I Rest

Months ago, I had a strange dream. I was on a university campus, looking for a young woman I know. While I was walking around, a strong, warm wind hit me from the front. It lifted me off the ground, and I started flying forward. I got about 25 feet up, and I came to a water oak tree. I held onto the leaves and branches. It felt great.

The wind wasn’t just warm in the physical sense. It was full of emotional warmth, peace, and love. Very much like the feelings I experienced back in the Eighties, when Jesus came to me.

I felt wonderful, resting on the wind. I woke up, and I was face-down in bed, with my chest pressed against the mattress and my hands up and my palms against the sheets.

I’ve been praying for God to help me experience it again. The comfort was wonderful.

On March 1, the day I had the dream, God gave me this word:”Please keep lifting me up on your love.”

I have started having this same sensation while I’m awake. When it comes, I do everything I can to make it last. No matter what position I’m in, I feel as though something soft, firm, and warm is pressing against my upper chest.

For years, I’ve been saying we use drugs and alcohol to simulate the sensation of God’s presence. It’s true. The feeling I get when the warmth and pressure come to me is very much like the feeling you get from a strong opioid painkiller.

It appears that, like drugs, God’s presence is also addictive. I want to hold onto it all day. I don’t want to do anything to make it depart.

Jesus said the kingdom of heaven was like a pearl of great price. A man saw a pearl, and he decided he had to have it no matter what, so he sold all he had and bought it. That’s a great description of habit, which we call “addiction.” A junkie will throw everything away for one more dose. To a junkie, the next does is a pearl of great price. There is symmetry in the supernatural. It makes sense that a person who can get into God’s presence would crave it and give up a lot to hold onto it.

Sometimes it hits me while I’m praying. I’ll be going through my daily list, doing something I consider very important, and I’ll just stop, because something better has arrived. I’ll go quiet inside and just wait and rest.

I can understand why Mary abandoned Martha to look after guests so she could sit at the foot of Jesus and do nothing. There will always be people to mop floors and wash dishes, but how many get to sit with God and be bathed and permeated with his love, peace, and joy?

Jesus said what Mary did was better than what Martha did.

I go through Psalm 91 every day, taking advantage of the promises. Today I looked up the last verse in an interlinear Bible. It says, “With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.” Because I’ve been watching Derek Prince talk about the real meaning of “salvation,” I wanted to know what word the author used. It turns out it’s a variation of the word “yeshuah,” which is closely related to Yeshua, the name of God the Son.

That’s remarkable. God did show me Yeshua, twice.

I feel like I’m stuck here while this lingers. I don’t want to get up and do anything. We’ll see what happens.

The King has Good Credit

I feel like I’ve seen every Derek Prince Youtube in existence. Maybe I have. I know I’ve seen some more than once. It’s helpful to hear them multiple times.

Today and yesterday, I heard him talk about the meaning of “salvation.” This is something that interests me, as I suppose it should. For a long time, I’ve had the idea that “salvation” means more than avoiding hell and going to heaven. Now I know Derek Prince believes the same thing.

It distresses me that the church is so weak. Jesus and his followers did all sorts of wonders, but after he left, things dried up. I don’t know exactly when the church fell into unbelief, but it looks like it may have been during the second or third century A.D.

Ever since the power left us, preachers have been telling us miracles have ceased. What they really mean is, “We are not competent to get miracles, so our answer to the problem is to pretend God has chosen not to provide them any more.” It’s very obvious that God’s supernatural power is still available, and that the cessation story is a lie, because even now, many people receive miracles and visions and so on, but stubborn preachers and their followers continue to deny that God will help us.

One of the weird characteristics of human beings is that we marry ourselves to absurd beliefs. We love telling people this or that can’t happen, even after they’ve seen it happen.

People tell us tongues are “gibberish.” They tell us we imagine our healings. The Jews think there have only been 7 gentile prophets in the history of the world, and they teach that the reason prophecy dried up for them is that in the absence of supernatural activity among idolaters, it wasn’t needed. Supernatural activity among idolaters is rampant today, but there hasn’t been a wave of new Jewish prophets.

When there is no prophecy, it’s not because God took it away because it wasn’t needed; it’s because we’re doing something wrong.

Prince says something which may sound familiar to people who have been conned by prosperity preachers. He says we limit God with our low expectations. Prosperity pimps say this because they want people to think God will give them great wealth in exchange for buying them ridiculous jet airplanes, so talk of limiting God tends to turn smart Christians off, but Prince is right. God wants to do a lot more for us than we think.

God tells the truth, and his word is full of wonderful promises. “There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.” “The Lord is your pastor, and you shall not lack.” “They that seek the Lord shall not lack ANY good thing.” “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee.” Psalm 103 says God heals ALL our diseases. Not some. ALL.

Surely promises like these must be true. If we are not experiencing them, God can’t be the problem. He isn’t lying, and he is fully capable of doing what he says he’ll do. No one can stop him.

The New Testament talks about problems believers will have, but it doesn’t contradict God’s promises of help. Here is what I believe: if we have problems here on earth, they must fall into one of two categories: rejection (including persecution) and the baptism with fire.

Rejection is guaranteed. There is no possibility that the world will accept an effective Christian. If everyone you know thinks you’re cool, you’re a spiritual mess, like the boy-band-worthy kid preachers who go on Instagram wearing $7000 basketball shoes.

I don’t think God will require you to go through life being tortured and imprisoned, however. I believe heavy-duty persecution which doesn’t take place at the end of life results from our opening doors to the enemy. We don’t have any record of Jesus being beaten or imprisoned or otherwise abused until it came time for him to be killed, and his killing was something he, not the world, initiated. Paul had a lot of problems, including flogging and stoning, but Paul had problems with pride, and he made mistakes.

We have the idea that all of the apostles and prophets were perfect, but it’s not true. Moses failed to circumcise his son in a timely manner, and God himself tried to kill him. Elijah made the mistake of ridiculing the prophets of Baal, and afterward, God gave Jezebel, a true low-life and loser, power to chase him into the wilderness. I think Paul could have avoided a lot of problems by listening to the Holy Spirit.

John seems to have come out very well, as apostles go. He was exiled to Patmos, where he taught and probably had a wonderful time. He was called back by the emperor Domitian, to be boiled in oil. We are told that John went into the oil and came out unharmed, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace. If God wanted to spare John, he surely wants to spare us, too. We just need to let him.

It’s dangerous to assume that doing whatever a Biblical figure did is correct. They did a lot of dumb things. Jesus and, possibly, Enoch and John are the only exceptions I know of. I would not assume that I should suffer a lot here on earth just because some Biblical person did.

Rejection is unavoidable, but it’s not that painful if you’re a man about it. You shouldn’t cry because you feel ostracized by the lost. It’s childish to feel like you have to be invited to attend every party and join every club. The Bible says, “God sets him that is godly apart for himself.” You should accept it and be grateful instead of fighting God.

Outright persecution can be rough, but you can probably minimize it by obeying God. After all, the Bible says, “When a man’s ways please God, even his enemies will be at peace with him.” True, or not true?

The baptism with fire is not like rejection and persecution. You have a great deal of control over it. Many of the bad things that happen to you happen because you’re not listening to God as he tries to purify you. You hold onto people, possessions, activities, and attitudes he hates, and when you do, it’s as if you’re putting a banner outside your house that says, “Welcome, Satan. Give me Diseases and Kill my Children.”

If you keep using tobacco after you get saved, and you get COPD, cancer, strokes, or heart attacks, it’s the baptism with fire. You invited it. If you continue fornicating, and you end up diseased, burdened with kids you don’t want, or shackled to a family court judge, you invited it. If you hold onto yoga, astrology, meditation, channeling, Halloween celebrations, or other forms of idolatry, and you have bad mental health, you invited it. If you’re a feminist, and you’re determined to prove women are supposed to be just as prominent in the church as men, expect problems. You’re trying to tell God how to do things, just like Eve and Lilith.

You need to get cursed objects out of your house. You need to forgive. You need to stop gossiping. You need to repent of worry. You should be baptized with the Holy Spirit, and you should pray in tongues every day. Women should stop fighting and submit to their husbands. Men should pour themselves out for their families and submit to the Holy Spirit. Children should honor their parents. You should seek God’s help in ridding yourself of the demons you’ve been petting and feeding for decades. If you don’t repent instead of just begging God for things, expect to have a much harder life than you should.

Jesus is the pattern for all of us. When, prior to the cross, did he have a major problem? His loved ones had problems, but they weren’t Jesus, so their problems were not his. As far as we know, he, personally, never had a physical illness. He never had mental problems. He was never harmed by anyone. He was never controlled by anyone. He never lacked food, clothing, or shelter. He never lost a battle.

A thousand fell at his side, and ten thousand at his right hand, but it didn’t come near him; only with his eyes did he behold and see the reward of the wicked.

Prince talked about the earthly salvation the Hebrews experienced in the desert. They were surrounded by rocks and sand, in a place where there were no streams. The nights were cold and the days were very hot and dry. Still, look how things went for them. They walked into this area through the Red Sea, but no water got on their shoes. They always had abundant food and water. Their possessions never wore out. Everyone who followed Moses left Egypt in perfect health. They didn’t have a single enemy in the wilderness. They never fought a battle.

It sure looks like God is willing to do a lot for us here on earth.

It appears that we can do a great deal to end our problems by confessing and repenting. When you throw out your old disco albums, for example, you’re not just improving the cultural climate of your house; you’re evicting demons that hurt you and your family.

The natural human tendency is to try to improve life by accumulating things and people. I find I get results from getting rid of things and cutting people off.

Lately, I’ve been praying for God to cut my ties to Eastern Kentucky. I used to be proud I came from that place. I was out of my mind. The culture there is childish. People celebrate juvenile emotionalism. They love violence, ignorance, and drunkenness. They’re stingy as can be. They love verbal cruelty. They have an intense and irrational hatred of black people. They’re very proud, which is amazing, considering they are among the nation’s leaders in areas like toothlessness, financial failure, dependency on welfare, and illiteracy. The hills of Eastern Kentucky are a ghetto.

I loved Kentucky when I was a kid. I thought it was heaven. I loved going to Kentucky, living with my grandparents, and spending time with my mother’s family. It’s a big deal for me to ask God to cut my ties, but I am happy to do it, because he has opened my eyes. Eastern Kentucky is not going to be saved. The people there love immaturity more than God.

Your culture may be just as poisonous. Are you willing to abandon it for God? Maybe you should go ahead and start rejecting, instead of waiting to be rejected.

I hope to move to Appalachia soon, but I think God wants me to go to Tennessee, not Kentucky. Kentucky is not an option. I abandoned the idea of returning many years ago.

I continue practicing prophecy. The Bible tells us to covet prophecy, and God would not tell us to covet it if he didn’t intend to give it to us. He clearly wants us to have it, just as the army wants soldiers to have radios. I can’t refuse him. Imagine how much trouble a soldier would get into for dropping his radio in a ditch. It’s not my decision to make.

I keep hearing remarkable things when I try to prophesy. I hear about promotion and blessings that are coming to me. Startling things. Not easy to accept. The blessings are tremendous, I know I don’t deserve them, and like almost everyone on earth, I am used to living under curses, so it’s hard to think of myself as someone who is surrounded by good. In view of Prince’s sermon and the promises of scripture, however, the things I hear line up with God’s way of doing things. It looks like extraordinary salvation has come to me.

I don’t doubt God, but I do wonder about myself. I have a vivid imagination, and I am capable of making things up and thinking God said them. I won’t publish all the things God seems to have said yet. I hope I’ll eventually be secure enough to know what I hear is right.

A year or two back, God told me this: “There are no limits.” I wonder if he was referring to what I’m discussing now.

When God says he will bring me promotion, I don’t think he’s talking about fame. I certainly hope not. I don’t think he means he’s going to have me speak in front of big congregations or work in a church. The Bible says he gives us the desires of our hearts, and these are things I desire to avoid, pretty intensely. I think he just means he’ll make me effective with regard to the people I’m supposed to reach. That’s all I want. If I had to run a church or fly around speaking at conferences, I’d feel like I had been sent to prison.

I’d like to have a pleasant, quiet life and reach a few people for God. I’d prefer that to the wealth of Croesus.

Goodbye, Billie Holiday

Yesterday was a good day. I got rid of most of my jazz albums.

A year or two ago, I put all my blues CD’s in bags and took them to the dump. It was somewhat unpleasant, but I also felt unburdened. I knew God didn’t like them, and that they opened doors to spirits that hated me. At that time, I didn’t feel compelled to get rid of my jazz, but a while back, I started to feel it was time.

I talked to my young friend Travis about it. He’s a jazz musician. The thought of getting rid of jazz recordings disturbed him, but he took notice of something. Many jazz musicians have had filthy, ungodly lives. I agree.

Chet Baker was a junkie and a sociopath, and he killed himself by jumping or falling out of a window. Billie Holiday was a junkie. Louis Armstrong was a marijuana addict who destroyed his talent with drugs. Bix Beiderbecke drank himself to death. Thelonious Monk was mentally ill. Miles Davis was a wife beater who had drug problems. John Coltrane was a zealous Buddhist; so was Maynard Ferguson.

Heroin addiction has been so common among jazz musicians, it almost seems mandatory.

If you want to make it in jazz, what do you have to do? Play in bars. There is no way to avoid it. You can’t start out at Carnegie Hall. Bars, other than male-only establishments, were created to facilitate fornication. We don’t say that out loud, but it’s true. The secret to making a bar succeed is to attract women, not men. When women come, men follow in hopes of fornicating with them, and men pay the checks. You can look this up.

Centuries after Eden, women still lead men to perdition. We are supposed to lead. Without God, men are followers.

Jazz is not godly music. That’s obvious. You may cite exceptions. Dave Brubeck tried to create Christian jazz; he was a Catholic. But he wasn’t listening to the Holy Spirit. It was a carnal idea.

I don’t know how much jazz I had. When I cleaned out a USB drive containing all the albums I had ripped, Windows said I had gotten rid of 680 items, and I know I didn’t have all my albums on the drive.

I had two huge Art Tatum box sets. I had Billie Holiday. I had Dinah Washington. I had a set of Lionel Hampton LP’s in great condition. I haven’t located the Art Tatum sets, but when I do, they’re gone. The other things are already in the landfill where no one will ever see them again.

While I was at it, I came across Etta James, and I got rid of her albums, too.

I was allowed to keep a few things. I had some Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. I have an Ella Fitzgerald box set. There is very little left, though.

You can’t have objects that displease God. He has helped me to understand that having such an object is like painting a sign on your wall, welcoming demons to toy with you and dominate you.

We hold onto things like pornography, astrological paraphernalia, playing cards, dope, items related to yoga, and idols we think of as art, and when problems come, we pray to God for help, while holding onto the things that hold the door open for Satan. It doesn’t make much sense.

I’ve thrown many things out. I threw out my dad’s Masonic stuff (freemasonry is an occult religion). I threw out a treasured souvenir figurine he and my mother got on a trip to Italy. I threw out expensive porcelain because the shapes represented evil things. I threw out thousands of dollars’ worth of Cuban cigars. I’m glad it’s all gone. I’m glad no one else will ever have it; it would just poison them as it did me.

I have an expensive Muslim prayer rug in Miami. I told my house-sitter to get rid of it.

When the apostles taught in Ephesus, converts made a big pile of religious books worth a great deal of money, and they burned it. Paul didn’t say, “Let’s keep them as investments.” He didn’t say, “They have important historical value.” He didn’t make the excuses we would make today.

Here’s a good thing to know about spending time, money, and effort on ungodly things: the more you invest, the more you will lose when you finally repent and have to get rid of what you’ve built. It’s best not to invest much.

Derek Prince told an interesting story. He inherited some Chinese art from his grandfather. It consisted of two depictions of dragons. They were worth a lot of money, and they had great sentimental value. God asked him what a dragon represented in the Bible. Knowing the answer, Prince got rid of the artwork.

At the time, Prince was having a problem with inherited property. I can relate. Like me, he had irresponsible relatives who kept delaying the distribution of some of his wealth. When he got rid of the dragons, the wealth was released. I believe I have delayed God’s help by holding onto counterproductive music. Things are going great for me, but I have some nagging problems that resist resolution. I want to see what happens now that I’ve cleared away some supernatural obstacles.

God hates carnality. Anything you create, without being told to do so by God, is a carnal work. All carnal works will eventually be burned, and it won’t just be things like jazz compositions. Many Christians have done carnal works in God’s name. They’ve written Christian books God will burn in front of them. They’ve built churches and orphanages God didn’t want them to build. When the world is judged, all that stuff will be destroyed. People will come to God full of confidence, thinking he’s impressed by their works, but he will destroy what they’ve created and tell them it was the result of iniquity.

Might as well start the destruction while you’re alive, instead of waiting until it’s too late to do anything to purify your life.

No one in heaven listens to Lionel Hampton or Dizzy Gillespie. No one listens to rock, the blues, disco, or rap. It’s wrong to try to hold onto these things here on earth.

It may well be that all of the jazz giants I enjoyed are in hell right now, never to be heard from again.

The Lord’s Prayer says, “May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We’re supposed to bring a little bit of heaven into the earth. We’re not supposed to bring worldly things into our godly lives. It’s perversion. We can’t live here without getting a little soiled, but there is no excuse for increasing the problem unnecessarily.

I suppose people say I’m a fanatic, but so was Jesus. He was, and is, much more fanatical than I am. Enoch was a fanatic. Noah was a fanatic. Moses, the other prophets, John, Paul, Peter, Stephen…all fanatics. We’re supposed to be fanatics. The Bible says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Nothing ambiguous there. I may seem fanatical, but I don’t begin to approach that standard.

I wonder what else I have that I should destroy. I don’t want any more signs on my walls, inviting my enemies and granting them permission to harm me.

Do More With Dumore

Yesterday was productive. Spiritual progress began while I was still in bed; God helped me to be very effective in my time with him. Natural progress started before I left the bedroom. I had some problems with the recorder’s office in Dade County, as well as the Florida Revenue Department. People from both organizations called, and their errors were corrected. It’s not easy to call them yourself. You have to wait forever on hold. Much better when they call you.

I also fixed my TV before starting the day. I have a 55″ TV in my bedroom. In the past, I chose not to have a bedroom TV because it seemed inappropriate, but now that I use TV’s to listen to Julie True and watch Christian videos, it’s a different story. I got a Roku TV a few months ago. Unfortunately, it had started to make buzzing sounds when I played music.

I found that when I pressed my finger against the back of the TV in a certain area, the buzzing stopped. That meant something was touching the inside of the panel. I put the TV on my bed and opened it up. I found that a lot of wires and cables were stabilized with cheap vinyl tape, and one data ribbon was twisted unnecessarily, bringing it closer to the rear panel. I removed the cable, took the twist out, and reinserted it. Then I added a couple of pieces of Gorilla Tape. I put them on things that looked like they could vibrate against the cabinet. Bang. Problem solved.

I believe I would have gotten more done yesterday, but I had some issues with a weed eater and rotary tool I ordered. The weed eater’s box had been torn open, and things were missing. I contacted the manufacturer and the company that sold it to me. I ordered a new weed eater. Today the one I received goes back.

The rotary tool didn’t work out at all.

I have a Dremel I got in about 1995, and it has had a number of problems. It pooped out while I was using it to burnish the edge of a holster, so I Googled around to see who made good new rotary tools. I figured Proxxon was the answer. I already have one, and it seems okay. I learned that people often complain about the electronics failing, so I gave up on Proxxon.

I decided to go with the reviewers, and I bought a Dremel 4300 kit. I paid $100, and when the tool arrived, it turned out to be useless. I put my leather burnisher in it, and as soon as I turned the tool past 15000 RPM, it went nuts. It started screeching, and the tool wobbled in the chuck. There was no way to make it work. I tried a collet, and I got the same result. The same burnishing tool works fine in my Proxxon, and it worked fine in the old Dremel, so my best guess is that the one I bought is defective. If not, the design is incompetent. I’m sending it back. I started looking for options again.

It appears that no one on earth makes a good corded consumer-grade rotary tool. There are Dremel and Proxxon, and then there are the Chinese clones. I looked for tools made by real companies like Makita and Dewalt, but there was nothing. Milwaukee makes a cordless job which is probably good, but I’m tired of chargers.

I decided to check out Dumore. This is a company that makes industrial tools like tool post grinders. Their products are extremely expensive. A simple Dremel-like tool will run you over $300, and it won’t work with all of Dremel’s gadgets. On the other hand, they run for lifetimes, not weeks.

You can get a used Dumore inexpensively on Ebay. Oddly, the same tools that sell for over $300 new routinely sell for between $50 and $100 in fairly good condition. I checked the Dumore parts site, and things like bearings are not expensive. The highest price I saw was somewhere over $30, and most bearings I saw cost $4.41 each. Bearings and switches are the only things in a Dumore than can be expected to fail with any frequency (I think), so I don’t see any reason to be afraid to buy used. I would guess it’s unusual for the windings to fail.

Most or all of the Dumores I’ve seen don’t have variable speed, but this can be fixed with a simple, cheap external controller, so it doesn’t matter. A foot pedal is a nice addition to a rotary tool. You can put it down without handling the switch.

The Dremel is going back to Amazon, and my next rotary tool will be a Dumore. No more playing around.

Dremel prices keep going up, but the quality doesn’t keep pace. It’s strange that companies like Makita and Milwaukee haven’t gone into competition and exterminated Dremel.

I got the rotary tool mess fixed yesterday, and I also succeeded in burnishing the edge of my latest knife sheath, so it’s finished, but for improvements I may make later. I used the Proxxon.

I keep thinking I should get a Foredom eventually. This is a quality rotary tool with a flex shaft. I have a Chinese clone which works very well, but I know I’ll eventually want a second flex tool.

It appears that today will be productive, too. I already re-worked a lease with the lady who helps me rent properties, and I had a very powerful prayer session before I left the bedroom.

God willing, it won’t rain today, and I’ll be able to mow the yard.

I love it when God helps me get things done.

The Democrats Booed God; Trump’s People Pray in the Name of Jesus

Here is something I didn’t expect to see. Torben Sondergaard and his friends from The Last Reformation attended a Trump rally in Orlando yesterday. These are the people who baptized me in December.

Apparently, the rally started with a long prayer in the name of Jesus, in which numerous scriptures were cited.

Remarkable. I hope God rewards Donald Trump and his family by helping them to be saved and filled with the Holy Spirit.

Heinous Retaliation Soon to Commence

The excitement here never lets up. Today I expect my new weed eater to arrive.

I know people call them “trimmers” because “Weed Eater” is a trademark, not a description, and Wikipedia says Weed Eater was swallowed by another company and turned into Husqvarna AB. I don’t care. I call them weed eaters.

Why am I buying a weed eater when I already have one? Simple. I bought the wrong one because of a lack of confidence.

I hate dealing with ethanol-tainted gas. Ethanol is a scam which hurts everyone except a few greedy farmers and politicians, and it ruins carburetors and other machine parts. I bought an electric weed eater in order to avoid dealing with carb varnish. I got an EGO trimmer, which uses a huge lithium battery.

The trimmer works well, but let’s face it: it’s not a 30-cc gas trimmer. Also, the batteries only run something like 20 minutes, and I have a big property. I can replace the battery as needed, but then what if I want to use the EGO hedge trimmer and the edger on the same day?

I decided to write off my loss and get an Echo trimmer. I ordered a monster. It’s the second-biggest one they make. It’s crazy powerful, and it weighs two pounds less than the EGO.

I also ordered blades for it. String trimmers are great, but once woody weeds get over 3/8″ thick, you have problems. The answer is to mount a circular saw blade on your trimmer. You can zip through limbs 3″ thick with a blade. It’s amazing. You can see people do it on Youtube.

The blades will fill a gap in my yard-machine armory. I have a hedge trimmer, and it’s okay for light trimming, but if you want to cut a hedge back one or two feet, it’s not good. When you drop down into a hedge’s lower regions, you run into thick limbs, and they don’t cooperate with hedge trimmers.

I have a number of hedges which I think are too high. I want to take some of them down two feet. I want to take others down a foot. This would be a nightmare with a hedge trimmer. I’m hoping the weed eater and blades will massacre the thick stems without much effort.

The people who used to own this place let the hedges rise up over the lower panes of the windows. That seems wrong to me. If you told your builder to put your windows at a certain height, presumably, you didn’t plan to block the panes and stare at the backs of your hedges all day. I want to see some of the land I paid for. My plan is to cut the hedges six inches below the window sills.

The blades should also be nice for getting rid of grapevines in the woods near the house. They’re so thick it’s hard to walk in some areas, and they also provide great cover for rattlesnakes to hide while you approach them.

Thanks to the Internet, I don’t have to buy a series of blades until I find the one that works. There are a number of people who have tested blades on Youtube. One guy actually put together a chart showing which blades did what best. What you want is a pair of Renegade blades. You want a 32-tooth blade and an 80-tooth blade.

I guess you could buy circular saw blades at Home Depot, but the ones modified for weed eaters have holes drilled in them to make them lighter.

Once I have the new weed eater set up, I’ll be able to use it for everything except trimming near things I don’t want to cut. They would destroy things a string would bounce off of. Because I still have the lithium weed eater, I suppose I can use it for string trimming and leave a blade on the new one.

I wondered if I should get the very meanest trimmer Echo made, but it was considerably more expensive, and it seemed like overkill, based on what I had gleaned from the web. People are getting very good results with trimmers smaller than the one I ordered.

I hear UPS outside. That guy must think I’m nuts. He’s here like 4 days a week. He’ll have to deal with it. I’m not going to drive half an hour so I can spend more in a real store and not get the exact product I need.

It will be nice having my hedges under control. I don’t want my house to look like the Addams mansion.

Now if I can Just Get it to Cast Itself into the Sea

God has given me another productive day. The trick is to pray, curse your problems, and bless your efforts, in the name of Jesus Christ, BEFORE the problems pop up.

I’ve been working on three stubborn stumps in my front yard. I got one out this weekend, and then yesterday, I went after another one, and I got a bonus. I located a huge rock near a stump, and I managed to get it out of the ground and move it out of the area. I also succeeded in removing the second stump.

Today I went after the third stump. I prayed for help. I spoke the Lord’s opposition to the difficulty of removing it, and I spoke his help to me. After maybe 90 minutes’ work with the subsoiler, drill, sawzall, and Root Assassin, the stump surprised me by surrendering suddenly. It popped out of the ground for no obvious reason.

Here it is. I may have it bronzed.

I bent the tabs that connect the subsoiler to my hitch. I don’t know how I did that. My tractor is not big, so you would think it wouldn’t be able to bend what appears to be 7/16″ plate. I don’t care, however, because the subsoiler still works, and even if it didn’t, the amount I paid for it is a lot lower than the cost of having people come in and remove stumps and rocks. I don’t care if I break three of these a year.

Now there are no stumps in the area where I was working, and a big rock which would have caused problems is gone. I have three little blackberry plants ready to go in the ground. I just have to get more soil. When I began this project, I didn’t know I’d have four huge holes to fill.

I’m wondering if I should put clay or some kind of waterproof material in the bottoms of the holes, to retain water. The dirt here drains way too fast.

The Internet, which never lies, says blackberry roots don’t go deeper than 10″. I could put pieces of tarp down about 15″ and then put soil and plants over them. I wonder if anyone has tried this.

I also finished sewing my second knife sheath. I bought a Lionsteel M4 with olive wood handles, and the sheath that came with it wasn’t right for my jeans. This sheath was harder to sew than the first one. I don’t know why. Anyway, here’s a photo.

I still have to finish up the edges. Right now, the sheath is drying. I wet it down and molded it around the knife’s handle so it would hold the knife in place without a strap. I may have to add a strap later, though. That’s okay. The stitching is not great, and I may redo it. If I do that, I’ll have a good opportunity to add a strap with a snap.

I sharpened several knives. I bought a Cold Steel Swift with CTS-XHP steel. Cold Steel doesn’t use CTS-XHP any more because they can’t get a reliable supply, so it’s getting hard to find these knives. I found one on Ebay for something like $20 below the street price, so I had to buy it. Yesterday, I used it to trim a piece of leather, and it went dull right away. I had to do something.

My understanding is that manufacturers supply defective edges on knives. They sharpen them with belts, and they do it too quickly, softening the steel on the edges. This gives you a very sharp knife which gets dull fast. I think this is what happened to the Swift. Cutting the leather shouldn’t have affected it at all.

I got out my diamond hones and a weird ceramic hone, and I touched it up. Did I get rid of the soft steel? I don’t know. I’ll keep using it. If it gets dull fast, I’ll know the answer.

It’s so sharp now, it’s creepy. The fact that it sharpened up so fast may indicate that the edge is still soft.

The Swift is a very, very nice knife, but it’s an assisted-opening design. You open it part of the way with a little button on the blade, and then a spring slams it open the rest of the way. I don’t like that. I can open a knife just fine by flicking my wrist. Using a spring seems dangerous.

The whole point of buying a steel like CTS-XHP is to avoid frequent sharpening, so I hope the knife isn’t a dud. I have a Gerber Gator II with cheap steel, and it’s a great knife, but for the fast dulling. I paid $15 for it. If I’m going to get cheap-steel performance, I might as well pay cheap-steel prices. The Gator II is indestructible, and it has a very comfortable handle.

I also sharpened my Entrek sheath knife. I have seen the way Ray Ennis sharpens these knives when he makes them, and I don’t think it’s their best feature. Apart from the heating issue, the knife, as it came from the factory, didn’t seem to want to bite into things.

I have DMT diamond stones, but I didn’t use them. I like kitchen-style hones. I have them in two diamond grits, plus the ceramic one and two steels. They seem to work just as well as stones, and they’re easier to use. Also, you don’t have to use liquid.

On top of all this, got a lot of business done. Leases for rental properties and so on. And I stocked up on groceries. Breakfast was sub-optimal this morning because I was running low on things. I had three fried eggs with cheddar cheese, plus whole wheat toast. I had been planning to eat fresh vegetables, boiled eggs, pita, and so on.

Tomorrow, the sheath for the Lion Steel knife should be dry, and after a little finishing, I should be able to use it. I want to get used to going out in public with a sheath knife. I feel conspicuous, but open carry is 100% legal, and I prefer sheath knives to folding knives.

Time to shower up and spend time with the birds. Hope your day was as good as mine.

Stump Removal isn’t for Sissies

Today I would have to say the smug-o-meter is pretty much pinned. I just used the Kubota to yank a stump and a very big rock from my front yard.

My yard is full of oaks and large rocks. I believe it was last year that it occurred to me that I could remove them using a subsoiler attached to the tractor. A subsoiler is the same thing as a middle buster, but it has a narrow blade. I figured I could hook things from below and use the hydraulics to pull them up. It works a good percentage of the time.

I have some blackberry plants that have to be transplanted, and as of last Friday, there were three stubborn stumps in the area where I wanted to put them. Friends came to visit, and as city people often do when they visit farms, they got excited about outdoor work, and they volunteered to help me out.

Here’s a photo of my friend and his 13-year-old son working on the stump’s roots with a maul. Notice who is doing the work. I know it seems harsh to make a kid swing a maul in the sun, but we had to, because my friend’s wife was in the house.

We used the tractor, a maul, a drill with a 1″ bit, a sawzall, and a tool called a Root Assassin. This is a short shovel with weird features intended to make it useful for digging up roots. The tip is forked and sharpened to catch roots and cut them, and the sides of the shovel are serrated so they cut whatever they slide past. The blade is long and skinny so it goes deep without a lot of resistance.

It’s a pretty decent tool. It’s expensive, but I think it was a good buy. Obviously, it wasn’t going to cut 3″-thick oak roots, but it was a dandy tool for finding them and moving dirt away from them so they could be cut with other tools.

We worked for quite a while. Finally, I remembered an important step. I told everyone we had to use our supernatural tools. We prayed, and I spoke defeat to the difficulty of removing the stump. A little while later, it surprised me by yielding to the subsoiler. I was amazed. I had been expecting it to continue resisting for at least another day.

Today I decided to go out alone and work on the stumps. It has been raining a lot, so the dirt is wet. I figured that would give me a big advantage. Dry dirt holds onto things much better. This time, I was smart. I remembered to invoke God’s power before I started, and it paid off.

I took the tractor to a fresh stump and made passes beside it at various distances, figuring I would sever the roots where they were thinner. Right beside a stump, roots are thick and strong, but they taper off quickly as you move farther out. They’re easier to cut, and if you can pull them with the tractor, you get good leverage, and you may twist the stump loose.

The first stump I worked on today surprised me. I made a few passes beside it, and then I yanked on the stump itself. Up it came. I was thrilled. Nothing is more frustrating than a stump you can’t get rid of.

The second stump is still out there. It was a lot more determined to stay where it was. I kept moving around it, finding and popping roots. I moved so much dirt, I couldn’t see the stump clearly. Toward the end, I realized I had moved away from the stump, and I was actually pulling on a huge rock. It was coming loose from the ground. I would say it was a little smaller than a typical ottoman. Very heavy.

This was pretty exciting. I hadn’t realized there was a rock there. I hate underground rocks, and I was planning to put blackberries where this one was, so getting rid of it would be a major coup. I was surprised to see such a big rock coming loose. It dwarfed the biggest one I had already pulled.

The rock was too big to pull out of the hole with the subsoiler. When I really tried, I broke the shear pin. I decided to use a rope. I got myself some 5/8″ rope and tied it around the rock, which, fortunately for me, was peanut-shaped. The small waist allowed me to attach the rope so it wouldn’t slide off.

I put a loop in the other end of the rope and put it over one of my tractor’s forks. The tractor picked the rock right up. It wasn’t happy about it, but it did the job. The loader is rated for 1500 pounds, and the forks probably weigh 300, so I had 1200 pounds of capacity to play with.

I was ecstatic when the rock came off the ground. Just before it left the ground, I thought about the fact that it was going to be swinging on a rope. I tried to prevent it from swinging toward me, but it was too late. It whacked the tractor. The people at Kubota were way ahead of me, however. The heavy bumper took the hit with no damage at all.

Moving the rock to my rock collection area was interesting. I had to sort of roll it onto the forks, and then I tilted the forks back so it rolled toward the bucket. As I drove to the dumping area, the tractor pitched and rocked every time I hit a bump.

The rock is now resting safely among my other trophies. I need to start selling them to landscapers.

The stump is still in the yard, but I think it will yield readily now that it can’t rely on its friend the boulder for support. I may fill the voids with pricey potting soil instead of relocating dirt from the pasture. Might as well give the blackberries every advantage.

Man, it’s nice when tools do what they should.

I don’t know why the rock looks so small in the pictures. It’s a good three feet long. More, really. It must look small in the first picture because most of it is in a hole.

Maybe tomorrow I can get rid of the last stump, and then I can get the blackberry plants off my patio. That would be nice.

Paul Exposed Crooked Preachers, and so Should You

I hope your weekend was as good as mine. I couldn’t ask for a better one.

I have a long list of prayers I repeat every day. It includes a prayer for God to make my property a place where people gather to serve him. I ask him to make it a place where the sick are healed, the dead are raised, demons are driven out, and good doctrine is taught. I ask him to make it a place where people spend time with him. He’s making it come true. I’ve baptized three people here, and this weekend, friends from Miami came up for prayer.

My friends have been planning to come since May. I wrote about them then. I referred to them as Archie and Edith, and I called their kids Mike and Gloria. Archie was an armorbearer at Trinity Church in Miami, and he then served in some capacity or other at New Dawn Ministries. Edith was involved in both churches. They were at New Dawn when the pastor confessed to molesting a young girl over and over.

It’s bad to dwell on the past for no constructive reason. I emphasize “for no constructive reason.” There are good reasons to talk about people’s bad deeds, even after you’ve forgiven them. One good reason is to undo the harm those people continue to do.

Corrupt preachers tend to gaslight. When people correct them and expose their misdeeds, they will say they’ve been attacked by Satan. They’ll say the people who exposed them are liars. They’ll say the whistle-blowers are persecuting God’s prophets. Brainwashed and/or dishonest people who support them will attack the messengers, too. It can take years to refute the lies and undo the division lying preachers cause. This weekend, we talked a lot about the pastors at Trinity Church and New Dawn.

Many times, I have felt bad about discussing these people. I’ve wondered if I was gossiping. I’ve wondered if I was unforgiving. I’ve wondered if I was too hard on them. The amazing thing is that it always turns out I’ve gone way too easy on them. Also, I continually learn that they still have victims who need to have the truth put in front of them. It appears that what I do is correct.

The pastor at New Dawn started molesting a girl when she was 6. Perhaps it was earlier, but 6 is the lowest number which has been revealed publicly. One of the girl’s friends learned about it when the victim was in her teens. She told the victim’s mother. The mother blew up and told the pastor she would not have him prosecuted, provided he quit preaching. The pastor confessed to the church and stepped down. Then a few weeks later, he insisted on returning to the pulpit, and he also collected offerings. The victim’s mother had him charged, and now he’s doing three years.

It’s a remarkable example of supernatural pride destroying a person. The pedophilia didn’t do him in; he had a way to avoid prosecution. He was brought down by pride. He refused to humble himself and accept the kindness of the victim’s mother.

Imagine yourself in the same situation. Is there anything you would refuse to do, in order to stay out of prison? He could have been put away until he was in his seventies.

I’ve written about this before, but now I’ve learned that the pastors were even worse than I believed. After the crimes were revealed, distressed people talked to the pastor’s wife, who has since died, and she told them to “get over it.”

This was a woman who had two children of her own, as well as two grandchildren. The victim herself was a close relative.

What can you say about an attitude like that? It’s inhuman. It goes far beyond what you would think a rational person could be capable of.

In many charismatic churches, all of a head pastor’s relatives are automatically pastors. This goes against God’s will, but it’s true. At New Dawn, the pastor and his wife were called “Pastor” and “Pastora.” Pastora was very brassy and forceful. She wore the pants. Pastor was lazy. A close relative said he did nothing but sit on the couch. The church was only open maybe 7 hours a week. Like many lazy men, Pastor took off his pants and gave them to his wife, and she wore them with great zeal and a complete sense of entitlement.

A married woman should not confront men and scold them publicly. This should be obvious to any Christian. Pastora had a husband to deal with other men, but because she was so pushy, she did it herself. She used to chide and “correct” me on social media, where everyone in the church, including children, could read it. She had no idea how a woman was supposed to behave.

She was in charge of their social media presence. In all likelihood, it was she who blocked me on Facebook, without notice or explanation. I doubt Pastor knew how to work Facebook.

She got very full of herself. She started criticizing Edith’s clothing, which was perfectly normal. You can tell your 12-year-old daughter how to dress, but you don’t go up to a married woman with children and tell her she what to wear, just because she and her husband attend a church your husband pastors. Edith had to send her an email, putting her in her place.

I also learned that someone in the church officialdom (which consisted of 6 people) approached Archie and told him he needed to stop communicating with me. Archie won’t say who it was, but it obviously wasn’t the pastors, and two of the former bigwigs are my friends, so it’s not hard to figure out.

New Dawn was a cult, and cults have to be exposed. Pushing members to ostracize people who disagree with a church’s leadership is classic cult behavior. Mormonism is a cult, and the Mormons are famous for choking people off socially and economically.

The pastor had a brother-in-law I will call Walter. I will call his wife Maude. Walter was a new Christian. He came to the USA illegally from Honduras, a country known for terrible morals and a very high murder rate. Before Walter and Maude came along, the pastor’s brother George and his wife Weezy handled the church’s business. George left because he was afraid someone would be prosecuted over the way the church mishandled money. That left an opportunity for Walter. He was a relative of the pastors, so he was automatically a prophet and trusted advisor.

Walter used to go off on me on Facebook, telling me I spoke like “the voice of God” and so on. He got very angry over some revelations I posted. God showed me that illegal immigration was a curse based on a nation’s disobedience, and I wrote about it, and Walter, having zero humility, started arguing with me online. He was very angry; he said I was calling his family a curse. He couldn’t step back and look at the situation or consider the possibility that he was trying to refute knowledge that had come to be from God.

If your family’s presence in a country is a curse, you should be a man about it and accept the truth. The Bible makes it very clear that porous borders and invasions come from disobedience.

Walter didn’t understand what revelation was. As a recent convert to Christianity, with an inadequate prayer life, he didn’t hear from God much. He would say things like, “My personal revelation is…” He thought opinions were revelation. There are no opinions in heaven. There is only the truth. God tells others the truth, and that’s that. When someone gets a revelation from God, it’s not their subjective view. Walter didn’t get that.

Walter scolded the people who left New Dawn after Pastor was arrested. They were completely correct to stop supporting a pedophile pastor; I shouldn’t have to point that out. Walter put something on Facebook that said something like, “What do the sheep do when the shepherd is struck? Run?” He was way out of line a lot of the time.

I don’t know if Walter told people to shun me, but he and his wife are the only possibilities among the inner circle.

Carnal people ruin churches. The Holy Spirit tells everyone the same things, and when we listen, he prevents conflict. When one person is listening to God and another is listening to his own pride, conflict is inevitable. Walter was very proud, and he had a short fuse. He believed in hard work and forcing things to happen through effort. Naturally, the church he was trying to force to survive collapsed in disgrace, along with the pastor’s family.

I’ve learned new things about the leadership at Trinity Church as well. A friend of mine was hit by a car while sitting on a bus bench. A lady who was also on the bench was killed, and I believe one victim lost both legs. The accident made the news in Miami, so naturally, the pastors rushed to my friend’s bedside, where there might be cameras. Rich Wilkerson sent my friend to an attorney, but he never sued. I believe the idea was to sue the city for failing to protect bus stops.

My friend’s brother told me about it. When the family talked to the attorney about what his fee was going to be, it was more than they expected. When they asked why, he said he had to give part of the money to Wilkerson. This is what I was told, anyway. Knowing the Wilkerson family, I believe it.

In Florida, a lawyer can’t split a fee with a non-lawyer; it’s illegal and unethical. Also, what kind of pastor would take money from a young man with a broken pelvis?

Archie said he was present to see another well-known Wilkerson gaffe. A car thief named Alex Nicolas drowned while fleeing the police, and Alex went to Trinity. He as a big part of the music team. He had a lot of wealthy Jewish friends. Trinity hosted the funeral, and Wilkerson asked for an offering, which did not go to help the family. This is what more than one source tells me.

Archie said he and Edith got up and left the funeral.

What else have my former pastors done? How much worse can the revelations get? And how did people like this end up running churches? No wonder God is bringing an end to the church age and moving people to small groups. It can’t happen fast enough. We don’t need big churches at all. They cause problems.

The things we talked about this weekend were awful, but it was nice to have the clouds of lies and secrecy dispersed. I suppose this is the fate of liars and scoundrels everywhere. If you never come clean, people will have God’s go-ahead to rehash your sorry history forever, and it will not count as gossip.

Look at the Bible. It’s full of unflattering stories about people, and those stories are not gossip.

When you come clean and repent, people forgive you, and everyone heals. Then if anyone talks about what happened, it’s so they can give a testimony of what God did to help everyone after the offenders did the right thing. If you continue to defend yourself and lie, it’s as if you’re pushing a splinter deeper into your flesh. The infection will persist, and pieces of the splinter may keep coming out for the rest of your life.

My former pastors deserve to be exposed over and over, and the people they’ve hurt need to keep talking about them in public.

We had a wonderful prayer session. Archie and Edith go to a church the belongs to Calvary Chapel, which is a pretty dry organization. Calvary discourages the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, which are vital to the health of a church. Archie and Edith had let their prayer lives go, and things were not going well for them. They missed God because they weren’t encountering him at Calvary Chapel. I told them everything I had learned which could help them, and before you know it, we were praying in tongues and worshiping in the living room.

I could see how thirsty they were for God’s presence. I get that thirst, too, every day. It’s much worse after months without rain.

To top things off, someone who was present got baptized with the Holy Spirit and prayed in tongues for the first time. That made my day. You will only get so far without the gifts of the Spirit. You have to get over the hump and speak in tongues if you ever want to get past the baptism with fire and live in peace.

While my friends were here, God showed me I was under the influence of spirits of strife and opposition, not to mention cowardice, which caused me to worry. I now fight these spirits by name. It brings tremendous peace.

It’s as though I got a reward for hosting my friends.

Don’t be concerned if your church is poisonous. Just leave. God doesn’t require you to belong to a church; he requires you to know him, spend time with him, hear from him, and obey him. If you can find 4 people to worship with, you have plenty. The main thing is for everyone to be equally yoked. One egomaniac can ruin everything for the whole group, and it’s important to cut people off when they come between you and God.

If a person with authority in the church is using you, or they used you in the past and have never come clean, go ahead and tell people about him or her. Don’t let the cockroaches hide in the dark. Expose them so they can’t hurt anyone else.

At Least I’m not Talking to the Wallpaper

My painful (as always) trip to Miami and the sale of a house disrupted my life over the last two weeks, so now I’m trying to regain balance. I’m cleaning up the house and taking care of bills and so on. Both robot vacuums (Kim and Kourtney) are currently prowling the residence.

A fun item arrived via UPS today. I now have a Lionsteel (Or is it “Lion Steel? They send mixed signals.) M4 sheath knife in M390 steel, with olive wood scales.

I wanted a small sheath knife for everyday carry, so I bought a Lionsteel M1. It turned out to be the size of a small paring knife, and that’s a little too small. I don’t know if I’ll send it back, but I’m not going to carry it every day.

I could have gotten indestructible G10 scales on the new knife, but olive wood appealed to me because of its Biblical connection to the Holy Spirit. It doesn’t look as nice as darker woods, but I want it anyway. If I change my mind, I’ll look into getting new scales.

Here it is.

I will have to make a sheath for it. I look forward to that. The practice will help me. By the time I’m finished with my third sheath, I should be fully competent, if not highly skilled.

People brag on Lionsteel sheaths, maybe because they’re Italian. I don’t get it. The seem perfectly nice, but if you showed me one without a stamp on it and told me it was from China, I would believe you.

I’m not worried about the steel. A reader says Lionsteel’s M390 is suspect, but in at least one cutting test, Lionsteel M390 has stomped some pretty impressive steels, so I am willing to give it a shot.

I can’t let the knife-nerd culture get me. I am nothing like that. Oh, no. Not me. Although I do name all my knives “Mike.”

I can’t help liking the Lionsteel name. Reminds me of someone I used to know. Back when I was lawyering, I worked with a client named Giancarlo. Gian-something, anyway. Little Italian guy with a beard. Probably weighed 130 pounds. Whenever I asked him how he was doing, he always made a fist and said, “STRONG, like a LION!”

This weekend should be fun. My friend Eric is bringing his family for a visit. He and his wife are not happy at their Calvary Chapel church. They miss the Holy Spirit. They called me to see if I could help, so we’re going to see what I can do. More accurately, of course, we will see what God does through me and through them.

This will be the second time someone has come here just to get closer to God. That’s tremendous. This is what I want my home to be.

Guess I should get to work on the toilets. I get tired of explaining how the stains are caused by well water, not filth.

Tiny Sheath Knife for Sneaky People

It’s official. I am finally free of a house I was trying to sell. Today I can relax and think about trivial things. More than usual.

Selling the house wasn’t the only exciting thing that happened yesterday. I also received a new knife: a Lionsteel M1. This is a small sheath knife made from M390 steel. I’ve already written about it. I am trying to transition to sheath knives because they’re just, well, better. I have a couple of sheath knives in the 9″ range (overall length), and they’re a little bigger than I need them to be for general use. The M1 is under 7″ long, so I thought it would be a good choice.

It’s a very nice knife. Apart from the M390 steel, it has G10 scales. G10 is more or less the same thing as micarta. It’s fabric inside plastic. G10 uses glass fabric (fiberglass), and micarta uses other materials. G10 is stronger, but since micarta is way stronger than it needs to be, it doesn’t really matter.

I may send the knife back. It’s smaller than I thought it would be. The blade is somewhat thin, too. I would say it’s about 0.10″ thick. Actually, I can check. Okay, it’s 0.13″, so I’m off by 30 thousandths. To give context, I’ll add that my Entrek knife is about 0.1875″ thick. It’s a monster, and it’s not unusual these days.

That’s a $150 knife, believe it or not. A lot of money for not much knife.

I’m going to get a Lionsteel M4, which is 8″ long. It’s shorter than the Entrek, so it should be handier. The blade is 0.15″ thick, which is somewhat better than 0.13″. I want a knife I can use every day without fear of snapping it.

Micarta and G10 are probably the best handle materials there are, but I decided to get an M4 with olive wood scales. It won’t be as tough, but olive wood appeals to me because olive oil is important in the Bible. It symbolizes the Holy Spirit, more or less. I believe it should be possible to put G10 scales on it if I don’t like the wood. Lionsteel knife handles aren’t ground flush with the tangs, so new scales should fit as well as the old ones.

Lionsteel also makes a knife called the DPX HEST, which is a 7″ survival knife. I don’t think my survival will ever depend on a knife, but survival knives seem very practical. They’re supposed to be tough and versatile. I might try one eventually. They’re pretty ugly, but so are Glocks, and we all know how well Glocks work. Well, most of us do. Colt, Sig, and Springfield fanbois, among others, have their fingers in their ears.

The HEST has a super-thick blade, plus a pointy thing for prying and wire-stripping notches. It has a built-in wrench which only works for 1/4″ fasteners IF you can fit the knife over them.

The DPX line contains models with names containing the word “assault.” I don’t really see myself assaulting in the near future. It’s funny how many products have macho names that have no relationship to the ways in which they will actually be used. TRY NEW KELLOGG’S ASSAULT POP TARTS! ASSAULT YOUR TASTE BUDS WITH EXTRA FILLING!

You can get the HEST in Sleipner and Niolox steels, both of which are supposed to be really good. I don’t know if I want Sleipner. It’s named after a mythical 8-legged horse that belonged to the false god Odin. Creepy thing for a Christian to own. Also, Sleipner steel rusts badly enough to generate complaints.

It would be nice to have a real knife collection, meaning maybe 30 or 40 knives. I probably have 10 right now. When I was a kid, I used to trade pocket knives with my grandfather’s older brother, so fooling with knives brings back nice memories, just as shooting brings back memories of my grandfather.

If my life sounds unexciting, good. That’s exactly how I want it.

Please Let it Happen

The other day, I returned from Miami, and I wrote about my joy. As inexpressibly wonderful it is whenever one departs from Dade County, I think today’s joy may be even greater. I’m finally selling a house I’ve been stuck with for 5 years. And it’s in MIAMI, so losing it means one less tie to America’s rudest, least cultured, most voodooed-up city. With all the Cubans, Haitians, island people, and Mexicans, I would guess that at least 60% of Miamians participate in some kind of voodoo.

My dad bought my sister a house some years ago. When my mother died, I let my sister take all the jewelry, and it was very valuable. There was no talk of compensation. On the other hand, my mother gave me her security accounts because she wanted to make up for the huge amount of money she had spent on my sister. She initially wanted to disinherit my sister entirely, but I talked her out of it, and that was a big mistake (which I did not repeat when my dad brought up the same idea).

My sister told my dad she was owed, basically. Not true, but he took the bait. He asked me if I had any objections, and I told him what he did with his money was his business.

He originally wanted her to put her own money in the house instead of renting. She found the house, and then when it came time to pay, either she didn’t want to contribute, or she could not, because she had not saved much. Much later, she chipped in, but he ended up paying for around 5/8 of the house. Then she didn’t maintain it. A water connection broke under the floor, and she paid what she said was over $300 per month for water, instead of fixing the leak. The living room floor rotted and caved in. Trees grew in the roof gutters. Mold coated the walls until they were black. Rats roamed freely in the kitchen. A dog with no housetraining at all roamed freely, and the floors were not cleaned much.

They owned the house as tenants in common with a right of survivorship, which meant that if my dad died, she would get the whole thing. She would not have to pay him back. It was a very good deal for her.

As the place fell to ruins, the city got on my dad. They said they were going to demolish the house. They were also going to fine him $150 per day. He had to buy the place and fix it. There was no way to take care of it with my sister living there.

As he deteriorated, I had to take over the expensive renovation. Then I found the place was impossible to rent profitably, so I put it on the market.

My dad was never a good home shopper. My mother said he would always buy the second place a realtor showed him. My sister was worse. The house was a bad choice. It was poorly built. The layout was bad. The location was great, but location will only get you so far. People didn’t want the place. On top of all this, when I priced the house, I relied on an overly optimistic appraisal, and that cost me at least a year.

I kept dropping the price, and finally, a South American showed up to take it.

Doing business with South Americans is not always pleasant. American conventions of integrity and good manners are not quite the same as those of our friends south of the Panama Canal. The buyer signed a contract, but he only signed part of it, which means there was no contract. He said he needed longer than expected to get the money. Then when it was time to finalize things, he offered me $15,000.00 less than the price we had agreed upon. I countered at $20,000.00 more than the original price. If he could go down, I could go up. He agreed to the original price, and we had a contract.

We had problems with the documents. Things had to be translated by experts. Surprising, but true. Even in Miami, a Spanish-speaking person may need certified translators in order to buy a house.

The date was moved back two more times. I wondered if it would ever happen.

As of now, I am waiting for the final documents to come back to me via email. When that happens, money will be wired, and I will be free of this horrendous burden.

I feel bad, calling the house a burden. I was never supposed to have it at all, and the whole business made me a lot of money. Property values went nuts after my dad bought the place from my sister, so I’m being compensated for my misery. I suffered a lot, though. I got ripped off by contractors. My dad made me miserable when things didn’t go well. I had to pay high taxes on a house no one was using. Lots of stress.

On the one hand, I’m grateful to God for giving me the house, but on the other, I haven’t enjoyed it. The enjoyment won’t come until the money is wired and I know I will never have to set foot in that house, or pay any bills related to it, ever again.

I used to pray for God to help my sister hold onto her inheritance. That didn’t work out. In order for that prayer to be answered, she had to cooperate with him. No dice. My dad and I did our best to get her to move out so we could fix the place and give it back to her, but she refused until it was far too late. Then when she sold out to my dad, who had no choice, she said he was stealing her house.

It’s unpleasant, having someone accuse you of dishonesty while you’re trying to help her.

My dad’s house is next. It appears that the value went up a great deal after he moved out, so it was worth it to hold onto it until he died. When that place sells, it’s completely possible that I will be arrested for dancing in the middle of a busy highway and throwing hundred-dollar bills at strangers.

Later today, I should buy myself a celebratory present. Like a new Corvette. Well…no. But maybe a nice knife.

I am praying this deal winds up today. I could really use another knife.

Because I Really Needed More Hobbies

In 2017, I started hunting. I did not accomplish a whole lot, but I did manage to kill a number of squirrels. I didn’t hunt much in 2018. My dad was declining, and I felt disinclined to kill things while he was approaching death. I can’t explain that. Killing squirrels and other pests is morally correct, so it wasn’t as though I felt it would be wrong. For some reason, I felt restrained.

When I started hunting, I knew I needed a sheath knife. A folding knife is a fine thing, but they’re less sturdy than sheath knives, and they’re impossible to clean well. If you use a folder to gut squirrels, it will always have a certain amount of filth trapped inside it.

I got myself a couple of very nice knives, but I was not happy. They came with sheaths made to go with belts, and I don’t like belts. They’re uncomfortable, they’re unhealthy (they raise blood pressure), and they don’t really hold pants up. They just slow the decline. You still have to pull your pants up many times every day.

Obviously, I needed sheaths that fit in the pockets of work jeans, but they don’t fall out of trees. If you want one, someone has to make it.

I got a kit so I could make myself a pocket sheath from Kydex. This is a tough plastic. You heat it and let it mold itself to your knife. In order to do this, you need a Kydex press, which is basically two thick sheets of foam mounted to boards. You put the knife and heated sheath in the press, you close it up, and when the plastic is cold, you have a sheath that fits your knife.

I haven’t gotten around to using the kit. Making a press is somehow unappealing to me, and I like leather better than plastic.

I looked into leatherworking, and I learned that it’s actually not significantly harder than using Kydex. You can get a world of leatherworking tools and materials for $150.00, and there isn’t much skill involved. I decided to try it.

To get going with leather, you need punches to make stitch holes, an awl to do the stitching, dye, appropriate thread for leather, and maybe a hole-punching tool and some Chicago screws. You can also get little tools for dressing the edges of leather and putting a shine on the edges of finished goods.

Chicago screws are screws that work like rivets. One end is a T-shaped nut, and the other end is a screw. When you screw the screw into the nut, you end up with a spool-shaped contraption. You run them through holes in leather and tighten them, and you get removable rivets.

Making leather knife sheaths takes very little time. A lot of the time it will take you to make your first sheath will be spent waiting on deliveries because you didn’t know what to get. Cut that excess out, and it takes around two days to make a sheath. It takes over a day because you will want to use water to mold your sheath to your knife, and water takes time to evaporate.

I decided I wanted sheaths with pocket clips. I found what is considered to be the best clip out there: the Ulticlip. You can look it up. They were created for gun holsters, but you can get models that fit smaller items. They lock very securely to waistbands and pockets. In fact, they’re a pain to fasten and remove, which means your knife is never going to fall out of your pocket.

I just finished the main body of work on my first sheath. I’ll post photos. The stitching is a little rough, so I think I’ll redo it, but it will work for now. I used a type of thread known as artificial sinew. It’s like tough, greasy dental floss.

The knife is an Entrek Beaver. I originally wanted a model called the Javalina, but they sent me the wrong blade shape, and I ended up returning it and getting a Beaver.

I have no idea what thought process led to that name. They no longer sell it. I guess I can rename it. I’ll give it a more masculine name. I’ll call it the Entrek Roid-raging Mega-Jaguar.

Entrek, as I understand it, is actually a man named Ray Ennis. He makes handmade knives and sells them at very reasonable prices. You can find him on Youtube. He has videos showing exactly how he makes his knives. Once you’ve seen the videos, you can pretty much make your own Entrek knives if you’re handy.

He seems like a great guy. He’s having health problems, so it’s not certain the company will continue to produce.

Ennis uses 440C in all his knives. This is a very corrosion-resistant stainless that became popular in the Eighties. It’s not 440A or 440B; those are loser steels. My first really good knife was a Gerber made from 440C, so I wanted a sheath knife made from the same material.

People complain that 440C chips when you get it really hard, but Ennis says he has his blades treated with super-low temperatures, and he believes this makes them chip-resistant.

In any case, the Bea…Roid-raging Mega-Jaguar is a very nice knife. The handles are rough Micarta, a material so tough it may well be the last thing God manages to destroy when he remakes the earth. It’s shaped so you can grip it very securely. It should serve me well.

I’m planning to start carrying a sheath knife everywhere. Florida allows open knife carry. You have to be careful about local ordinances, but they’re easy to look up.

I used to think I could carry a switchblade anywhere in Florida because Florida law allowed it, but it turns out I was mistaken. Snowflake officials in some areas have banned large classes of knives with ordinances, so it may be that back when I carried a switchblade, I committed a number of serious crimes. Sorry for the many, many felonies I may have committed before I looked the ordinances up.

I always say virtually everyone is a felon. If you look hard enough, you will almost surely find a stupid law you violated in the past.

Dade County’s ordinances seem to ban open carry of knives, but it’s not clear. I don’t care, because Dade is a tacky, festering hole of unhappiness and immorality, and I plan to avoid visiting for the rest of my life, except when forced.

The Roid-raging Mega Jaguar is fine for squirrels, but with a thick blade over 4 inches long, I think it’s a little cumbersome for everyday carry. I decided to try a smaller knife. I’m getting a Lionsteel M1, which is a shorter sheath knife in M390 steel. I don’t know a whole lot about M390, but it’s among the “super steels.” I think Superman uses it to make stays for his underpants. It’s supposed to be really great. I tipped my hat to the past with a 440C knife, so now I feel like I’m free to get into snob metal.

The M1 is something like three inches long, which should be very handy around the farm. For all I know, it will even be better for squirrels.

Believe it or not, fixed-blade knives really do work better than folders. I learned this the other day when I took my drill press and band saw out of my truck. I had to cut a lot of rope. I was taking my Cold Steel folder (CTS-XHP super steel!) out over and over, and because I’m too lazy to close it, I kept leaving it in various places, open, and then forgetting where it was. With a sheath knife, you just slap it back in the sheath every time you’re done with it.

I have a lot of hobbies, and sometimes I pick up hobbies that are useless, but I think I hit a home run with leather. It takes almost no skill, and it fills a gaping hole in my tool repertoire. Think of all the times you’ve needed a leather sheath, bag, belt or something, but you couldn’t get what you needed. Maybe you have a tool you use a lot, or maybe you have very specific ideas about a carry holster. If you can do basic leatherwork, you can get what you want without a lot of hassle or expense.

I know almost nothing about leathercrafting, but I can pass on a few tips. You don’t want Fiebing’s low-VOC dye. “VOC” means “volatile organic compound.” It refers to dangerous chemicals that give off fumes. It’s nice that Fiebing is trying to avoid killing customers, but the dangerous old dye works much better. Also, you want 7-8-ounce leather for knife sheaths. Lighter leather is flimsy, and heavier is hard to work with. The leather has to be vegetable-tanned, not chrome-tanned, because chrome-tanned leather rusts knives.

I don’t know what “vegetable-tanned” means. Maybe they take cowhide and rub it with salad.

My first sheath looks pretty good, even though I made a lot of errors. The second one should be as good as what’s available in stores. It’s just not that hard to do.

Deportation Requires Identification

I learned some new stuff about demons.

For years, I’ve been telling people demons are for everyone. You don’t have to be epileptic or clairvoyant; we all have them. Demons infect our flesh, and they manifest in things like unbelief, hatred of Jesus, sexual perversion, gluttony, anger, and addiction. Name a character fault, and there are demons associated with it. Greed, cowardice…anything.

The book of Enoch says demons are the spirits of bastard creatures killed in the flood. Angels camed down, assumed flesh, allowed themselves to be seduced by women, and spawned giants. God killed the giants, and now they’re stuck on earth, working in people. They want bodies so they can satisfy their carnal desires through them, and so they can hurt human beings, make us Satan’s soldiers, and lure us to hell.

I don’t know if all demons come from this source. After all, demons are extremely numerous. They seem to outnumber people by a wide margin. Derek Prince has opined that a pre-Adamic race may have ended up like the giants. Genesis mentions a lot of events, and there is no clear mention of a pre-Adamic race, but we know Genesis doesn’t mention everything that ever happened in the early days. The fact that something doesn’t appear in Genesis doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Prince cast a lot of demons out of people. He said one demon protested over and over. Prince described it a certain way, and the demon kept saying, “That’s not my name.” It resisted for a while. It eventually left because Prince persisted.

Jesus asked demons who they were. We don’t know that he did it every time he cast demons out, but he may have. In one case, he asked what a demon’s name was, and the demoniac said, “Legion, for we are many.” This shows that there is precedent for asking a demon to tell you its name.

It makes sense that we would need to use demon’s names. The supernatural is full of symmetry. When we serve God, we can’t just refer to him as “God” all the time. We have to be specific. We have to use the name of Jesus. The world is full of false religions in which people address “God” yet are actually speaking to other spirits.

You can see evidence of this truth in the way modern people respond to the name of Jesus. Most people don’t complain when you praise or invoke “God” in public, but try saying “Jesus,” and you bring a hailstorm of persecution on yourself. When you say Jesus, you’re supposedly discriminating against non-Christians. In truth, you are discriminating against them, and it’s right to do so. Jesus was completely intolerant of other religions. He is the only way to God. It’s Jesus or hell. No third possibility.

If God requires us to use his name in our walks, then it makes sense that we would need to use the names of other spirits when we humble and defeat them.

God gave me the names of a couple of spirits during the last 24 hours. One was “sexual defilement,” and the other was, “reviling.”

You may say those aren’t names. They’re descriptions. Well, what is “Yehoshua,” which is the full name of Jesus? It’s a description. It means, “Yahweh is salvation,” more or less.

It may be that a demon’s descriptive name is like a last name. Maybe a demon has a more specific name, like Barney, but his description, like a last name, covers him and his whole family. In the military, people give valid orders using ranks and last names. You don’t have to say, “Forward March, WILBUR,” in order to have authority.

A few months ago, God told me there was such a thing as sex without defilement. That’s interesting, because society teaches us to love a very defiled type of sex. In God’s plan, sex is supposed to be an event filled up with intimacy, love, and surrender. The world’s version of sex isn’t like that. It’s about body parts which are shaped just the right way, or weird actions that heighten selfish animal arousal. It’s about choking yourself by hanging yourself in a closet while you pursue solitary sexual activity. It’s about aggression and humiliation. It’s about physical pain.

You can’t have intimacy, love, and surrender while you’re beating someone with a whip or cutting off their air to get them excited. San Francisco sex, as I would call it, isn’t loving or unselfish. You can’t have intimate, loving bondage.

It shouldn’t surprise me to find out I’ve been dealing with a spirit called sexual defilement, after all I’ve been exposed to.

Anyway, I spoke defeat to it and cast it out. I renounced involvement with it. I could feel it filling with dread as I spoke, and I could tell when it left. Now I have to keep it out.

As for “reviling,” it refers to verbal abuse. I got tons of this when I was young. Most of it came from my dad and my sister, but even my mother fell into it. I internalized it, verbally abusing myself silently every day, and I also abused others.

The Bible says you can’t inherit the kingdom of heaven if you’re a reviler. If I want the kingdom of heaven inside me, I can’t give rulership to a reviling spirit.

Today I fought it just as I fought sexual defilement, with the same basic result.

The Bible lists a bunch of things that will keep you from inheriting the kingdom of heaven. Covetousness, for example. Cowardice and unbelief are also named. If your flesh rules you, Satan rules you, because demons serve Satan, and your flesh will generally choose to be ruled by demons, not the Holy Spirit.

I knew I had to get rid of demons, but I didn’t understand that I needed to ask God to tell me their names. Now I have more power to fight.

It may be that a demon is more likely to return if you didn’t use its name when you cast it out. You have to repent if you want to stay free, and you can’t repent unless you know what you’re repenting of.

I just learned that Catholic exorcists have rules they follow, and one rule is that they have to ask demons what their names are.

There is so much wisdom out there, and our ancestors threw it away. Life would be so much better had they preserved it and passed it on. As it is, I have to get a great deal of it directly from the Holy Spirit, because preachers are ignorant and/or dishonest.

The Real Criminal is Barbara Cartland

Really interesting day today. Interesting and also boring, if that makes sense.

I got called for jury duty. This is not a good week for me, to put it mildly, but I figured I should show up and see if there was any chance I could be of use in a short trial. I have been called a number of times, but I have never been part of a jury because lawyers almost always strike other lawyers.

I showed up at the courthouse before eight today, and a judge came to the assembly room and started working with us. He asked people to come up so they could be excused. He gave various reasons. Felons can’t serve. Pregnant women and seniors don’t have to serve. He also gave a reason that surprised me: doctors and lawyers don’t have to serve. That’s new. I guess they have given up trying to get lawyers to accept doctors and lawyers as jurors.

I could have weaseled out by telling him I was an attorney, but I decided to go with an approach I thought was less selfish. I told him about some very important business I have to attend to this week, and I said I could serve for a day, but that was about the best I could do. He said I would have to talk to whatever judge interviewed me when I was made part of a group of potential jurors.

The assembly room was pretty bad. In Miami, they play bad movies on overhead TV’s, and as awful as that sounds, it beats the Marion County system. Here, they have the TV’s, but they don’t turn them on. They also have some horrendous magazines and books.

I must have been in there for almost two hours before I was called to a courtroom.

The defendant was Jose Manuel Martinez. He’s a celebrity. I didn’t know that. The jurors still don’t know it. We were told we were forbidden to look him up on the Internet to find out about the case. Of course, I have looked him up, because I didn’t end up on the jury.

Jose Manuel Martinez claims he was a cocaine cartel hitman, which means he was a failed human being who was willing to kill people in order make a living. In the movies, hitmen are sophisticated, highly trained killers. In real life, anyone who has no conscience and no valuable skills can be a hitman. The valuable commodity isn’t good marksmanship or Hollywood-style spy skills; it’s a willingness to shoot people without hesitation. That’s really all you need. If you can dig a ditch, you can be a top-notch hitman.

Martinez is already imprisoned, and he is never going to get out. He claims to have killed at least 30 people. I suppose the death penalty is on the table in the present case, so he is probably motivated to seek an acquittal in spite of his existing sentences.

According to the indictments, Javier Huerta and some guy named Oliveira were found in a black Nissan pickup truck on highway 19, next to the northbound lanes, near highway 40. They had been shot to death. This happened in November of 2006, and the trial just started today. I don’t know if Martinez confessed or what. There has to be some reason why it took 13 years to get started. Surely the authorities didn’t find out about these deaths 13 years ago. Defense attorneys can do a lot of things, but I don’t think they can delay trial until an offense reaches bar mitzvah age.

CORRECTION: apparently, the judge couldn’t pronounce “Olivares” correctly. Martinez is accused of killing a man named Olivares-Rivas, not Oliveira. Also, it turns out Martinez bragged about the murders, and that’s why he’s on trial in 2019.

It’s kind of nice living in a county where a judge can’t pronounce “Olivares.” Refreshing.

When I showed up in the courtroom, I didn’t know what kind of trial to expect. I thought there might be some kind of simple felony, and I could serve and go home today. When the judge started talking about dead bodies, firearms, and premeditation, I knew that was not going to happen. He said the trial, including sentencing, could run through June 28th. No; can’t do it. Too many irons in the fire.

When the judge asked if any of the potential jurors couldn’t serve because of scheduling conflicts or prior knowledge of the case, I stood up. Later, he interviewed me, and I told him about my business problems. For good measure, I said I was an attorney. I knew it would come up in voir dire anyway. I was working on my second chance to be excused, and I didn’t want to have the judge hold onto me and then have the attorneys find out about my background. I thought it would annoy everyone involved. They would ask me why I hadn’t told them sooner.

The judge cut me loose, but I still had to return to the assembly room. There was still a chance another trial would work for me. Back to SELF Magazine and Barbara Cartland novels.

Maybe 30 minutes later, lunch rolled around. I did two things. I bought a book of crossword puzzles, and I bought the Kindle version of The Bourne Identity. I don’t like pulp fiction all that much, but I knew I needed a page-turner to keep me from losing my mind. Why, why, why didn’t I think to bring a book of differential equation problems?

They finally turned me loose at around 3:45. I resolved never to offer to serve on a jury again. It’s a waste of my time. They’re not going to take me, so why show up?

There are two unselfish acts I now refuse to get involved with: jury duty and giving blood. Every time I have given blood, they have torn up my arms, so my feeling is that blood donation is not for me. Also, it’s unnatural for a lawyer to GIVE blood.

The earth will still turn if I let other people hear cases and donate blood. It’s not necessary for me to do every nice thing there is.

When I learned who Martinez was, I almost wished I had been allowed to serve. How often do you get to sit on a jury for a celebrity killer? But it was not to be, and also, do I really want to be one of the people who sentenced a cartel hitman to death?

Relax, my Mexican amigos. I’m not the guy you’re looking for. And you might have problems getting past my neighbors.

For all I know, his friends have already hit the jurors with a volley of dead-chicken-and-black-candle curses.

Yes, they do things like that.

Before Martinez came in, I thought another guy was the defendant. I saw an old white guy at the defense table, and I knew he wasn’t on trial. Old, white, and might as well have had “lawyer” stitched on the back of his coat. Next to him, however, there was a young Latin man. He had kind of a smug look on his face, which is not unusual for criminals. He also appeared to be something of a bodybuilder, and prisoners have a lot of time for exercise. Being Latin also contributed to my impression of him; there is no point in denying it. Mexicans really do commit a lot of crime. Look it up.

I assumed he was the alleged perp. I actually prayed for him and his family. It looks like he was another attorney or a paralegal.

Oh, well. Prayer won’t hurt him any.

An older Latin man came in and sat at the defense table. I thought he was a lawyer. Now that I’ve seen Martinez on the web, I know who the older man was.

I prayed for Martinez and his family, too. My guess is that not a lot of people who actually have the status to pray effectively (without voodoo chickens and peyote, I mean) have taken the time to do this.

I feel pretty great about choosing to attempt to serve. I learned how the juror selection process works here, and I realized trying to do it again was not a good idea. I have peace about my choice to quit serving.

I did a number of crossword puzzles, and I got to the point where Jason Bourne’s kidnapping victim has realized the people who saved her from Bourne are not cops. The book is not great. I don’t know if I’ll finish it.

Thank God I was excused. I really need to be available for business this week.