FORTY SACRED DAYS: THE TRANSITION
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 6, 2026 – The Jesus who rose from the dead looked nothing like the rabbi Jesus. In fact, he looked so different, it’s likely his own mother didn’t recognize him. Certainly, his disciples didn’t, and they’d been with him for three whole years, night and day, talking to him, listening to him, memorizing every curve and angle of his face, the way you soak in every last detail of a loved one. And yet even they—his chosen few—thought he was just another stranger, and an ill-informed one at that, when they first came upon him on the road to Emmaus. They didn’t have a clue they were talking to their risen Lord until he outed himself at dinner.
I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during that encounter! I bet Jesus could barely hold back a smile at their fumbling earnestness. Did God supernaturally withhold Jesus’ identity from them? Scripture says he did. It was probably another test of sorts, the way we’re tested when God withholds the identity of angels from us. He wants to see how we’ll interact with strangers when we don’t know we’re being watched. I never know I’ve had an angelic encounter until the angel is long gone. Still, there’s something about them even as I’m talking to them that triggers something inside me. Something that nags at me the way something nagged at the disciples on the road to Emmaus. They described it as their hearts burning within them, a knowing without knowing what it was they knew. The same thing happens when we encounter God’s holy angels here on Earth and, to a lesser degree, when we encounter other genuine bornagain believers in person.
We can only wonder where Jesus went and what he did in the 40 days leading up to his ascension. We know he spent several hours with his disciples and other followers, but that time accounts for only a small portion of the nearly six weeks. Was he here on Earth the whole time, or did he do some day trips and maybe even a few overnighters in Heaven? He told the “good thief” on the neighboring cross that he’d be with him that day in Paradise, so we can assume from this scripture that Jesus did have physical as well as spiritual access to the heavenly realms prior to his publicly witnessed ascension. How much access, we don’t know. (Maybe we don’t need to know.) It’s still fascinating to think about how he slipped back and forth between Heaven and Earth not only “in the spirit” but physically, like the holy angels do, all decked out in his shiny new but unrecognizable-to-those-who’d-known-him-before body that was being upgraded to heavenly standards day by day.
In contrast to the wide reach of Jesus’ ministry during the preceding three years, very few on Earth got to see the risen Jesus before he ascended. And even of those who did get to see him, some still doubted it was him because he looked and sounded and moved so different from the Jesus they knew. It might have seemed to them that it was Jesus but not Jesus, because it actually was Jesus but not Jesus, the way we’ll be us but not us if we make it to Heaven – same soul, but different body, different voice, different movement.
Different memories.
Jesus has never stopped teaching us, not from the moment Moses first mentioned him all the way up until now. But in those 40 sacred days between his resurrection and ascension, Jesus taught us something very special: He gave us a glimpse into what awaits us if we make it Home. And what did he teach us? That we’ll look entirely different from what we do now, and that our bodies will have entirely different capabilities. For instance, we’ll be able to appear and disappear at will. Among humans, we’ll appear human, though not recognizable (people who knew us before won’t know who we are). We’ll be able to eat food (yay! lol). We’ll be able to move between the heavenly and earthly realms with the same ease as God’s holy angels. And we’ll continue to help and teach much in the same way as we help and teach now, only with greater authority: We’ll command attention without demanding it, and our words will have impact, due to the fulness of God’s Holy Spirit that will be in us.
When all is said and done, this is what I’m waiting for – that glorious transition from here to there, from the earthly to the heavenly, spiritually and physically. I thank God for giving Jesus the grace of time to show us what that transition looks like.
“AS THE DAYS OF NOAH”: NO MORE CONVERSIONS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 2, 2026 – In describing the final stages of the end times, Jesus likened them to “the days of Noah”. But what did he mean by that? The book of Genesis tells us that those days were unimaginably evil, and that the evil was not just confined to people but had manifested in all the animals as well. We also know from the Gospels that the people in Noah’s age appeared to be blissfully unaware of the horror that was about to be unleashed on them and that they went about their daily lives as if God and his judgement didn’t exist.
Sound familiar? Jesus could well have been describing our own age.
Noah, as we know from scripture, was the only one who “found grace” in God’s eyes. Not his wife, not his three sons or their wives, only Noah. Still, Noah’s grace was sufficient to spiritually cover his family and a certain number of animals, and so they, too, were spared from the watery grave that would claim everyone and and everything else. But it was only Noah who was righteous and had found grace in God’s eyes. This point is important.
When God commanded Noah to build the ark, giving him the exact design specifications as well as the reason for building it, Noah obeyed God to the letter. He didn’t argue with God about the seemingly impossible construction timeline (according to the book of Jubilees, just over one year) or about excluding everyone but his immediate family from the ark. He didn’t beg God to spare his village or at least the children in it. He didn’t rail at God for not giving anyone else a chance. He simply put his head down, nose to the grindstone, and did as God commanded.
There were no more conversions to God’s way of righteousness after Noah received his instructions. We know there were no more conversions because God implicitly states in scripture that only Noah found grace in his eyes. Once God had decided enough was enough and that judgement was due, the line was drawn separating Noah from everyone else. No-one else squeaked through even at the eleventh hour because no-one else was given the chance to squeak through.
As a bornagain believer, you are likely well acquainted with the anguish of praying for people who are deep in sin, only to have God gently chide you not to pray for them anymore. I remember the first time that happened to me; I witnessed a different side of God’s mercy. Paul describes it as God giving people over to their sins: If they choose evil, God lets them have evil. He positions us as witnesses (silent or otherwise) to his Truth, but he lets the sinners be, and he tells us likewise to let them be.
I believe that Noah was tunnel-visioned after he received his ark-building instructions from God. I don’t believe, as some Bible commentators have proposed, that Noah frantically preached to his unrepentant evil generation. I believe that he just let them be in their sins and focused instead on doing God’s will, which in this case was to build the ark and prepare for the flood. I believe this because over and over again, scripture informs us that after a certain point, God washes his hands of sinners. He no longer tries to correct them or to send anyone to try to correct them; he just lets them be.
We see this in the days of Noah, we see this in the days leading up to the destruction of Sodom, and we see this in the days leading up to the fall of Jerusalem prior to the Babylonian exile. Conversions to righteousness don’t happen, not after a certain point. We read in Ezekiel 9 how none are spared but those who are already righteous in God’s eyes. Even little children are not spared. We need to stare this fact directly in the face and see it for what it is. We dare not look away; we dare not pretend it isn’t so; else, we’ll waste precious time doing what we shouldn’t be doing by praying and preaching to the already lost, and in so doing disobeying God.
And still the sinners will sneer: “Where then is your precious God’s mercy?”, to which the only reply can be: “In letting you live the life you choose, in letting you sin freely, since you’ve shown that’s all you want. In allowing you to reject God—to disbelieve he even exists—while still giving you what you want: That’s God’s mercy.”
When Jesus says the final stages of the end times will be like the days of Noah, he means, among other things, there’ll be no more conversions. He means the line will already have been drawn separating the righteous from the unrighteous, from those who have found grace in God’s eyes and those who have not. The book of Revelation underscores this truth in showing that, after the sealings that take place prior to the opening of the seventh seal, there are no more conversions. Not a one.
In the past, I have stupidly—that is, without God’s guidance— prayed for people who were already lost. When God finally intervened and told me not to pray for them anymore, he explained that he doesn’t want them to be hounded. He loves them even though they’ve rejected him, and he wants them to have whatever little bit of happiness they can eke out from whatever time they have left. He tells me: “This is all they have. This time here, now – this is all they have. Let them be.”
And so I let them be. I put my nose to the spiritual grindstone, and I let them be.
You must do the same.
He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still….
Revelation 22:11
PASSOVER INCOMING!
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 31, 2026 – Just a quick reminder that Passover starts tomorrow evening (April 1st, at sundown) and continues into the Feast of Unleavened Bread, ending at nightfall next Wednesday. So if you haven’t yet bought/made your unleavened bread and wine (or wine substitute [I’m using grape pop lol]), now’s the time. Jesus directed us to observe the Passover in memory of him, and to do it as he showed us, so do it we must. It’s obligatory, not optional. Obligatory. And God directed us to observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread throughout our generations, so observe it we will. Yeast out, matzah in!
Now’s also the perfect time to dig back into the Exodus and read the entire account of Moses in Egypt, up to and including the children of Israel’s flight into the wilderness. We bornagains live in that spiritual wilderness; and like the children of Israel, we too are protected by the constant presence of God’s Holy Spirit. They had God’s Spirit without; we have God’s Spirit within.
So, Hallelujah, God Bless You, and Bottom’s Up!
NEVER SILENCED: ON BILL C-9 AND OTHER SIGNS OF THE COMING GREAT TRIBULATION
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 29, 2026 – One of the most definitive signs that we’ve entered the Great Tribulation will be the death of the worldly church. That means no more casual Christians, no more denominational Christians, and no more Christians-of-convenience (i.e., people who claim to be fleeing persecution as Christians in order to gain the generous asylum benefits of Western nations). During the Great Tribulation, the only people openly professing belief in God and claiming to be followers of Jesus will be genuine bornagain believers – that is, those who would rather be killed than deny who they are, because killed they will be, and brutally.
We can see from the ongoing presence of the worldly church that we’re not yet—thank God—in the Great Tribulation. We’ve been in the end times now for nearly 2000 years, but we haven’t entered the final stage. We’ll know when we do because, as I’ve mentioned, every vestige of Christianity will have been wiped from the earth, other than for the very rare and increasingly rarer saints, all of whom will have a bounty on their heads.
The end will be very much like it was in the beginning. Public preaching will be outlawed, and we’ll be forced into hiding and hounded from place to place until finally being arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and executed. Once the worldly church has been universally banned—like it is already in North Korea—only genuine believers will remain. No-one else will want to suffer for The Name.
The Canadian government is in the process of enshrining into law a bill (C-9) that removes the “good faith” protection from Canadians when they openly express what they sincerely believe, if what is being expressed is considered “hate speech”. Canadians were granted carte blanche permission by law to openly express what they sincerely believe back in 1970, but when “hate” laws were later thrown into the mix, stating your beliefs and using scripture to back them up started to come under scrutiny, especially when those beliefs concerned the “alphabetization” of Western society or the mass arrival in the West of demon worshipers claiming to worship God. That scrutiny has now turned into a clawing back of the permissions that I and most Canadians once took for granted. When this bill is passed into law within a month or two, much of what I’ve written here in this blog may be cause for me to be fined and/or thrown into jail for promoting so-called hate (otherwise known as God’s Truth).
The push-back to this looming law started as soon as the bill was introduced in Canada’s parliament last fall, but none of it will be successful because the bill has God’s permission. In other words, God himself – not parliamentarians and not even the devil – has deigned that Canadians have forfeited their “good faith” protection. As a nation, Canada has, in its “words and doings”, fallen so far away from God that it’s no longer recognized spiritually or geopolitically as a Christian nation. When a people remove themselves from God, God removes himself from them, and the demons rush in to claim the vacated spiritual turf.
We know that the world is under the authority of Satan, but Satan can only do what God permits him to do, and God will only permit him to do what has been earned either as a reward or a test. God is all-knowing and his justice is perfect; the Canadian parliamentarians aren’t pulling the wool over God’s eyes by sneaking through a law that targets his Word. Jesus reminded Pontius Pilate that he had power over Jesus only because God gave it to him, that God permitted Pontius Pilate to have power over Jesus for a time and for a reason because “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose”. The power referenced by Jesus didn’t come from from Pontius Pilate but from God, just as the removal of the “good faith” protection under Canadian law doesn’t come from Canadian parliamentarians but from God.
The imminent passing of bill C-9 into law is yet another sign that we are nearing the start of the Great Tribulation. Other nations formerly known as Christian have passed (or are in the process of passing) similar bills into law. With their passage, the threat of fines and/or imprisonment will so constrain the application of God’s Word to everyday life—will so water down what can be shared publicly—that preaching will soon become little more than a feel-good pep talk made agreeable even to unbelievers. This reward, sadly, has been earned. The worldly church will persist for a while, but in such an increasingly emaciated and bloodless form to be nearly inconsequential. When the church is finally outlawed in the name of cultural diversity or some other doctrine of devils, it will be a mercy killing, as the late-stage worldly church will be Christian in name only.
We, however, the Church founded by Jesus Christ and empowered by God’s Holy Spirit, will continue until Jesus comes back to take the last of us Home. We in the Kingdom cannot be silenced, any more than the two anointed witnesses prophesied to preach during the Great Tribulation will be silenced. We may be banned, yes; fined, yes; outlawed, yes; hounded, yes; imprisoned, yes; and killed, yes, but never silenced, because even in our death, the Word God spoke through us will resound.
No law on Earth can stop that.
“Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”
Matthew 24:35
THE BIBLE IS NOT ENOUGH
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 3, 2026 – I love the Bible. I’ve written here and here and elsewhere how important the Bible is to me. I carry one with me wherever I go, and at home I’m surrounded by them. I favor the King James version, though I’m open to other translations.
But the Bible alone is not enough. The Bible alone can’t take you where you need to go. Just before he went Home, Jesus told his followers that there were so many more things he needed to say to them, but they weren’t ready to hear them yet. So he promised he’d send God’s Spirit of Truth to teach them when they were ready.
Jesus’ promise to his early followers is also his promise to us. Jesus didn’t say to make an idol of God’s written Word and bow down to it as the sole authority. No; he never once said that. He himself contradicted the Old Testament on occasion, such as when he overrode Moses’ permission on granting divorces or when he directed us to love our enemies rather than to curse them. This wasn’t just a radical reinterpretation of accepted scripture; it was a whole new Word.
Those of us who are genuinely bornagain are still being taught by God’s Spirit of Truth. This was Jesus’ promise to us, his followers, and Jesus never breaks his promises. Still, there are those who claim that private revelation must accord with scripture, and if it doesn’t, it’s not from God. What would those same people say about Jesus’ private revelations forming the basis for the Gospel, seeing how in so many instances those revelations defied scripture?
We are constantly being taught by God through his Spirit of Truth. We are directed by God, informed by God, cautioned by God, chastised by God, humored by God, and most of all loved by God, all through his Spirit, as promised by Jesus. We all received a measure of God’s Spirit at our rebirth, and it is through this Spirit residing in us that we’re able to receive God’s revelations, which are actually just God’s teachings, which are actually just God talking to us, one-on-one, as our Father, as any loving father would talk one-on-one to his beloved child. Each of us receives God’s words according to our individual abilities at any given time, just as Jesus promised.
As I said, I love the Bible and I enjoy reading it every day. But I love my one-on-one time with God more. I cherish his private revelations to me just as much as I cherish his public ones in scripture. In some cases, I cherish the private revelations more because they’re so deeply personal and show God’s overwhelming love for me. Some of these revelations I share; most of them I don’t, depending on God’s guidance. Jesus shared some things publicly, other things he shared privately (among his disciples and friends), and some things he didn’t share at all but kept them just between him and God. Jesus promised us we’d have that same intimacy with God—the same access to private revelation—when the time came.
Thank God it’s come.
I love the Bible, but the Bible alone is not enough.
I love God’s Word, but I love God more.
THE ONE JOB SAFE FROM AI
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 19, 2026 – Matt Shumer is a self-professed artificial intelligence (AI) expert. I’m not knocking him for that; just stating a fact. He’s also likely not bornagain, so he can be forgiven for not knowing AI’s defining feature – it’s not a soul. And not being a soul, it can never have God’s Holy Spirit in it.
We have God’s Spirit in us. That’s our defining feature. Being bornagain doesn’t mean we’re eternally saved (that determination comes at the Judgement); being bornagain means that God’s Holy Spirit is in us at all times, not just on occasion like with the Old Testament prophets. God’s Spirit is in us in the same way God’s Spirit was in Jesus during his time on Earth. But this indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit can never happen to an AI because it isn’t a soul.
I’m a soul. You’re a soul. All beings on Earth created by the Living God are souls. We don’t have a soul; we are a soul. This part of me that’s communicating with that part of you is communicating soul-to-soul, and that’s the part of us that’s eternal. Our bodies are mortal, but our souls are immortal. I’m speaking to you from my soul, not from my brain (or any other part of my body). An AI can’t do that because an AI isn’t a soul.
And not being a soul—not being a living being created by God—an AI can never be regenerated and therefore can never have God’s Holy Spirit in it. Which means that an AI can never be a prophet, as it can’t know God.
Matt Shumer, that AI high-tech guy I referenced above, recently published a paper (likely AI-generated lol) warning people that AI was coming for their jobs. We’ve heard this warning before from other people, but coming from Shumer the warning was particularly intriguing, given that he’s made his fortune promoting AI. Shades of Dr. Frankenstein warning that his monster is about to break free of its chains? Perhaps. There’s an undercurrent of fear in Shumer’s “manifesto”, but also a hint of parental pride.
Shumer took especial pains to address anyone who wasn’t as impressed with AI’s achievements as he thought they should be. He cautioned them not to judge AI by the free models or cheap subscriptions available online (which he insisted are already outdated and outperformed, like flip-phones compared to the latest smart phone models). Instead, we’re to seek out and purchase the most recent and advanced AI options, and to constantly update them. This is because AI is not improving linearly but exponentially. Even yesterday’s model has been superseded by the one released just this morning.
This fast-paced consumer-driven AI hamster wheel that Shumer invites us to jump onto like some high-tech Noah’s ark is allegedly our only hope for surviving an AI-dominated future. And this future, according to Dr. Shumerstein, has already begun. He urges us not only to embrace this ever-evolving tool, but to make it an integral part of our everyday lives. If we can’t stay ahead of AI developments (it’s allegedly, according to Shumer, already too late for that), we can at least be aware of those developments and leverage them to our benefit. This is the only way to avoid being replaced by AI in our jobs.
But the one job Shumer didn’t mention as being entirely beyond AI’s capacity is the job we landed by default the day we were born again – the job of being God’s prophet. Not being a soul, AI can never have God’s Holy Spirit living in it and so can never speak as a prophet of God. It can repeat God’s words, but it can never directly hear from God. God will never speak directly through an AI, which means it can never prophesy.
So, as long we remain bornagain and in good spiritual standing with God, our jobs are safe.
LET THERE BE ART!
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 18, 2026 – That moment when you realize that Jesus was an actor and God’s Word his script…. All prophets of God are actors. They don’t speak their own words; if they did, they wouldn’t be God’s prophets.
This is actually good news within the Good News, because if prophets are actors and actors are artists, preaching venue options are almost limitless. Even better, since artists are getting a free pass these days when it comes to offending audiences, we wouldn’t have to worry about being shut down for being offensive. The more provocative the art, the more “edgy” and “artistic” it is (allegedly). So let’s provoke with God’s Word! Let’s offend with the Truth! Let’s get our audiences howling with rage over prophecy! We are, after all, highly dedicated artists. It’s our duty to push the artistic envelope.
Imagine if art galleries and performance spaces were secretly reimagined as pop-up pulpits. Imagine if in between the “To be or not to be” and a Harold Pinter monologue we sprinkled in a few verses from Matthew or slipped in a psalm. And if we offended anyone by doing so – so much the better! Art, remember, is meant to be provocative. It’s meant to spark debate.
Imagine if an art installation were nothing but words from the Bible, presented and arranged “artistically”. Imagine God’s Word in every language of the world, stylized in 8 to 800-point multicolor multi-type font and filling an entire exhibition space from floor to ceiling (including the floors and ceilings [and doors!]). But we don’t only have to imagine it – we can do it, if we call it “art” (and maybe even get a government grant to fund it lol ;D).
Artists have been co-opting God’s Word into their art for millennia. Think Michelangelo. Think the German passion plays. Think the highly theatrical stations of the cross. Only in the most recent of instances has God’s Word suffered mainly derogatory inclusions and adaptations. But I say what’s good for the goose is good for the gander: If it’s fair game nowadays to co-opt God’s Word in a negative way, then let’s re-imagine Hamlet as a prophet of God. Let’s script Snow White as a persecuted Mary Magdalene and the dwarves as new converts. And if anyone’s offended by the adaptations – so much the better! Art, remember, is meant to offend.
The best part of all this (besides the possibility of reaching a massive new audience) is that artists are rarely arrested for being offensive. Art exhibitions are rarely shut down because someone’s nose is out of joint. Preachers, however, can be shut down, can be limited in where they preach, can be arrested for “hate speech” and being offensive. So let’s rebrand our preachers as artists (not “Christian artists”, just artists) and let our artists ply their trade wheresoever they will.
It was trendy a while back to “Christianize” the lyrics of popular tunes. Let’s Christianize public and private spaces again under the guise of art.
WE NEED A PANDEMIC
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 17, 2026 – We pray wrong. We see a drought and pray for rain. We see a broken nation and pray for healing. We see ungodly people doing ungodly things, and we pray for God to forgive them. But what we should be praying for is an outbreak of righteousness, an epidemic of doing good, a pandemic of people choosing what’s right in God’s eyes, even when it flies in the face of what the world thinks is right. At the same time, we need to pray for God to strengthen us to levels he hasn’t strengthened us before, so that we can persistently and under every circumstance model godliness, model godliness, model godliness, until it spreads like a holy contagion to everyone around us.
We need a pandemic of godliness.
You can’t change God’s justice. You can’t call for a review of God’s terms just because you don’t like them. God sent Jonah to warn the Ninevites that their city would be destroyed in 40 days. When the King of Nineveh heard Jonah, he didn’t ignore him or mock him. He didn’t try to silence him. He didn’t threaten to arrest him for hate speech or for creating a public disturbance. No, the King responded by instituting a nation-wide emergency. All Ninevites were to drop whatever they were doing and immediately sit in sackcloth and ashes, including their animals. And they were to fast until the king told them to stop. No arguments and no exceptions. They couldn’t even drink water. The King believed that if Nineveh did this, God might change his mind about destroying them.
Note that the King didn’t simply pray to God to forgive the Ninevites’ sins. Nor did he curse God for the threatened destruction. He instead took the most drastic godly action possible and used his authority to make sure that everyone else did. “But, Charlotte”, you might be thinking, “People today aren’t going to this. They’re not going to stop whatever they’re doing and go along with whatever the government or other authority tells them to do.” You might be surprised. During the last “pandemic”, whole populations stopped whatever they were doing and donned masks. Whole populations obediently stood six feet apart. Entire industries were shut down, schools and businesses were shuttered, people self-isolated at home – some welded in from the outside – until they were given permission to leave. Whole populations complied with the most drastic of decrees without question. And they did all this for months – even years – because they were afraid to catch a cold. You’d be surprised at what people can be persuaded to do under the right authority.
When God saw the Ninevites’ collective show of repentance, he called off the planned destruction. Note that God’s justice didn’t change; the Ninevites changed, and in changing their behavior, they changed their due reward.
All nations today are on the fast-track to destruction. We need a pandemic of godly behavior to stop the destruction or at the very least to delay it. Praying for God to forgive us and save us is not going to cut it this time. Like Nineveh, it’s too late and we’re too far gone. We need instead to pray for people to make godly choices – to choose what’s right in God’s eyes. And we need to pray this prayer while making godly choices ourselves, every day, all day, without exception. Our prayers will only have authority if we ourselves model what we’re praying for.
We urgently need a pandemic of godliness. It begins with localized outbreaks of making good choices.
Let’s get that pandemic started now!
So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.
(Jonah 3:5-10)
GOOD BONES
By landing the quad axel, [Ilia] Malinin may have maxed out the boundaries of human performance. Most sports scientists agree that the speed and amplitude necessary for five-revolution jumps truly is impossible…. 1
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 16, 2026 – I loved figure skating when I was a kid. I was no “contender” (as Marlon Brando famously put it2), but I loved skating nonetheless. I took it up again briefly a few years ago as an enthusiastic adult. Still no contender, but men would occasionally follow me around the arena and ask me to teach their kids (lol).
I finally had to give up skating altogether following an unrelated knee injury. Resigned to being sidelined at arenas for the rest of my time on Earth, I still love to watch figure skaters and to dream about when I’ll be skating again in Heaven. Really skating. Contender-level skating.
I was watching a video of Ilia Malinin a few weeks ago, marveling at his jumps (especially his trademark quadruple axel), when God told me I’ll be able to do that and more – at least ten revolutions – in Heaven. Surprised at his comment, I asked God if that’s because it’s Heaven and everything’s possible in Heaven. And he said no, there are still limits in Heaven and I’d still have to learn how to skate properly; I wouldn’t arrive in Heaven already knowing how to do jumps and spins. I’d have to learn things in Heaven just like I do on Earth. The difference is that Heaven has different “natural laws”, which means that our bodies are different, especially the bones.
“The bones?”
“Yes. Your bones in Heaven will be more like birds’ bones – hollow and light. Only unlike earthly birds’ bones, your heavenly bones will be unbreakable.” He went on to explain further that the birdlike lightness of my heavenly bones, combined with my heavenly body’s zero fat and infinitely flexible joints and strong muscles, will enable me to propel myself high up into the air, completing a dozen revolutions or more and covering a vast distance. It will almost be like flying.
“Good bones”, God repeated. “It’ll be in your good bones. You’ll see.”
Meanwhile, back on Earth, scientists report that
[a]n ideal quadruple jump spans around 0.6 seconds, wherein the skaters have to first take off, then spin four and a half times…. Studies estimate that for an ideal quintuple jump, the athlete has to have a jump duration of around 0.8 seconds…. This requires humongous heights and distances which can only be achieved by ‘pencil’ thin bodies and about 90% rotation efficiency, meaning that only 10% of the total airtime should be used for take-off and landing while also starting off with greater forces to increase angular momentum.3
And yet according to God, our jumping ability is not just in the “speed and amplitude”1 or in having a “pencil-thin” body or maxed-out angular momentum3 – it’s in the lightness of the bones. Our human bones are heavy and solid and also depend on fragile ligaments and joints that are prone to stiffness. None of these issues will be a factor in Heaven. If scientists can figure out a way to hollow out skaters’ bones (and do away with ligaments and joints), they might just make it past the current quadruple human limit.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to test-run my new body on my local skating surface in Heaven. It’ll be one of the first things I do when (and if) I get Home.
So move over, Ilia (and Marlon)! There’s gonna be a new contender in town….
1 Led by Fairfax’s Ilia Malinin, figure skaters push limits of human performance | FFXnow
2 I Coulda Been a Contender – On the Waterfront (6/8) Movie CLIP (1954) HD
THE ANSWER TO MY PRAYER
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 14, 2026 – Because I came to belief as an adult rather than as a child, my faith evolved differently than most believers. Still, even as an adult, I was as docile as a child when I first believed. Having been infant-baptized into the Roman Catholic church and so believing that’s where I belonged, I started attending Catholic masses shortly after I was reborn. Sometimes I’d go twice a day (noon and five p.m.) and on Sundays I’d go three times. I couldn’t get enough of God, who (as I was told by the priests) lived in a box at the side of the altar. I’d always sit in the front pew so I could get as close to him as possible.
As I matured in my faith, I started having doubts about what the priests were telling me. I started not being able to say some of the responses during mass because I knew they were wrong. I started reading with horror about the various Inquisitions and other crimes, past and present, of the papacy. I also (and this for me was by far the worst) started to feel a distance developing between me and God. The joy that had been my constant companion in the early days and months of my rebirth began to retreat. In its place was a sense of duty (attending mass, praying the rosary, following all prayer and fasting directives issued by the pope, decorating my place with crucifixes, pictures of saints, prayer candles, etc.) that seemed to be taking me farther and farther away from God.
Three-and-a-half years into my rebirth, I was heavily involved in Catholicism. Along with attending mass daily, I sat on several committees, was appointed lector, taught a Bible class, and was even entrusted with a key to the church building, I was there so often. I also rented the church basement for my employment-related events. My life revolved around “the church”, so what happened on January 12th that year upended everything.
It was a Sunday. I was sitting in my pew after the service, reveling in my usual post-mass bliss and enjoying the smell of the just-extinguished altar candles. I loved that smell because it reminded me of birthday candles (and so birthday cake!). Other than for a few people milling around some statues of saints, lighting candles and bowing down in prayer before them, I was alone in the church’s main room. As I sat there in a haze of spiritual warm ‘n’ fuzzies, God suddenly opened my eyes. I say “opened my eyes”, but it was more like something fell from my eyes and I could see what I hadn’t seen before. And what I saw horrified me.
I was in a pagan temple. I wasn’t in a God-worshiping church, I was in a pagan temple, and the people bowing down before the statues were bowing down before effigies of demons. Even worse was the abomination of the mangled corpse that hung, larger than life, over the altar. It was a reenactment of Jesus on the cross that was supposed to represent God’s great love for us, but all I could see (and all I still see, whenever I see a crucifix) was Jesus’ tormented and humiliated body. This is not how God shows us his love.
While I sat there in shock at what was being revealed to me, the priest slipped through one of the back doors behind the altar, smiled at me, and asked me if I’d be attending the Christmas party in the church basement at noon. I managed to squeak out a “we’ll see”, to which he nodded and disappeared back through the door. Then the deacon bustled up the aisle behind me to prepare the altar for the next mass. Seeing me sitting there, he also asked me if I was attending the party, to which I managed another weak “we’ll see”. He murmured a few more pleasantries while performing his housekeeping duties and then disappeared through the same back door as the priest.
I took this as my cue to leave.
Carefully, deliberately, I stood up and put on my shoes. For three and half years, I’d removed my shoes whenever I passed the threshold of the church, believing the place to be holy ground. For me to put on my shoes while I was still at the church pew was an act of revolution. Likely no-one else noticed me putting on my shoes at the pew, but I did and God did. And then, firmly shod, I made my way to the back of the church, out the doors, and onto the street, never to return.
In showing me the truth about the church building I’d just exited, God didn’t say to leave it. He gave me no directive or command in that regard: He simply revealed to me what manner of place I was in and then left it up to me to decide what to do. But having seen what I just saw, there was no way I could stay there. And not being able to stay there (or in other places like it), I could no longer be a Catholic.
When I got back to my apartment, I immediately tore down all the crucifixes and pictures of saints adorning my walls and threw them into a box. Into a second box went my rosary beads, chaplets, prayer cards, and every other piece of Catholic paraphernalia I’d collected (at great expense) over the years, including my Catholic Bible, hymn books, and catechism. I then closed the two boxes and shoved them under a table out of sight.
I half expected to be struck by lightning through my skylight while I was doing this, but nothing happened other than that the room appeared much brighter and cleaner after the purge. Then I sat down at my kitchen table and opened a second-hand Bible I’d bought on impulse a few years earlier but hadn’t used (because it wasn’t Catholic) and started reading the Old Testament for the first time in my life. I’d been reading the New Testament every day since my rebirth, but I hadn’t yet touched the Old Testament. I’d been relying instead on the carefully selected and sanitized OT snippets that were doled out during mass. But in reading the older books for myself, I soon realized why those snippets had been so carefully selected.
The OT clearly showed that Catholicism is not Christianity. Many of the rites and rituals taught to Catholics are expressly forbidden and even outright condemned in the Old Testament. Tellingly, those verses are never included in the OT morsels spoon-fed to us during mass.
From that day forward, I removed myself entirely from the church and all its activities without telling anyone there why. God had me remain silent, as I wasn’t yet strong enough to combat their arguments. I let them draw their own conclusions as to why I’d left. Occasionally, I’d pass a congregant on the street, but they’d avert their eyes and ignore my greeting. The priest stopped me once and asked me “Charlotte, what happened?…”, but I could only mumble some vague excuse that I no longer recall and that didn’t resolve the confusion in his eyes.
The priest was a kindly man. He’d consistently supported me in everything I did at the church, appointing me as lector at noon mass and even agreeing to let me teach a Bible study, which at that time was unheard of in a Catholic church. He knew my conversion was real and that I was different from most if not all the other congregants. I could see the hurt in his eyes that day on the street, hurt and concern underlying his confusion, but God had me remain silent beyond my mumbled excuse. It wasn’t my time to explain.
The revelation God showed me on January 12th that year was an answer to a prayer I’d prayed on my face in tears on a milestone birthday nine days earlier. In that prayer, I’d begged God to take out of my life everything that was keeping me from doing his holy will, to take me back spiritually to how I was when I was first reborn. My prayer was awkward and stilted (I was repeating a phrase I’d heard from a televangelist), but my tears were real and my agony was real and my desire to reconnect with God—to be close with him again like we were at the beginning—was a cry from the heart, pure, raw, and unfeigned.
And God heard my prayer.
And he answered it.
In his time and in his way, he answered it, showing me that what was keeping me from doing his will was Catholicism and all its trappings. He didn’t tell me to leave Catholicism; he showed me what it was – first, by revealing the true nature of the place I’d been worshiping in, and second by revealing to me in scripture how Catholicism violated his commands and how I’d been replacing him with Catholicism, faith with religion. What I chose to do with that knowledge was up to me.
I know I made the right choice in walking away from the Catholic organization. Although my life was temporarily upended and I became an outcast in that community, the reward was a closer relationship with God. My prayer was answered in the best possible way. I’ve never once regretted leaving Catholicism and I have no plans to return. But in rejecting the church, I didn’t reject the people I’d met there; most of them were kind-hearted and well-meaning, just spiritually confused. It wasn’t Catholics I was rejecting, it was Catholic doctrines, Catholic creeds, Catholic paraphernalia, and the whole rotting edifice of the papacy. It’s all spiritual garbage, but it does have a worldly purpose, and so I let it be. Catholicism is not my concern.
I’m glad I experienced the worldly church firsthand, but I’m also glad it was “one and done”. I might have been infant-baptized into Roman Catholicism, but I was reborn into God’s Kingdom. I know now, as a mature bornagain believer, that my worship center is the Kingdom established by Jesus, and my fellow worshipers are bornagain believers. This is my Church. These are my people. This is where I belong. No buildings. No creeds. No recitations. No props. Faith, not religion. Just us living in constant spiritual communion with each other and with God and Jesus, through God’s Holy Spirit.
This is all I want and this is all I need until I get Home.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 