There is a Difference

One of the problems with hearing from God is that you will find yourself in competition with a lot of people who have heard from things like the devil, insanity, a craving for attention, and indigestion. It’s always important to pray for guidance when someone tells you something that supposedly came from God, or when you think you’ve heard something from him.

I’ve watched Sid Roth many times. He has a show about supernatural things that happen to Christians. He has guests who have genuine revelations and so on, but he also hosts nuts and liars from time to time. They generally have books, CD’s, or DVD’s to sell. I’ve checked three of their products out, and none turned out to be worthwhile.

Sid has a Youtube channel, and the other day, he interviewed a guy named James Goll. This man says God visits him and so on. He says Trump will be reelected and that he will appoint a female “Esther” to the Supreme Court.

I have grave doubts about this guy. For one thing, he’s a self-promoter. Look how he introduced himself to Sid:

You know who you’re talking to. I am an intercessor. I’m also a teaching prophet, not only a declarative prophet.

Isn’t that pride?

What, exactly, is a teaching prophet? Is that like the guy who taught Amos, Jeremiah, and Samuel? As I recall, God himself taught them. If the new covenant is better than the old covenant, how come Old Testament prophets were taught by God and New Testament prophets have to have teachers? Does that make any sense?

Goll seems full of himself, and he also makes weird, inexplicable grimaces while he speaks. They remind me of tics. My personal belief about tics is that demons cause them. Something other than the proper inhabitant of a body tells the muscles to do silly things. If something is controlling your muscles, and it’s not you, who is it?

His whole demeanor is off-putting. He seems effeminate. He seems very angry. He’s unpleasant to watch. Spirit-led Christians are generally pleasant to be around. The Holy Spirit always brings harmony and affection.

He reminds me of someone who vanished from my life. This person lectured people, and he was usually angry. He spoke as though he had authority. He said a lot of useful things, but he got very involved with worldly projects and didn’t pray in tongues. If you don’t pray in tongues, you lack real revelation, but you can still fill up on the false kind. You can be led pretty far astray.

He used to invite people to get involved with his projects, saying they could work for him. The projects and jobs didn’t pan out, however. The rosy descriptions never matched reality. He persuaded a big company to do a job for him, and they invested a lot of money in preparation. Then they found out he didn’t have money to pay them. They sued, and he defaulted. He also said things about his technical background which I, as a former physicist, knew could not be true.

You always have to be careful about listening to self-promoters. Sometimes they’re like balloons. Let the air out, and what you have left is surprisingly small.

I looked Goll up. He is part of the Seven Mountain Mandate crowd. Ted Cruz’s dad and Paula White are also adherents, as are the Bethel/Sozo people. They believe Christians will take over the world. Not after the rapture. Now. They want to dominate the government, education, business, and entertainment, among other things.

I’m not a Sozo guy. A friend of mine gave me a Bethel book, and I gave their doctrine the old college try, with sincerity. Nothing happened. They tell you to think back to a traumatic moment in your life and ask Jesus where he was. He’s supposed to say something like, “I was over by the window,” and he explains what was happening. Then you find catharsis and healing. There is nothing even remotely like this in the Bible, and I got nothing from it. I’ve seen Bethel sermons, and most gave me the creeps. I think they’re on the wrong track.

I don’t see Christians taking over the world. We are declining in influence, and our decline isn’t linear. It’s accelerating. The difference between 2000 and 2010 was nothing compared to the difference between 2010 and 2020.

Jesus said the world would hate us. The Bible says it’s a problem if the world loves you. Jesus said his kingdom was not of this world; he rejected efforts to make him a political or military leader. He didn’t even try to run the temple, even though he was the son of God.

In short, I think the Seven Mountain Mandate doctrine is completely wrong. I think anyone who turns the office of prophet into a job and brags about his credentials is bogus. We are clearly told not to seek our own promotion. I don’t believe anyone who boasts and promotes himself, who makes money from Christianity, and who thinks Christians should run the present world can possibly be a prophet.

Prophets hear from God every day. Wouldn’t God tell a prophet if the movement he belonged to was based on misconeptions?

Goll claims Luke 7:44 somehow proves women are supposed to be prophets and pastors and so on. This is the verse about the woman who washed the feet of Jesus with her tears and dried them with her hair. In this story, Jesus talks to a man named Simon, teaching him about what the woman is doing.

Goll says Simon is Peter. Problem: he is not. Not even close. Jesus was invited to have a meal at the home of a pharisee, and that’s where the woman washed his feet. When the Bible mentions “Simon,” it says he was the man who invited Jesus to his house. Not Peter at all. It’s not ambiguous. It’s not subject to interpretation. It’s very clear.

Paul said women should not speak in church, and he was very firm about it. It makes sense, because men bear the burden of leadership in this world, and the human race was cursed because a man let a woman take over the job of religious instruction. When it comes to idolatry, women have a long history of taking the lead. False religions tend to spread among women first. Women are more open to them. This is why they slept with angels in Genesis and gave birth to giants.

If you think women make great leaders, ask yourself where we would be if women voted and men did not. Ellen DeGeneres would be empress for life, and our GNP would be about five hundred dollars. Somalia would be sending us aid.

Paul’s credentials are a lot stronger than James Goll’s. The Bible agrees with Paul, and I agree with him, too.

I came across another person who promoted weird doctrine. I put up a Youtube video, and a commenter posted an extremely long (maybe a thousand words) comment saying he and his family loved Marvel movies and that he expected the rapture to come on August 4, or Shavuot.

Problem: Marvel movies are occult movies. The characters use magic. Dr. Strange is a witch. The Scarlet Witch is pretty obviously a witch. Thor is a false god. The Black Panther uses drugs to make himself powerful. Christians shouldn’t fool with Marvel. I did, and I quit.

Problem: Shavuot was weeks ago. It ended on May 30. It’s a spring holiday.

Christians who have high hopes for August 4 are talking about counting the omer. An omer is a dry measure, like a pint. “Shavuot” means “weeks.” It’s a holiday that takes place 7 weeks after Pesach (Passover). Jews count 50 days between Pesach and Shavuot. I think I have that right. I guess the idea is that the days fill up an omer. Shavuot is supposed to be the same thing as Pentecost, but the Gregorian calendar throws it off. “Pentecost” is a Greek word that means “fiftieth.”

There is zero ambiguity. Shavuot ended weeks ago. It will not come this month.

It appears the August 4 idea comes from an obscure concept called the Creator’s Calendar. There are a few Christians who think the Jewish calendar is wrong. Jesus had no problem with the Jewish calendar, and Paul had no problem with it, but that’s the theory. The Creator’s Calendar says Shavuot will really take place on August 4.

Problem: Shavuot is the festival of the first fruits. You can’t have first fruits of the harvest in August. Not in Israel. The wheat harvest comes in spring.

If the rapture were to come on a Jewish holiday, I would expect it to be Sukkot. This is the week when Jews build temporary booths from branches. The rapture will take us away for 7 years (one week of years), and during that time, we will be celebrating with Jesus. It will be the celebration of his marriage to the church. It looks a lot like Sukkot. On the other hand, Shavuot is the day when the first fruits of the harvest are celebrated, and the rapture looks a lot like Jesus taking his first fruits to heaven.

I don’t know whether the rapture will land on a holiday, but I do know Shavuot was over a long time ago.

The long comment went to spam, and the guy who posted it asked me to restore it. I took a look at it. I think it went where it was supposed to go. He linked to his own video and tried to take over. That’s how spam works. I felt a strong impulse to delete it, so I did.

Prayer in tongues is very important. If you go off course and start believing something that isn’t true, prayer in tongues will put you back on track. Most Christians don’t pray in tongues much, so they drive off the road, stay there, and celebrate being stuck in a ditch.

I keep feeling like the rapture will come in December. I can’t prove it. I can’t say it’s a prophecy. I don’t have a special calendar. I am not a “teaching prophet” who writes books and appears on TV shows. In my entire life, I have made $80 from Christianity, and that was because a disturbed person forced me to take it. I don’t have a jet. I don’t have a beard. I don’t wear a habit or a cross the size of a frying pan. I don’t call myself Apostle Steve. I pray a lot, and I have a persistent feeling. That’s about it. I may be wrong.

I hope I’m right. Can you imagine putting up with another year of this insanity? It gets crazier every day. They’re burning Bibles in Portland now. Finally, someone on the other side is being honest. I’m actually happy about it. I don’t approve of burning Bibles, but I’m glad some of the children of darkness are exposing their real feelings.

I wonder what’s going to happen with coronavirus this year. My best guess was that it would poop out with the hot weather, but I was wrong about that. It’s also disconcerting to see it ramping up in conservative areas. My county is up around 1.5% now.

I think God spared conservatives for a while so we would have time to repent, fast, and pray. We did not do that, however.

Interesting fact: a huge percentage of the cases in my county are among women and prisoners. This is a prison county, so there are a large number of people who are cooped up together. Women make up something like 2/3 of the cases.

It makes sense that prisoners would get it. They are cursed people. Prison is a taste of hell, for people who are headed the wrong way. I’m not sure why women are getting sick. A women’s prison got hit, so that may explain it.

If you remove the prison cases, this county is still doing pretty well. Prisons and old folks homes are outliers. They are not representative of the rest of the population. Journalists don’t like to talk about it, but prisoners and people in homes make up a tremendous part of the coronavirus statistics. Journalists want us to think we’re all equally likely to get it, and that it’s usually a severe disease. Both of those things are untrue.

If there is an up side to the prison and nursing home situation, it’s that people in these facilities don’t get many chances to infect the rest of us.

Some people think bad things have to happen to Christians first, because Peter said something about judgment beginning in the house of the Lord. If you read his words, however, it appears that he is talking about things like confession, repentance, and inner transformation. Not plagues and famines and so on. Bad things don’t have to happen to Christians first. If anything, we should be less likely than anyone to experience things like coronavirus. The fact that coronavirus hit red states hardest at first doesn’t mean it’s not a punishment from God.

I guess that’s all I have. Keep praying, and don’t let anyone sneeze on you.

Shoot Accurately with Cheap Ammo

It has not rained today. Hard to believe. I actually got to shoot my Ruger Precision Rifle.

I’ll post the target. I started at the bottom left and went clockwise. I shot 30 rounds.

Things are looking up. That may not be the most impressive target on earth, but I see a big difference since the last time I shot the gun.

The stuff at bottom left generally went into one inch. I think the three outliers are flyers caused by technique failure. I think this gun will shoot sub-MOA with this ammo all day, provided the shooter has it together.

I zeroed the scope as well as I could on the previous outing. It rained, so I was not able to do everything I wanted. Today I decided to move the zero around. That explains the second group (top left), which is still a lot better than I used to shoot with other rifles.

The flyer at right is me adjusting the scope, and the farthest shots to the left were also caused by scope adjustments. That means the rest, fired at the final zero setting, were very close together.

I think the shots that piled into the center of the bullseye on the top right represent the rifle’s actual zero. I was fiddling with technique, and I was getting annoyed with my rear bag. I think that’s why the entire 10-round group takes up so much space.

I love 6.5 Creedmoor. It shoots as well as .17 HMR, but it reaches a lot farther out and kills things like deer and bears. And the recoil is a joke.

While I was in the pasture shooting, I ordered a bigger rear bag. I think it will make things much easier.

The ammunition is wonderful. I bought a lot of it. As mentioned in an earlier post, a Youtuber with a Ruger Precision Rifle shot it into a small gong, over and over, at 656 yards, so I have a lot of faith in it. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong when I take the gun to a longer shooting lane.

I’m learning more about long-range shooting. I learned that an expert’s advice was not very good.

I bought a book by Ryan Cleckner, a former sniper who teaches people to shoot. I also watched him on Youtube. In a video, he provided his method for aligning a scope’s reticle with a rifle. Most scopes have flat surfaces on their undersides, and many rifles have flat surfaces on top of them. Cleckner says to stick a rectangular object between the scope and rifle so both are pressing against it. This aligns the rifle’s top surface and the scope’s bottom surface.

Problem: it doesn’t align the reticle with anything. Not accurately, anyway.

Scope manufacturers don’t align their reticles perfectly with the housings of their scopes. Some have tolerances of up to 3°. If you’re shooting at a target 1000 yards off, your bullet will drop maybe 30 feet. Thirty feet times the sine of 3° is about 19″. That means you can be aiming 19″ to the side of your intended impact point. That’s a big deal.

I don’t think this applies when you’re using your turrets to change your point of aim, but I can see how it would be a problem if you were using your reticle. Or maybe I’m wrong. Are the little things inside scopes that move reticles really aligned with the reticles? Now my head hurts.

I am amazed that a person who holds himself out to be an expert would drop the ball like that, but I shouldn’t be. Am I saying I know more than he does? No. I got the information about scope reticle tolerances from other experts, and I have concluded, tentatively, that they know more than he does.

Maybe I’ll read something tomorrow that will convince me he’s right. That would be nice, because otherwise, I have to get some of my scopes leveled. I don’t think it will matter for .17 HMR, because it pretty much dies before it drops 20 inches, but it could be worth the trouble for .204 Ruger, .223, and .308.

In his book, he says he doesn’t believe in rifle levels. He says he has no faith in them because they may have more internal error than the people and equipment they’re supposed to help. Maybe that’s a gadget I can forgo.

I don’t know the answers. Right now, I just want to be able to hit a gong 900 yards away on the first try with every one of my high-powered rifles. Surely I should be able to gather enough sound advice to get to that point, even if the people I listen to aren’t right about everything.

Whatever. I now have a very nice shooting platform that blocks most of the sun and rain, I have a good deal of cheap, accurate ammo, and I have my rifle set up well enough to hit a few things. Onward and upward.

Enough of This Place

For some reason, I decided to look up Michael Avenatti today. If you doubt the existence of evil spirits, or you doubt that God defends his servants, the Avenatti story should clear up your doubts. Avenatti’s self-destructive, self-deluding behavior is so bizarre, it could be considered insane, and his fall suggests he offended God himself.

As people who watched the news a few years back know, Avenatti dedicated his life to persecuting President Trump. He represented a trashy woman Trump had sex with, and for a time, he was constantly threatening to bring Trump down with other purported bombshells. He said something ill-considered, which later became famous in a way he didn’t like: “Enjoy your time in prison.”

Avenatti appeared to be an extremely successful individual. He drove racing cars and spent money as though there were no end of it. Then he tried to extort money from the Nike corporation, he was convicted of a felony, and it also turned out he was a huge tax alleged evader. The IRS accused him of a number of fraudulent actions. He is also accused of stealing from clients. I can’t recall whether he has been convicted of the tax and theft charges. You can Google and find out.

Apart from Trump himself, he may well have been Twitter’s most well-known participant, baiting and insulting everyone who disagreed with him. He seemed to think he occupied a lofty seat of judgment, as though anointed and invulnerable. Then in 2019, the tweets dried up instantly and permanently. He is barred from using the Internet, and he has gotten in trouble because he is suspected of violating the ban.

I can only imagine what it feels like, having that kind of personality and knowing there are tweeters out there running roughshod over you every day, unrestrained and unpunished. Unblocked.

His account is still up. That says a lot about his pride.

The things we know he did, setting unproven things aside, suggest mental illness. No lawyer or competent law student would commit extortion in writing. How could it have happened? He graduated first in his class at a very good law school. Unless he paid someone to take his classes for him, he had to know he was setting himself up for prison time and a permanent end to his legal career, not to mention intense public humiliation.

The contrast is stark. On the one hand, he was extremely arrogant and self-righteous in his condemnation of others, calling for severe punishments. On the other, he was busy guaranteeing such punishments for himself. How can one head contain the mechanisms for doing both of those things simultaneously? How could he have failed to expect to be fed a near-lethal dose of his own medicine, very publicly? Strange.

I believe that when people behave irrationally, spirits are usually at work. I can’t think of a better explanation for the Avenatti story.

As for Trump, I was calling him “Cyrus” before anyone else said it in a prominent forum. Cyrus was a heathen whom God anointed to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. He was no man of God, but he was a friend of God’s people, and he defended them and provided for them.

When God chooses you for a job, and someone with mental problems makes a career of trying to bring you down by deceitful means, you are asking for a beating. It sure looks like Avenatti got a divine spanking. No one can say Trump was behind it. Avenatti opened himself up over and over. He begged to be disbarred and imprisoned, and it appears God sent people to oblige him.

To me, his tale underscores the importance of humility and forbearance. If you can’t accept your own vulnerabilities and faults, you’re asking for the universe to reveal them to you in very painful ways. If you’re ruthless in your treatment of people you believe to be guilty, especially when you’re wrong, you can expect severe treatment when your own misdeeds ripen and burst into view.

It’s a scary story. When I think about this man, I do my best not to gloat. I try to focus on forgiveness in my own life. I don’t want to find out what it feels like to be Michael Avenatti.

If California is like other states, Avenatti might be able to get his license back a few years after he leaves prison. Bar associations really do things like that. I know a felon who was disbarred twice. He can also work as a clerk for someone who has a license. He might be better off driving a truck, though. Getting a job unrelated to law would take less time, and he will have to eat while he’s rebuilding.

Avenatti’s fall gives me hope Trump will win again this year. If God was willing to put Avenatti in federal prison and take away everything he had, maybe he’ll be willing to give a comeuppance to the brats who are running amok in our country. I hope so. Four more years would be very helpful, assuming there are four years left before the rapture.

I’ve been watching more rapture-dream videos on Youtube. They’re popping up all the time. Even small children are dreaming of angels with swords or of being transported to new homes.

I used to think I had only had one rapture dream, but that may not be true. I had several dreams in which I died. I can’t recall how many. At least two. They were the same. I was driving a Ford Explorer on a major highway. I was on a section of road that rose far into the air. There was a break in the road, and for some reason, I kept driving. I drove into empty space. The car rotated so it was facing downward. I was hundreds of feet from the ground. I watched the ground approaching. I knew I was going to die.

I wasn’t worried. I was excited about the adventure of going to heaven. I wanted to meet Jesus. I was glad my life here was over. I was also very impressed with the serious and somber nature of the moment. I prayed and tried to make sure I was going to the right place. I woke up at some point in the fall.

It may be that these were rapture dreams. The end of the road could be the end of this age. The fall could be the time I’m going through now, sitting and waiting. Seemingly doing nothing.

I can’t recall who was in the car with me. Wish I could.

Last night I started asking God for more dreams about the future, as well as prophecies and visions. Can’t hurt.

It’s going to be pretty bad if I turn out to be wrong, Biden wins, Kamala Harris becomes our president, America declines into poverty and chaos, and I’m still here. Life will not be worth living in times like that.

I won’t worry. A heavy schedule of prayer in tongues, combined with self-examination, fasting, and repentance will put me on top no matter what happens around me. And as God keeps telling me, I’ve already won. If the rapture doesn’t come in my time, all I have to do is shelter in place until this body quits. The children of darkness hurt people while they’re alive, but they can’t prevent them from dying of old age.

Mike Tyson has Been Punched in the Face More Than Your Whole Family

Not much has happened today. For some reason, it didn’t rain. That was shocking. I was able to mow the yard.

While I was mowing, my tractor pulled one of its tricks on me. I drove through the web of a gigantic spider, and after I stopped the tractor to flail and scream and knock the webbing off of me, with great dignity, the tractor would not start. I put jumper cables on it and went in the house to Google a solution. While I was walking in, a very useful phrase came to me: “I’ve already won.”

I have been saying this a lot lately. Years ago, on a certain day, God told me I would have total victory from then on. At least I believe he did. Since then I have had a lot of very annoying challenges leap up and bite me in the rear end. Things don’t always go smoothly. I used to ask God how that could be considered victory. Then I realized victory is not the same thing as peace. Muhammad Ali defeated George Foreman, but he had to fight several rounds with a broken jaw in order to do it.

I used to feel beaten when things went wrong, because it seemed to happen so often, when it seemed I had done everything right. Now I remind myself: I’ve already won.

If the tractor won’t start, or the new stove won’t fit in the hole in the granite counter, or the people at the ALF where I put my dad for several days are overcharging me and turning bill collectors loose on me, or GEICO is trying to blame me for being backed into in a parking lot, or I just slipped and committed a sin I thought I was done with, it doesn’t matter. I’ve already won. I’ll react. I’ll get God’s help. A solution will come. When it’s over, I will have won.

You can project this principle to life itself. I’m surrounded by sick people. A man who thinks he might be a prophet says we’re going to have 80% inflation next year. Trump is polling badly, and God-haters may put Kamala Harris in the White House next year to abuse people like me. Maybe the rapture won’t come this year, as I feel it will, and I’ll be stuck here to cope with a bad situation when I’m no longer young enough to start over. It does not matter. I’ve already won. The very worst thing that could happen is that I could have 35 bad years and then go to heaven. They can’t keep me alive when my body quits. Escape is guaranteed. Sooner or later, I will be with Jesus, and I will have won everything.

It’s a good thing to keep in mind. It will give you strength.

In other news, we had another day of pre-hurricane weather here. I’ve written about this before. In the days prior to a hurricane, the air is still. Everything is quiet and peaceful, but there is a feeling of impending misfortune in the air. Often, the sun isn’t as bright as it ordinarily would be. Today was like that. It was overcast much of the time, but there was no rain.

Is the storm really coming this year? I’ll admit it: I hope so. Not so much the storm, but the rapture that precedes it.

I know that’s selfish. I’m just tired of living among hostile, impudent, underdeveloped, ignorant boneheads who won’t be helped. I want people to be saved, but I want to live in my own world, with my own people. I want rest.

We have a tropical storm headed for Florida. Isaac. The son of promise. Not a big deal.

I no longer own a single property that can be damaged badly by a hurricane or tropical storm, so this year is completely different from years gone by. It’s a new feeling. I hope Miami doesn’t get pounded this season, but I have no personal stake in it, so I have new peace. I guess heaven will be like that. Right now, my flesh is down here in a world full of microbes, violence, accidents, economic threats, and natural disasters. Once I am removed, I will have no vulnerable parts left on the earth, and most of the people I care about will be safe with me. That will be a nice change.

I’ve already won, and you can win, too. Think it over. You’ll never get another offer this good.

There are Little Raptures Everywhere

As days go, this one has been pretty good. I helped my friends Alonzo and Teri move into their first non-rented house.

Alonzo and I were armorbearers at Miami’s Trinity Church, under the authority of the fine family of pastors that made public-nudity enthusiast Kim Kardashian one of America’s best-known Christians. The armorbearers used to meet for breakfast at a Denny’s on Hallandale Beach Boulevard, and I used to talk about the importance of speaking in tongues and getting free of iniquities and demons. Alonzo was always quiet. I thought he was just waiting for me to shut up. In reality, he was taking it all in.

He and his family lived in a pretty bad situation. They had part of a house in Liberty City, which is about like South Central L.A. He hated his job. Things weren’t going all that well.

Over time, he and Teri moved closer to God, and he blessed them. They moved to a place farther north, away from their relatives. Then they moved to Orlando. This was a step up from South Florida, which is a very dark and corrupt place, but it could have been better. After Orlando, they moved to Sanford, and now they’re between Sanford and Ocala in a very rural setting. They own the house they’re moving into. It has 5 bedrooms. It’s in a quiet, peaceful area packed with conservative Christians.

If you know this blog, you know I had a young friend named Travis Quinn. He was also an armorbearer. He was a lawless ghetto kid. He started listening to me. He tried the things I was doing. God changed him a great deal. He found himself living in Coral Gables, as my house sitter, going to the University of Miami on a music scholarship.

Unfortunately, he was shot accidentally in April. We were told his injuries weren’t a big deal. Then his condition worsened, and he died. During his last month, he wasn’t able to communicate with anyone except his family.

I had assumed Travis would be my big success story, but it looks like Alonzo and Teri got what I thought he would get. They have 5 wonderful kids. Their marriage keeps getting better. Now Alonzo says God is talking to him. He says God told him that if he fasted, God would do things for him, with no effort from Alonzo, that would amaze him. Alonzo fasted, and suddenly Alonzo found himself able to move into his house ahead of schedule. He didn’t have to pay his last month’s rent. He didn’t have to pay a power bill he thought was coming due.

The place where he used to live was better than the places where he lived before, but it wasn’t perfect. People smoked dope where his kids could smell it. The neighbors weren’t great. Now he’s in a thinly populated area where life is very, very easy.

His kids will be two miles from school. There is a big grocery store so close he can walk to it. There is a great pizza place a mile and a half away. Three of the kids now have their own bedrooms. It’s wonderful.

He and Teri have had the same coronavirus experience I’ve had: peace and plenty. They both have jobs. No one they know has gotten sick. It’s as though God has wrapped them in a blanket.

Moving was a breeze. It’s July in Florida, and it should be about 95 degrees outside. It was very comfortable today. I joked because I felt a drop of sweat at one point and had to run for shade. Ordinarily, my clothes would have been sticking to me after 20 minutes. I don’t even need a shower.

He took me to lunch today, and the pizza place we found was excellent. It was surgically clean, the staff was great, and the food was wonderful.

We talked about the time we live in. As former Miami residents, we agreed that it feels like the day before a hurricane. If you haven’t experienced a hurricane, you won’t understand, but things are extremely quiet the day before one arrives. The sensation is peaceful, but ominous. Many people are saying the rapture is nearly here. As Christians know, the rapture will be followed by the storm of God’s wrath.

I keep feeling the rapture will take place in December. For a while, it seemed like the 24th was the day. Then it seemed like the 11th was correct. I don’t know the answer, but I have a strong sense that I will not be on earth in 2021. I hope the rapture is coming, because the coronavirus, #MeToo, Antifa, and BLM curses we’re enduring seem to be part of a larger pattern of destruction which is going to get worse, not better. I have no desire to be here to see fools and brothers to apes rule us without God’s opposition.

I have been invited to Thanksgiving dinner. Alonzo says he wants to have a real Thanksgiving dinner at his own house. That will be great. It’s less than an hour away, so it will be very convenient to drive down and then transport myself back so I can lie on my back and recover.

They live fairly close to a 900-yard gun range, so that will give me more reason to visit their area.

I still know people who are mired in South Florida. Alonzo and I think God moves people to better places as they get closer to him. There are areas where nice Christian people are concentrated. It seems that God wants to preserve these places as though he were weeding gardens. I don’t think he wants to move too many backward people there. The same principle can be seen in the Bible. When the Jews behaved badly, their land spat them out. They only lived there and did well when they were obedient. The modern era is exceptional, because God moved them back while most of them were still atheists and leftists, but many have come around.

I think God let me fester in Miami because I belonged there. I would hate to go back. Today I saw “Miami” on road signs, and it made my insides tense up.

I think I’m as happy about Alonzo’s move as he is. It’s wonderful to see someone get in gear and catch God’s blessings.

We Think he Will Make his Move Soon

I made an important decision today. I decided to buy hundreds of rounds of Sellier & Bellot 6.5 Creedmoor FMJ ammo for rifle practice.

The ammo problem is pretty bad right now. You can still get nearly anything you want, if you’re willing to pay maybe 1.75 times what it’s worth. Personally, I am not willing to do that, and I do not understand people who are.

I don’t buy ammunition in person, because you have to be a chump to do that. You drive around to the few stores in your area, and then you find out they don’t have what you want or they do have it and the price is insane. A lot of people still do this, and it must be a good thing from where I sit, because I use the Internet, and if they were using it, too, there would be no good deals left for me.

Some people buy in person, and others go to ripoff websites and pay their insane prices. I know this, because the sites run out. It amazes me that people would rather be milked than spend a few minutes searching the web.

I just spent about an hour looking for what I wanted at a good price. I could have spent well over a dollar per round and given up after 10 minutes. I knew someone out there had to be selling for between 60 and 70 cents, so I persevered, and I got what I needed.

Why did I buy Sellier & Bellot? I’ve already mentioned it. This stuff is phenomenal. If you look around, you can find a site showing 2″ groups fired from 300 yards. This is about 2/3 MOA. The guy who tested it got a velocity spread of 7 fps.

Is it the best 6.5 Creedmoor ammo available? I’m sure it’s not, but I will be very surprised if, during the next year, I get so good I can shoot 2/3-MOA/300-yard groups with anything. This ammunition will shoot better than I can, and I don’t see that changing any time soon, so it seems to me it’s a tremendous bargain.

Any ammo that will hit a rat reliably 900 feet away is good ammo.

I should try their soft-point ammo. Maybe it’s just as good, and it would work if I needed to shoot for food.

Some people look down on Sellier & Bellot. It tends to be cheap. Thing is, they have an impressive modern factory. You can see a video tour on Youtube. In comparison, CCI’s .22 factory looks like a converted garage. That is not much of an exaggeration. Sellier & Bellot is a serious company. If their ammo is cheap, so much the better. Cost and quality are not always closely related.

I could not shoot today. Of course, it rained. It rains every day. I have no idea when it will stop. I’m going to have to start shooting before noon. It’s nearly always dry then.

I am cornering the .17 HMR market, and if I can ever get outside to shoot, I’ll be using my Savage 93R to work on my prone shooting. It’s cheaper to shoot than most pistols, and if the wind is still, it will shoot into an inch at 100 yards. Hard to imagine a better cheap training round. If the wind isn’t still, that will be fine, because I’ve had some training in dealing with wind, and I need to put it to use.

I’m going to try an Athlon scope on the 93R. I already have a Burris scope, but having trained to use mil-dot optics, I see no point in continuing to fool with different technology. I like the idea of learning to use the Burris correctly, but after that, there seems to be no reason to continue.

With the Burris, you shoot at various ranges and take note of where your shots land, and then you use the information later to help you make use of the holdover marks on the reticle. With my training and equipment, I’m supposed to test the ammo with a chronograph, enter data into my ballistic calculator, determine the range to targets, and aim where the calculator tells me to. It’s supposed to enable me to hit things on the first shot at any distance. I didn’t pay a load of money to take a class to learn all this so I could forget about it and go back to Elmer Fudd technology.

In order to get an Athlon, I had to go for crazy magnification. I had to choose between 8 and 25, and 8 was not going to fly. I think 25 is a lot for .17 HMR, but on the other hand, if I hunt with it, I might be hunting tiny critters with kill zones the size of ping pong balls. It seems like the best choice for the money.

The Vortex company made a name for itself using Asian-made scopes to compete with expensive Caucasian optics. Primary Arms came along and did the same thing to Vortex, undercutting their prices. Now Athlon is undercutting both of them, and the scope I’m getting is supposed to be as good as, or better than, the thousand-dollar Vortex I own. It costs $400. How can I not try that?

What if it turns out to be better than the Vortex? I’ll feel pretty stupid. I paid over $800 for it.

I still need to make a few ammo purchases to get me into the security zone. Once I feel like I have a few years’ supply, I’ll put my ammo away and start buying fresh ammo to shoot. That’s the plan.

Thank God I’m not doing this with food. Today someone sent me an ad for dried disaster rations. On sale, they wanted about $120 for 25,000 calories. So 12 dollars per day for 10 days, and then you starve. I think I can beat that at the grocery store. I fail to see the bargain. Ordinary stores carry a lot of things that will last a decade or more in a pantry.

If starvation becomes a widespread problem, I would rather just die and leave. How much should I be willing to fight to stay in this world, when I’m a heartbeat away from a place where no one is hungry and they never need air conditioning? Eating rehydrated desperation food from a 5-gallon pail is not my idea of living.

Now that the RPR is working, I should go visit the long distance range. Wednesday would be a good day for that. My farm is fine for a hundred yards, but the range offers 900, and there are no cattle walking between shooters and targets.

I’m not far from completing my basic armory and ammo dump. Once I’m done, the credit card companies may send people to see if I’m okay. When I stop spending money, they may assume I’m dead.

Doing Things Right is Fun

It’s a big day. I finally shot my Ruger Precision Rifle.

The other day, I set up a roofed platform in the pasture. Today I put my shooting mat on it and zeroed the RPR at 100 yards. The rifle is very nice. The trigger seems to be just as good as a Savage Accutrigger. The bolt is a little rough, but I assume that can be fixed.

It’s surprising how it bangs around. In comparison, the bolt on my cheap Savage 93R is like greased glass.

I don’t have a target photo to put up. It started raining after I shot about 10 rounds, and I quit after 20. I didn’t feel like stopping the cart in the rain to take a photo.

It wasn’t an impressive target anyway. I was adjusting the scope as I shot, so it’s not like I produced a nice, tight group or set of groups.

The recoil was a joke. I can’t even tell you what it feels like, because I don’t remember. When you shoot a .308, you will definitely have some memory of what you felt. It really looks like .308 is an obsolete cartridge. Bad recoil, short range, a parabolic trajectory, and terminal results that are no better than 6.5 Creedmoor. And it seems like ammo is more expensive.

Our military agrees with me. A number of outfits are abandoning the .308 and switching to Creedmoor.

And here I am with lots of .308 ammo.

I used Sellier & Bellot FMJ, which is cheap. A guy on Youtube posted a video in which he hit a small gong with it repeatedly at 656 yards, so I assume it’s good enough for zeroing a scope and getting started. If I shoot something more expensive, I should still be on the paper, so changing the zero should be quick.

I would say I’m shooting a little over 1 MOA. I don’t know if it’s fair to say anything about me, the gun, or the ammunition after 20 rounds. New guns sometimes take a little while to start shooting precisely. I don’t know if that’s the case with my gun and this ammo, but it could be.

I’m still getting accustomed to new things I learned when I took my shooting course. I need to sit down with a couple hundred rounds and get used to prone shooting. Seems like every time I go out, the rain drives me inside after a few shots. It can’t do that every day forever. Eventually, I’ll get to practice.

I am loading up on .17 HMR. Sellier & Bellot 6.5 Creedmoor is cheap, but .17 HMR is much cheaper. My goal is to keep 4000 rounds on hand. I don’t want to get caught empty-handed if Kamala Harris becomes president after Biden is forcibly deposed.

I may put a new scope on the .17 HMR rifle. My old scope is a very nice Burris Fullfield II something-14x. It has clear glass, but it won’t work well with the shooting methods I’ve learned. I was taught to use target turrets and grids. My scope has three lines below the horizontal crosshair, they don’t seem to have any relationship to any particular caliber, and it has no target turrets.

I guess it would be smart to have some versatility and develop the ability to use this type of scope, and maybe that is particularly true for a caliber that shouldn’t be used past 200 yards. Maybe I should be able to guess bullet drops within that short range. I want to use what I learned, though! I have a Kestrel I haven’t even used.

I’m looking at the Burris manual. It says they expect you to take your gun and ammo to a range and figure out the yardages the horizontal marks correspond to. Then you write the figures down and use them. I guess that makes sense. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help much with wind, and .17 HMR blows around like crazy.

I can stick a 4-14X Primary Arms scope on the Savage with an EGW 20-MOA base and some sort of rings. That ought to do the job. After that, I can take the Savage out and shoot it up to 300 yards and learn how to use a rifle. What I learn shooting .17 HMR can then be applied to other calibers.

It looks like I’ve blown maybe $2000 on the wrong scopes over about 12 years. Oh, well. It could be worse. I could be spending a hundred bucks a weekend to waste my time playing golf. My dad paid $180,000 for a fishing boat, and buying fuel meant filling tanks that held 775 gallons. My hobbies seem frugal compared to golf and fishing, which are relatively worthless pursuits.

I’ve spent quite a bit of money on equipment and ammo this year. I did the right thing. I’m buying before the start of the real insanity, and guns and ammo are very important. They can provide safety and food. To me, a thousand-dollar couch is a dreadful indulgence, but 10,000 rounds of .22 ammunition are a wise and necessary investment.

This week I plan to visit a long range gun range to see what they can do for me. That should be fantastic.

If I ever get to finish a shooting session before being drenched, I’ll write about it here. It will be a welcome change.

Shattering Idols May Get you Promoted

A while back, I got banned from The High Road, a contentious and unpleasant firearms forum, for saying (correctly) that a gun writer named Massad Ayoob had no business giving people legal advice. The moderators banned me, claiming I had violated the rules. Either that was a lie, or they have a rule against discussing Massad Ayoob honestly. At least a couple of forum bigwigs know him personally.

He’s not a lawyer. He’s not even a real cop, not that cops know much about the law. They do not.

He was a part-time cop (“captain” over 5 officers) in a nearly crime-free town the size of a high school. I thought he had no education at all, but today I learned he has a bachelor’s degree in business, from a college with an 84% acceptance rate. So he should be able to manage a hardware store or a restaurant. It’s not legal training.

I don’t know why it was so hard to find evidence that he had a degree. I did try. Maybe he downplays his education because it’s so obvious it didn’t prepare him to discuss things like law, ballistics, firearm design, ammunition design, or bullet wounds. Also, if he touts his background, people may look at it and marvel at the lack of military and big-city police experience.

From my non-expert standpoint, I guess (“guess”) he can speak with some intelligence about using a gun to defend yourself, but it appears he learned what he knows through a career as a writer. So he’s a bit like a person who Googles something a lot and then writes about what he read. That would make him more like Mr. Beauchamp than English Bob and Little Bill.

Self-taught people can be very sharp, but when it comes to law, it hasn’t worked out that way for Ayoob. His writings about the law impress laymen, and they probably impress bad lawyers, but they’re not great. His advice for people who use lethal force is scary, and it comes from a person who, like all laymen, is barred by law from representing people in legal matters. He’s probably right 75% of the time. Any half-bright person who reads up will usually be right about the law. The problem is that you can be right most of the time and still not know what you’re doing.

He used to be nearly alone in his field. As recently as two decades ago, not many people wrote seriously about self-defense tactics. Now you can use Google and find a huge number of people who have what appear to be superior qualifications. You can find experienced cops (who have actually had to shoot at criminals), Navy SEAL’s, Delta Force retirees, former military instructors, people who have worked in various government jobs involving firearms, individuals who have run private security firms, and so on. You can find real ballistics experts and wound experts, and you can find competitive shooters who have done much better than Ayoob. You can find lots of very skilled people who design and make guns. You can find extremely knowledgeable people who make ammunition. You can also find a lot of qualified attorneys who are willing to give general advice from a position of some authority.

Ayoob has done some good work, but it seems to me that his reputation as an oracle was never justified, and in 2020, it’s less justified than ever. No one has the last word on all things gun-related. People who hold themselves out to be demigods say dumb things all the time, and in the right circumstances, even a true expert can be corrected by an intelligent person who spots an error. Nonetheless, many gun enthusiasts quote him as though he were God himself.

Anyway, I got the boot, and it was pleasant news, because the forum was full of angry, condescending pedants and posers. Many gun forums are like that. It’s a shame, because people need good information on firearms, and if we’re going to keep our gun rights, we need to have some sense of community.

The moderators were arrogant, pompous, unfair, and rude. Not all the time, but enough. Visiting the forum was like visiting an abusive parent in the process of losing is faculties. It was necessary to walk on eggs in order to avoid starting kerfuffles that drove threads off-track and destroyed the purpose of posting. I limited my visits. Before posting, I would ask myself if the benefit was worth the aggravation.

I didn’t sit down today to write about being expelled from the playpen. That was just background. I felt like writing because I wanted to talk about the pleasant experiences I’ve had at another forum.

I tried to join two forums after I was paroled from The High Road, and there were some weird issues with my IP address, so I didn’t succeed right away. Finally, one of them let me in. I’m glad I made it, because my experience there has been infinitely better than my experiences at places like The High Road and The Firing Line.

The High Road and The Firing Line are related forums.They sprang from the same root. A bitter, ugly conflict caused a schism. They share at least one moderator.

The Firing Line is somewhat less unpleasant, but it’s still very flawed. One of the problems both forums have is denial. The people who run them are deluded. They think they can build bridges and attract leftists. As a result, members have to be very careful about mentioning politics and God. Things that matter to most gun enthusiasts.

My guess is that the proprietors want to make money by attracting people and selling ads. Or maybe there are some leftists among the owners. I don’t know. But the result is that they end up stifling the population segment that feeds them. Of course, the vast majority of the members are conservative, and many are Christian. They should be welcomed and encouraged, but they’re treated as though they embarrass the management.

When I joined the new forum, I got some big surprises.

First, I had to post an introduction. I got so many friendly responses, I had to shut off notifications. Everyone wanted to say hi, and they posted photos representing their states. That will never happen at The High Road or The Firing Line. I didn’t know what to make of it.

After that, I looked at the history of the place and the rules. It was created because other forums were lame, and they don’t tolerate rudeness.

I found a thread some character started. He was thrilled it was Sunday, because that was football day. Remember when it used to be church day? Spectator sports have always competed against churches and synagogues. That’s by Satan’s design.

Almost no one who responded was happy about football day. They criticized the unpatriotic, whiny pre-game protestors. They said they had better things to watch on TV. The guy who started the thread started responding in anger, and he got banned the next day.

This is typical of sports cultists. They have a demonic devotion to teams and players who do extremely trivial things for a living. You can tell they have a problem, because they get angry at people who say they’re not fans. If you say you don’t watch football, American men are likely to get upset with you. They may even insinuate that you’re a homosexual, which is a little weird, given the big homosexuality problem in football and other contact sports. Ordinarily, heterosexuals are less likely to want to watch big, sweaty muscular men in tight pants, and let’s not even talk about wearing a Target jersey with another man’s name on it.

I was amazed to see how people responded to the football thread. Especially the moderators. I felt at home.

They also have a religion forum. You can go in and talk openly about the antichrist, the rapture, and Jesus. That’s amazing. If you tried that at The High Road, it would never fly. Check out their rule:

We have learned from bitter experience that discussions of politics, abortion, religion, and sexual orientation often degenerate into less-than-polite arguments or claims that “my God is better than your God”. For this reason, we do not discuss such subjects on THR, and any threads dealing primarily with these subjects will be closed or deleted immediately.

They suggest rudeness and conflict are their concerns. The truth is that they allow rudeness all the time. They’re just afraid of offending non-Christians.

The new forum allows religious conversations, and they even have a chaplain. You can post prayer requests.

As for politics, they boot people who start anti-gun threads. They haven’t sold their souls. They know who supports them. The forum itself has a pro-Second-Amendment position. They say so. No hiding.

You can go to a thread and say rioters are spoiled criminals who want to promote socialism. You can say the police should blast them with water cannons to restore peace. No problem!

In short, it’s a much healthier place. The people are nice, the moderators understand who they need to attract and retain, and they don’t pretend to be something they’re not.

One of the signs of a successful Christian walk is seeing venomous, godless people removed from your life. When you’re in need of refinement, God doesn’t want to subject his children to you too much. He wants to bless them, and they can’t have blessed lives if they’re constantly forced to endure obnoxious people. As you improve, he will move you to better places. I saw this principle at work when God helped me move out of Miami. I see it in my experience with The High Road. Those people are a mess. Spending time on that forum is like hanging out with toddlers in day-old diapers. It produces a feeling of being besieged. Moving to a nicer place is like taking a shower and putting on fresh clothes.

If you hate the place where you live, and you’re tired of the people around you, maybe you need to clean yourself up so you’re fit to be put somewhere else. That’s how I see it. I love it where I am, but I think God will move me to an even nicer place if I cooperate and grow.

The rapture is the final expression of this principle. When it no longer makes sense to make us stay in this world, God will put us in a place where we are all alike in our hearts. There won’t be any rioters. No one will be pulling down statues. We won’t have to read news stories about pregnant “men.” We’ll never have to picket any abortion clinics. I see why we talk of eternal life as rest.

I feel more motivated to improve. There are rewards. There is relief ahead. It’s worth the trivial sacrifices.

Today is my third day of fasting until 3 p.m. Yesterday, after I was done, I felt bursts of faith that startled me. I felt self-control increasing and the drives of the flesh decreasing. It’s exciting. Maybe this type of fasting is the key to the breakthrough I needed. I don’t know if I’ll ever eat before 3 p.m. again. At the very least, I can see myself abandoning breakfast.

If I want to be separated from the filthiness of the world, I need to be separated from my own filthiness. I want God to bless me by putting me among good people, but if I’m still a mess, he can’t do that, because he won’t want to subject them to my presence.

I hope to keep posting good reports. I hope I’m really onto something.

We Rejected the Vaccine, and we Don’t Want the Cure

Decided to fast again today. I’m like a dirty stable that hasn’t been shoveled in a while. I need to keep going until I get it done. Sometimes I think I should fast every day from now on.

I really do not want to be here after the rapture. I don’t like this place right now, when our problems are minor. I can’t imagine spending a single day here with God’s protection, and every person who thinks like me, removed.

A strange thing has been happening. I listen to an audio Bible whenever I drive, and I play it in the house a lot. I keep hearing passages about disaster.

For some reason, Jeremiah keeps popping up. I’ll hear him say something in the car, and then I’ll go in the house and hear the same thing coming from the TV.

The other day I wrote about the horsemen of the apocalypse. The first is a crowned figure on a white horse, and he goes out to conquer. Then comes a red horse with a rider who brings violence. Then comes a black horseman who brings lack. The final horseman brings death by things like disease.

These things were written in around 90 A.D. Long before that, Jeremiah said this, about Judah and Jerusalem:

Then the Lord said to me, “Do not pray for this people, for their good. When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence.”

Jeremiah mentioned the same problems, in the same order. Of course, John had read Jeremiah, but that doesn’t mean he copied him. John was a prophet. Unlike today’s preachers, he didn’t have to plagiarize in order to have something to say.

The white horseman is Jesus. I have written that I suspected as much, but later in the Revelation (chapter 19), he is named as a man on a white horse. If I were any kind of Bible student, I would have known that. He goes out to warn and prepare people, so when the other horsemen show up, human beings have no excuses that would incline God to spare them.

Jesus rides into the world to defeat the antichrist, and he does it on a white horse. In the gospels, he rode the white colt of a donkey into Jerusalem.

This morning, Daniel was playing, and I heard this:

Then the Lord said to me, “Do not pray for this people, for their good. When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I will not accept them. But I will consume them by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence.”

He wrote this after fasting and praying to find out what would happen to the Jews.

What a picture of what’s starting to happen in America. God brought disaster to the Jews because they didn’t pray and turn to him. Right now, America is sliding toward catastrophe, and we’re not praying or repenting, either. We pin our hopes on ridiculous masks and government officials who tell us one thing one day and the opposite the next. Where are the prayer rallies? Where are the preachers who say we brought this on ourselves? Responses like these should be immediate, but we’re barely seeing them at all.

Here’s what God said about Jerusalem and Judah in Isaiah 3:

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

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

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

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

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

When a man takes hold of his brother
In the house of his father, saying,
“You have clothing;
You be our ruler,
And let these ruins be under your power,”

In that day he will protest, saying,
“I cannot cure your ills,
For in my house is neither food nor clothing;
Do not make me a ruler of the people.”

It’s an interesting passage. These things are happening to us right now. We used to have rulers and influential people who were capable and reasonaby mature. Now we have disgraceful, unlearned brats. We make ignorant ghetto boors billionaires. We have a lot of masculinity-hating women in power. The Bible says it’s a curse to be ruled by women. It’s demeaning, it exposes men’s failure to assume their proper roles, and women in power generally make the wrong choices. Ask Adam. If only women voted, we would already live in a totalitarian communist state.

For quite some time, I’ve believed God gave us Donald Trump because he didn’t want to put a gentleman in the Oval Office. I don’t think he wanted a gentleman to have to suffer the libels and unfair attacks. The children of darkness do their best to make conservatives suffer while they’re in office. They file frivolous suits. They get them charged with crimes they didn’t commit. They impeached Trump for things that aren’t even illegal. Decent people shouldn’t have to deal with that, but to Donald Trump, these things mean absolutely nothing. On his scale of suffering, mosquito bites are worse.

More than ever, nice people have abundant reason to avoid running for office. They risk ruining their lives and exposing their famiies to abuse, in order to help a nation of people who, increasingly, are not worth the sacrifice.

People speculate on the source of coronavirus. They claim a lab created it. They say it came from bats. It came from sin. You can stop speculating.

God is allowing it to make people sick, kill them, ruin them financially, and keep them out of church because we sinned and sinned and sinned, and we never repented or even admitted guilt. It’s probably not going away soon, and if it goes away, something worse will follow it. The idea that we can shelter in place, ignore our sins, and wait for things to get better is fatuous.

You can’t run from God. The Bible talks of rich people who call on the mountains to fall on them and hide them. This is already happening. People are buying underground bunkers. They’re not going to work. Can anyone be stupid enough to think he can go where God can’t go?

As plagues go, coronavirus is a joke. I don’t want to see the real plagues that come after the rapture. Not being able to buy eggs or toilet paper for a month was annoying; I don’t want to know what the horseman of lack will bring America. Racist, Marxist rioting has inconvenienced us. I don’t want to see what the horseman of violence does when there are no Christian people on earth praying for God to help humanity.

The other day I wrote about the flood metaphor. Lots of Youtubers are posting videos about the rapture, and they say they see flooding. I posted a video like that about 5 years ago. The Bible says we will be lifted into the air during the rapture, and that means invisible water will make us float. I feel God has been using this concept to open my eyes to Bible verses which are about the rapture. There are more of them than you would think.

Take a look at Psalm 32:

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.

When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.

For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah.

I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah.

For this shall every one that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him.

Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah.

Here’s a passage from Matthew:

And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.

And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus.

But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.

And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?

And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased.

Here’s some of Psalm 69:

But as for me, my prayer is unto thee, O Lord, in an acceptable time: O God, in the multitude of thy mercy hear me, in the truth of thy salvation.

Deliver me out of the mire, and let me not sink: let me be delivered from them that hate me, and out of the deep waters.

Let not the waterflood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me.

Look at Matthew:

But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,

And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.

Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.

Many Christians say “days of Noah” refers to sin, especially sexual sin, that will fill the world before the end. We don’t talk much about the reference to the flood. Jesus is saying the rapture will be like a flood that lifts certain people and drowns others.

Psalm 29:

The Lord sitteth upon the floood; yea, the Lord sitteth King forever.

There are too many verses to quote in one blog post. Flood references are all over the Bible. Jesus even compared carnal preachers to people who had millstones tied around their necks and were thrown into the sea. Many, many famous preachers will be here after the rapture, and my guess is that many will go to hell. I think there must surely be a lot of them there already.

A flood is starting to wash over us, and most of us are sitting under the water holding our breath, hoping the water will go away on its own.

The Bible makes sense, and it’s not hard to understand. It just seems hard to understand because we have supernatural blindness, like the men of Sodom who couldn’t find the door of Lot’s house.

I hope I get it together and keep it together long enough to make be buoyant. The last thing I want is to be stuck in a ruined world with people who hate me.

Smart Preppers Prepare Supernaturally

I’m fasting today.

Generally, I keep it quiet when I fast. Jesus discouraged people from making a show of fasting in order to impress others. I’m not trying to impress anyone. I’m embarrassed about having to fast. Since the epidemic got into high gear, life has been very easy for me, and I’ve let my flesh take over. I eat too much and do too little, and some bad behaviors have been creeping up on me.

On a related note, I’m thinking about coronavirus. I’m wondering why it hasn’t gone away.

Here’s what I think God is telling me: virtually no one is calling for fasting and prayer. We’re wearing ridiculous masks that do nearly nothing, and we’re very self-righteous about them. Half of the country is blaming Donald Trump, not because he’s the problem, but because that half of the country will jump on any chance to libel him. We’re criticizing each other’s cleanliness (we have a point) and our social-distancing failures. The truth is that we got this disease because we’re sinful and rebellious, and the door we came in is the only way we can go out.

There is nothing even faintly resembling a national call to prayer, which is exactly what we have to have, if we want to move on. I think most Americans would prefer death to repentance, however. We’re in love with fornication, homosexuality, pride, drugs, anger, cruelty, pleasure, and ourselves. We think the God of the Bible is ignorant, backward, and unreasonable. We would rather make our own way. Our own way leads to disease, starvation, and murder, however.

The epidemic doesn’t make sense, and God told me something very important a long time ago: when something doesn’t make sense, look for a supernatural cause. This is true of curses and also blessings. If you wonder how an unrepentant serial rapist became “America’s dad,” or how Oprah Winfrey became a billionaire while doing a mindless job other people did just as well, or why Americans responded to coronavirus by hoarding things that wouldn’t help and were never actually scarce, there’s your answer.

The statistics appear to be pure nonsense. I can give you some examples. When the epidemic was getting started, the CDC’s website said we had had 80,000 flu deaths over the last season. A month or two back, a different figure appeared, and it was about half as high. In May, the US coronavirus curve went nearly straight sideways for about a month. If you look at representations of the same curve now, the horizontal part is gone, as though it had never happened. They’re telling us the epidemic never slowed down, and we all know that isn’t true.

We will never know how much of the surge is actually illusory. Testing has increased very dramatically, and this has warped our data. In my area, the graph representing the number of people tested looks almost exactly like the graph of new cases, and that says a lot. No one in authority made any effort to confront this issue, which is at least a nationwide phenomenon, until people pointed out the obvious and forced them.

A couple of days ago, I got a haircut. I listened to the conversation in the shop. I learned something interesting. People who are dying in ways that seem to have nothing to do with coronavirus are being added to the death toll. I knew there were stories about this out there, but until this week, I hadn’t heard from anyone with personal knowledge. I heard about someone who died in a motorcycle crash and another person who had had coronavirus but had died from a heart attack. Both, according to the people I listened to, were declared coronavirus casualties.

Hospitals get paid more when they claim patients have coronavirus. It’s a lot of money, and diagnoses are subjective. People in healthcare generally lean left. If they overdiagnose, they get more money, and they get to add to a state of hysteria that tends to work against conservatives.

The statistics are cooked shamelessly every day. That’s unquestionably true. On the other hand, there do appear to be a lot of new cases.

If coronavirus has proven anything, it’s that epidemiology is a joke. I’m sure it must be good for something, but epidemiologists have failed miserably at explaining this epidemic and making predictions. Apparently the science has not yet reached the point where it can make reliable predictions, which makes you wonder if it has significant value.

We don’t really know what’s going on, but we do know coronavirus is still here. We should repent and pray. It’s not happening. When you receive punishment from God, and you don’t repent, he sends something else, and his punishments tend to be progressive. The longer you stiffen your neck, the worse they get.

No one knows who I am. When I blog, nearly no one reads what I say. I can’t do anything significant to help, apart from prayer. I can’t take out newspaper ads or buy millions of banners on websites. I can’t hold a press conference or address stadiums full of people. There isn’t a whole lot I can do for other people, but I can repent and pray here at home.

I’m not focusing on avoiding coronavirus. I don’t worry about that (or anything else). I am concerned about preparing myself for the rapture and for living life until it comes. Coronavirus doesn’t scare me. To me, it’s just a reminder that life is a very serious game. I don’t care about death. I would be thrilled to go right now. I just want to be aligned with God so I will live correctly while I’m here and I will go to the right place when it’s over.

Usually, I avoid watching fiction, unless reruns of Duck Dynasty count. I feel God wants me to limit my exposure to video fiction. Hollywood is run by smug, ignorant fools who corrupt the rest of us with their willful stupidity. This week, I felt he allowed me to see a couple of films. I watched both Sicario movies. These films are about a jaded, vindictive man the government hires to fight Mexican drug lords.

Last night, I watched a scene in which a group of thugs drove a hostage through the desert. One group was in a Ford SUV with a gaudy green paint job. The men in the car were trashy-looking. They looked exactly like the tattooed, smirking ticks and lice who actually work for gangs. They were listening to obnoxious Spanish rap.

I was repelled. I thought about the godless lifestyle. I have a little experience with it. Loud music, drunkenness, drugs, no sleep, impudence, pride, malice…it’s repugnant. I thought about the tens of millions of people who live that way every day in America. You don’t have to be a Mexican criminal to live in that atmosphere. Most people I’ve gone to church with do it. Christian music in church; rap in the car, the house, the workplace (if any), and the club. Trashy tattoos. Trashy clothes on the women. Dope. Filthy language. No prayer except on Sundays. Shacking up. Strings of illegitimate babies.

Thinking about it made me realize how sick I am of this world. I really want out. I’m fine when I’m alone or with other Christians–real ones–but associating with the general public is unpleasant. It’s like riding in a hot bus with a bunch of people who never bathe or brush their teeth.

My attitude is correct; it’s healthy. It came from the Holy Spirit. The closer you get to God, the more you find wrong with yourself and society. In other words, you grow up. Only a small percentage of people really grow up. They prefer to go through life like babies who never have their diapers changed.

We’re supposed to love people who are against God. We’re not called to bring them into our social circles and endure their presence around the clock.

I used to like bars. The thought of going into a bar is unpleasant now. Bars are for drunkenness, fornication, and fighting. Every bar is a sore on the face of the earth. They should all be burned. I used to like fishing and taking trips to the Bahamas, but those things brought me in contact with shallow, selfish people who never did anything for anyone else. Somewhere, people were witnessing or feeding the poor, but these characters were thinking about drugs, drunkenness, sex, and the lofty goal of catching big fish. I used to like jazz, but it has nothing to do with God, and it has been created and performed by drug addicts and drunks. I don’t want to hear it now.

I’m not out to change the world. A desire to force other people to comply is carnal. My goal is to control myself and my immediate environment. I am content to hole up in my own little Patmos and try to reach people from inside it. I say all bars should be burned. I don’t mean I think Christians should burn them. That would be insane. It would be nice if they disappeared, however.

To get back to coronavirus, if you belong to God, plagues aren’t for you. If this minor plague gets you, something is amiss. The Bible repeatedly mentions shortages, disease, and violence. Because Americans aren’t learning from disease, our nation will probably see severe shortages and widespread violence before too long. I am working to be excluded. If God excluded the Jews from the plagues of Egypt, surely he will exclude his real children from whatever problems America faces.

Rumors of Yesterday’s Rapture are Greatly Exaggerated

People on Youtube are predicting the rapture will come on July 22, 2020. I’m hoping they’re wrong, because that was yesterday, and I’m still here.

Others think it will be July 25. While nothing could make me happier than to see them proven right (other than having it happen right now), I think it will happen later. People are using weird astronomical calculations to come up with July 25, but the word says God tells us what will happen through prophets, not astronomers. Figuring things out isn’t prophecy.

I watched a great video yesterday. A lady who sounds sort of Jamaican dreamed she and her son were in a school bus, outside a school, waiting for the school day to end. The bus symbolized the separation of the rapture, obviously. School was wrapping up. People who weren’t prepared for the rapture were getting a last chance to learn and repent.

I loved this video, mainly because she used the phrase “going home.” The word “heaven” sounds nice, but “home” has a special meaning. The concept of home is a big deal in the Bible.

Adam had a perfect home. He lost it, and he could never return. In his home, everyone was in agreement. There was no anger or argument. Even the animals were friends to Adam and his wife. Once they were driven from their home, things changed. They had two sons, and one murdered the other. The human race became so corrupt and disgusting, God killed nearly everyone. It’s getting the same way now.

The Jews had a pretty good home in Israel, but like Adam, they were driven out by God. They rebelled, so the land vomited them out. In Israel, when they behaved, they were dominant and prosperous. When they acted up, foreigners came in and humiliated them by ruling over them. They eventually had to leave, and they have been tormented in other nations ever since. Homelessness is a major theme in Jewish history. Apart from Israel, they are strangers wherever they live.

Americans had a sweet situation for a long time. We had our problems, but our nation was generally safer than other nations, and it became the strongest, best nation on earth. Then our rebellion increased to the point where God had to do something. Now foreigners come in illegally and take our jobs and commit crimes (other than the crime of being here illegally). Revolting people push us around politically and in our workplaces. A barbaric nation that used to be afraid of us is becoming dominant over us. The earth has never been “home” for real Christians, but America was the next best thing. Now our “Israel” is being taken from us.

The problem with our predicamant is that there is no place else to go. Christians were able to leave Europe when religion was in decline there. We were able to move to America and live in hegemony. Now that America is not hospitable, we’re stuck. We are out of fresh continents. We can’t go to Mars.

There is no large country left that can function as a home for us. For this reason, the rapture is more exciting to me than it ever has been. There is nothing left for us here, so it’s wonderful to have a new nation that will take us in. Heaven is our nation, it’s perfect in every way, and the people who hate us will never, ever be seen or heard there. Once we take the bus ride, we will never even have to think about them again.

We will never look at the news in heaven and get knots in our stomachs. Won’t that be nice? What a change.

We will still have to think about the earth. Prophecy says at least some of us will have to return to Earth in 7 years, but it will be a changed place. No rioters. No LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ tyranny in the workplace. No secular government to take our money and rule us with insensitivity and spite. No crime problem. No pollution. No plagues. No poverty. Jesus himself will be here as our king. We won’t have to worry about being abused by President Kamala Harris or President Elizabeth Warren.

I was thinking about it last night, and I realized that if I am brought back here, the rapture won’t be a permanent move for me. It will be more like a vacation. My lifespan won’t be over if the tribulation ends within the next decade.

At times I’ve wondered what I should do with my stuff. Should I write a rapture-ready will? I’m not sure how that would work, because 1) everyone I would want to leave things to is a Christian and would hopefully be taken in the rapture, and 2) I don’t think anything I left anyone else would be helpful to them. When the full-blown apocalypse takes place, what good will money and land do anyone? They won’t save anyone from famine, war, pestilence, or the disasters that will kill big percentages of the plants, animals, people, and sea creatures.

Now that I see the rapture as a 7-year rest, I wonder if I should forget about plans for my estate. Maybe my property will survive, and I’ll be entitled to reclaim it. If I’m raptured, I won’t be legally dead anyway, so anyone who tries to take what I have will have no claim.

No one thinks about this stuff.

During the rapture, we will go home to heaven. When the tribulation is over, we’ll return to something we have never experienced: an Earth where we are not rejected. It won’t be home, but it will be ours; our big Israel. We will be kings and queens. No one will question it. No one will protest displaying the Ten Commandments in a public building. No one will tell us kids can’t pray in school. If there is money, we’ll be able to put the face of Jesus on every coin and bill, and no one will be able to do one thing about it.

I’ve already experienced something like this. God moved me from Miami, a trashy city which is like hell’s embassy, to a place where you can go to a store that belongs to a major chain and hear Christian music while you shop. The people here are polite and patient. They are hard to provoke. They do things for each other. It’s not perfect, but it’s a huge step up, and it’s a picture of the rapture.

Every day, I thank God over and over. I look around and I say, “Look at this place! Look where I live!” I say these things out loud while I drive. If I’m this happy here, how will I be able to stand the joy of being at the marriage of Jesus in heaven?

I can’t wait to go home. The closer I get to God, the more he isolates me from corrosive people and spirits. I can’t wait to be completely free of them and to know I will never have to see or hear them again.

The Bible clearly says God’s chosen will know when the rapture is coming. I thought we wouldn’t know, but fellow blogger Baldilocks corrected me. Christians love to say they don’t claim to know the date, but in reality, there is no reason why we can’t. The Bible says it won’t come as a thief in the night to God’s children. The surprise is for everyone else.

It looks like July 22 was not the day, and I don’t think July 25 is it, either. I keep feeling it will be December 24. Pray and see what God tells you.

God kept telling me my dad would not be alive on April 1, 2019. He told me this for months. Then my dad died a week before that day. Now I feel like God is telling me I won’t be here on January 1, 2021, and December 24 comes about a week earlier. Does it mean anything? I’ve been wrong before.

December 24 is my dad’s birthday.

I hope I’m not here to see the children of the devil elect a post-Trump president. It was painful enough to see them elect Clinton and Obama. Biden is demented and presumably dying, and if he is elected, the extreme-leftist black woman he chooses to be vice president will be in charge. Life will be unbearable for anyone who belongs to God. Israel will be in big trouble. It will be very ugly.

There are rabbis who predict that Netanyahu will be Israel’s last prime minister prior to the coming of the Messiah. I don’t consider rabbis prophets, since they missed the Messiah the first time around, but it’s interesting. Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while, and in the Bible, a Jew who rejected and persecuted Jesus uttered a prophecy.

Some Christians and Messianics point to the writings of the late Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri to “prove” Jesus is the Messiah. I have written about it before. I am not convinced.

Kaduri, who was an extremely influential rabbi, claimed he was in communication with the Messiah. When he died, he left a note about him, and the first letters of the first words of the note spelled “Yehoshuah,” which is the long form of “Yeshua,” or “Jesus.” Kaduri’s students confirm that he believed Yeshua was the Messiah, and at least some are now Messianics. They don’t equivocate. They say he expressly stated that Yeshua was the Messiah.

Kaduri’s followers put the note on his website. They were proud of it. Then when the “code” was discovered in the note, the note was taken down, and his son started claiming it was a forgery. Now some notebooks Kaduri filled have been published, and a handwriting expert says the same person wrote the note and the notebooks.

Here’s the thing: Kaduri said the spirit of the Messiah had attached itself to someone in Israel. Was he talking about reincarnation? This is not a Christian doctrine. The Bible clearly says Jesus will return in the skies and that everyone on earth will see it. I suppose he could do that after living in Israel incognito, but it doesn’t sound right. He said he would return in the sky. If he’s living in Israel, that’s a return, and he’s clearly not in the sky.

Of course, the Holy Spirit attaches himself to every Christian who does Christianity right, and the same thing applies to Messianics. If Kaduri was referring to the Holy Spirit, and not reincarnation, then there is no problem. He said the Messiah was already in Israel, but that’s vague. It’s not the same thing as saying a human Messiah in a flesh body was in Israel.

Jesus visits people and talks to them. He visited me twice. I suppose he could dwell on a person for a time if he wanted. That would not be reincarnation.

A Christian preacher has written two books asserting that Kaduri was right. The book is being used to win Jews over.

I don’t believe a reincarnation prophecy could be correct. I also have doubts about Kaduri’s salvation. Jesus plainly stated that if a person denied him before men, he would deny them before Yahweh. We are told that Kaduri said he hid his belief because he was afraid of persecution. If that’s true, how is it possible for him to be saved? If he had been communicating with Jesus, presumably, he would have been told to stand up like a man and tell others what he believed.

I am not sure what to make of the Kaduri stories. If they’re unsound, people shouldn’t use them as conversion tools. You can’t build a strong house on a soft foundation. But it’s interesting. Also, sometimes false prophesies are partly true. Kaduri had a long history of giving people magical charms, which means he was a witch, but Saul got sound information through a witch, and besides, a witch can repent.

Kaduri said the Messiah wouldn’t return until Ariel Sharon died. Sharon had a stroke soon after he said that. He was in a coma for an amazing 8 years, and he died in 2014. That was the year after the US Supreme Court forced federal recognition of absurd gay “marriage.” This shows Sharon died at about the time the world started to get really insane.

Kaduri also said Jews needed to return to Israel to escape natural disasters. So far, the disasters haven’t materialized.

The more I look at Kaduri, the more I think I’ve misunderstood what he said in the past. Maybe he was on the level.

This week, I had a few end-time thoughts which may be revelations.

First, why are there so many rapture dreams on Youtube, referring to floods and tsunamis?

I had my own tsunami rapture dream several years ago. I was sitting on the floor in my grandparent’s living room. Their house was a place of peace and escape for me. It was a place of belonging. My mother was in a chair in a corner. She was wearing jeans and a work shirt; items she would never have worn in real life. She had long hair. I have never seen her with long hair. I had a little dish of insecticide bait pellets in front of me.

I heard a horn sound. The pitch was low. It shook the earth. Somehow I knew the creature blowing it was way out over the Pacific somewhere. I realized the rapture was taking place.

My mother, the poison pellets, and I started rising in the air. It was as though the room were filling with invisible water. Everything else stayed put. I woke up when we started passing through the ceiling.

It’s strange that the poison was coming with us. It had obviously been provided by God, for some good purpose during my time on earth. Sometimes I think I have been bait for people controlled by demons. Many, many people have attacked me for no reason during my life. It’s something I expect. It’s normal for me. The poison would be the judgment God hands down to them later.

Why do rapture dreams resemble floods?

The first rapture was the flood. The earth was full of filthy people who were polluted with the DNA of fallen angels who had had sex with bird-brained women. This is where the giants came from. Enoch says they were giants in the flesh but not in spirit. God made water rise. Those who didn’t float died. Those who were lifted in the ark survived and ended up in a cleansed world.

Jewish legend, which is occasionally correct, says Satan petitioned God after the flood, complaining that God had locked up spirits that served him. He said he needed more of them to tempt mankind. God released a fraction of them, and they are with us today, if the story is true.

Things that happen in the physical world in the Old Testament are shadows of things that happen in the supernatural world in the New Testament. Physical water and the extermination of half-breed abominations symbolize other things that take place in later times.

After the flood, God promised he would not use water to destroy the world again.

In the Bible, water represents words and voices. These are the things that actually control everything else. The word says God’s voice sounds like many waters. When Peter sank in the Sea of Galilee, it was a picture of a person succumbing to the voices of corrupt people and demons. There is a sea of such voices that covers the world.

When the rapture comes, supernatural waters that do not come from evil spirits or their children will rise, and those who belong to Jesus will float on them. We won’t see water with our eyes. It won’t be physical water. It will be a supernatural tide that comes from God.

I believe this explains the flood of tsunami dreams. I use the word “flood” deliberately, even though it looks like a bad choice.

The second revelation, or possible revelation, involves the birth of Israel (Jacob) and Esau. Esau was a profane person who always threw away future blessings in exchange for immediate gratification of the flesh. He was like a pig. For all his faults, Israel was closer to God.

The Revelation says a woman clothed with the sun will give birth, and a red dragon will try to consume the baby when it comes.

The dragon is Satan. It sweeps a third of the stars from heaven with its tail, just as Satan corrupted a third of the angels.

The woman–God’s people–is taken by eagles and carried away to safety for 7 years. That just happens to be the number of years of tribulation that follow the rapture.

The dragon tries to destroy the woman by spewing water from its mouth, but the earth swallows the water. When a person’s words have no power, they fall to earth, according to scripture.

Satan is constantly filling the earth with the water of his lies and curses. “God isn’t real.” “Christians are silly, ignorant racists who hate women.” “Jesus is just like Buddha.” “There are many ways to heaven.” “Christianity is anti-female, and wicca is right because it recognizes the superiority of women.” “Science proves the Bible is wrong.” You’ve heard them all. Faith provided by God is what allows you to float on the water.

The Revelation talks about labor pains, but it’s not completely clear whether Jesus and his nation are the only ones who are being born. It looks like the antichrist is also being born, because he rises up before Jesus takes over the world, and like Esau, he ends up on the bottom.

When Israel and Esau were born, Esau came out first. He was the elder, so he was entitled to receive most of what Isaac had. Israel came out behind him, holding his ankle. Esau was unworthy, and he ended up selling Israel his birthright for a bowl of soup. Then Isaac was tricked into giving Israel the elder son’s blessing.

It appears to me that the birth of Esau and Israel is a picture of the end. The antichrist, who is the human representative of Satan, will emerge before Jesus comes in glory. He will rule in great power, like a king who inherited his kingdom as an eldest son. Then Jesus and his nation will return, take over, and expel the antichrist.

Esau was red when he was born, like the dragon.

It certainly looks like the birth of the twins was a picture of the emergence of the antichrist and his defeat and replacement. Satan’s children rule the world right now, but we will receive everything they’ve stolen, and they will be removed from our presence.

I’m not certain about everything, but I think it’s safe to say the age of the Gentiles (the age of the church) is over. I believe the apocalypse has begun. I believe the rapture will take place soon, and I strongly suspect it will be this year.

Too Many Holes

I managed to shoot 30 rounds today from the new platform. Things went well, but not too terribly well.

First, the platform. It’s stable. It’s comfortable. There was no cow spit on it when I went out to shoot, so maybe I don’t have to worry about them licking it.

Now, the shooting. I’ll go ahead and post the target. I was shooting a CORE-15 M-Lok Scout with a 16″ barrel, a LaRue Tactical MBT-2S trigger, a Midwest Industries quick-detach scope mount, and a Primary Arms 4-14x Mil-dot scope. I was using 55-grain Australian Outback ammo, which is pretty much the same thing as Hornady Urban TAP, only better and cheaper.

The bullseyes are 4″ wide. I shot 10 rounds into each one.

I started at the bottom left. If it looks bad, it should. After I finished, I noticed the scope was moving.

I followed the instructions when I mounted the scope, but quick-detach mounts are not like mounts and rings that use screws to hold them on. Ordinarily, you can use a torque wrench to make sure a scope is secure. Quick-detach mounts have weird, gimmicky systems you have to adjust by trial and error. I tried, and I got an error. I stopped shooting, got a screwdriver, and fixed the scope mount.

I shot the bullseye at bottom right next. I adjusted the scope first. I believe I adjusted it before realizing it was loose. Not the best practice. Anyway, I didn’t do all that well.

I shot the top left bullseye last. Seems to me I improved a great deal in some ways but not in others. I have seen stringing before, but this takes the cake. I made an 8-shot-long, contiguous bullet-hole snake, along with two flyers.

I am not a gun expert, but here is what I make of that: the gun will shoot sub-MOA with cheap ammunition and a 16″ non-match barrel, IF I can figure out what I’m doing to make it move sideways.

Is the problem parallax? Well, if it is, why isn’t there vertical stringing? This group is super-tight, vertically. It’s wonderful, if you ignore the width. Parallax isn’t just a horizontal thing, so it seems like a parallax problem would be likely to work along both axes.

I am not completely in love with the trigger I bought. It’s a LaRue MBT-2S. It seems to be a fine trigger, but they send them out with a 4.5-pound pull. That’s kind of heavy for the technique I use. I was taught to bend my finger at a right angle and put the trigger way down near the end, where I get no leverage. This makes any trigger seem heavy, so 4.5 pounds may be more than I need.

The funny thing is that the point of the new technique is to stabilize the rifle horizontally.

How is my cheek weld? Not that great. My scope is inexpensive, and it has a small eye box or area in which you have to put your eye to make it work well. It’s not easy to get situated accurately, consistently. Maybe I should think about a new buttstock or some kind of pad. I have read that cheek weld problems can cause horizontal stringing.

Of course, practice is also a major factor. I haven’t been able to practice because of rain, lack of a suitable platform, and equipment issues. I think I’m going to get out the .17 HMR and get some practice in. The ammo is really cheap, and it’s very, very accurate.

Why am I complaining about a relatively inexpensive rifle, scope, and ammo that appears to be able to nail squirrels reliably at 100 yards? Because it’s stupid to shoot badly if you can shoot better. Why not keep fixing your problems? I don’t think there is anything significant wrong with the gun, ammo, or scope, so I believe I can get considerably more precision if I try.

Shooting Platform Finished

I feel like I got my life back just now. I put my new shooting platform down in the pasture. Photos below.

Here, I’m seeing if the tractor forks tear the platform up before lifting it.

Here, I’ve decided to go for it.

Here, you can see the cattle resenting me for disturbing their rest.

Here, I’ve selected the platform’s location.

Here, the platform is situated in its final resting place.

The pasture has an old wooden fort sort of thing designed for kids. It’s not in great shape, and I’m not all that interested in swingsets and so on, so I don’t maintain it. I considered putting a new roof on it and using it as a place to sit while I wait for varmints. Decided not to do it. Anyway, the best and safest location for the platform lines me up so I shoot under the fort.

The tractor didn’t damage the platform at all. If you tried, you could find some little marks where the forks pressed against the wood. That’s about it.

I can move it whenever I want, so if I get brave and decide I want to shoot at 400 yard, I can do it. I have to balance my desire to shoot well against my desire to not shoot the neighbors and go to prison.

The dangers of outdoor shooting, for responsible people who shoot well, are not as great as one might think. The odds of my firing a shot so wild it would leave my property are infinitesimal. The odds of a guest firing such a shot are considerably greater, so it may well be that no one except me will ever be allowed to use the platform.

Hitting another house would be pretty difficult. In addition to missing the berm and the ground past it, you would probably have to shoot several hundred times just to have one shot make it through the woods.

I’ve let noobs shoot pistols at short range on my property, and I let two people I knew were not idiots shoot rifles, but that’s about as far as I’ll go. I have never let anyone shoot without me present.

What to do now?

It’s blistering hot. Do I really want to go out there and shoot? I guess I should. Laziness always finds an excuse. I put a roof on my platform to make excuses harder to swallow.

I hope things work out well. For all the expense and work, I think I should receive a substantial return.

“Log Entry; July 19: Today we Observed the Hate Blogger Completing Some Sort of Alt-Right Assassination Platform”

The air at my house is heavy with smugness. I finished building my prone shooting platform today. Here she is.

The paint on the plywood is tough but not well-executed. I am not a good painter. I did what I could, but it still has weird irregularities in it. I don’t think it will matter out in the pasture.

I put two quasi-diagonal braces on it to make sure it stays square from side to side. I may put one on one of the long sides. I can’t put one on the left side, because that’s the side where I’ll enter the platform.

I bought some hardware cloth. It’s not cloth. It’s wire. It’s like square chicken wire. I plan to fasten it to the right side of the platform to send spent casings back inside. It will be better than chasing them around the pasture.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to carry the platform a quarter-mile with the tractor.

My plan is to put long pieces of lumber under the platform from end to end. There are three crossmembers under the plywood, and the long pieces of lumber will push up on them as well as the two-by-sixes on the ends. This ought to allow me to lift the platform without damaging it.

Taking the platform apart and reassembling it in the pasture would be a bigger and more damaging job than moving it with the tractor, so it’s the tractor or nothing.

Once I get it situated, I have to make sure it’s oriented so a rifle on a bipod will not be hard to aim at the berm. If it points up or down too much, the platform will have to be adjusted. I don’t see it happening, because I’ve shot from the ground where the platform will sit, and it wasn’t a problem.

I truly hope the cows will not be energetic enough to try to wedge their fat rear ends inside this thing. I tried to make it inconvenient for them. They have no respect. When you have cattle, you can’t have nice things.

This was a pretty tough job, mainly because of the weather. When it wasn’t raining, I was usually in direct sun with no help from clouds. Water goes in one end of me, and nothing comes out the other.

This year, it’s not hot by local standards, so I should be grateful.

I used my 12″ sliding miter saw to make this. I had been thinking of putting it on Craigslist, because I have a beautiful Powermatic 66 table saw which is easier to use for almost everything, and I also have a 19″ vertical band saw and a small 10″ miter saw.

It turns out it’s much easier to cut long, thin pieces of lumber on the 12″ sliding saw, especially if you make angled cuts. I had dreamed of opening up some space in the workshop. Not any more. The saw has earned its keep. I paid $300 for it when Home Depot had it on sale. That was a score. I had to add the Ridgid mobile base in order to make the saw useful.

This little saw (little compared to a Powermatic 66) can be rolled outdoors, so sawdust isn’t a problem. The dust goes where it goes, and you leave it there. It’s good for the yard. That’s my story.

The platform is ready to use. Maybe now I’ll actually be able to shoot my fancy new gun. That would be wonderful.

To Attack Christians and Jews is to Attack God

Today I thought about something that gives me hope for the upcoming election. Witches curse Donald Trump, and Christians pray for him.

You can look up stories about Satan’s servants gathering to curse Trump. Interesting thing: we haven’t seen any stories about them cursing liberals. Practitioners of witchcraft and Satan worship are overwhelmingly leftist.

Anyway, let’s think about Rabshakeh and Sennacherib.

Sennacherib was the king of Assyria, and he worshiped filthy, defeated spirits. He sent a servant the Bible calls Rabshakeh to Jerusalem to intimidate the Jews under King Hezekiah. “Rabshakeh” may actually be a title, not a name. He commanded them to surrender.

It wasn’t just a battle between kings. It was a battle of gods, or one God and some inferior, beaten spirits. Rabshakeh said this:

“Thus you shall speak to Hezekiah king of Judah, saying: ‘Do not let your God in whom you trust deceive you, saying, “Jerusalem shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.” Look! You have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands by utterly destroying them; and shall you be delivered? Have the gods of the nations delivered those whom my fathers have destroyed, Gozan and Haran and Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Telassar? Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah?’ ”

Attacking the Jews involved challenges, but attacking the creator of Rabshakeh and Sennacherib was a great deal worse. The heathens provoked God to prove his dominance and the feebleness of his enemies.

Hezekiah humbled himself and prayed, and Isaiah predicted that the Assyrians, who massed outside Jerusalem, would lose and be unable to shoot an arrow into the city. Then one night God killed 185,000 of the Assyrians. Sennacherib returned to Nineveh, and his sons eventually murdered him.

The story of the Exodus is similar. The Egyptians, and many Hebrews in Egypt, worshipped beaten spirits. Pharaoh believed he, himself, was a god. Through Moses and Aaron, God sent 10 plagues that not only weakened the Egyptians but humiliated the powerless spirits they served, as well as Pharaoh.

Non-Christian historians claim the Assyrians were disarmed by a sudden plague of field mice which ate their bowstrings and the straps of their shields. Somehow, this is supposed to suggest that God didn’t work a miracle to help his chosen. Is there any other story, in all of human history, of mice appearing instantly, in such great numbers they disarmed an army? Of course not. When God killed the Assyrians, it was a miracle, and if mice disarmed them, it was also a miracle.

It must be good for Christians when servants of broken spirits menace our friend Donald Trump and try to assert dominance over Jesus, the creator of worlds. There are times when God lets his rebellious children suffer defeat, but one would think he would be less willing to tolerate overt challenges to his own eternal and complete supremacy.

I would hate to see Trump lose. We could really use four more years of his help while the remnant gets it together.

When I was living in Israel, I had a vision. I woke up in the night, and my bed had turned 90 degrees so the foot faced east. I saw a quilt over me, and dead arms and legs are attached to the borders, perpendicular to them, flapping around frantically. At the foot of the bed, I saw what I thought was a woman with silvery hair. This person wore a pure white robe with a silver belt about 6 inches wide. This person’s arms were raised in worship. The face was raised to heaven. A light shone down on this person, like a spotlight from the throne of God.

I have always said it was a woman with short hair, like a man.

The other day, I saw myself in a video, and I looked familiar in a strange way. I looked like the person I saw at the foot of my bed in Israel. Maybe it wasn’t a woman. Maybe it was a vision of myself later in life. I didn’t get a long look, a robe is the same thing as a dress, and nearly any beardless person in a dress looks like a woman at first glance.

It made me wonder if it was a picture of me at the time I would be taken from the earth. My hair is getting that silvery look.

Before I got this idea, I had been having a strange feeling. I had the sensation that there was an invisible person who shared the same space I occupied, and that that person, not my physical self, felt the way a person feels before lightning strikes.

Before lightning strikes, people in the area may feel an electrical charge building on their skin. It makes hairs stand up.

Is supernatural lightning about to strike the earth? I keep feeling as though God is telling me I’m going to be raptured soon and that I won’t be around in 2021.

The Bible says Satan fell from heaven like lightning, and there is always symmetry in the supernatural. Maybe the raptured rise to heaven like lightning. Good and evil and triumph and defeat are all about direction. When Satan was in heaven, it did him no good, because he was headed for hell. We live on the roof of hell, but it does us no harm, because we’re on the way to Satan’s vacant office in heaven.

It seems like God should wait, because the world isn’t completely insane yet, and people are still being saved. Maybe I’m wrong, though. Maybe it’s sufficiently bad, and people are sufficiently stubborn, to motivate God to start using extremely painful means, through the tribulation, to convince the stubborn. Even if many people are moving toward God, maybe he has determined that many more would be saved if they had to endure the horrors of the apocalypse.

It’s hard for me to believe God would take me when I’ve accomplished nearly nothing for him. That’s on me, though. For over a decade, I have been trying to get cleaned up and aligned with the Holy Spirit, and I’ve been asking God to put me to work, but maybe it’s too little, too late.

The main thing I want is to miss the tribulation. I’m sick of humanity right now. I don’t want to be here when people are even more boneheaded, vicious, violent, proud, and filthy. Look how they act while they’re restrained by the prayers of God’s people. Imagine what they’ll be like when we’re gone.

I have to admit, part of me wishes I could see a little of it. I would like to see what pompous celebrities say on Twitter when it becomes obvious the apocalypse is in full flower. I would like to see their arrogant dismissals and fabricated explanations. I wonder what they will come up with. I can’t help but be curious.

Maybe in those days, female celebrities will wear nothing but face masks.

It’s a childish desire, though. When God releases you from something, let go and face forward. Savor what’s in front of you. It’s a bad idea to look back. Also, the suffering on Earth will be horrible to witness. From where I sit now, the tribulation is about as upsetting as a dental appointment, but if I could actually imagine it, I would wish I couldn’t.

The Bible says Jesus will come when the gospel has been preached to all peoples. Some think this hasn’t happened yet, but maybe it has. What may be the last frontier was breached in 2018. A young evangelist traveled to North Sentinel Island, where primitive, vile people are “protected” from helpful instruction by the Indian government. He was murdered before he could get through to them, but he went, nonetheless. Maybe that was enough. Some people say there are many peoples who haven’t heard about Jesus. I am highly skeptical. Books, periodicals, TV, and the Internet are everywhere, and evangelists have been at work for 2,000 years.

The word doesn’t say the gospel will be preached to every person. It only says it will be preached to every people. Is there any people which has had zero exposure?

Jesus said “the end,” not the rapture, would come when the gospel had been preached to all peoples. It may be that he meant the spread of the gospel would be completed during the tribulation. We know two witnesses will preach during that time.

If I’m still here a year from now, I’ll ascribe my feelings to confusion. It would be nice to be elsewhere, though. Try and imagine a life among faultless, brilliant people who love you more than your mother and agree with you about everything.

When I lived in Miami, I was surrounded by coarse peasants (I include the educated and successful) who were had the hearts of pigs. A pig naturally looks down at the earth all the time, hoping to find something nasty he can eat. He focuses on low things. People in Miami were crude, boorish, selfish, proud, racist, godless, prone to demon worship, and obnoxious. They made me hate leaving the house.

Then I moved to Northern Florida. Suddenly, everyone around me was polite. No one ever got angry at me. Seemed like everyone was a Christian. Strangers did nice things for me.

Moving to heaven should be the same kind of experience, only much better.