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.

Digital Flea Dip Increases Peace and Love

It’s remarkable how disappointing people are!

Yesterday, I wrote a piece about the bizarre behavior of the moderators at a firearms forum I have used. I saw a crazy video featuring Massad Ayoob, a layman who gives people legal advice concerning firearms. He has no business doing this. Someone might see one of his videos and decide not to wait for a lawyer’s advice at a very critical time, and every lawyer knows this can result in prison time or even an execution. I wrote a forum post about it, and early the next morning, the moderators had sent me a personal message. A group of them had assembled for the purpose of telling me I was wrong.

I marveled. I did something insignificant, and I did nothing wrong, but they clearly thought it was momentous. They had assembled something resembling a firing squad, and they did it early in the morning. The guy who started the private message conversation lives in California, and it appeared he had started it at 7:35 Eastern time, or 4:35 a.m. where he lives. Maybe Ayoob got him out of bed.

I was not nasty about Ayoob’s video at any time. I was critical for sure, but criticism is a good thing, especially when your criticism could keep people out of prison.

Jesus was extremely critical and blunt; he said things that would spark protest marches today and send man-bunned college kids into special rooms full of therapy puppies. It’s important, in our efforts to be kind and loving, not to go too far and lose what Jesus called our saltness. When salt loses its saltness, it’s only fit to be trampled underfoot. If you can’t speak the truth when it’s not popular, and you can’t do it unapologetically, you aren’t doing one of the things Christians are supposed to do.

I’m not saying I went to the forum to evangelize, but one of my concerns these days is the danger of letting myself be childish and mean. You have to know the difference between useless, sadistic railing and blunt, well-deserved, useful criticism.

The moderators in the ad hoc forum jury said things that were obviously wrong, and I corrected them at length with no reserve or timidity, but I told them I wasn’t there to cause problems. I said something about how they should delete the thread I started if it bothered them.

Of course, I did cause a problem. The thread wasn’t that big a deal, but I caused a major problem by confronting forum moderators with their own unfairness, lack of real importance, and ignorance about the practice of law.

Shortly thereafter, the thread disappeared, and they claimed it was because I had made misrepresentations, which was completely untrue. The thing that bothered them, it appears, is that I said things that were true, about someone they held to be exempt from all criticism. I think losing a debate very badly in the private message conversation was also a major factor.

I didn’t care about the thread. Who would? It was trivial.

The things I found interesting were the dishonesty and corruption. I told them Ayoob was getting special treatment, and I said they ought to ask themselves why they were bothering to create what I called a star chamber or FISA court in the clandestine direct message conversation. Obviously, they don’t do this for every person who says another person made a bad Youtube video. They denied giving him special treatment, in a conversation, the existence of which was the direct result of special treatment.

I wondered if they knew what a star chamber was, and that’s why I used the term “FISA court.”

Ayoob is a forum member, and he knows some of the poobahs personally. A cynical person would say they singled me out for disparate treatment just because I made their pal look bad. I think that was what got them going, and I think the fact that I stood up for myself put the cherry on the sundae.

Who are Internet forum moderators to me? Should I be intimidated by them or in any way bow down to them? It would be ridiculous.

Ayoob never showed up in the conversation; at least not while I was participating. I thought it was odd that they would do his responding for him as though I had mugged a disabled person. Maybe he’s not doing well. He lives in Florida, where coronavirus is hot right now, and he’s elderly.

Anyway, I wondered why they didn’t ban me. They were clearly not above such things, and it seemed like the obvious next step. Given their childish behavior, I wondered if I would soon find that I had no access to the site. I thought it would happen eventually.

Guess what happened this morning? You’ll never guess. Not in a million years.

Yes, my username is now banned. The reason? “Violations of the rules.” Plural.

That’s all I know.

Of course, I didn’t violate any rules. I cooperated completely.

Oddly, I am still logged in. I can’t log out. There are fresh alerts for me on the site. One appears to be a private message alert. I think maybe they told me I was banned, in a conversation they should know I can’t see. If you go to the site and look at old posts I made, it still says “member” by my username. I guess the software does that. Surely they’re not pretending I’m still active, to cover their behavior.

So now I’m cut off forever from all the close friends I’ve made there, as well as the great information the forum contains.

Actually, I don’t find friends by going to Internet forums, and I can still go to the site whenever I want, using a new username they don’t recognize, and ask questions until the cows come home. And I belong to other forums. One wonders what they accomplished.

I suspect the thing that really set them off was a remark I made about the thread. While I was telling them I didn’t want to be a problem and saying they could go ahead and delete the thread, I said there was a website where the boss always agreed with me (since he’s me), and I would put my stuff there. I let them know I respected their very limited authority, but I also did something you should never do to a bully: I made it clear I would continue to defy them elsewhere.

Bullies are about two things: sadism and control. When you tell them their control is extremely limited, it makes them more determined to punish your defiance.

If you want to inflict great suffering on a bully, all you have to do is thwart his efforts to bully you and let him know he can’t do anything to you. You don’t have to do to them what they try to do to you. Just make it clear they can’t do what they want to do. The pain they feel is like red-hot whips. I can’t explain it, but I’ve seen it many times.

I don’t know how many people would have seen the thread I posted, had they not deleted it. Hundreds, maybe? I wrote about the whole business here, where it will remain as long as I pay my hosting fees. Thousands of people will see it. They can’t take it down. They can’t send me private messages. They can’t involve themselves in any way. In trying to cover up dissent, they put it before more people and destroyed their power to participate. They set me free and pulled their own teeth.

If my thread were still up, they could post all sorts of things vilifying me and praising Massad Ayoob to the heavens. Not an option now.

It’s nice to be banned. I feel light because I have been freed from a considerable number of cantankerous, unreasonable people. The atmosphere in the forum was pretty corrosive.

Gun forums are full of obnoxious, posturing men who think owning a Browning Buckmark makes them Rambo, Chris Kyle, and John Moses Browning, rolled up in a needlessly-camo-covered ball of unpleasantness. You have to walk on eggs around them. Insecurity hangs in the air like fallout after a nuclear test. Using a gun forum can be very helpful, but you have to be careful not to become contaminated with hostility and immaturity.

I got somewhat annoyed during the Ayoob digital kangaroo court, and that bothered me, because I don’t want to be infected with lingering anger over tiny trivialities. The prospect of having stuff deleted and being banned didn’t bother me at all. What could be less important? But the gaslighting and unfairness of the silly private conversation made me a little angry.

The majority of the people at the forum are reasonably pleasant, but the minority is not a small one, and it is well-represented among the moderators.

For a long time, I’ve felt that using the forum was a vice. It was something I limited deliberately. Whenever I thought about going there to post something, I asked myself, “Do I really want to do this? I want to be a man of love and please God. Do I want to risk being provoked by very small people in exchange for some unimportant information or a few minutes of diversion?”

I saw it as a throwaway activity. I had the feeling I would eventually be banned for standing up for myself or that the bullies would eventually take so much of the fun out of the forum I would quit, as I have quit other forums.

Gun forums are nasty places for people who don’t cower for bullies, and this particular forum is worse than others I use. To me, it was a place I went when I felt energetic enough to risk being insulted and belittled. I would think, “I know a lot of these people are basically land mines, but I feel like checking the forum out today, so what the heck.”

This is my second forum ban. The other forum was also a gun website. I joined the Rimfire Forum, and I got the boot within a month or so, if memory serves. I had just gotten started. I was trying to find a new trigger for a .22 rifle, and there was a guy who called himself Arrowdodger who was famed for the triggers he made. I tried to get in touch with him via various means, and he never responded.

I mentioned this on the forum, where he is revered, and when people defended him and someone blamed me for not continuing to pursue him, I dismissed their strange remarks, essentially saying a person who runs a business should not have to be chased by customers. I wasn’t nasty about it at all. I just didn’t bother applying a coat of sugar. Why would I? I wasn’t blaspheming God. Just saying a mere man like myself should communicate with potential customers.

Within a day or two, without warning, I was banned for spamming. Of course, I don’t spam. I don’t sell anything. It was a lie someone told, perhaps because the forum software required an explanation for the ban, and something had to be typed in a box. That’s a guess. They were never man enough to respond to email inquiries, so I will never hear their explanation.

One of the illusions firearms forum people tend to have is that they are manlier than everyone else, but in this case, they ran away and hid. Because I am so scary? What good are guns to people who don’t have the courage to stand their ground in emails? Gun owners like to call leftist protestors snowflakes, but at least the protestors have the guts and integrity to show up.

Bottom line: Internet forum moderators tend to be immature and corrupt, some are not rocket scientists, and the problem is worse in certain types of forums where insecurity and hostility are higher than normal.

The ban will be helpful to me, because it takes a source of irritation away. I can’t say I feel damaged, even though I was wronged, because the people who wanted to chew on my ankles ended up blessing me by removing themselves from my life.

Every day, I pray for a group of people I know, and of course, I’m on the list. As part of the process, I pray the Lord’s Prayer. What does it say? “Lead us not into temptation.” I expound on it. I say, “Please keep us away from temptation and provocation, and help us not to tempt or provoke others.” Provocation is temptation. Bullies are some of the worst tempters around. They are great at infecting you with rage it’s hard to get rid of.

The ban is a direct answer to my prayers, and I am thrilled to get it. I love seeing a prayer answered. I hope similar things are happening to the people I pray for.

It’s surprising how many doors Satan will use to get into your life. Things that seem insignificant can be chinks that turn into major perimeter breaches. Being given a desk next to a rude coworker, receiving a credit card charge for something you didn’t buy, or being lied about on an Internet forum can open the door to anger and unforgiveness that come between you and God.

In about 2015, God gave me what I call “the little rapture.” He told me to get rid of my social media accounts. I had been dishonored and sassed online repeatedly by numerous people I knew from church. Christian “friends” were the main problem. They had no respect for older people, the educated, or people with good prayer lives. Trying to help them was like trying to clean up Somalia. I was punished for it.

When I got rid of my social media accounts, I missed certain people, but I had peace. I was insulated. God still had access to me, and so did good people I knew, but unrepentant, arrogant, impudent boneheads did not. I was no longer required or permitted to wrestle with them. It was, and is, very nice.

The forum thing is also like the rapture. It separates me from an endeavor that did me little good and had the potential to be infectious.

I truly look forward to the rapture. Imagine the peace of being away from protestors, road ragers, politicians, abusive relatives, sadistic employers, and so on. It will be magnificent. Everyone around you will be bursting with love and support, and they will agree with you about absolutely everything. The love you will share with every person in heaven will be much deeper and cleaner than the strongest love you share with anyone here on earth.

Forgiving people is a beautiful, powerful experience, but it will be much better to be around people who never, ever have to be forgiven.

It was annoying to receive the strange treatment I got at the forum, but I can be purged of annoyance, and the freedom from provocation is very, very pleasant.

MORE

I mentioned the coward who banned me from The High Road on another forum where one member of the super-secret THR forum jury is also a moderator, to let people know I might not be around later. I wanted to thank the people on the other forum for their help, in case I got banned there, too. My remarks were up for an hour or two, and then they were deleted with no explanation. My guess is that a ban will be handed down later today.

Unfortunately, when it comes to this site, all they can do is watch.

MORE

Things keep developing. A moderator at the second forum sent me a message telling me to stop talking about the first forum. I told him I was actually glad someone was talking to me instead of sniping from cover. I said I would gladly comply, or he could ban me if he wanted, and there would be no hard feelings.

This is a moderator who lost an argument with me pretty badly a while back, and he’s a hothead who doesn’t like admitting error. I was polite, but his arguments were extremely poor and easily refuted, and he didn’t prevail or come close to prevailing. I expect to be banned because of that, not because I mentioned the other moderator.

George Santayana, I Listened!

I have had a fascinating experience. I went to a forum and criticized something I saw in a Youtube video. The thread was locked, and when I got up, I had a personal message featuring a slew of forum moderators as participants!

I explained how I disagreed with them. I did it politely. I said they should ask themselves why they chose to send me the strange personal message with multiple cc’s. I said they could delete the thread if it bothered them, and I said maybe they should have a rule that no one can disagree with the person whose behavior I criticized.

They deleted the thread, and here is the explanation: “I have deleted the thread because the OP has little value and misrepresents the issue.” This is not even a little bit true, but it’s the explanation. My response to them: “Problem solved.”

Guess who I criticized. I’ll tell you. Massad Ayoob. I’ve written about him before. I used to be impressed by his work, but that perspective has changed as I have learned things.

If you don’t know who he is, here are the facts. He is a gun writer. He has participated in pistol competitions. He was a part-time cop in a tiny (like fewer than 3000 people) town in New Hampshire.

Right now, that town has a grand total of 5 patrolmen. But when Ayoob “retired” from part-time work, he had the rank of captain. That’s very odd. I’ve known a number of small-town cops. I never knew anyone who called himself a captain. I knew deputies and sheriffs. I don’t think they knew they could make themselves captains. It seems very strange to me that a part-time cop in a sleepy little department would let someone call him “captain.”

Anyone can go to a police supply site and order stars or bars. Captain’s bars cost $8.75 on Amazon. For 10 bucks, you can be a brigadier general.

You can also be an admiral, but most of the admiral stuff is from Battlestar Galactica, so you might get sued by the estate of Lorne Greene.

The thing about it is that there are many, many LEO’s and military people out there who earned the insignias of rank. They fought in battles. Many were wounded or killed. There are many cops who worked their way up in departments in violent cities, taking part in shootouts. I would feel very odd, putting bars on my shoulders after working part-time, in very little danger, in a miniscule town where nothing happens.

I’ve seen a number of statements of his credentials, and I’ve never seen one that indicates he went to college or served in the military. He has no law degree. He works as an expert witness, which means lawyers pay him when they think he can state facts that will help their clients.

An expert witness is not allowed to talk about the law on the witness stand. He can only talk about facts. An expert witness who started issuing legal opinions would get in trouble with his boss–the lawyer–and he could also be held in contempt by the judge. Here’s a good parallel: a technician runs a complicated machine while a surgeon removes a brain tumor, and he pushes the surgeon out of the way and starts cutting.

A gun channel on Youtube put up a video in which Ayoob told people how to talk to the police after shooting other people.

This is what we lawyers call “legal advice.” Ayoob lives in Florida. In Florida, a layman like Ayoob can get in big trouble if he provides legal advice. If the situation is sufficiently egregious, he can be charged with a third-degree felony. Practicing law without a license is a crime in every state. Telling people how to talk to cops in a Youtube video is not necessarily practicing law, but the fact that practicing law without a license is a crime is an indication that there is a consensus that it’s very bad for unqualified people to give legal advice.

My dad defended 11 murder defendants, and he got 10 acquittals. Like nearly any other criminal attorney you may talk to, he told me this: you do not talk to the police when you get in trouble. He said 85% of prison inmates were incarcerated because they talked. I don’t know where he got the statistic, and it may have been somewhat outdated, but the principle was correct, and he didn’t make it up.

It should be obvious that Ayoob isn’t qualified to tell people how to act in pivotal legal situations with potentially catastrophic consequences. The main problem is that he isn’t a lawyer and does not understand the law. The other problem is that he’s giving outlier, contrarian advice that goes against what every attorney is taught in law school. It goes against what most criminal attorneys are taught when they practice. It flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s Miranda holding, which resulted in police being forced to tell suspects they had the right to remain silent.

I tried to explain why what he did was not wise, and of course, laymen in the forum disagreed. I knew that would happen. It gave me flashbacks to my childhood, when I couldn’t communicate with other kids. I would say things like, “It’s ‘LIBRARY,’ not ‘LIBERRY,'” and they looked at me like I was from Mars. I’m not the smartest person on earth, but I’m smart enough to be frustrated a lot when I try to explain things to people. The smarter you are, the lonelier you will feel.

At least one person mentioned advice a cop had given him. Are cops lawyers? No. They are not. I don’t care if you’ve arrested 3,000 suspects. Police experience doesn’t make you a lawyer, any more than prosecuting criminals makes you a cop. I have to note, however, that one person said a cop had advised him not to talk.

My main point was not that you should never talk to the police after you shoot someone. I believe it’s true, as do most lawyers, but there are competent attorneys who believe otherwise. The point was that a guy who writes for magazines and works as a paid witness has no business giving blanket legal advice on Youtube.

I’ll give you the only free legal advice my law school told me I could give people without risking serious problems: when you’re in trouble, hire an attorney. You say you may not be able to get an attorney right after you shoot someone? Sorry; they didn’t teach me how to make one appear for you. You can always hire one today, just to give you preemptive advice. That’s my advice. Hire an attorney.

I’m not telling you to talk to the cops. I’m not telling you to talk to them. I’m telling you this: hire an attorney.

Anyway, here is the thing I wanted to write about, and it’s a wonderful confirmation of my understanding of human nature: when I got up today, I had that personal message to deal with.

I can’t read anyone’s mind, but I have some opinions:

1. Ayoob has a cultlike following, and he gets very special treatment.

2. Gun forum moderators are not the most ethical people on earth. Something I already knew.

Imagine you belong to a gun forum, and one day, you criticize a Youtube video made by a non-famous person the moderators don’t know. Let’s say the video guy is telling people the .38 Special is worthless for self-defense, and you happen to know that the video guy is a bartender who has no formal training in ballistics or pathology. On the other hand, he has done a lot of reading. You say he shouldn’t be posting videos because he isn’t trained.

Will the forum moderators gang up and send you a message to reeducate you? Will they delete your thread?

Of course not.

Why is Massad Ayoob different? Why was he sheltered?

If anything, he should get less protection than a bartender. He is presumed to be extremely knowledgeable and able. The Ayoob of myth should be able to swat me like a fly. Why not give him a shot at it?

What were they afraid of? What were they trying to prevent? Unfair criticism? The forum is packed with unfair criticism. It’s normal. No one cares. People say things that are wrong, other people contradict them, they insult each other for a while, and no one cares.

They didn’t flip out because I was wrong. I wasn’t, and they don’t have a policy of deleting erroneous posts. It wasn’t because I was unfair. I wasn’t, and they leave unfair material up every day. What does that leave?

Ayoob is supposedly a member of the forum. Is he in frail health? Were they afraid he would have a stroke if he saw someone disagree with him? Is he funding the forum? Were they afraid he would cut them off?

It doesn’t look like they had any faith in his ability to respond to my posts. They never gave him a chance.

Truthfully, he wouldn’t have had a chance had they allowed him, because…he’s a layman. It’s pretty obvious that laymen shouldn’t give legal advice.

I’ve written about my participation in forums before, and I’ve noted a few things. Some types of forums draw reasonable, polite people (no, really), and others draw the other kind. I participated in a bodybuilding forum briefly to do research for something I was writing, and the people were completely vile. Maybe it was the steroids. I’ve run into a lot of annoying, supercilious pedants on machining forums, but woodworking forums aren’t too bad. Food forums are full of culinary jihadis. The hate and factionalism are shocking.

Gun forums are pretty low on the list. “I shoot better than you.” “I’m tougher than you.” “I’m more patriotic than you.” “I will shut you down whenever you say anything everyone else has already swallowed without questioning.” My policy with gun forums is to zip in when I have a question, shrug off whatever abuse comes my way, and zip back out. Posting a thread questioning the infallibility of Massad Ayoob was a lapse. I had a weak moment. Something to thnk about so I can correct myself in the future.

As a Christian, I try to limit the provocation in my life. I have been very contentious in the past, and I fight it and pray about it now. I should never have mentioned Ayoob’s obvious error on a forum. It was like walking past a gang of prostitutes with hundred-dollar bills hanging out of my pockets. I knew better.

I don’t have a ton of respect for Ayoob. The more I learn about him, the more he seems to be about sizzle, not steak. He shoots well, and he has done a lot of work to educate himself about tactics and weapons. That’s about it. His ability to analyze legal questions is negligible, and he ought to know it. He also got into a ballistics/wounding dispute with Dr. Martin Fackler, a physician who is perhaps the world’s greatest authority on bullet wounds. How can you make a decision to do a thing like that, knowing how your own abilities stack up? It’s like running onto the field during the Super Bowl.

Twenty years ago, Ayoob might have been a rare source of useful information, but now you can go to Youtube or other sites and get free advice from SEAL’s and Delta Force soldiers who have actually cleared buildings and killed people in gunfights. You can hear from real cops who, though not captains, worked full-time in dangerous cities and fought armed criminals multiple times. You can hear from real lawyers. You can also find source material people like Ayoob rely on. Buying an Ayoob book or watching an Ayoob video is now not a productive use of time. You can do much better and pay nothing, or you can take a class from someone who has more experience and personal knowledge.

Every time he gives you tactical advice, it’s secondhand. He had to ask the people who were really there, in armed confrontations, after being trained properly by others who had the same kind of experience. Why not ask them yourself?

This is a guy who didn’t have a nine-to-five job. He was a writer. He didn’t have a company infrastructure to guarantee him a paycheck of pension. Result: he had to promote himself in order to keep working. This is probably why he went overboard. He must have formed a habit he couldn’t break.

To get back to the point, human nature is disappointing in that it never disappoints when you expect it to let you down. I knew there was no way I would convince most laymen on the forum they weren’t as qualified as Benjamin Cardozo, and I knew disagreeing with Massad Ayoob would turn the poobahs against me. I knew I would not be treated fairly. I knew there was no way any of these people would see, or at least admit they saw, their own errors.

Human beings are as predictable as termites. It makes you wonder what good our 1350-cc brains do us.

The fact that I said what I did, in spite of what I knew about human beings, tells me I still need improvement. I don’t have to go through life poking Happy Fun Ball™.

80%

It’s remarkable how complicated it is, building a decent shooting platform.

You would think you could grab some two-by-fours and a sheet of plywood and a few nails and get it over with, and I guess that’s true, but when your platform was done, you would have the following issues:

1. Splinters
2. Rot
3. Rain
4. Sun exposure
5. General disgrace

It would also be pretty hard to take your platform apart and move it.

I decided to use 1/2″ plywood for my shooting surface, and of course, I could not get anything that was treated to resist bugs or water. That means the wood has to be sealed. Like just about all Home Depot plywood, it was also flawed and likely to put splinters in me. It also had a flap of wood that was trying to come loose on one edge.

Day before yesterday, I took an orbital sander and spent 20 minutes sanding my plywood. Then I had to decide what to do about sealing it.

They sell sealers for decks. I thought this was a bad idea. Sealers don’t improve the surface of wood. I wanted a smooth barrier. I finally decided on Rust-Oleum farm implement paint. That meant I had to spend $35 on primer and paint.

“Primer? Who uses primer?” I can hear people thinking it. People named Bubba don’t use primer, and their 3-can camo paint flakes off later. I’m spending around $200 on materials, and I don’t want to have to do anything over a year from now. I want my paint to stay put.

Yesterday I went to get the primer and paint, but I realized I couldn’t paint without fixing the loose flap. That decision cost me a day. I shot Titebond III glue under the flap, put a piece of steel plate over it, and put a clamp on the plate to force it against the wood and flatten the flap. The clamp has been in place since yesterday.

This morning, I realized I had to do something about the edges of the plywood, because rain would go in through them and make the plies come apart. I didn’t think paint would do much good.

I decided to use Flex-Seal or truck bed coating on the edges. Either one should be fine. I just need something that will resist water long enough for it to dry up or run out of the platform.

Today I have to tape up the plywood to keep the waterproofing stuff off the sides, and I have to blast the edges to seal them up. With any luck, I’ll be able to apply primer today. That may take a day to dry. To get the wood primed and painted, I may need three days.

After that, it should be easy to put the roof on. One nice thing is that I’ll have a platform to stand on while I do it.

I’m thinking of putting some screen on the right side of the platform to keep semiauto casings from flying out, but that would bounce them back at me. I guess I’ll be okay as long as I wear a shirt. Guys named Bubba shoot without a shirt. A true Bubba never shoots or drives without removing his T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off.

I’ll put up a photo of what I have now. Picture it with a roof. You won’t be impressed, but I don’t think you’ll fear for my safety.

The roof should be very helpful. The platform will be in a shady area, but shade is not reliable in my pasture. The sun sneaks around the trees.

What next? Maybe I’ll build a bench to sit on. Or I could just toss a couple of $17 plastic chairs out there. That probably makes more sense.

When you’re shooting from a rest that isn’t concrete or part of a mountain, you can’t let anyone touch it, because it will wiggle. I can’t let people sit on the platform. If you think about it, a 1/100″ movement at the tip of your barrel will move your bullet’s impact about an inch at 100 yards. That’s more than enough to be annoying. We’re talking about the thickness of two and a half sheets of paper.

The Bubbacious failings of my platform will be due to lack of skill more than a Bubba attitude. I’m trying to do it well. Unfortunately, doing a B+ job takes about a week, as compared to a 90-minute Bubbathon. You know what they say. Ten percent of the work takes 90 percent of the time.

What’s in the Scroll?

It’s very weird how the truth, and by “truth,” I mean the only truth, which is God’s truth, works. It’s not hard to understand, and it’s generally very obvious, but we are often unable to see it. We can’t see the truth until God shows it to us with supernatural revelation, and then it appears simple and obvious, because it is.

Human beings are born blind and deaf. We don’t have the equipment to perceive the truth. It has to be revealed to us by God. The reason we don’t understand things is that we are supernaturally blocked.

I have wanted to put together an end time timeline so I would know what was going on around me. I used to sit around with Microsoft Word open, trying to make a list. I looked at the Bible, and I wrote things down. It should have been very easy, but it wasn’t, and I made mistakes.

Yesterday I decided to try again, and it all came together in a very short time. That’s how things work when God helps you.

Here’s how it looks:

1. Falling away.
2. Persecution.
3. Rapture.
4. Tribulation and the rule of the Antichrist.
5. Return of Jesus.
6. Satan and other inferior spirits bound.
7. Messianic age, with Jesus on earth, ruling with resurrected believers.
8. Satan released to tempt the world.
9. Satan defeated and imprisoned forever, along with the damned.
10. Heaven and earth destroyed.

That’s not everything, but it’s a few things I consider important. Right now, it seems pretty sound.

The age of the Gentiles, which I call the Church Age, is over. God isn’t watering the plant, and it’s withering. If we’re not in the apocalypse, which comes next, we’re in some kind of interstitial transition period.

Yesterday, I wrote about the rapture. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I keep feeling that God is telling me I am not going to be on earth next year. On the other hand, people love to say we can’t predict anything. While Jesus was with the disciples, he said he didn’t know when the end would come. People point to that and say Jesus still doesn’t know, so we won’t know, either. He said his “day” would come like a thief in the night, and he said he would return when the disciples thought not. Many Christians think we’re going to be taken by surprise.

I opined that Jesus had probably been told the date of the rapture at some point after saying he didn’t know it, because the Bible didn’t say he would never be told. I guessed that he would give his people warning, because the Bible says God doesn’t do anything without telling the prophets.

In my comments, Juliette Ochieng, AKA Baldilocks, piped up with the answer. In 1 Thessalonians 5, we see this:

But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.

For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.

For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.

But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.

Well, there you go.

I read the Bible, and I listen to the Bible, but I don’t remember all of it all the time. The answer was right there, and I didn’t remember reading it.

Jesus warned Lot, and he warned Noah. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the flood were pictures of the apocalypse. God works in repetitive patterns. He’s not going to take his favor away from the world suddenly, fail to inform his children, and leave them in the world to suffer not only the torments intended for the lost but also unrestrained persecution.

So the news is very good.

What about redemption, though? I don’t mean salvation. I mean restoration. The world has been cursed for thousands of years. Many saved people have died young. They’ve even died in the womb. They’ve been barren. They’ve had deformities. They’ve died single. They’ve been poor and diseased. They’ve been murdered by unbelievers, including rabbis, popes, and priests. What about compensation?

The Bible clearly says believers will rule the world with Jesus for a thousand years. It’s not referring to believers who appear out of nowhere. It refers to those who lived before the return of Jesus.

This means you get a second chance at life. If you were deformed, maimed, or sick, you get to live whole and healthy. If you were mentally ill, you get to live with a healthy mind. If you were poor, you live in abundance. If you were persecuted, you live in safety. You get to prosper. You get to marry your childhood sweetheart and have an ideal life.

The Bible says people in heaven don’t marry, but the Messianic age will take place on earth, not just in heaven. It says people will live long lives. It says, “the child shall die an hundred years old.” It doesn’t say, “the resurrected person will die an hundred years old.” There will be marriage and reproduction.

It ties up a lot of loose ends. The Bible is full of wonderful promises for us, but we often die without seeing them realized. It also promises things to the Messiah, but Jesus was killed before they came to pass. We know the reward of Jesus comes after his return, fulfilling every prophecy, and we know we are his body, and we inherit the blessings he earned. It makes sense that we, too, would be fulfilled in the Messianic age.

This is how I see things at the moment. I don’t see any reason to doubt it.

There are lots of promises about people who have been thwarted, receiving all the things of which they have been deprived. How can those promises be true if we don’t get a do-over, just like Jesus?

It’s astounding to see how disgusting the world has gotten. We see filthy language on billboards. The Internet has made us murderous and vicious. The lowest of the low are our celebrities and role models. We even have Sports Illustrated trying to turn men into homosexuals.

Imagine going back to 1980 and telling the staffers at Sports Illustrated they were going to try to convert heterosexual men. They would have assumed you were insane. But Sports Illustrated now has a castrated male swimsuit model, and the intention of their swimsuit photos is to arouse heterosexual men sexually. They’re trying to convince straight American males it’s okay to lust after a man. This guy also works for Victoria’s Secret, so men have already seen him prancing around in women’s underwear.

It’s going to work. Mark my words. There is no idiocy human beings can’t swallow when the Holy Spirit is gone and peer pressure is applied.

It’s going to be a bad time for women when homosexuality diverts males in large numbers. Women are hard for men to get along with, and they have babies. They expect to be supported. They earn less money. Selfish men who have no sexual desire for women will have great incentive to abandon them.

When two gay men get together, they have some advantages. They understand each other well. They have similar desires and opinions. They don’t have to worry about babies popping up to interfere with their selfish lives. They don’t have to have the burden and fear of long-term commitment. They are likely to have more money than a straight couple. These truths will put women in a bad spot.

When it comes to sex, men love novelty. Men in gay relationships can switch and swap all the time, keeping sex interesting. No wife can pull that off. Marry the most beautiful woman on earth, and in a few months or even weeks, you’ll find her less exciting than other women. It’s just the way men work.

Of course, the tribulation will be terrible for women, and everyone else, in many other ways.

I wonder what will happen to the unborn in the rapture. The unborn are people, and they have no sin. Will they be taken? Will pregnant women find they are suddenly no longer pregnant? Will children below the age of accountability disappear? Will people who lack the mental capacity to sin disappear? Am I the only one who wonders about these things?

How will TV preachers explain it when the rapture comes and they’re still here doing their shows? What excuses will they come up with? Maybe they’ll say God chose his special, anointed, exalted servants to stay during the tribulation, preach to the unsaved, and, of course, collect a lot of offerings.

I think we’ll have a very good idea when the rapture is coming. I think it will be very soon. I think the rewards for people who make it will be far better than anything we can imagine. I don’t believe we have anything to worry about.

Zoloft and Xanax are Counterfeits

Nothing good comes out of a person unless God first puts it inside him. It’s impossible to do all the things Jesus wants us to do unless he gives us supernatural revelation. I just got a great one.

I was watching a video from One for Israel Ministries. It’s a Messianic ministry in Israel. They put up wonderful testimonies from Jews who got to know their Messiah. They get death threats from rabbis, but they seem to be doing fine.

In case you don’t want to sit through the video, I’ll spoil it for you. A man was in the French army. He was treated badly because he was a Jew. He knew a large, muscular Muslim named Korish. The Muslim asked him for things all the time, and he gave them to him. One day Korish asked him for a cigarette, and he refused to give it to him because Korish never thanked him.

Korish beat him so badly he lost consciousness. He believes he died. He left his body. He prayed to God, asking him to do something, if he really existed.

He reentered his body. He was in a coma for over 5 months. When he woke up, he was given a complaint to sign. Korish would have gone to prison, and he would have had to pay his victim a lot of money. He wanted to put Korish in prison, and he wanted to kill him when he got out. Korish was a mess. He cried all the time and couldn’t eat.

The victim’s family was experiencing a wave of salvations accompanied by miracle healings. He started reading the New Testament. He was captivated by the story of the landlord who forgave his servant’s debts.

I won’t summarize the story, because every Christian knows it.

The victim thought about what he owed God for saving his life, and he forgave Korish. He owed God much more than Korish owed him.

I thought about this. I forgive people all the time. I’m not stupid. I know I have to do it. I also know it makes life easier. I ask God to help me forgive people from the heart. I’ve been asking for that for years.

Today I got a revelation. Somehow, I suddenly had a heartfelt appreciation of the forgiveness I had received. I always try to be forgiving, and I fight self-righteousness, but until today, I couldn’t completely shake the idea that I was doing people a favor when I forgave them. Of course, I’m not. It’s an obligation. In relation to God, I am much worse than the worst person who has harmed me, but God is letting it slide. I am not an underserving victim surrounded by inferiors. I am just like the people I forgive. I knew that already, but now I can feel it. Only God can make me feel it.

I feel peace surrounding me. I want to get off the couch and go run an errand, but I feel like I’m glued here. Everything is so quiet.

The mind can’t save you. The mind is just a door you can use to let the Holy Spirit in.

I’m very grateful. I couldn’t do this on my own. I have been trying so long, I can’t remember when I started.

The funny thing is that I’ve seen the video before.

I guess I’ll sit here and swim in the fog of peace until I can get up.

Will I be Here to Use my Toys?

The cattle helped me make a decision. I’m building a platform for prone shooting.

I tried shooting on an anti-manure tarp plus a mat, and while it worked, it could have been better. The wind kept folding the tarp over the mat, and I was so low, I had to walk up and down between the mat and target, moving weeds. Also, I have the impression that mirage is stronger close to the ground. Not sure.

I’m making the platform 19″ high. I got that figure by measuring a chair. The seat was 19″ off the ground. I know I’ll want to be able to sit on the platform sometimes, so why not make it a convenient height?

The frame is going to be pressure-treated wood held together with 1/4″ screws. The surface will be 1/2″ plywood. It’s pretty flexible, but I’m going to have a few slats under it to prevent it from bouncing.

Back when I lived in Miami, I could buy marine plywood. I don’t think anyone knows what it is up here. I have to use whatever Home Depot sells. I’m going to paint it with Kilz and then maybe tractor paint. I’ll use a light color so it doesn’t hold heat if the sun hits it. I don’t see any reason to paint the pressure-treated parts.

The top will be galvanized steel, with a 4″ drop from front to back. That should be enough to make rain run in the right direction. The main purpose of the roof is to keep cattle out. They get into everything. If I made the platform lower and didn’t add a roof, they would be in there all the time, taking selfies.

It’s not easy squaring up frames that are 8 feet long. I decided to use my plywood sheet as a square. I would guess that the saws in plywood factories are trued up fairly well. Using a short carpenter’s square won’t work. I’ll have to finish the platform on my concrete driveway. How flat is it? You tell me. It will have to do. The platform will surely have a little flex in it, so I would guess that it won’t matter if the driveway is off by a quarter of an inch here or there. The platform will probably bend a little when I put it in the pasture anyway.

If I move, I should be able to take the platform apart and put it in my truck. Hope so. I don’t care about losing the money, but I don’t want to spend three days building a second platform.

Getting it to the pasture will not be easy. I’ll have to carry it with the tractor or move it in pieces.

I look forward to using this thing. Lying in the dirt is not that much fun.

It turns out I bought the wrong long-range scope. A guy who taught my first shooting course recommended a Vortex Viper PST, and some guy in the class said they were on sale, cheap, on a certain website. I went to the site and bought one. Then, a week after it arrived, I realized the man who recommended the website was wrong. The scope that was selling cheap was a first-generation model, and my teacher told me to get the second generation scope. So now I have a scope I don’t want.

I looked for a deal on the newer one, and of course, it was a lot more expensive. I ordered one. A Vortex scope is already a compromise, so I’m not going to make things worse by failing to buy the best version.

It looks like the vendor will take the scope back and charge me a hundred bucks for restocking it. I would be able to send it for a full refund, but I’ve already mounted it on a rifle. I don’t know if they would be able to tell it’s been mounted, but I want to do the right thing, so I’m not going to lie about it.

I’m thinking I should offer it to my buddy Mike for the same money. He’s not quite as serious as I am, so I think he would be happy with this scope, especially with a big discount. If he doesn’t want it, I’ll ship it back. Then he’ll have to spend a lot more.

For the most part, I’m living life as though the apocalypse were not well underway; as though I were definitely going to be here on earth for the rest of a normal lifespan. I don’t know what else to do. I keep asking God if I’m really going to be removed, and I keep getting the same answer. I hope I’m right. I do not want to be here for President Kamala Harris or President Elizabeth Warren.

I’m praying more, and I keep asking God to help me do whatever it is he sent me here to do. Maybe he’ll tell me something.

Jesus said he didn’t know the time of the rapture, but I don’t think he said he would never be told. Maybe things have changed. Maybe he has been given the date, and maybe he is willing to give the rest of us information. The word says God doesn’t do anything without telling his prophets, and Jesus is certainly a prophet, even in heaven.

Some people think God gave Adam’s children 7000 years here on earth, and that the millennia are like days. This is something I have often wondered about. We are edging up on 6000 years since the birth of Adam. Would God really be that obvious? Did Jesus die at the turn of one of God’s millennia? Would he start the apocalypse close to the 2000th year after the crucifixion?

There is supposed to be a messianic age 1000 years long. It’s like a sabbath after all of mankind’s troubles. If the sabbath lasts 1000 years, shouldn’t every “day” be that long, especially since the word says that to God, 1000 years are like a day? That reference was made with regard to the apocalypse. Here it is, from 2 Peter 3:

But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness,

Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?

If Peter says the world will be destroyed at a certain time, how can it be related to the rapture, which is the main thing that concerns me?

It’s somewhat confusing. The Revelation says there will be terrible problems during the tribulation, but it says the world will be utterly destroyed 1000 years later, after the messianic age.

The Revelation says Satan will be bound during the millennium. Because evil spirits won’t be here, people won’t go through the kind of temptation mankind has historically experienced. God will release spirits to tempt people at the end, and there will be a final battle with Satan. After that, heavens and the earth will be destroyed.

I don’t think Peter can be referring to the tribulation when he says there will be destruction, because he writes of total, not partial destruction.

He says “the day” of the Lord will come as a thief in the night. If “day” means “millennium,” then the day of the Lord, during which the world will be destroyed, can come as a thief in the night, even if the final destruction, which takes place at the end of the day, is expected when it occurs. The part that comes as a thief in the night is the beginning.

I think this makes sense.

To recap, here’s what I think.

Jesus probably knows the date of the rapture, even though he did not know it 2000 years ago. He probably won’t tell us the date unless we’re very close to it, and he won’t tell people who have rejected him. He appears willing to give us general ideas about the time of his return, perhaps narrowing it to a month or week.

He will rapture those who are close to him. Then the tribulation will occur in full force. Seven years later, the tribulation will be ended by the return of Jesus. He will rule for a millennium, and people who didn’t reject him will be resurrected to rule with him.

Evil spirits will be bound in hell, so no one will be tempted or otherwise disturbed by them. At the end of the millennium, spirits will be released to tempt man. There will be a battle with Satan, and he and his family will be imprisoned forever. The heavens and the earth will be destroyed and renewed.

Sometimes I think about my future. What if I’m wrong, and I’m doomed to stay here until my lifespan is finished? I suppose that would be tolerable, because I’m set up pretty well now, and I’m sure God would look out for me. What if I’m right? If so, I don’t have to plan for my future on earth, because it won’t happen for another 7 years, and when it happens, I’ll be on a planet where Jesus rules and people are taken care of.

Should I come up with a will that takes the apocalypse into account? I don’t know. Who do I know who will still be here, yet whom I care enough about to provide for? If only ungodly people can inherit from me, do I really care which one takes what I have?

Maybe I should care, because maybe one of them will come around during the tribulation and receive salvation.

Before my friend Travis died, I thought I might make him my main beneficiary. Now he’s much richer than I am and needs no help.

I’m going to try to stay close to God. I do not want to be here during the tribulation, and I don’t want to be useless in the meantime.