SILENT WITNESS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 11, 2026 – If they want to believe it’s love, let them: It’s all they have. We know it isn’t God’s Love, but we’re blessed to be able to receive God’s Love, so the least we can do, being so blessed, is to let them believe what they want, even if it’s a lie.
Especially if it’s a lie.
One of the great mercies we can afford as children of God is to let people believe what they want to believe. If that’s all they want, that’s all they’ll get. It would be wrong of us to take away that small comfort of a lie told to them so many times it’s become truth to them. We should never take away their lie. It’s not ours to take.
Paul writes about people so far gone—so lost in sin—that God just lets them be. He doesn’t send Paul to preach to them; he just lets them be.
Some people, not sent from God, argue that we should urgently witness to these souls, and the louder the better – that we should invade their claimed spaces and harass them with the spiritual equivalent of waterboarding. But these preachers have been sent on a fool’s errand that will only end in loathing and rage on both sides. You cannot override what God has decreed, and if God has decreed them lost (like the people written about by Paul, or the people just before the flood, or the people in Sodom just before it rained fire and brimstone), then lost they’ll be. You don’t want to fight against God’s decrees because to do so would be to deny God’s justice and to fight against God himself. We can’t do those things and still call ourselves God’s children. Let the worldly church fight the fight not blessed by God, if that’s what they want to do. But we, like Paul, must stand back and stand down because to do anything else would be to defy God.
It was not easy for Paul to see the level of sin he saw and remain silent. It’s not easy for us, either. In these cases, we must change our tactics, knowing that nothing we say will persuade them to change. So we say nothing. We treat them with the same courtesy that we would want to be treated with (as commanded by Jesus), but we say nothing about their sin. We don’t involve ourselves in their sin; we don’t celebrate their sin; we don’t question their sin; we don’t even acknowledge their sin: Taking our cue from Paul, we separate ourselves from their sin, speaking of it only among ourselves, if necessary, but otherwise remaining silent.
We are silent not out of fear of them but out of fear of God.
Our silence is witness enough.
ELDAD AND MEDAD, AND US
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 11, 2026 – Eldad and Medad have their 15 milliseconds of Biblical fame buried deep within Numbers. If you rush through the book, you might miss it. Still, Eldad and Medad rank as prophets, because scripture tells us that God’s Spirit spoke through them. They are a prototype of us bornagain believers, a forerunner of what God had in store for his people, so long as they are God’s people.
Eldad and Medad were not among the 70 elders officially designated by Moses to receive a share of God’s Spirit. They had remained behind in the camp when the summoned chosen dutifully filed into the tabernacle to be tapped. And yet God chose the two men to receive his Spirit outside the tabernacle, having seen something in those two that Moses initially missed.
However, as soon as the Spirit fell upon Eldad and Medad and they started prophesying, a boy who heard them ran to tell Joshua, who then rushed to tell Moses, expecting him to immediately silence them. To Joshua’s way of thinking, because Eldad and Medad were not of the 70 chosen elders, their prophesying was undercutting Moses’ authority.
But Moses didn’t see it that way. He knew the two men were prophesying by God’s Holy Spirit, by direct appointment of God. And so instead of commending Joshua for his loyalty, Moses reprimanded him, saying:
Enviest thou for my sake? would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!
(Numbers 11:29)
As Moses’ protégé, Joshua got schooled and schooled hard in that exchange. But he obviously also learned from it, because later he himself would be guided and emboldened by God’s Holy Spirit, becoming not only a great leader but also one of only two of the original 600,000+ men who left Egypt who ultimately made it to the promised land.
Moses and Joshua’s exchange reminds me of the New Testament passage where the people are shouting “Hosanna in the highest!” during Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem. The Pharisees command Jesus to silence them, to which Jesus replies that if he did silence them, the very rocks beneath their feet would cry out instead. The lesson here is that you can’t interfere with Spirit-led prophesying, as it comes directly from God. Attempting to do so only makes disciples and prophets even of rocks and mountains and trees, which will then proclaim the glory of God everywhere and unfettered.
Moses’ wish that “all the Lord’s people were prophets” finally came true when Jesus founded his Church nearly a millennium and a half later. Everyone in that Church is born again, each with a unique measure of God’s Spirit according to God’s grace. Like Eldad and Medad, all of us bornagain believers are God’s prophets, whether we are recognized by the world (and the worldly church) as such or not. You cannot have God’s Spirit in you and not be a prophet of God, as having God’s Spirit is the very definition of a prophet: “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy”.
We all remember the instant when God first put his Spirit in us – how suddenly we “saw” and how easily we prophesied! Nothing could have silenced us in those early days of our rebirth any more than the disciples could have been silenced at Pentecost: The force of God’s Spirit was overwhelming. I can imagine that Eldad and Medad experienced much the same thing, though with them it wasn’t spiritual rebirth: It was more a visitation of God’s Spirit, like it was for all prophets of God prior to Jesus founding his Church. Still, like us at our rebirth, Eldad and Medad were unstoppable in their prophesying, which Moses in his God-given wisdom recognized for what it was. There was a place and a purpose for Eldad and Medad, just as there was a place and a purpose for Moses and his 70 chosen elders, just as there’s a place and a purpose for us, God’s saints, during the prophesied falling away.
And yet despite the force of God’s Spirit when it first enters us, none of us are fully spiritually formed at that time, not even Jesus. We begin with a bang at our rebirth and grow from there. Jesus had a head start on all of us, being conceived of the Holy Spirit, but he still had to go through his paces, he still had to make his mistakes and learn from them, he still had to bide his time and patiently wait. Part of the waiting was for his sake and part for the sake of others, so that God could strengthen Jesus for his appointed tasks while also getting all his ducks in a row. God likewise has us wait at times. When that happens, it may seem like we’re spinning our spiritual wheels, going nowhere, but that’s just God’s way of preparing us by letting us steep, like tea: the longer we steep, the stronger we grow.
We just need to be careful not to grow cold and bitter while we wait.
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)
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 