prosperity preachers? First, he would have begged a local businessman to lend him a bulldozer. Then he would have made his drama team find him a big hardhat. He would have had his band prepare some dramatic music. He would have sent out twenty thousand flyers, inviting people to see him BRING FORTH WATER FROM THE BARREN ROCK! And he would have called the local TV stations. He would have jumped on the bulldozer, made a speech about how your financial problems were “like this ROCK,” and shoved the rock out of the way while the band played behind him.

If water had come out, people would have said, “That idiot broke a spring open, and he’s trying to tell us God did it so we’ll give him money. He probably wiped out a water main.”

This is why you don’t do things for God. At least, you don’t force his promises to come true. God can’t get his glory if you bust your rear end and stay up nights working to make things happen. Any idiot can get things through hard work. Only a man of God can get things by walking by faith.

Think about Jesus. Is there even one example of him giving people medicine? No, but he healed a whole lot of people. Think about Elisha, who purified a well by throwing salt in it. Think about Naaman, who got healed of leprosy by going swimming. How about Joshua, who destroyed the walls of Jericho by walking around them in a circle?

Either it’s about God’s power, or it’s not. If your walk with God is about hard work and your wonderful talents and gifts and social connections, you might as well be a Buddhist.

Introducing a Fantastic New Blogger: Mr. N.Y. Times

Here’s an interesting fact. Real blogs have been driven out of Google News results.

I just Googled the bin Laden story, bringing up 100 “blog” results. My blog used to appear in these searches, as did the blogs of other people I knew. Guess what? Things have changed. In the current results, the closest things to blogs are Newsbusters and The American Thinker. I don’t even see Instapundit in there!

It’s so funny, being this right. Years ago, I complained that big businesses were going to take over blogging and drive the little guys out. Now look! ABC and NPR and The New York Times appear in “blog” searches, but we don’t! We are HISTORY! KAPUT! OVER!

I didn’t realize it had gotten this bad. There is really nothing left now.

It’s the craziest thing. For about seven years, a loophole opened up, and ordinary people were able to get their feet into it and hold it open and talk to the world. Then it snapped shut! What’s left? Is Youtube still doable? I don’t even know.

I underestimated the ruthlessness and selfishness of the big time press, which is saying a lot, given how much I talked about these things. I knew they resented us, and that they would try to kill us, but I didn’t know they would proactively push us out. They have to be using search engine experts and so on in order to do this, unless Google is doing it for them. This kind of thing doesn’t just happen. It has to be deliberate and premeditated.

I don’t know what to say, except for, “Thanks for all the fish!”

It doesn’t matter what I say. No one will read it!

He Sleeps With the Fishes

Osama (I keep typing “Obama” by mistake) is dead. Hooray, hooray. It’s good news. No doubt about it. But here’s my question: what has he done to us lately?

As I understand it, under President Bush, America and her allies neutered Obama…I mean “Osama”…years ago. Al Qaeda has been on the run for quite some time, and they don’t get a lot done. So I’m not all that excited about Osama’s death. He wasn’t running the show.

There are some good things about it. It shows that there is a price to pay for killing US civilians. We didn’t quit. It shows that even a dainty, pampered, self-adoring amateur like Obama will support this kind of action. I’m also glad they dumped Osama’s body in the ocean, because now there is no hope of building a mosque over it. It will probably lead to Osama Elvis sightings, but that’s better than having them put him in a nitrogen-filled glass case at the Ground Zero Mosque.

Still, Osama was not our biggest problem. Right now, the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to assemble a coalition of Islamist nations, and they’re probably going to succeed. And we’re helping them. Our tireless terrorist-busting President is pulling yet another Carter tribute. Carter gave Iran to the thugs, and Obama is handing them a big chunk of the rest of the Muslim world. It’s funny how our two least Jew-friendly Presidents of the last twenty-five years have both ended up handing giant tracts of real estate to Israel’s sworn enemies.

Bush made the mistake of supporting land for peace, and so did Clinton, but they were nothing like Carter or Obama. There is no longer much room to doubt that Carter is an anti-Semite, and Obama has been extremely bold in changing our policy toward Israel. He has made it clear that he thinks we have been too good to Israel, and he has established a pattern of humiliating the Israeli Prime Minister. Say what you want about Bush and Clinton. Neither of them would have criticized the US for favoring Israel to the point where more “even-handedness” was needed. Obama did that.

The Muslim Brotherhood concerns me. It seems that their aims are the same as Al Qaeda’s, but they are much more effective, and they are using common sense. It’s much smarter to take over a Muslim nation and use it than to slaughter American civilians and invite a crushing response.

In the past, the US and Israel have generally benefited when Muslims didn’t get along. When they fought among themselves, they didn’t have much energy to fight us. Now we may be looking at a multi-nation alliance that is cohesive enough to deal us severe blows, possibly of a biological or nuclear nature.

Perry Stone thinks the Antichrist will be a Muslim. He believes the Antichrist will be the Twelfth Imam, AKA the Mahdi. Many Muslims hoped Osama would turn out to be the Mahdi. The Bible also tells us the Antichrist will rule ten nations, or at least that’s how people interpret it. Right now, the Muslim brotherhood is putting nations together. Are they building the Antichrist’s confederacy?

God and Satan have a way of rotating their employees. Elijah arose, and then his anointing–his supernatural “commission”–fell on Elisha. I suspect that Satan got everything he wanted out of Osama, so he gave him up to die and go on to get what he deserves. Now someone else is on the rise, and we don’t know who it is. Osama was Madonna; the new person will be Lady Gaga. Maybe.

God is going to severely squash the nations that divide Israel, and the United States is currently one of those nations. We need to get Obama out of the White House and replace him with someone who will support God’s nation. We need to quit voting for legislators who don’t believe in prophecy. America needs to repent. People need to turn back to God, start walking by faith, quit killing their unborn children, stop glorifying themselves, and get into the flow of God’s blessings.

I think people who walk by faith will come through the upcoming economic and political upheavals unscathed. In the Revelation, Jesus told the destroyers not to touch the oil or the wine. Oil represents the anointing and the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Believers who are full of the Spirit are like vessels filled with new wine (this is what the miracle at the wedding of Cana means). Maybe Jesus was telling the destroyers to shake the world but pass by his faithful, as the destroyer passed over the homes of the Hebrews in Egypt. I think we’ll be fine, and people will hate us for it. But the rest of the US, well, that depends on how we treat the Jews, the poor, the unborn, and so on. And socialism is not charity, so voting for liberals is not the way to be good to the poor.

Wow, read Psalm 105 and see how it lines up with our current situation. It’s all about God’s people, being enriched and delivered during hard times, and it’s about the plagues that hit Egypt but missed the Jews. I found it accidentally by Googling the bit about the oil and the wine, and it says something very similar: “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.”

It turns out Revelation 6:6 is the relevant verse. I’m not enough of a prophecy scholar to tell you whether it has to do with the Tribulation or the current shaking, but I think the principle is eternal. God’s people are often delivered from the mess around them. “A thousand shall fall at thy side and ten thousand and thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.” Noah, Joseph, Jesus at the cliff in Nazareth, Lot and his family…even Peter, standing on the Sea of Galilee.

I know I sound like a kook, but there is so much I’m not telling people, they really can’t judge. Last night one of the young people from my church called me about bin Laden, and we started talking about evidence that God is real and that Jesus is the Messiah, and even I was amazed at the words that came out of me. God has show me a ton of stuff. He’s up there, believe me. More importantly, he’s down here.

There are worse things than sounding like a kook. I probably have forty years left, if I get to live my entire span. That time is going to pass in a flash. I still remember watching new episodes of Batman and Mission Impossible. I don’t perceive the passed time as very great, but I know these things happened over 40 years ago. In what will seem like a minute, in the same way, I’ll be looking back at today. I’m going to die. It’s as good as done. Why should I sweat about what people think of me here? They’re as good as dead, too. None of this is permanent. And when it’s over, we’ll all know who was right.

Actual Noise, as Contrasted With Aspirations and Theory

I got the Firefly amp and speaker cabinet working. I thought the amp was too dark, so I dug up a 200pF capacitor and stuck it in the magic “bright” holes in the PCB. I think it made a big difference. Now the amp sounds a lot better.

Here I am, continuing to work on “I Know a Little,” with the mighty Chinese Epiphone Riviera P93 with Lollar pickups. I’m using a Way Huge Pork Loin pedal. I’m at 80% of the album speed. I can play it faster, and the mistakes don’t get much worse, but I like it better at this speed.

05 01 11 i know a little intro epiphone riviera firefly amp pork loin

It craps out when the boost is too high. Probably something loose in there.

I recorded this on a Tascam GT-R1, which is a very small recorder with a cheap built-in mike. Take it for what it is.

Sorry

Forgot to post this. It’s from Heather.

Mom has to have stent replacement surgery later this morning(don’t have a set time yet, hospital will be calling me). She had both stents replaced in March, but the left one has gotten blocked and is causing the left kidney to be swollen. Hopefully this will help her kidneys to heal. Please keep her in your prayers for a successful procedure and recovery.
Thank you & God Bless,
Heather Page

That was on the 27th. At least you can pray for her recovery.

Eat Your Heart Out, Bang & Olufsen

Here’s what I have so far on the Firefly amp.

I still have to put handles and feet on everything, smooth out the speaker cabinet, and paint everything. But it works right now.

I’m amazed at how loud it is. I can’t turn it all the way up because of feedback. It won’t make you deaf, like a 5-watt amp. But it’s loud enough to make the neighbors mad, if they’re outdoors.

The next project will have to be a Murder One amp. This is a less powerful design, and it’s the size of a pedal.

I like the Firefly, but it’s a little dark. It’s supposed to sound like a Marshall, and if the Marshall/Fender comparisons I’ve seen are any guide, that means somewhat tinny. I think I prefer the Fender sound. Of course, I don’t know how to get it.

This project took considerable work. One of my friends from church wants me to make him a Fender Super Reverb clone. That’s a huge amp, but it would be way easier, because there would be no fabrication. In fact, it’s barely fit to be called “building.” You just put the parts together.

Let’s see. Soon I’ll be playing an amp I made, through a cabinet I made, using a guitar I made. Weird.

Guitar Improvement

Five days ago I posted a cheesy recording of me, playing the intro to “I Know a Little” on a Telecaster. I had just gotten it sort of together, and it was really shaky. But I was thrilled I knew it well enough to play it. Here it is.

I Know a Little, With Marv as Background Vocalist

Today I decided to post a new recording I just made. It shows what you can learn in five days. I played it on a Strat, which is very annoying to work with, because the volume knob is in the way of the picking hand. Still, it’s way smoother and more competent than the first recording. I think I should be on top of this by the end of May.

I Know a Little, played on Strat.

That’s actually not so bad. Working on one piece for weeks sounds awful, but this is a very hard bit to play. As fast as it is, it’s only up to 80% of the album speed, and there are slides and stretches and other difficult things in there. The triplets come in at about 260 beats per minute, and they’re flatpicked, one at a time.

One of the hard passages has been smoothed out completely. The others are improving fast. I’m even getting a little more swing, as the piece gets easier to play. It’s hard to think about music when you’re terrified of missing a note or getting lost.

Today I decided to check out my Greg Koch instructional DVD to see what he could do to help me. In my memory, his playing was right on target, so I figured he might have some tips. I was shocked when I watched his demo. He’s not even close. He can really play, but he’s way off on “I Know a Little.” Maybe the work I’ve done since I bought the DVD has changed my ability to hear the music correctly. I’m going to be able to play this better than he does. Apart from that, however, I will still basically be a wart on a germ on a flea on Greg Koch’s rear end.

This is pretty exciting. Someone else might listen to these recordings and hear only hopeless crap, but I know how fast I’m making progress, and I can tell where I’m headed. I’m going to be able to play blues guitar well. What a relief.

Or Something

I got more input on the “seven blessings of Passover” thing. Aaron chimed in and pointed out a few things. Here is one comment:

Each festival has its own offering with minor variations. Passover initiates the omer offering which is done daily until Shavuot. Whether Shavuot is a “major” offering versus other festivals isn’t clear. It’s “first fruits”. Never heard of an offering where volume was a factor. The most sacrifices were during Sukkot, but that was because there were sacrifices by Jewish priests on behalf of other nations as well as the Jews.

There were freewill offerings, but there is no linkage to volume.

Some offerings differed upon the means of the person making an offering, reducing an expensive animal to an inexpensive dove or even a handful of grain.

Also:

Ultimately, even in a time where there is no Temple, the prophet Daniel proves that sacrifices and even a Temple aren’t necessary for a connection to G-d.

Hosea 14:3 “Take with you words, and return unto the LORD; say unto Him: ‘Forgive all iniquity, and accept that which is good; so will we render for bullocks the offering of our lips.’”

Sacrifices are an exercise in the process of tshuvah. They are not the primary focus or goal of Jewish scripture.

I suppose a Christian could jump up and say I shouldn’t listen to a Jew and overrule a Christian. The fatal problem with that argument is that the seven blessings doctrine purports to be based on Jewish practice, so Jews are the ultimate authorities. Jews did not believe in seven special offering-related blessings at Passover or Yom Kippur, so the doctrine can’t be right.

The whole idea of giving monstrous offerings in order to get God’s favor is dubious. Jesus said his yoke was easy and his burden was light; it’s hard to reconcile that with giving away your kids’ college money. I recall Aaron telling me that Jews think it’s generally a bad idea to give away more than 20% of your increase, and that makes sense to me, barring some sort of miraculous command delivered by an angel. You have a responsibility to avoid becoming dependent on others, which is what happens when you impoverish yourself.

The whole “give to get” gospel is a problem. It does not work. Churches are full of people who give and don’t get! We keep hearing that our miracles are just around the corner, but…they’re not! We don’t see huge numbers of Christians raking in large sums of cash as a result of tithing and giving offers. If the “give to get” message were true, there would be Christian billionaires all over the place, and people would be trampling each other to get to churches so they could join up and get rich.

I want to be careful. I am positive God rewards charity right here on earth; he promised to do this in the Psalms, and I have seen it happen. I also believe God rewards people who tithe and give offerings. The promise in the book of Malachi probably reflects a principle that applies to Christians as well as ancient Jews. But I do not believe God gives money to people who can’t handle it, and I don’t believe you can force God to give you great wealth. And I don’t think you have to give extravagantly, except in unusual circumstances.

If you have a good job, a house, money to pay for good things, no debts, you enjoy life, and things go well for you, you’re prosperous. That’s a fantastic standard of living. I think God provides these things to people who are generous and who seek his kingdom first. There is a lot of scriptural evidence for that. But I don’t think God wants everyone to have a helipad and a castle, nor do I believe you have to give yourself into poverty in order to give God an opportunity to rescue you.

I’m also disturbed that preachers encourage people to give borrowed money to God when they can’t pay their debts. I’m disturbed that preachers don’t criticize covetousness and overspending. I’m disturbed that preachers don’t caution people not to give money they should be spending on their families or the poor.

As I understand it, the Jews believed you had to do right by man in order to get favor from God, so if you were a deadbeat, or if you were stingy with everyone but God, your offerings would be rejected. I know someone who gave stolen money to ministries. And I know there are millions of deadbeat, spendthrift Christians who put donations on their credit cards. I’m sure there are millions of Christians who give money to ministries while neglecting the poor, simply because most–MOST–prosperity preachers don’t talk much about charity. They say, “Pay ME, and God will pay YOU.” I don’t believe that kind of offering is acceptable. If anything, it should lead to curses and lack.

Jesus said you shouldn’t dedicate something to God in order to avoid giving it to your needy parents. That makes sense to me. God doesn’t need money, but people do. Our purpose in the world is to undo evil and spread salvation. We are the earth’s managers. We should be looking to do as much good as possible, with the resources we have.

The thing about borrowing in order to donate is very troubling, because the Bible tells us over and over again not to borrow. Debt is a horror. It’s a form of slavery. When you take on debt, you promise to give your future time and work to the lender. You become his slave, as the Bible says. I can’t believe God would ask a human being to get involved in that, in order to give a donation to a ministry.

Jesus told us not to promise or swear. What’s the first thing you have to do, if you go into debt? You have to swear. You sign a piece of paper, swearing you will pay. Jesus said anything beyond “yes” or “no” is from Satan, and loan notes are great examples.

Satan loves it when we make rules. He loves law. As soon as you make a rule, he has a new tool to use against you. He looks for a way to make you break the rule. And a promise is a rule you apply to yourself. So when you promise to pay a debt, presumably, Satan does his best to see to it that repaying it is a hardship, so you will be tempted to break your word.

This is what I believe, so I avoid signing promises, and I hate debt. I’ll sign a Mastercard receipt, because the world is set up so using cash is just too hard, but I won’t run a balance from month to month, and I don’t have any long-term loans. I know you can generate a lot of wealth through debt, but you can also lose your reputation and your standard of living. I love knowing that what I own, I OWN. Have you ever asked yourself what a typical parking lot would look like, if all the cars that weren’t paid for disappeared? What would a typical block look like, if only paid-up houses remained? America would look like the middle of Australia!

This is an important thing to think about, because we’re headed for a financial meltdown, and when it hits, it will matter whether your car and house belong to you. A lot of people who are driving BMWs and living in big houses right now will be wandering around begging, because their possessions will be gone, their jobs will be gone, and they will have no savings. Most Americans have little or no net worth. Many have negative net worths.

So anyway, I would never borrow money in order to make a donation to a church. I would quit donating to ministries (except tithing) before I would give up charity. And I would never donate or even tithe unless I had my debts in order. I don’t believe God will bless me for being a parasite and a thief.

Truthfully, I don’t even believe in mortgages. I know that’s a scary thing to say, but it’s true. I don’t want to go to bed at night knowing a bank owns my future and my house. The government (especially the courts) belongs to Satan, and so do the banks. I don’t want to get involved in that mess, just so I can have a bigger home sooner. If you’re going to believe, BELIEVE. Don’t say, “Oh, I walk by faith, but EVERYBODY has a mortgage. EVERYBODY has a car loan.” Walk by faith or admit you don’t. I don’t believe in mortgages. Call me crazy.

I’ve heard preachers say it’s a blessing to qualify for a car loan. I’ve heard them cite car loans as evidence that tithers got blessed. That seems insane to me. A car is a blessing. But a note that says you’re allowed to pay twice the car’s value in order to get it right now? How can that be a blessing? It’s a hook in your jaw, and it devours your money by causing you to get less for it. It’s like buying a bag of locusts.

In law school, I knew a guy who bought a convertible using a student loan. His friends used to ridicule him. They called it “the Ferrari,” implying it would cost as much as a Ferrari by the time he paid the interest. People used to say that if you bought a pizza in law school, it would cost $30 by the time you paid Sallie Mae. It’s funny that they didn’t extend this logic to the loans they incurred after entering the job market. How is a mortgage any different?

Student loans are particularly horrendous, because you can’t get rid of them. Bankruptcy doesn’t affect them. You pretty much have to prove you’re paralyzed in order to escape. Or you can die. Other than that, you’re owned. And when you don’t pay, they add the interest to the capital. I know someone who owes almost $200,000 because of that. The original loan was probably five figures. Now that I think about it, I know a couple of people in that situation, and they’re not going to make it as lawyers, so you have to wonder what they’ll do. They promised. Satan observed and acted. Now the walls of the pits are a thousand feet high. The strongholds are built.

Not only do they have permanent debt, but their credit ratings are wiped out. That means no one will hire them, because employers check these things. It means they’ll pay more for insurance, too. It even means no one will want to marry them, unless they manage to hide their debts.

Don’t borrow unless you have to. That’s all I can say.

I don’t want to fall into offense over this. I just saw a timely message from John Bevere, about avoiding getting into confrontations with other Christians. But I don’t think he explained it as well as he could have. He said Satan uses Christians who are “in opposition” to do his work. He cited 2 Timothy 2. But that’s not quite what it says. It doesn’t forbid opposition or correction. In fact, 2 Timothy suggests we are supposed to correct others. Here:

2 Tim 2:23-26
But stay away from stupid and ignorant controversies — you know that they lead to fights, and a slave of the Lord shouldn’t fight. On the contrary, he should be kind to everyone, a good teacher, and not resentful when mistreated. Also he should be gentle as he corrects his opponents. For God may perhaps grant them the opportunity to turn from their sins, acquire full knowledge of the truth, come to their senses and escape the trap of the Adversary, after having been captured alive by him to do his will. [CJB]

So, what I take away from this is that I have an obligation to point out error, when it comes to important disputes. That’s the farthest thing from wrong. But I have to do it gently and with humility, which is always a challenge. And when it mentions doing Satan’s will, it’s referring to those who are corrected, not those who correct.

Interesting stuff. I hope I’m right.

One thing I’m sure of: the “seven blessings” teachings are wrong.

SOUND!

I got my new Firefly amp working. I am too lazy to post another photo.

The sound is very good, although a little dark. I think a pedal will fix that. You can brighten the sound by adding a capacitor; I don’t know if that will make it warmer or just tinny.

The amp has a boost channel. I don’t really understand the circuit, but I assume this just recycles the amplified sound, using the main circuit as a preamp. Anyway, it’s pretty danged loud. But with the boost off, you can turn the main circuit gain up all the way without getting loud. The sound is nice and coarse, so it sounds like the tubes are actually working, but the plaster doesn’t fall off the walls of the house, as it would if I turned up any of my other amps.

I have advice for anyone who builds one of these using a PCB. First of all, why use a PCB? It’s easy and small, but the amp will still be small if you use an ordinary circuit board, and you’ll save forty bucks or something.

Second, don’t use the onboard stuff, like the pots and jack and switches. There are places to mount these items directly to the PCB. This forces you to drill very precise mounting holes in the cabinet. It all has to line up. That’s stupid. Just run wires to the PCB and mount this junk wherever you want.

When I finished getting this thing into working condition, I had no cabinet to plug it into. I found a solution. I borrowed the jack from the Telecaster I’m building, and I wired it to the Weber speaker I’m going to use in the cabinet. I stuck the speaker on the couch and plugged it in. Works great. Not elegant, but I was in a hurry.

It turns out the tubes have to be mashed pretty hard to get them into the sockets. One of mine fell out. Also, the little screw-tightened wire connectors on the PCB are hard to get right. The wires tend to fall out, which is bad.

I attached the top using only glue, and so far, it has worked. They tell me a good glue joint is stronger than the wood around it, so why not put it to the test? If it breaks, I’ll put it back together with screws and supports.

I have to figure out how to paint it. I think I’ll just blast it with leftover truck bed paint. It will be very tough, and I won’t have to blow twenty bucks on a vinyl covering.

It needs knobs. If I can’t find anything around here, I may machine a couple out of aluminum. That would be fast, and it would look good, and I could rub it in the noses of all the non-mechanical people who already think I’m superhuman because I can solder resistors onto a board.

Now all I need is a tiny cabinet for super portability. The speaker I bought is a 12″ job, and it sounds good, but for convenience, it would be good to have something really small, like a car speaker. And dang it, I KNEW I’d need the old Dodge and Ford speakers I threw out when I upgraded vehicle stereos. DANG it. I just realized that. Maybe I still have the Dodges. I wonder how sensitive that speaker is. And how do you check the impedance? Can you just stick an ohmmeter on it? I might have to stick a resistor in there somewhere.

This is beyond cool. Now I have to make the big cabinet, the little cabinet, and a Murder One clone, which is a sub-one-watt amp using submini tubes, whatever they are. It’s the size of a pedal. I may even try to make a PCB for it. You can do that, if you’re a big enough nerd. I already have the PCB and photo paper, plus free circuit design software.

Man, what is happening to me? I’m turning into My Favorite Martian.

I’ll try to record this thing eventually.