Inching Upward Toward Mediocrity

Some new gadgetry arrived today, so I made some effort to shoot some more macro shots.

I was interested in focus stacking and focus bracketing. I should cover these things first.

Macro teachers on the web bamboozled me into thinking all I needed were a camera, a diffuser, and some patience. Not really true. You can get plenty of good pictures without a ton of equipment, but there are things you just will not be able to do, and the smaller you go, the more obvious this is.

With the lens I’m using on my APS-C Sony, the depth of field is something like 1 mm. That is small. It means that if I’m shooting a flower that measures an inch in my sagittal plane, I’m only getting about 1/25 of it, in terms of depth, in focus. That is no good.

A lot of people take shots that focus on one part of a small subject and give up on the rest, or they settle for low magnification. That’s okay, but sometimes you want to see more.

The way to get more depth of field, assuming you can’t back up enough to get it naturally, is to combine images using a computer. This is focus stacking. You take multiple images, changing the in-focus plane in steps. Then the computer discards the fuzzy stuff and puts the rest together in one sharp image.

How do you get all those images?

First of all, you have to use a tripod. Forget doing it the old-fashioned way. You will move around and get shots that are not the same.

Second, you can forget changing the focus between shots manually. It’s just too hard.

I thought in-camera focus bracketing might be the way to go. It looked that way when I read about it. It doesn’t work.

When you make your camera do focus bracketing, you push the button, and your camera shoots more than one shot, changing the focus between shots. The problem with this is that if you’re doing macro, not just “taking pictures of small things,” the camera will not change focus in small enough increments.

It turns out you need to move the camera, using a device that has a micrometer screw. That device is called a focusing rail. You mount it on your tripod, you line up your shot, and then you take numerous shots, leaving the focus alone. This moves the focused plane along your subject, giving you the desired material for focus stacking.

I got a pretty good tripod, and it arrived today. I got a geared head for it because geared heads hold stuff more reliably and allow for easy tilt adjustments around several axes. I found out how to make my A7IV do focus bracketing, and then I took pictures. I merged them in software, and the results are about what you would expect if I just held the camera and hoped for the best. Bad.

It isn’t going to work. I’m not going to fool with it. I’m getting a rail.

The tripod is excellent. I’m not saying it’s a great tripod, because it seems like any piece of equipment that qualifies to be called “great” by real photographers had to be made of spun platinum and cost over $50,000. I believe it’s excellent for my plans, given what I am willing to spend.

It’s a Vanguard Pro 2+, or something like that. Carbon fiber for weight reduction.

It holds a lot of weight, and you can move the legs and the central column in ways that will put your camera just about anywhere, solidly.

Using the tripod for the shot above was heaven on Earth. So much less aggravation than an Amazon Basics.

If you want to photograph a mushroom on the ground from 8 inches away, this tripod will hold your camera right where it needs to be. That’s pretty neat.

I got a geared head for it, and that’s also fun, but I think I could have lived with a regular ball head, which has a ball-and-socket joint you tighten with a screw.

I think I blew around $350. It’s not a childish splurge. It’s me, being a grown-up about photography. You can’t nickel-and-dime everything. You can’t buy a nice camera and nice lenses and then cheap out on everything else.

My $20-$25 tripods are amazing for what they cost, but you can’t put a real camera and a real lens on one and expect things to go smoothly. The weight is just too much. They’re wonderful for things like smartphones and Gopros.

I am getting a mid-range focusing rail, and with that done, I should be in good shape to do some photography. I am eager to see the results. The rail goes on top of the geared head, under the camera.

Pushing the button to take a shot is nerve-wracking, because it takes a lot of force and moves the camera. I’m going to be using remotes instead. I would stay away from Canon and Sony remotes. For one thing, they are back in the Stone Age when it comes to batteries. They use coin batteries that are a pain to replace, and my OEM Canon remote actually has a tiny Phillips screw you have to remove. Insane. I got rechargeable remotes from a company called Aodelan. I also have a tiny Smallrig tripod that has a rechargeable Sony-compatible remote in the handle.

I’m not using a phone app to pop the shutter because NOT EVERYTHING IN LIFE SHOULD BE DONE THROUGH A SMARTPHONE. Man, I wish millennials would understand this. I’ll bet I have over 100 apps, and in a sane world, maybe 35 of them would not exist. The 21st-century obsession with forcing people to do everything on phones is incredibly stupid. A 50-year-old who can use a desktop is almost godlike compared to a millennial who can’t.

I’ll bet there are kids out there writing term papers with their thumbs.

Well. That’s not true. They tell ChatGPT to do it, and they go on their illiterate, merry ways. Oh well; 6-7, right?

I guess I’ll want a real diffuser eventually. The fabric job I have is not very good. The diffusing part is white fabric, and the flash shines through it. This would be fine if there was any distance between the flash and the fabric, but it’s very close to it, so I think I’m probably getting a very localized light source. I think it’s a lot like wrapping your underwear around the flash. The light isn’t direct, but I don’t think it is spread out effectively. Could be wrong.

Diffusers are cheap, so no worries there.

Looking back, it’s a wonder I ever got any nice shots of small things.

My conclusions are always subject to change, because I am learning as I do, and I knew almost nothing to start with. I think I’m right about focus bracketing, but who knows what knowledge tomorrow may bring?

Suddenly Semi-competent

I am getting better at macro photography.

I should say that I have learned that the term “macro” is used very loosely. In the most rigid sense, a macro photograph is one in which the subject’s projection on the sensor is at least actual size, but people use the word “macro” to describe photographing just about any small object up close, so I will use it that way, too.

I was not happy with my focus or depth of field with the new camera and lens. I have a real tripod on the way, and that will help. My TEMU-grade tripods are not up to the challenge.

Another thing that helps: backing up. The farther you get from your subject, the greater the depth of field is. Unfortunately, it’s an exponential change, so I don’t expect to be able to predict it while moving the camera. Today I tried to double my distance from the subjects, and I guessed at the distance by looking at the size of the subjects on the monitor.

I also changed the focus peaking settings. Focus peaking is the camera feature that makes things light up on a monitor screen when they are in focus. I have been using the high setting, because, hey, high has to be better than low. But it doesn’t. Google AI told me accuracy increases as you turn it down. I couldn’t really see the focus peaking on the low setting, so I tried the middle setting, and my focus improved.

A lot of people say not to use high f-stops because of diffraction, which will make things look fuzzy. On the other hand, it increases depth of field, or “DOF,” as we pro photogs call it. A French lady who teaches macro says to go high and not worry about it, so I did that today, shooting at f16. The results were not exactly crisp, but they were better than previous efforts. Maybe going down one or two stops is the answer.

Anyway, I’ll post a photo.

It is not going to win any sharpness contests, but on the other hand, photography isn’t all about sharpness. This isn’t science. I’m not a satellite shooting tiny features on the surface of Pluto so the human race can get the most information possible. It’s just supposed to be pleasant to look at.

To me, this is good enough to be considered a successful photo. The bigger version is sharper. I can’t post giant images here. I’ll post a piece of this photo for comparison.

That ought to be good enough for government work. I wouldn’t be embarrassed to have that hanging on my wall.

I have learned that some cameras do something called “focus bracketing.” You focus and shoot, and your camera takes several shots while changing the focus slightly. This is very useful for macro photography with a low depth of field. It gives you a number of images suitable for combining with software so more of the subject is in focus.

Guess which Sony camera doesn’t have this feature? The one I just bought. DOH!

My bigger Sony does have it, however.

I don’t think it’s that important. I’m using a manual-focus lens, so I couldn’t do it with this lens anyway. A lot of people get great results with this lens.

Things keep improving. I’m learning more about real photography where the dial is not set to “AUTO” all the time. I’m really enjoying the editing. I don’t know why it’s so relaxing.

I think I should be able to produce some pretty good stuff before the month is out.

A Lot of Money, That Is

The macro photography journey continues.

I got me a Laowa lens that was supposed to be fantastic for macro, and I also got real and bought a Sony a6400. I need to quit dividing my time between the Sonyverse and the Canonverse, and it seems pretty clear the Sonyverse is better. I don’t want to have to speak the languages of two manufacturers, because I don’t shoot often enough to keep my memory refreshed. I also got an a6400 because it was time to admit I needed a Sony APS-C camera for travel. I am probably never going to lug the A7IV around the world with its heavy lenses.

Yesterday, I tried shooting a tiny fly on a leaf, and it was frustrating. A Youtube guy said to use focus peaking, which is a weird feature through which cameras guess which parts of an image are in focus and paint them with bright colors in your display. The bug and the leaf lit up, and I thought everything was in focus, but in truth, very little was.

I have been told to use a tripod and try focus stacking. A tripod makes focusing easier. Focus stacking means taking several photos focused at different distances and using computer trickery to merge them into one image that has more stuff in focus than any single source image.

My best tripods cost about $20 and $25, and I got them in about 2004 and 2020
It is not ready for this kind of work. The camera, lens, and flash are light, but the tripod can’t handle the weight. It allows the camera to droop gradually toward the ground. I managed to get some shots, but this tripod has to go.

The tripod was inadequate, but it made focusing a lot easier. I got all sorts of color from the focus peaking. Then I looked at the images, and the depth of field was still no good. I got some gorgeous shots, but the focus was subpar.

I have to get a real tripod. K&F Concepts makes a cheap one that seems to work for some reviewers, and Vanguard makes a more expensive one that appears to be a more solid choice.

I have free Affinity editing software, and I checked to see if it does focus stacking. It does. So now I have to take some appropriate photos and try it out. It is conceivable I could do it with the $25 tripod, but I don’t know yet.

I don’t know if Affinity is good at focus stacking, but if it isn’t, finding something else won’t be hard.

The tripod I used today sometimes held steady long enough for me to fool with camera and flash settings, so I was able to get some okay exposures. That was a big step forward. I have watched tutorials about the flash, but I forget things, so I will have to watch again. It seems to have a mind of its own.

I am getting truly beautiful photos, even if they are seriously flawed, and I’m very gung-ho about macro. I think I’m less than a week away from a few photos that will make me very, very happy.

I’m also going to shoot other stuff. I am used to using a phone or shooting in aperture mode, so my understanding of what really works when I go manual is not what it should be. I have been trying to get good shots of my son before he is so old he gets mad at me and drives home.

Doing all this makes me appreciate phones more. I don’t know who designed my phone so it does such a good job making me look like a great photographer, but he must be a genius.

Yeshua Never Said he Was the Way, the Opinion, and the Life

I was awake for hours last night. God showed me various things. For one, I have not been leading my family as I should.

I am not making my wife sit down in the living room every day, in the middle of the day instead of just before bed, to pray, study, and praise God. Sometimes we go all the way to bedtime before we pray together. We have a routine of praying after we get up, but I have not been enforcing it well.

I haven’t been speaking blessings over my wife and son every day. I should be doing that. Look how it worked out for Isaac.

I’m not decisive enough. I need to be in touch with God to get help with decisions. I shouldn’t consult my wife so much, when she is looking for leadership, not discussions.

God reminded me of some things.

Eve was the first rebel in the Bible. She was the first idolater and witch. She was the first drug pusher. She was the first feminist.

Adam failed to lead his wife. Perhaps she would have rebelled anyway, but we will never know, because he let her down.

It’s unfortunate, but most modern people have no idea drugs have historically been associated with witchcraft. By “witchcraft,” I mean all idolatrous practices that involve serving evil spirits and using them to satisfy our corrupt desires. Wicca. Voodoo. All the pagan religions that openly involve spirits.

Tobacco is a drug, and it was used by Indians in their religions, all of which were witchcraft. Marijuana came to us via Old World witches. Witches have used mushrooms in spirit worship.

The forbidden fruit was a drug. Like the worst popular drugs we have today, it came from a plant. It altered minds. A plant that alters minds is a drug. The forbidden fruit is one of many. Opiates, pot, coke, psilocybin, mescaline, and even LSD come from plants.

I am going to write in generalizations now. Generalizations are valid and useful. Citing counterexamples to debunk valid generalizations is sophistry. God himself speaks in generalizations. Read the Bible and see.

God also reminded me that women are the leaders in Satan’s army now. They have fought for feminism, homosexuality, fornication, drug abuse, idolatry, and socialism much harder than men. Go to a botanica, and what do you see? Men lining up to buy black candles? No. Women. Join a cult, and who do you see standing around you? Mostly women.

Men have abandoned their role as leaders because fornication is accepted and expected now. We are supposed to lead and accept the fact that we will not always be popular. Instead, we flatter and manipulate women to get them into bed. Naturally, they end up behaving like the fatherless. What were we to expect from them?

We can’t complain if we don’t accept the blame for our part in the catastrophe.

Women love homosexuals and homosexuality. Many women say they wish normal men could be like them. They wish we would be emotional and prone to crying. They wish we loved dancing the way they do. They wish we were excited about shoes and clothes. They wish we hated shooting, hunting, military service, and normal diets including meat.

Many women think it’s important to feminize men. To bring out a “feminine side” that doesn’t really exist. As though masculinity were an act, but prancing around like Liberace or Peter Allen reveals our true selves.

I have a baby son. He is as masculine as can be. He beats on things with his fists. He is fascinated by objects. He is rough and full of energy. I didn’t teach him any of that. It came with the package God designed. It’s going to continue.

It’s common for an American woman to have a husband and a homosexual friend to gossip with, and for her to wish the husband was more like him.

I had a girlfriend who teamed up with another woman and tried to get me and the woman’s boyfriend to go to a gay bar. I said they just wanted us to sit at a table and buy them drinks while they danced with homosexuals who loved dancing and wouldn’t try anything sexual. They admitted I was right. It was pretty insulting. It was extremely selfish and manipulative. It was contemptuous. Of course, I didn’t go. This is an example of the kind of thing I’m talking about.

My friend, who wasn’t really a friend, ended up marrying the other girl. I pity him.

Women vote for everything God hates. They vote for Democrats. They put Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden in office. They voted for the far-leftists in Congress. They vote for those who persecute the church and the Jews. They love socialism, because it makes the government the reliable husband they can’t find.

God told me this: if you and your husband don’t vote the same, how are you not a house divided?

BOOM.

What did Yeshua say about a house divided? It can’t stand. It’s built on sand, so it has no foundation.

If you vote to counter your husband, you make him and your entire house powerless. Is that supposed to be a good thing? A house that produces no net votes has no power.

Recently, Democrats put out an ad telling women to vote against their husband’s candidates. They were pitting women against their God-given leaders, with whom they were supposed to be one flesh. They were attacking their marriages.

If you can’t agree on the best candidates for political office, you are out of agreement, generally. You are outside God’s plan, and you are bringing curses on your family.

My wife and I visited Singapore. We were in a mall. An Israeli guy had a cosmetic business, selling ridiculous potions and fake medicines that were supposed to make women beautiful. He had a local girl working for him to hook customers, and she descended on my wife.

They convinced her she should try this expensive stuff, which I had to pay for. I was standing right there beside her, and they ignored me. They must have read Genesis 3.

Fortunately, the Holy Spirit spoke to me. I said they were trying to pit my wife against me, so why should I support them? I got very angry. God had given me a wonderful wife who was full of the Holy Spirit, and this mall huckster was trying to drive a wedge between us that would threaten my marriage. He was pushing us in the direction of divorce.

I explained this to my wife later, and she understood. Now I am very sensitive about anyone who tries to persuade my wife to do anything while excluding me. After all, who did the same thing in Eden?

Satan didn’t come up to Adam and Eve and say, “I’m glad I caught you guys together, because I have a great limited-time offer I know you’ll be interested in. And there’s a coupon.”

Satan is a real bastard. There is no other way to put it. He is pure malice. His time in hell and his time in the flames will be the best times for humanity. He wants to destroy the best things in your life. He wants you in agony. The people who tempt your wife in his place are not looking out for you. The girlfriends who collect your secrets tell you your wife is too good for you. The gay hairdresser who tells you how to manipulate him. The salesmen who tell you your husband is cheap and selfish. The astrologers. The people who sell crystals. The palm readers. The lesbian preachers.

What I’m writing will not make me friends, and it will offend people. I don’t care. If you’re offended, it means you’re against God and against marriage. You’re trying to harm my wife and me. You’re trying to harm my baby son.

You should be offended. I hope you’re offended. I want you out of my life if you can’t listen. Get lost. I hope you never come back. I don’t need you. I’m sick of people like you. I need God and my wife, and my family needs me.

Your opinions are not valid or important. They are excrement. They’re like excrement from people who have fatal contagious diseases. Go and die from your disease far away from us, if you can’t listen.

God never worried about hurting people’s feelings. He never said, “I’d like to destroy Sodom for the good of mankind, but people will say I’m judgmental and homophobic. They won’t give me likes. I’ll be shadowbanned.” He poured out the fire and brimstone, killed hundreds of thousands of people, and the world was better for it.

I have repented, and I plan to do better, starting today. We will take over this house for God. We will get down on our faces in front of our son, and he will grow up to know this is normal. We are not going to live like nominal Christians who die and wake up in hell, surprised. We will show God love and appreciation instead of treating him like a washing machine and a VD clinic that gives free shots.

Spending More Money is Always the Answer

I plan to try to take more macro photos today. I am determined to figure it out. I have learned that if you want extremely beautiful, compelling, or interesting subjects, macro wins hands down. There are more small things than big things. You should be able to find excellent subjects in your own house, if you are satisfied with very small objects.

I have decided to upgrade my backup camera, and I don’t mean the camera on the rear of my car. I think I was stupid to try to make do with an old DSLR instead of getting a decent mirrorless during my last upgrade. Now I am correcting that mistake.

I don’t have to ask my wife if she thinks it’s a good idea. She always tells me not to worry about what I spend. I say I don’t want her to end up working at IHOP. She says God will take care of her.

Two years ago, when I decided to get a real camera for family photo purposes, I already had an ancient Canon 350D with 8 megapixels. It was not a bad camera, but I couldn’t get really sharp photos with it, and it was generally not as good as 2023 or even 2015 cameras. The screen was bad. It needed a lot more light. It was a 2005 camera.

I got a Sony A7IV, which, to me, is a Bentley of a camera. To a pro, it’s more like a Jetta, but I considered it a splurge. It’s full-frame. It has zillions of features. The lens selection is crazy. It’s easy to get great photos and videos with it.

My wife and I were still traveling a lot, and when I packed for trips, I learned that you have to be a very serious guy to take an A7IV with you on vacation. It is heavy. They lenses are big. If it’s stolen, it’s a big hit.

I had a Sony vlogging camera, but it’s not great. I don’t get fantastic stills with it. The lens can’t be changed. It overheats and turns off without warning while shooting video (that cost us dearly). I’m not sure I should ever use it again. It’s very convenient, but it doesn’t do much a phone will not do just as well.

My Canon had a lens I liked. I thought it would be smart to buy a newer but still old Canon that would take the lens. I bought a 200D, which was made in around 2017. It had lots of helpful features. It had zillions of megapixels.

Then I did something that blew my whole “bargain” theory out of the water. I got two new lenses for the 200D. One replaced the old Sigma lens that had made me think buying the 200D was smart. DOH!

We took the 200D on trips, and it was okay. It was lighter than the big Sony; so much lighter I actually used it. I got nice photos and videos. On the other hand, I now had two ecosystems, so I had to speak both Sony and Canon. I had to remember which camera could or could not do certain things, because the 200D was DSLR, not mirrorless. The 200D could not be zoomed during video shooting with a remote. Learning that was a real bummer.

I have been immersed in baby-related activities for over a year, and I have spent very little time with the A7IV and 200D. We are stabilizing now, so I got my gear out, arranged and sorted it, and started shooting macro. I found I had to use new features on both cameras. I had to use two flashes. There were useful features the 200D lacked.

I decided to do what Porsche should have done in the early Sixties instead of doubling down on stupid and continuing to make troublesome rear-heavy cars: I admitted fault. I gave up on the 200D and also on Canon. I’m getting a Sony a6400, which is a mirrorless camera which is lighter than the A7IV. Of course, I have to get a few lenses, and that adds to the pain. I can try to work with adaptors, but life is short, and I have already cheaped myself out of enough good photographic experiences.

I thought the a6400 was a good compromise between frugality and getting features that would be satisfactory for the next decade or so.

I looked at used cameras, but the discounts weren’t great, and the a6400 comes bundled with a lens I want, plus some other good stuff, at a nice price. I bought new.

While I was working on picking out a camera and two lenses, I read other people’s reviews. In particular, I looked at reviews of Laowa Venus lenses. Laowa is one of those Chinese optical companies that have been giving companies like Sigma and Tamron fits by making pretty darned good lenses for bad-lens prices. Not always the best, but often too good to turn down.

While I was checking out macro lenses, I had a realization: there a lot of very experienced, highly trained, bad photographers out there. It made me feel I had been selling myself short.

I have seen all sorts of shots on the web recently, and most were posted by people who thought they had gotten great results. Maybe 80% of the time, they were shots I would either delete or keep to myself. Bad composition was the biggest sin. After that, I noticed photos that were too bland and uniform; not enough color or brightness variation. I also noticed that most people were happy with photos that weren’t very sharp at all. Also, people took shots that either had boring subjects or seemed to have no subjects at all. Are we supposed to look at the island way off in the middle of the lake or the little crooked tree on the island?

Some people were posting sublime, eye-popping shots that made me feel I was destined to lead a life of utter inferiority, and I was glad to see those, because they showed me I should improve. The others were the kind of shots that make you try to think of polite things to say. “Everything in the shot is kind of orange, isn’t it? That’s certainly…interesting.”

So how much can you tell about a piece of equipment if people who use it post bad shots? A bad lens can make bad photos, but it’s not easy to create really good shots with an objectively bad lens. If a person’s photos are good, you know the lens must be okay, but if they’re awful, you don’t learn much about it at all.

Here is how I feel about photos: if a shot is good, you know it almost instantly. It grabs you. To me, this quality is more important than focus or obeying rules.

When I’m editing shots, I move selector buttons back and forth, and when a photo is right, I suddenly feel it and stop moving them. I don’t have any rules. When the photo looks right, it sort of yells at me and tells me to stop.

So…the people who take very bad photos with very good equipment and think they’re wonderful…are they just too proud to look for instruction, or is it an incurable lack of innate talent? I guess sometimes it’s both, and sometimes it’s just a talent void.

I know I can take very good photos. Can I create great photos? When I ask that, I mean great photos that aren’t lucky shots. Anyone can get lucky.

I know nearly nothing about photography, even after all these years. I haven’t worked at it. I make almost no use of filters because I don’t know how. I don’t know how to work with white balance. Someone told me about stacking software. Don’t know anything. I don’t know how to use fill flash. The list is almost endless. I can’t do a whole lot of the things a real photographer can do, but I can do good work within that limitation, and I should be able to improve somewhat.

I wish I understood editing software. Seems like every program has 5,000 functions, and I understand 4.

I wonder if I could find a useful course. Maybe there are online courses for people who are beyond being told what an f-stop is but not capable of anything advanced.

Now, of course, I’ll sell the Canon stuff and try to mitigate the pounding I took when buying the new Sony.

Yeah, right. I know me. I’ll find a reason to keep it.

I’ll post another macro from yesterday. The depth of field could be better, the subject matter is okay but not great, and I felt there was a limit to what I could do to improve the composition.

MORE

I got a few shots today.

I tried to keep the f-stop at 18, and I kept the speed at 1/160.

I believe my biggest issue today was focus. I used the A7IV’s focus peaking, and it really failed me.

First, a peach blossom I shot. I believe I need to jack up the ISO, because things come out a bit dark, and the color is bleached out. Nonetheless, I like this better than the results I got yesterday.

It looks a little better at full size, but it is not perfect.

Second, a fly on a magnolia leaf. These guys were all over the leaves. I am considering smearing the leaves with a piece of tuna or something to leave a smell that will draw more bugs.

This is a very small bug, like 3/16″ long.

As you can see, the focus is poor. This is true even though the focus peaking lit up all over this guy. I got a bunch of shots like this, and they’re all useless. I don’t know if I need to use the feature that blows things up for focusing, or what. The person I watched in order to learn macro says not to do that.

A tripod won’t work unless the bugs sit still, and that won’t happen.

I got a lot of bad shots of some blossoms, so I deleted them.

It’s difficult to press the camera’s button without ruining composition and moving the lens off to the side or up or down.

Anyway, I made some progress.

I Never Did Mind About the Little Things

I am fooling with macro photography today.

I am starting to think the Canon 200D is not all that great for macro. It lacks focus peaking, and you can’t set the temperature manually without a lot of grief. Even then, you’re guessing. Maybe I’m wrong, though.

Today I decided to use the Sony A7IV I rarely take out of the closet. Maybe I was stupid to spend so much. I really thought I would be using it all the time for baby photos, but the phone has turned out to be more than adequate, and it’s always handy. I don’t have to take it out of a bag and re-read a manual.

I used a Sigma 105mm F2.8 DG DN Macro Art lens. This is a pretty decent lens, so I had high hopes.

Setting up the camera turned out to be a royal pain. At first, the monitor was dark all the time. I found out there was a setting that forced the monitor to show me what it thought the photos would be like, and because I was using flash, it showed me darkness. The camera didn’t know I had a flash attached, which is weird, considering all the other things it knows.

It also has a maddening feature that magnifies things drastically when you try to focus manually. One second, you’re looking at a flower you want to shoot, and the next, the flower is IN YOUR FACE SO FAR YOU CAN SEE THE INSIDE OF THE ROOTS. You lose the shot every time. I had to fix that.

The exposure was too low. The ISO was too low. I finally got the camera to work well enough to produce images, however. They are not spectacular. I think they are underexposed. But the focus is much better than yesterday, with greater depth of field. I kept the f-stop pretty high.

I’ll post a couple of shots. The flower is under an inch across, and the bolt head is around 5/8″ in diameter.

The detail is not great. I don’t know if that’s because the ambient light was low. I would have assumed using a flash from a few inches away would make ambient light irrelevant, but maybe it doesn’t. The sun was fading when I shot these photos.

I left the flower photo somewhat dark. I don’t think every photo has to be bright. Given the exposure, I don’t think it would have been possible to brighten it up much without making it look weird.

I think I’ll get on top of this soon. It should be a very rewarding experience.

Mankind Fails Again

What a week. An antisemitic Muslim socialist who awaits the 12th Imam, who he thinks will turn the world Muslim and make the rest of us dhimmis, is now the mayor of New York, a city so heavily identified with Jews that Jesse Jackson calls it “Hymietown.” A nut who said he wanted to put two bullets in the head of his GOP opponent and said his small children should also be killed is now the Attorney General of Virginia.

Here’s something I haven’t seen anyone talking about: if Republicans and Jews had voted for Andrew Cuomo, Zohran Mamdani would have lost. Hmm.

About 100,000 Jews voted for a man who is on the side of those who want to put an end to the Jewish state; their only lifeboat. The worst enemies of the Jewish people have always been Jewish, just as Christians have always been the most effective enemies of Yeshua.

As for conservatives, I think it’s fair to say we are seeing a powerful wave of antisemitism on the right. As a Babylon Bee sketch character said concerning the left, hating Jews is cool now. That is literally true in the mainstream left, and it is becoming true on the right.

It’s a shame Americans are so young. If the average age were 60, more of us would remember a more-normal, less-insane America, so we have the background to understand how deranged the populace has become.

The average age of a US citizen is 39. That is pretty young, in a world where a person who isn’t a total health idiot can expect to live to be over 80. A person who is 39 now was only 21 when the first Iphone was released and people started seeing the world through their phones and engaging with it with their thumbs.

About a third of us are 25 or under. They are generally like loaves of bread that haven’t been baked long enough. They have no idea how to look for the truth. Their morals are appalling. They get their news from random nuts on social media sites and also from the withering MSM, which is very dishonest and hostile concerning Christians, Jews, Israel, conservatives, men, and America itself.

The kids have no idea what a normal country looks like. They don’t see how America has changed, and they don’t realize how much healthier it used to be.

What is happening in the US parallels what is happening around the world, and it’s happening for the same reason. Israel’s allies are vanishing, we are moving toward a world that is almost universally antisemitic, and it’s because mankind rejected the Holy Spirit. The Jews claimed to accept Yahweh but rejected Yeshua and the Holy Spirit. Christians claimed to accept Yahweh and Yeshua but rejected the Holy Spirit.

To reject any part of the Trinity is to reject every part, and there will be a price to pay.

Only the Holy Spirit keeps people sane. If you’re not spending time with him every day, you can be made to believe anything. If you think Caitlyn Jenner is a woman and Donald Trump is a serial pedophile rapist, you’re listening to demons, and you are probably lost forever. If you think the pandemic was planned, you’re in the same boat.

We are seeing things that were not possible in 2000 America. Millions of us now admire a sick, disgusting boy named Nick Fuentes, who says he loves Hitler. If figures can be trusted, Candace Owens has over 7 million X followers. She repeats classic libels as though they were true, and self-described Christians tell her she is doing God’s work.

Not long ago, these two bigots would have been considered radioactive. No one would have given them platforms. Owens would be working in a cubicle somewhere, or she would be a liberal pundit who was careful not to step on Jewish toes. Fuentes would be working at Walmart. The guy the other employees didn’t want to sit with at lunch.

Someone who pays for ads is supporting these two. I guess antisemitism is now good business. Doesn’t that mean that someone somewhere was paid to do a survey asking people questions to find out whether it would bother them to see products associated with people like Owens? Advertisers don’t roll over in bed without a survey. Surveys are what got conservatives and gun enthusiasts demonetized on Youtube.

Americans must have have given responses that encouraged advertising companies to associate their clients’ products with hating Jews.

I’ll say what I always say: if it’s this bad now, what will it be like in 6 months?

The prophecies are coming true. I know people say Christians have been making apocalyptic pronouncements since the day after the crucifixion, but we live in a time like no other. For the first time, nations all over the globe are turning against the Jews, as the prophets said they would. It’s a new thing. The UN persecutes Israel. In 1948, the UN established Israel. The prophets say all the nations of the world will come against Jerusalem. That was never on the table until now.

The church is collapsing in the US. It collapsed a long time ago in Europe. There is no place on Earth that hasn’t been evangelized. Not China. Not India. Not Japan. Not the Muslim world. There is no nation that is a candidate for a future revival that will give Christians and Jews a refuge. America is going to abandon Christians and Jews, and then there will be nothing to prevent the prophecies from playing out.

Look for conservatives, including “evangelicals,” to adopt antisemitism as the dominant policy soon. I think three years will get it done.

I don’t think it would be hard to get J.D. Vance onto the wrong side, if he isn’t there already. He’s a Catholic who married a Hindu. Here is Christianity 101: don’t marry a pagan. Vance has zero revelation, he doesn’t know the Holy Spirit, and that means he is open to anything.

Maintream Americans weren’t like this in the past. Candace Owens isn’t the first nut to grab a microphone and squirm with rage while ranting against innocent Jews, but her support is unprecedented. So is Fuentes’. So is Tucker Carlson’s. Megyn Kelly is also turning a blind or at least severely astigmatic eye toward antisemitism.

No one should be surprised to see blatantly hateful and dishonest people win elections. It’s normal now. No one should be surprised to see uncloseted antisemites receive wealth and acclaim. No one should be surprised to see Jews help them and vote for them. Jews have been empowering their enemies since Genesis. For Christians, it has only been since Acts.

The World is Full of Tiny Models Who Never Need Rehab

I got all excited about photography yesterday, so today I went outside and tried to do some macro shots. Macro photography is photography involving little-bitty subjects like bugs and drops of water.

Back when I got my first DSLR, I gave macro a shot, and I got some photos I liked, but they were not amazing, and I did not keep up with it. I had an all-purpose 17-70mm Sigma zoom lens that happened to work okay for macro, but I didn’t know what I was doing, and I don’t recall working hard to educate myself.

When I got married and had to think about family photos, I bought a nice full-frame Sony camera, and I kept my Sigma lens and replaced the camera instead. Probably a bad idea, since I was going to replace the lens anyway, and I suppose a new mirrorless Sony would have been smarter.

I liked the idea of having a lighter, smaller, much cheaper backup camera.

I upgraded to a 2017 Canon 200D, which, oddly, was much more advanced than the 350D I bought 20 years ago. Shouldn’t the numbers get higher, not lower? I also picked up a wide-angle lens for the Canon as well as a better macro lens.

I have a very good macro lens for the Sony, but I like the Canon because it’s way lighter.

I also got on-camera flashes, which you need for macro shots, and I also got a diffuser, which is a big fabric pancake thing that, aptly, diffuses flash light.

I did a little macro work, and if memory serves, it was all bad. I did some studying so I could improve, but I did not follow up.

Today I tried to refresh my meager macro education, and I got out there and took some photos. It went poorly.

The guy I looked to to get me up to speed is a Youtuber whose bag is macro. He said to shoot at ISO 200, use a shutter speed of 1/200, and use f8 for an aperture. He also gave some other tips.

I tried doing what he said. I put my diffuser on. I set my flash up the way he said to. I adjusted my camera to his liking, to the degree that its firmware would let me, and I looked for little things to shoot.

The first thing I went after was a peach blossom. It is probably under an inch from one end to the other. I will show you one of the better shots.

The focus is heinous. Some bits are almost sharp. The rest looks the way everything has looked to Keith Richards since 1962.

I didn’t do anything to that shot except cropping, resizing, and exporting to JPG.

I kept trying. There were some things I could not photograph at all. I’ll post the best shots I got. I cropped them and edited them with Affinity, which is a great program you don’t need a Ph.D. to operate. Forget Photoshop. Maybe it’s great for pros. I don’t know. Affinity is working better for me than Photoshop ever thought of working, and it’s free.

If you know anything at all about cameras, you can see that my depth of field was inadequate. There was no way to make it work. Focus on the bug’s head, and you lose the tail. Focus on the flower, and you miss the bug.

I kept fiddling with the lens, and then I came inside to see if I had anything I could save. You are looking at the best of it.

Here’s something interesting: the first guy has posted his work on the web. I just looked at it. The focus is awful. Half a bug in focus. The other end hazy. Apparently, he is not a very good photographer.

I found another Youtuber, and she made a video about people’s macro mistakes. High on the list: using a low f-stop.

Wow.

She says to go to f22 or f28 or whatever it takes to get the shot. She’s right. Her photos are very, very good.

So why does the other guy keep giving bad advice? I wonder if he needs to be fitted for glasses.

The lens I was using is a Sigma 70mm 1:2.8 DG Macro DG EX, and it’s supposed to be very good for macro, and not just because it has “Macro” in the name. The camera has 24 megapixels. It’s not the problem. The instruction is the problem.

I was going to take the Sony out next to see if I could do better, but I don’t think I will. I plan to use the Canon again and start out at F22, the highest setting. I think I’ll do much better.

I like macro for a lot of reasons.

1. There are probably millions of times as many macro subjects around us as ordinary subjects.

2. Macro subjects don’t cost anything. You don’t have to create backdrops or whatever. You definitely won’t have to pay bugs.

3. Macro subjects aren’t whiny and uncooperative, and they won’t call the police on you or beat you up, which could happen if you do street photos of other people.

4. Macro is perfect for introverts. You never have to accost anyone or ask permission. Or have any of that nasty old human interaction.

5. You can do a lot more macro shots in the time it takes to do ordinary shots. You can walk around your yard and take dozens in an hour.

I expect things to go well once I start doing what actually works.

Let Your Walls be Your Testimony to God’s Goodness

I thought I would post some good advice for anyone who wants to decorate the walls of a house.

You can spend big money for good art. You can spend less but too much on bad art your kids will throw out. You can make your own art, which is great if you have the ability. Another possibility: have your own photos blown up, and put them in nice frames.

Today I received a frame from Amazon, and now this photo is on our wall, 20″ wide.

We have other big photos on our wall. I have 4 photo posters that are 24″ high. Travel shots of the wife and me.

Ordinarily, I would not put a shot of my son on the web, but you can’t really make out his features from this photo of a photo.

I didn’t spend a ton on the frame. I got it from Amazon for $50. I could have spent maybe $150 at a frame place. This frame looks very good. The front is plastic, not glass, but I can always go buy a pane of glass if I want to. You would have to touch it to tell the difference.

I took the shot with my phone, and it’s a very good photo. It shows you can’t use limited equipment as an excuse not to try.

In 2023, before upgrading my cameras, I took a shot of a weed in my yard. I used my ancient (!) Canon 350D Rebel, which is about 20 years old. It would be easy for a photographer to convince himself it wasn’t possible to do anything worthwhile with that old 8-megapixel camera, but it’s not true. There are some things you can do with a given setup, and there are some things you can’t do, and many of the things you can do are well worth doing.

Below, you will see the photo I took. It’s an elephantopus carolinianus blossom (Carolina elephant’s foot). It’s a useless weed, and it’s ugly from a distance, but the flowers are really something. The flower is around 3/8″ across.

I blew the shot up so it’s 24″ high, and I ordered a frame to fit. I think it will look neat on an upstairs wall; a guest (or child’s) bedroom. Not the greatest photo on Earth, but very pleasant to look at, and it’s mine. I took it on my own land. If I croak, my family will feel bad about throwing it in a dumpster.

I need to spend more time using my better cameras. The baby interrupted just about every process in my life.

You’re Inadequate

Yesterday I wrote about a revelation God gave me: the 7 churches of the Revelation, though very important to Yeshua, did not have their own buildings. They were not big organizations like the Southern Baptists or the Catholic Church. There were no popes. They met in houses. The many people who now claim everyone has to belong to an organization and go to a building once a week are mistaken, unless Yeshua was mistaken.

He considered house churches important enough to feature them in an appearance that was to be recorded in the final book of the Bible. He didn’t say they were doing poorly because they didn’t have enough members. His criticisms never mentioned buildings or the sizes of their congregations. He didn’t tell them that if they pleased him, he would get them nice buildings.

Today, I’m thinking about this: John and the Apostles had no New Testament.

At some point, people started writing the gospels down, and the authors of the rest of the New Testament gradually produced the rest of the books. Before the New Testment was compiled and approved, the post-Yeshua scripture Christians had access to was very limited, if they had anything at all.

I should also add that Adam, Seth, Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Job, Abraham, and Moses didn’t have the Old Testament. Neither did Melchizedek.

Bibles are very important, but you’re not supposed to be dependent on the Bible. You’re supposed to get to know God and have him live inside you so you learn from the Holy Spirit. If all the Bibles on Earth suddenly disappeared, would you be unable to continue in the faith? Would you be unable to evangelize and baptize? If so, you have a problem.

Sooner or later, you should start living more by revelation than by what you read, and the Bible should serve more as confirmation than teaching. You should reach the point where you know certain things because God told them to you, and then you see them confirmed when you remember or read the Bible.

If you can’t do what Christians are supposed to do without belonging to a church, going to church weekly, swallowing all the doctrine your church teaches without question, and reading the Bible all the time, you’re in a bad situation.

I always think about John, who told us we don’t need men to teach us. This is a passage preachers ignore. It’s a threat to their power, prestige, and wealth, and I think most of them don’t understand it and don’t believe it. Most preachers don’t actually believe what the Bible says. These days, Christianity is more like a philosophy than a religion.

Actually, it’s more of a business, and treating it like a philosophy is a way of offending fewer potential customers. Denominations are like the ad agencies that refuse to monetize Youtube videos they think might upset consumers.

If you want to see a preacher squirm, ask him about dinosaurs. Ask him about the flood. Most of them think Genesis is a fairy tale, so why are they Christians? Are they Christians at all? Can you say you believe in Yeshua, who called himself the word of God, when you dismiss the written word?

In 1 John 2, John, who was closer to Yeshua than the so-called pope, Peter, explained where heresy and apostasy come from. He wrote about “antichrists.” “Anti” means “instead of.” Antichrists teach doctrine they want you to accept instead of the truth. On the other hand, Yeshua is the truth.

John said that the difference between antichrists and God’s children was that God’s children hear from the Holy Spirit. Paul said the same thing when he said, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”

The Spirit is not a book, by the way. He’s not a set or rules, either, and he’s not a feeling. He’s a being.

In 1 John 2, John said:

Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.

But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.

“Unction” means “anointing.” Look it up.

As God has told me, all authority comes from spending time in the presence of God. Anointing is authority. Speaking in tongues, allowing the Holy Spirit to speak through you to Yahweh, is spending time in God’s presence. The Holy Spirit is God.

Did John literally mean we were omniscient? No. He meant we had the Holy Spirit to tell us everything we needed to know in order to succeed as children of God.

He uses the word “antichrists” to refer to nominal Christians who taught bad doctrine, including preachers. “They went out from us.”

The preachers who became antichrists became so because they didn’t spend time with the Holy Spirit, who would have kept them on course.

Later on, he said:

But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.

And now, little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming.

Who is going to be ashamed at his coming? Yeshua told us.

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?

And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

The people who will be ashamed will be Christians and Jews who denied the Holy Spirit and trusted men, denominations, and their own crooked minds and hearts over him.

By “iniquity,” he means lawlessness. Christians are under the law. We’re under the law of the Holy Spirit. You can build a cathedral, feed the poor, house orphans, and do 15 pilgrimages to Assisi and still be disobedient and unsaved. You’re supposed to do what the Holy Spirit tells you to do. In person. Not just through a book. You’re not supposed to guess and say, “I think God would like it if I did this because it sounds virtuous.”

The other day, I got a fresh confirmation of this while studying the prophets with my wife. We were reading Jeremiah, and somehow we ended up looking at Ezekiel. Ezekiel described what was supposed to happen after the crucifixion. He agreed with John.

Of course he agreed. The Holy Spirit tells everyone the same things. There is never any disagreement. There is no such thing as “healthy debate.” It comes from separation from God. This is why God is a king who hates democracy, not a president.

God mixes things up in the Bible. For example, he addresses David when he is really talking about Yeshua. and he addresses the King of Tyre when he is really talking about Satan. He said the King of Tyre had been in the Garden of Eden, which is not true. In Acts 2, Peter referred to Psalm 16, which said David had ascended to heaven from hell, which was true of Yeshua, not David, who was still with Abraham.

In Ezekiel 36, God speaks to Israel, saying he will gather them and fill them with his spirit, but that never happened. He was talking to future believers, including Christians:

For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.

Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.

And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.

And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.

He will put his Spirit in us and cause us to walk according to his laws, and we will be obedient. That is a reference to the baptism with the Holy Spirit, which was not available to Jews in the time of Ezekiel or any time prior to the events of Acts 2. It’s about all believers who are Spirit-led.

It’s a confirmation of what John said and what God told me.

He said the same thing in the 11th chapter:

Therefore say, Thus saith the Lord God; I will even gather you from the people, and assemble you out of the countries where ye have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel.

And they shall come thither, and they shall take away all the detestable things thereof and all the abominations thereof from thence.

And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh:

That they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

Again, this never happened to the Jews. They continue in rebellion unto this day. They have lived in occupation, servitude, or exile. They are not united by the Holy Spirit, and they admit they have no prophets. Not one.

There are a lot of similar references in the Old Testament.

Look what Yeshua himself said in the book of John:

But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

The Spirit teaches us, and he also reminds us of what Yeshua said, including things that are now scripture, showing how the Holy Spirit is confirmed by the word.

I saw something funny the other day. A Christian named David Wood likes to debate Muslims. He is not Spirit-led, or he wouldn’t spend his life debating. He is a psychopath who tried to murder his father when he was young. Although he has accepted Yeshua and defends Christianity, he says he is still a psychopath.

He was criticizing a Muslim, and he used the Koran to do it. Apparently, there is a passage in there that says that a Christian or Jew who doesn’t accept the whole “book” (Bible), and who agrees instead with man who teaches against the word, that person worships a man.

That amused me, because it’s true. Satan wrote the Koran, but he had to put some truth in it in order to fool people. He included a truth most Christians would hate. It’s a truth that caused a lot of righteous people to be imprisoned, tortured, and burned alive by Catholics.

John told cautioned us against believing men, and he told us the Spirit would teach us, but preachers tell us to join a church, go every week, give us their money, and believe them instead of John. They tell us the Bible, all by itself, contains all the knowledge we will ever need, which is indisputably not true. If the Bible contains everything we need to know, why did James tell us to pray for wisdom? He could have said, “Look it up.”

Have you ever prayed for God to help you make a decision? If so, you were admitting the Bible doesn’t tell us everything we need to know. “Tell me whether I should move to this city.” “Help me choose a job offer.” “Is this woman the one for me?” The Bible doesn’t contain information like that, but the Holy Spirit knows. He’ll tell you anything you need to know. He’ll tell you what to have for lunch.

History is littered with Bible scholars who knew the Bible inside and out and were completely, catastrophically wrong about God, and who led millions to hell. Mormons read the Bible. Knowing the Bible will not get you everything you need.

The Bible is not enough, and it was never intended to be sufficient.

It’s wonderful to see Ezekiel and other Biblical authors confirm what John and the Holy Spirit told me. We search long and hard, trying to find the right path, and many of us find out late in life that we have wasted our existence on wrong beliefs. Knowing I’m on the right course is priceless.

It’s good to have the Holy Spirit on my side, because as the word says, who can be against me? He’s going to keep teaching me and looking after me. I should continue becoming less and less wretched from here on out.

You’re Building on the Wrong Rock

I just got the most interesting revelation, and like all revelation, it seemed obvious after I got it.

Christians love dragging “backslidden” Christians to church. By “backslidden,” I mean any Christian who doesn’t belong to a church or hand a lot of money over to a pastor or priest. They think anyone who is not a church member is “out of fellowship,” they see us as “lost sheep,” and they think we are deluded by pride and demons.

Here is a great question: why was there no big church building in Ephesus?

Don’t bother Googling. I did it for you. There was no big church building there until long after the apostles were dead.

I’ve been to Ephesus. It is decorated with symbols resembling 8-slice pizzas. Circles with several lines across them.

This type of symbol is called an ichthys, which is a word English stole from Greek. It means “fish.” Most of us are more familiar with the icthys we see on car trunks, but the pizza symbol is also an ichthys.

The symbol is supposed to stand for “Yeshua Moshiach, Son of God, Savior.” The lines represent letters.

When you walk through Ephesus, you see pizzas here and there, scratched into public structures. Why?

Ephesian Christians were afraid; that’s why.

The Ephesians of First Century Asia Minor were unpopular, like all true Christians. Christianity was new. Pagans hated Christians. Jews who rejected Yeshua hated Christians. It was dangerous to get together to celebrate Yeshua. As a result, Christians used pizza symbols to announce their presence, and they met in each other’s houses.

BOOM. God drops the mic again. Thank you, Lord.

Scroll forward to 2025, and somehow a Christian who worships Yeshua in his house is illegitimate! The people who are more like the Christians Yeshua decided to call a church in the Revelation are scallywags and truants.

Yes, Yeshua chose to mention cities with house churches, but he didn’t say anything about…Rome. Or Jerusalem, for that matter.

None of the seven cities had big church buildings. Look it up if you want to waste your time.

When God told me the age of the big church was over, he wasn’t talking about a church in decline. Not exactly. He was telling me about a new, better church that would meet in houses and locations of opportunity. It won’t take over the world, because Satan always gets the popular vote, but it is less corrupt by an order of magnitude.

If you meet in a house, you can exclude the people who need to be excluded. The glory hounds. The control freaks. The hypocrites. The denomination-worshipers. The pastor-worshipers. They ruin churches.

People think it’s about building a big tent. It’s not. Exclusion is important. Mindless inclusion is what destroyed the big churches. Go read about Gideon.

I love this. I love getting confirmation that I heard from God when people are trying to correct what he told me. It happens over and over and over.

Sorry. I Take That Back

The other day I wrote about a Christian friend who was mad at me. Another friend insists he’s not, but the texts suggest he is.

You can’t just ask a Christian if he’s mad at you, because they will always say no. You have to piece it together from clues.

You know how we are. “I’m going to pray for you” often means “I want to push your face in.”

He has invited me to a dinner function with other Christian men, on his dime. I accepted, but I was a little reluctant because of the timing and because of my many, many bad experiences with groups of self-identified Christians. Maybe I was rude, but I said I had to make something clear: I was never going to join a church again.

He said he knew that. Seemed a little annoyed, but I can’t really be sure.

I was afraid there was going to be an intervention. Let’s fix the backslider boy!

Some Christians evangelize for Yeshua, but most evangelize for churches. If you’re not going to church, you might as well be a crackhead who performs degrading services in exchange for small change. You have FALLEN AWAY, and they must go seek after the lost sheep.

Church Christians like to say we have to have “coverings.” If you don’t have a pastor, you have no covering, whatever that is. Like you’re doing an EVA without a spacesuit.

Coverings never worked for me. When I was a kid, I never saw a preacher who knew God or knew much of anything about him. They were able to dust off ancient notes and repeat sermons, and some were good at passing out communion and holding raffles and running church carnivals to raise money, but that was about it.

When I became an adult, things didn’t get much better. I had charismatic preachers, and they knew a few things about the Holy Spirit. That was helpful. They didn’t know they were supposed to pray in tongues a lot and receive revelation, however, so they mixed a lot of harmful excrement in with their teaching. Tithing, prosperity offerings, hard work, mindless submission to other human beings…the works.

They also discouraged talk of repentance. At my last church, there was a girl who kept coming in with new illegitimate babies, and they put her on the stage because she sang well. They never asked the obvious question: “When are you going to knock this off?”

The church before that was full of thieves, armed robbers, scammers, rappers, and strippers, and they were only too happy to put unrepentant people in ministry and hold them out as examples. I recall seeing one girl sing while her belly was so big it was like she was looking at the audience over the top of it.

Where there is no repentance, there is no salvation. That’s not me being self-righteous. That’s just how it is.

Most people have no idea what self-righteousness is. Giving useful criticism to others is not self-righteousness. We are required to do it. Yeshua did it and still does. The apostles did it. A self-righteous person doesn’t criticize himself. That’s the definition.

If I added up the hours I’ve spent criticizing myself and repenting this year alone, no one would believe me. God keeps waking me up at night.

Preachers think getting people into churches–their churches–is the most important thing in their lives. They also think that talking about repentance will keep butts out of seats, so they use “judge not” as an excuse to avoid it. They tell people God accepts they just as they are, which is not correct at all. They get lots of butts, but they’re the wrong butts. The wrong-butt people then end up running the church.

God eventually told me the church age was ending. Big churches had failed so catastrophically, he was giving up on them. This was necessary for a number of reasons I’m not going to get into now. God still wants us to assemble together, but you can do that in your backyard. Wherever two or more are gathered in his name, there he is among them.

When I tell people the church age is ending, they don’t like it. I think that must be because they are dependent on their churches, not the Holy Spirit. If they don’t go, they don’t feel God’s presence. They stop feeling clean. They feel like they’re not learning or improving.

It’s not supposed to work that way. You should bring God’s presence with you when you go to church. From your house. From your car. Otherwise, you’re showing up empty-handed.

The Holy Spirit should be with you wherever you are. If he’s not, something is wrong, and it’s disastrously wrong.

I hope they don’t try to drag me to churches. It would be nice to visit a church once in a while, but becoming a slave again and giving them over 10% of my income when I should be helping the poor instead…that will not happen unless I somehow become deranged.

I hope they don’t slander the Holy Spirit. If they ask me what’s happening in my walk, I will just tell them. God told me to stop going to church. God told me to stop tithing. God told me to pray in the Spirit a great deal. God told me preachers compete with the poor for money. God told me I had to do charity. God this and God that. I hope they don’t give me that, “Oh, another one,” grin and start talking about all the people who make up things God supposedly told them.

My friend belongs to the Assemblies of God. This outfit has produced a fair number of bad preachers. People like Swaggart and Bakker. It pushes the prosperity kickback scheme very, very hard. Trinity Church, my old church, was also an AG church.

I used to think the Assemblies of God was a charismatic church that promoted the Holy Spirit, but I found out that wasn’t true. They tell people to be baptized with the Spirit, and they get them started speaking in tongues, but then they stop. It’s like recruiting new soldiers and sending them straight from the recruiting station into battle. No weapons. No training. No communication with officers and instructors.

If you pray in tongues a lot, God WILL give you revelation, and you WILL have testimony. The vast majority of AG people don’t do it. They are there for prosperity, marriage, babies, healing, and the social life. And in many cases, money.

I figured most people in my church would be full of the Holy Spirit and that we would help others fill up. No such luck.

I would say AG people, and most people from charismatic churches, are just greedy Baptists who believe in miracles but don’t actually expect them. Not literally Baptists, but functionally similar. Nominal charismatics.

Nominal charismatics don’t have revelation or testimony, and they scoff at those who do. “I didn’t get it, so you’re not getting it, either.” They assume you’re lying or deceived when you talk about what God does for you.

This is how you can become a lifelong Christian who has never left a charismatic denomination and still end up slandering the Holy Spirit, living in defeat, being puffed up with pride like a bullfrog in mating season, and missing out on enormous blessings.

You can be a missionary, nurse the sick in a hospital in India, wash the feet of the homeless, preach with a bullhorn every day, memorize the whole Bible, smuggle Bibles into godless countries, drive the church bus, coach volleyball at Christian youth camp, lead the choir, compose hymns, and still have a lifestyle of slandering the Holy Spirit and thereby persecuting people who are doing better than you are.

Dormant, stunted charismatics who served churches instead of the Holy Spirit persecuted me at my last two churches. I didn’t have much trouble at all with unbelievers or the voodoo people who infest Miami. Preachers and volunteers made me miserable.

I joked to my friend about God telling me to buy my wife stuff, which is a privilege on both ends. He said Kenneth Copeland claimed God told him to buy his wife an $18 million mansion.

Was he slandering the Holy Spirit? I have to wonder. God really does tell me to buy my wife things. God tells Spirit-led Christians to do all kinds of things.

My wife lived in poverty until God joined us. She washed her clothes in a bucket. Much of the time, she had no hot water. She shared a hovel with two other women. She couldn’t afford to have a lost tooth replaced. To get up to the standard of a normal American women, she needs to be given some things other women here already have. Jewelry, shoes, clothing, medical care, and so on. She should be expected to require above-average expenditures until she levels up.

I’m not Kenneth Copeland. Copeland is a notorious fool and egomaniac who has lied for a living for decades. He’s a nasty person, and it is obvious his sick, worship-like covetousness didn’t come from God. Comparing the two of us would be absurd, and the absurdity is extremely obvious. You can’t miss it unless you want to. Surely my friend was not comparing me to him.

My sense is that he was trying to tell me I was claiming to have a relationship with God that I don’t really have. Like Copeland. If the Assemblies of God is what it should be, no AG member should be skeptical when another claims to hear from God. It should be disturbing when they say they don’t hear from him.

I have noticed that when we’re together, he keeps questioning my words, beliefs, and actions and asking me to defend myself as a Christian. I have never done that to him.

Maybe I’m wrong about the Copeland thing. Benefit of the doubt and so on.

My wife and I saw a funny video the other day. Maybe it wasn’t funny. Copeland had been given a Bentley. He was talking about it. He bowed his head and, in a reverent and highly emotional tone, said, “Ohhhhhhhh, thank you, Jesus!” He sounded like a junkie who had just recovered his stash of heroin after dropping it in a storm drain. It almost sounded sexual. He was overwhelmed with emotion. Over a car. A car no one told God to give him.

I dread going to the dinner for the same reason I avoid Christian forums. My concern is that I may be lectured and “corrected” by people who don’t know anything and who may be motivated by pride.

Christian forums are amazing. They’re like correction demolition derbies. Everyone wants to correct, and it’s not because they want to help or because they want others to avoid making the mistakes they’ve made. It’s because they have Smartest Boy in Class Syndrome. And most of what they say is wrong. Sometimes it ends with, “I’m going to pray for you!”, which, to many Christians, is synonymous with the middle finger.

A long time ago, I learned that I can’t help groups. I have managed to help individuals, but never groups. Satan works through groups.

My young friend Travis, who died in 2020 after a ghetto friend who was showing off a new gun shot him in the chest, thought he would save the black race. He was always mentoring kids. He thought he could save the ghetto, and he wanted to live there while he did it.

I told him that in 20 years, the people he knew would be exactly as they were at the time I was speaking to him. I told him that if he wanted to help, he needed to leave the ghetto and come back on weekends to reach a few people.

The same principle applies to Christians, generally. If you soak in their presence all the time, you will be distracted, misinformed, used, and persecuted. You need to spend a lot of time apart from them and avoid turning them into your consuming club. It’s better to be with a few people here and there.

I’m probably overly concerned. PTSD from past dealings with churches. Maybe I’ll have a great time.

My friend means well. I should appreciate it when people try to help.

One of the great things about my wife is that when I get a revelation that isn’t part of the church-worship belief structure, she never tries to correct me. She never accuses me. She never hands me a woke line in order shame me. She pipes up right away with a scripture confirming what I said, and then we have a discussion in which the Holy Spirit expands on it.

I have one person, on the entire planet, who listens with God’s ear and doesn’t fight with me.

This is a wife’s proper function. If your wife is constantly trying to correct you, or she’s always praying for God to correct you, one of you is married to the wrong person.

In any case, I am going to the dinner. Pray for me. And not in that, “I’m going to pray for you,” kind of way.

Not Every Tramp is a Tramp for the Lord

A friend of mine is mad at me.

I sent him and another friend a link to a Fox News story celebrating slutty Halloween costumes celebrities were wearing. I listed some types of familiar costumes. Slutty nurse. Slutty bride. Slutty vampire. You can finish the list.

He got mad and said I was using crass language, and he said I was using “slut” to “define women.” That’s a false accusation. On his part, I mean. If he meant I was trying to give women a label for the purpose of condemning them, he was wrong. If he meant I was defining actual sluts, meaning individuals who were bona fide sluts, well, okay, he was right. He mentioned the one true judge, meaning I was not entitled to call anyone a whore.

This is an important subject, because whorish women now have unprecedented power in America. We literally make them billionaires, and we make them co-parents by encouraging our kids to watch them and listen to them.

Back when I was an armorbearer at Trinity Church, or maybe it was right after I left, Kim Kardashian visited. I was not present. The other armorbearers had to put her in a front-row seat and treat her like Yeshua himself. She was honored during the service, and afterward, “pastor” Rich Wilkerson went to the Internet to post a photo showing everyone that the goddess had visited HIS church, and he wrote, “What a great friend.”

Kim Kardashian is a slut. She is the most famous and powerful slut in America. Bigger than Madonna ever was. A slut is a woman with loose sexual morals and/or a woman who has many sexual partners.

She made a porn video and sold it on the web. Her co-star says her mother was in the room, directing the video. She has posed for Playboy. She has posed naked in other places. She has never repented.

This is what comes of misapplying “judge not” and bowing and scraping in order to put butts in church seats regardless of what kind of people the butts belong to.

Rich Wilkerson teaches tithing and giving extravagant offerings. If he can get a billionaire to join his trashy church, he can cash in like never before. I believe this is why he sucks up to rich people. He puts them in the green room behind the stage and fawns on them. I never saw a person in need treated like that at Trinity, but I did see him ask us to shoo them away.

As to my friend, I pointed out a few things, but I didn’t convince him. I’m not angry, but he pretty clearly is. I’m a little frustrated, but I’m not angry.

First of all, every word in the Bible can be attributed to every part of the Trinity. They are unified. If Yeshua or the Holy Spirit or Yahweh said it, or an anointed person said it while God spoke through him, it can be attributed to all three of them. Yeshua wrote the Ten Commandments, for example. It’s not like Yahweh wrote them and Yeshua said, “Wow, that seems pretty harsh to me.”

Also, I’m entitled to use any word an anointed person used, because as a Holy-Spirit-baptized Christian who listens to the the Holy Spirit, I am anointed. Anointing refers to authority. As long as I’m not out of line, and I have heard from the Holy Spirit, I have authority. It’s not like Paul is a general and I’m a private. We both answer directly to God.

With that in mind…

The word “whore” and synonyms and related words are all over the Bible, in both testaments, spoken and written by God himself as well as prophets and apostles. “Whorish woman.” “Whoring.” “Whoredom.” “Harlot.” “Whoremonger.”

It gets worse. God called Israel an ass in heat.

If you want to see something shocking, read Ezekiel 23:20. “Flesh” is a reference to private parts.

There is no point in referring to the Old Testament any further to prove “whore” is an acceptable and valuable term. Anyone who disputes the fact that “whore” and related terms are all over it is either lying or unfamiliar with the Bible. It’s like saying there are no mice in Disney cartoons.

As for the New Testament, which is where flesh-led Christians find a Yeshua who never judges and is basically a gay version of Buddha, well, hold onto your socks.

First Corinthians 6:15-16:

Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take

the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid.

What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.

Ephesians 5:5:

For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

First Timothy 1:9-11:

Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,

For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;

According to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.

Hebrews 11:31:

By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace.

Rahab was an ancestor of Yeshua, and the Bible still calls her a whore, which she was at the time she helped the spies.

Hebrews 13:4:

Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.

Revelation 17:1:

And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters:

Revelation 17:15:

And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.

Revelation 17:16:

And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.

Revelation 19:2:

For true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.

Revelation 21:8:

But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

Revelation 22:15:

For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.

It is interesting that we are still “allowed” by the church to call murderers, thieves, liars, and other habitual sinners exactly what they are, and we can even say “adultery,” but we are not supposed to say “whore” or “pervert.”

Why is that? Satan shapes the language of the Spirit-denying church. He is using whores and perverts to destroy our connection to God, so he has banned terms that describe them accurately.

People claim words like “slut” and “whore” are derogatory in some special way, but that’s only because they describe people others find contemptible due to their behavior. The behavior made the terms distasteful. Call whores “sex workers” long enough, and “sex worker” will come to be considered offensive.

When I think about the way words fall into disapproval, I always think about “moron” and “imbecile,” which came to us from medicine. They were legitimate terms used to describe people with terrible problems. Naturally, they came to be used as insults. Then we were told to use another medical term: “retarded.” That became an insult. Then we were told to say “mentally challenged.” Soon after, I heard a kid ask another kid, “Are you challenged?”

When Yeshua called people fools, which he did several times in the Bible, he used a Greek word. The noun form is “more,” and it means an unintelligent person. It’s where “moron” comes from.

There is only so much you can do to make language pleasant to hear.

It’s not self-righteous to say “whore.” It’s self-righteous to say you are too good to say “whore.” John and Paul said it. Am I better than them?

Why do I not mention Yeshua, who used terms like “whore” in both testaments? Because my friend claimed only God had the right to say it. If John and Paul said it, and they were not out of line, then what he said isn’t true.

I don’t think my friend realized it, but unintentionally, he was implying he was better than I am because he doesn’t “judge.”

We are commanded to judge, by the way. Look at everything Yeshua said in the verse many Christians think constitutes the entire Bible:

Matthew 7:1-5:

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

No one quotes the whole passage. Just the part Satan likes. He liked it when the ancient Jews were too hard on sinners, and now he likes it when we refuse to correct them. He’s like a good lawyer. He can work with any parameters and make an argument.

Look at this passage from Ezekiel 3:

Son of man, a watchman I have given thee to the house of Israel, and thou hast heard from My mouth a word, and hast warned them from Me.

In My saying to the wicked: Thou dost surely die; and thou hast not warned him, nor hast spoken to warn the wicked from his wicked way, so that he doth live; he — the wicked — in his iniquity dieth, and his blood from thy hand I require.

Has the Old Testament been set aside by God? Astonishingly, many Christians think so. In reality, it can’t be set aside. We are not required to abide by certain rules the Jews had to follow, but the word is eternal. After all, it is the word itself that tells us we don’t have to follow those rules. Only the word has the authority to do that.

The Holy Spirit will generally tell us to do what God told the Jews to do before us, and he definitely wants us to warn people about sin and iniquity. How else are they supposed to know?

I showed my wife the conversation with my friend, and she expressed the same wonderment I do.

She has a niece. The niece hangs around drunk in bars. She has three small children by three men. At least one of the men is married. She makes her mother raise the kids. She leaves them for days at a time. She shows no signs of stopping. What are we supposed to call her? A great friend?

You’re not supposed to go outside with a megaphone and tell prostitutes, “YOU’RE ALL WHORES, AND YOU’RE GOING TO HELL, UNLIKE ME.” But you are supposed to call people what they are. It wakes them up, if they are willing, and it can turn them from destruction and help them live in God’s love every day.

I think my friend is a wonderful guy. He used to smuggle Bibles for Brother Andrew. He is kind and warm-hearted. He wants to please God. But I think he needs to get closer to the Holy Spirit.

It seems like he never has a testimony, and I have never heard him share revelation.

If you’re spending a lot of time with God every day, praying in tongues and bathing in the Spirit, you will have revelation every single day of your life. It won’t be something you saw Ray Comfort or the pope saying on TV. It will be something God told you directly. It may conflict with your church’s doctrine, and it may even seem to conflict with the Bible at first, but when you open the Bible and look, especially at the Greek, Aramaic, or Hebrew, you will see that there is no conflict.

If you spend time with God, you will also have all sorts of testimony.

The other day, I opened a dish in the microwave, and hot steam shot out onto my thumb. It kept hurting after it cooled off. I commanded the burn to go, and I commanded my flesh to be healed, and I asked God to back me up. The burn left, and within the hour, I was as though I had not been burned. That’s an example of testimony. I have lots of testimony. So does my wife. Hers is more amazing than mine. It’s not because we’re super-righteous. We are definitely not. It’s because we have spent time in the Spirit.

If you’re not spending time with God, how can you call him your father?

We are taught to be church-worshipers, which means man-worshipers. We know we’re not all that holy, so we go to church to listen to the really holy guys and give them money. We have the really holy guys pray for us instead of praying for each other, because we have no faith in our own prayers. We accept the doctrine the really holy guys teach us, as though they were God. After all, they have the big hats, the fancy cathedrals, the TV cameras, and the jets.

Then we find out they’re homosexuals and even homosexual predators. We find out they sleep with women they are supposed to lead. We learn that they made things up in order to get power and money. We find out we wasted our lives, displeasing God by following their false doctrine.

A church-worshipers are predictable. They get very angry when you question their denomination and their favorite preachers, as though doing so were blasphemy. They repeat certain bits of false doctrine predictably. Things like “judge not.” They may tell you it’s a sin to have a single drink; a lot of them do that, but it’s a lie, as Yeshua might tell you with a cup in his hand.

Often, they try to be holier than God himself. This usually manifests in niceness. God isn’t always nice, though. He killed nearly the entire human race once, and he is coming around for another pass soon. He is extremely blunt and open about sexual matters and toilet functions. He’s not a Victorian prude, running around putting skirts on table legs so they don’t give men impure thoughts.

God gave me a wonderful word once, and it suprised me. He said it in my own voice, directed to himself. He said, “I am not better than you.” To be clear, he was telling me I am not better than he is.

It sounds strange and obvious at first, but it’s very powerful.

Satan and his children are always claiming to be better than Christians and better than Yahweh. They’re nicer, they tell us. Of course, they are really angry and dangerous, but let’s not go down that rabbit hole. They tell us they love everyone. They tell us they’re superior because they don’t eat animals. They tell us sexual sin is virtuous and beneficial. They call whores “sex workers” because it sounds like a job, not like whoring and being enslaved by pimps.

When we refuse to judge, we are telling God we are better than he is. We are doing what Satan’s children do. What the “judge not” passage really means is that we have to judge ourselves first, fairly and honestly, before we judge other people and try to help them change.

Yeshua judged. All the writers of the New Testament judged. All the prophets judged. David judged in the Psalms. We are not better than God.

My friend is a church Christian. That’s why he doesn’t have revelation or testimony. He is doing his best to do what he has been taught by men. This is probably why his family has been destroyed and he has been separated from his wife and kids, although they might have abandoned him if he had done everything right. They have free will. It’s definitely why things aren’t getting better for him and why people are still abusing him and getting away with it.

I judge myself constantly. I keep asking God what I’m doing wrong to cause chronic problems, and I ask him to help me to stop, show me what to do to fix it, and help me to do the things that will turn the situation around. He told me to ask these things…because I spend time in the Spirit and receive revelation.

The ancient Jews also asked for correction when they were in trouble. They never said, “Well, we’re having a famine, so it must be because we’re the special, chosen, righteous people, and we’re doing everything right.” They fasted. They tore their clothes. They put ashes on their heads. They went to prophets and priests and asked them the same questions I asked, and what did God do? He answered them, and when they heeded his words, God fixed their problems.

When I didn’t spend time in the Spirit, I was ignorant, and I lived in defeat and depression. That’s not a mysterious aberration. That’s how life is supposed to work. You’re not supposed to be blessed if you shun the Holy Spirit. It’s not proof God doesn’t exist or doesn’t care about you. It’s evidence that his word is true.

I wasn’t a “good person” to whom “bad things” happened. God wasn’t testing me. He wasn’t showing me his greatness through my habitual, degrading defeats. He wasn’t teaching me to be strong. I get sick of hearing Christians claim failure is really victory. I wasn’t a martyr. I was just a loser, because I wasn’t connected to the person who gives us victory.

We need to quit asking God why bad things happen to good people. We need to quit promoting a dangerous lie. We need to ask what we’re doing wrong.

Just this morning, God gave me a relevant word: “Thank you for humbling correction.”

As for Halloween, I am glad it’s behind me and all the witches have gone home from their meetings where they cursed you and me and Israel and Donald Trump and Yeshua himself. I’m very glad I live behind a gate so no one gets to knock on my door and ask me why I don’t have candy for little children dressed like demons and vampires.

And sluts.

Can’t Get to the Parking Lot Fast Enough

For a long time, I’ve been telling people competitive sports are incompatible with Christianity. In America, this is like saying God himself is evil, because American men almost literally worship athletes, and the sports industry is their church. It makes people very angry. It really upsets the guys who have the mistaken impression that football is a great tool for building good Christians.

It is true, however. Our sick, deranged obsession with sports comes to us from the Greeks. They also exalted athletes and even treated them as gods after their victories. The Greeks were not Christians. This should be obvious. They worshiped childish false gods and decorated their front yards with statues featuring permanent erections, and they considered these statues sacred, not unlike the bizarre nudes found in many Catholic churches.

Today I got some wonderful confirmation.

I dreamed I was back in prep school. I was in history class. My teacher was Mr. Thomas. He taught me in ninth grade. Now that I think about it, he was the football coach.

Mr. Thomas was not a very nice guy. He wasn’t extremely abusive, but he was an angry leftist, and he was a little bit of a bully. Example: students complained that he kneed football players because he didn’t believe they were wearing protection.

I just realized how odd it was that he was a sports coach. He was about 5’7″ and maybe 260.

In the dream, I had already graduated from high school and college. For some reason, I was repeating high school.

You can imagine how much interest I had in my second tour. I didn’t need another high school diploma, so I had no reason to do any work or show up at school.

Mr. Thomas had given us a novel to read. It was about a Revolutionary War hero. Fiction. He had told us to write term papers about it. Odd, but this was a dream.

The paper was due the next day. I had done nothing whatsoever. I felt I had to do something by the next day in order to avoid failing. That was all I cared about. I was not interested in writing a good paper. I just didn’t want to be yelled at.

I was in the classroom with the other students, but Mr. Thomas was not there. He was late. I decided to take the time to use my laptop to see if I could learn anything about the guy in the book.

I searched the web very quickly. I made the mouse fly. I went to site after site. I made a lot of typing errors, so I went to sites that were not helpful. One site had something to do with sex. It showed a realistic cartoon lady who was wearing a short transparent nightgown with nothing underneath, and she was evidently familiar with a practice attributed to people from Brazil.

Somehow, my classmates were able to see what I was doing on a huge display. I told them I had gone to the dirty website by accident. In case they were wondering.

At my school, we had an unwritten rule, and the rule was that if a teacher was late, we could leave after a certain amount of time. I think it was 20 minutes. We got tired of waiting for Mr. Thomas.

A security guard came in. He was dressed more or less like a cop. He was a nice guy. A little nerdy. Glasses and a short beard. He wore an old-fashioned police hat.

We told him what was going on, and he told us to go home.

I was thrilled. Best news I could have asked for. I got up to leave.

My desk was like an elementary school desk in that it had a lid on hinges. It was bigger, of course. I opened it and saw that it was full of my belongings. I couldn’t take them home in one load.

By now, the guard had turned into a custodian. He wore a grey shirt with his name on the left breast pocket. Somehow I knew his name was Zeke. Ezekiel.

I asked Zeke if he or someone else would be around to let me into the room later to get my stuff. He said someone would be there.

I didn’t expect to return. I wondered if Mr. Thomas was dead. I guess he is, now.

When I woke up, I didn’t know whether the dream meant anything or not, so I prayed for revelation.

What is high school for? It prepares you for employment, and if you’re ambitious, it prepares you for self-exaltation in a prestigious, lucrative occupation. My school always sent a big percentage of students to Ivy League and Ivy-League-adjacent schools, and a lot of them went on to make big money.

In the dream, I had no ambition at all. Why would I? I didn’t need money, and the thought of getting a job and having to work was horrifying to me, as returning to prison would horrify an ex-con. This is my attitude in real life, as it should be. God has, with extraordinary generosity and patience, given me an easy life. Also, I know from past experience that no matter where I work, I will be blackballed, cheated, robbed, and undermined. Satan runs that world. It even happened to me at church. It’s part of Satan’s world.

The purpose of the dream was to get me thinking about ambition and to confirm that my attitude toward it was a gift from God.

I went to the Bible and the web to look around.

God expressly condemns ambition in many verses. I was relieved to see that.

Let’s start with Galatians 5. Look it up, and you will see that selfish ambition is a work of the flesh. The Greek word for it is eritheia.

Before you hit the keyboard and tell me that wanting to be a preacher or something similar is not a selfish ambition, let me point out that it very often is. Preaching is a great job. It can make you a millionaire, and you never have to do anything right. You can keep teaching things that don’t work, and when your victims complain that their lives aren’t getting better, you just tell them they’re not doing it right, or you say it’s an attack of the devil, and they will keep giving you money. This even works if you are caught in a motel room with a prostitute after getting another preacher removed from the pulpit for adultery.

Priests are often ambitious. Same for cardinals. Popes are often glory hounds; look at Francis. It’s not just a Protestant problem.

At Trinity Church in Miami, there was a young man called Chino. After I left Trinity and moved on to a church called New Dawn, Chino visited. He had decided to become a preacher.

He delivered a sermon which got people very stirred up. I thought it was pretty bad. Other people were cheering and clapping.

After the service, a friend of mine told me he had heard a preacher named Jabin Chavez recite the same sermon, nearly word-for-word.

Chino had been indoctrinated by a prosperity church run by a con artist with a family made up largely of con artists. He saw that the preacher lived in a mansion on Golden Beach with a yacht tied up out back. He saw a chance to get his own mansion, so he stole a sermon.

I only single Chino out because I don’t want to type dozens of similar stories, which I could easily do.

What does this have to do with sports? It should be obvious.

Sports are driven by ambition. They’re also driven by gambling, but on a personal level, they are driven by personal ambition.

In sick America, athletes get crazy favor. They get sex with all sorts of very attractive girls and women who won’t have anything to do with non-athletes. They get a grotesque amount of admiration. They get scholarships. They get good grades without doing their own work. They get all sorts of wealth. When they’re young, they get cars and paychecks for no-show jobs. They get bribes from colleges. They end up with free college degrees. Some become professionals and make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. The police turn a blind eye to their violent crimes. It’s a cushy existence.

Don’t tell me there is no personal ambition in team sports. If you want your team to do well, great, but you wouldn’t be playing if it didn’t benefit you.

The word eritheia can be used to describe a lot of things. Selfish ambition. Strife. Rivalry. Factionalism. It has been used to describe people who campaign for political office. It describes doing a job purely for mercenary reasons.

Competitive sports promote all of these things. It’s about exalting yourself and abasing others. It’s about division. You or your team against the other guy or guys.

What happens at an athletic event? One person or team leaves in celebration, with memories that will bring them joy all the days of their lives. The other leaves in painful disgrace. Don’t let anyone tell you different. No one goes home thinking, “I played the game ethically. That makes me a winner.” That never happens.

Losers regret their losses all their lives. They fear losing. Many athletes throw up before competitions. Many beat their wives and girlfriends when they lose. They suffer depression. They are often condemned by teammates, relatives, coaches, and fans. These days, “goat” is used to mean “Greatest Of All Time,” but it originally meant an athlete who caused a loss.

If you win an Olympic gold medal, you may go on to extremely lucrative endorsements and appearances. If you win a silver, you end up teaching gym to high school students. Then you spend the rest of your life watching the gold medal people, wishing you weren’t a loser. Blaming yourself. Wondering what you could have done differently. Reliving moments when you made bad choices.

These principles apply to all types of competition. Shooting for a promotion your coworkers also want. Winning an election. Competing with another business. Ambition is divisive.

Don’t tell me we should apply these principles to Christianity, too, because Yeshua said he came to divide. Not true. Yeshua came to divide wrong-thinking people from the righteous. He didn’t come to pit the righteous against the righteous.

Romans 2 says God will render to every man according to his deeds:

To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life:

But unto them that are contentious [eritheias], and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath,

Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile

Second Corinthians 12:20:

For I fear, lest, when I come, I shall not find you such as I would, and that I shall be found unto you such as ye would not: lest there be debates, envyings, wraths, strifes [eritheiai], backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults

From the list of works of the flesh in Galatians 5:20:

Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife [eritheia], seditions, heresies. . .

Philippians 1:16-17:

The one preach Christ of contention [eritheia], not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds:

But the other of love, knowing that I am set for the defence of the gospel.

Philippians 2:3-5:

Let nothing be done through strife [eritheia] or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.

Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus

If you want to see more references, click on this link to a reference site.

It all makes sense. What was the iniquity that got Lucifer expelled from heaven? Ambition. He wanted to compete with God, not because he thought God was wrong and wanted to save others from God, but because he wanted power and admiration.

Ambition is self-exaltation, and God hates self-exaltation. There are endless verses that show this. Here is one: “And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.”

To be ambitious is to keep yourself under a curse and make God himself fight you. If you’re a parent, it can destroy your descendants. My dad’s ambition helped destroy my sister, and it harmed me greatly.

Proper Christians don’t compete. They build each other up.

God has shown me how important it is to know your place and love it. I should be glad I get to submit to God. My wife should be glad wives have to submit to husbands. My son should be glad he has to submit to God and his parents.

There are people who have more than I do. Well, God bless them. They generally work hard, which I do not, and they provide all sorts of benefits. Inventions. Products. Helpful services. I wouldn’t trade places with Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.

Much of the current strife in the world is based on ambition; the desire to elevate oneself above one’s proper place and take that which belongs rightly to others. The vicious people who set cities on fire and topple statues are motivated by ambition. They want what better people have, but they want to remain children and, at heart, murderers and criminals.

Ambition does great harm in the church. Ambitious Christians attack and take down Christians who want to do the right things and spread the truth. They amplify their own voices and smother the voices of better people.

The ambitious do the work of their father. They can wear robes and miters, and they can start big TV ministries and claim they brought millions of people to salvation, but they belong to Satan, and they do what he would do if he were in their shoes.

I’m very happy I had this dream. It means I’m doing better than I thought, and it will help me to avoid catastrophic decisions in the future. It will also help me protect my son from catastrophe when he is old enough to listen to me.

I hope this dream is about the rapture. I concern myself all the time with practical matters. How should I deal with wealth in order to make sure my wife and son always have more than enough? What should I do about various business affairs I loathe working on? What will I do about health insurance next year? Where can I find a good contractor to fix minor issues with the house? I hate this stuff. I would be great to be take out of this world with my brothers and sisters so I can let it all go, like the junk in the drawer in my dream.

Making the Effortless Impossible

I’ve been having an interesting day with my Chinese Alibaba-grade excavator, an AGT QK16R.

The last time I used it, I saw a long trail of oil behind it, and I realized this was not right, even for a Chinese machine. I parked it and fiddled with it. I thought the oil was coming from the slew motor. This is the motor that turns the excavator without moving the tracks.

Slew motor leaks are common with these machines because a lot of Chinese workers don’t believe in using wrenches. My motor is held in by 4 M8 cap bolts with lock washers. A lot of people find that these bolts are loose from the factory. This makes the motors wobble around.

There are also 4 bolts on the underside of the motor itself, and they have been known to leave the factory loose. My understanding is that when these bolts are loose, the O-ring in the motor gets torn up and causes a leak.

I found out the size of the O-ring: 138. Don’t take my word for it, because I haven’t installed one yet. I got some O-rings.

Today I got into the excavator. It is an amazing piece of machinery. I don’t mean that in a good way.

To get to the slew motor, you have to take off the floor plate. Easy, right?

I removed every bolt that held the floor on, and of course, all sorts of stuff was still in the way. The pedestal with the controls, mainly.

I learned some things that may help others.

1. Do not try to take off the lower sheet metal. AGT puts welded nuts on the upper sheet metal, where you don’t really need them, and it uses loose nylocks for the lower sheet metal. They are very, very hard to get at for loosening and tightening. Welding nuts to the inside of the excavator would be a good mod.

2. Removing the upper sheet metal is not hard, but it is tedious. You have to take out 8 screws and nuts, plus two bolts, to remove the door in front of the engine. The 8 screws are in hinges which don’t work because AGT made it impossible for the door to swing. A clever guy tapped the pins out of his hinges and replaced them with R-clips. I plan to do that, although Velcro would probably work just as well.

3. You should remove the foot pedal in order to get the floor off. It is held on by one oddly-chosen screw with a nylock.

4. You will have to remove the lower canopy support which is bolted to the frame. The bolts that hold it on go through the floor for no good reason. I am going to turn the holes into slots so I can loosen the bolts and lift the floor up instead of removing the support. The support is not needed to hold the canopy up, because the canopy bars in the rear are mounted solidly to the excavator frame.

5. One guy recommends cutting off the bit of the floor to the right of the control pedestal. It doesn’t really need to be connected to the rest of the floor. It can be reinstalled after cutting it. Some minor mods could be added to make everything stiffer.

6. Another guy recommends cutting the floor in two big pieces, front and rear.

7. When you get the engine door off, you get access to the front oil dipstick. This machine has two dipstick holes, front and rear, and AGT puts the dipstick in the front one where you have to take the excavator apart to get at it. The holes are interchangeable, so while the door is off, swap the plug at the rear of the engine for the dipstick in front. Now you can check your oil.

It turned out my slew motor was just fine, sort of. The bolts were not very tight, but the motor was not loose. I pulled the bolts out, applied Loctite, and reinstalled them. I don’t know the actual torque figure, so I went with a Chinese measure: yu wei tai nau.

I am going to pull it and check the bolts on the underside. I don’t want to put the excavator together and then have the motor fail.

The hydraulic fluid was coming from a valve thing (hydraulic swivel joint?) that feeds the track motors. When I looked at it, without even checking, I thought it looked weird. One one side, there were three screw-on fittings, and one was clearly farther from the motor than the others, suggesting it wasn’t tightened all the way. I fired the machine up, moved the tracks, and saw oil dripping out of the fitting.

Now I have to tighten that fitting. I wondered how I would do it, because access is nearly nonexistent. It’s under another fitting which I can reach, but I can’t get to the leaky fitting itself. I realized I could remove the top fitting, tighten the leaky one, and reinstall the top one, so that’s what I’ll do.

I checked whatever I could reach to make sure nothing else would come undone, but I can’t get at everything without a ton of work, so I plan to put the excavator together and hope for the best. I’m glad nothing was damaged.

The moral here is: tighten everything you can on your Chinese excavator. Also, change the hydraulic fluid before you run it, and don’t be afraid to modify it. You really are smarter than the engineers who designed it.

This info ought to be very helpful to people with the exact same excavator, and it should be somewhat helpful to people with similar models.