IT SEEMS PRETTY CLEAR TO ME
MCLEODS, New Brunswick, October 3, 2023 – It seems pretty clear to me that Jesus is not God.
It seems pretty clear to me that Mary was a virgin when she conceived and gave birth to Jesus, but that after Jesus’ birth, Joseph “knew her”.
It seems pretty clear to me that the man-made doctrine of “the rapture” is a lie.
It seems pretty clear to me that “once saved, always saved” is a lie.
It seems pretty clear to me that if you request or demand money for preaching, you’re not from God.
It seems pretty clear to me that the papacy is an abomination.
It seems pretty clear to me that the Bible’s been messed with.
It seems pretty clear to me that there are no holy places, only holy people.
It seems pretty clear to me that there are no haunted places, only haunted people.
It seems pretty clear to me that nearly everything most people spend their time doing is a distraction luring them away from God.
It seems pretty clear to me that the world is under Satan, and that more and more people are signing on with him every day.
It seems pretty clear to me that the only way home to Heaven is the Way shown to us by Jesus. There is no other way.
It seems pretty clear to me that if Jesus says that we’ll be accountable for our every word at the Judgement, we’ll be accountable for our every word at the Judgement.
It seems pretty clear to me that the Kingdom of God has been set up and running since the time of Jesus’ ministry.
It seems pretty clear to me that when Jesus says his Kingdom is not of this world, he means that his Kingdom is not of this world. There will be no earthly kingdom.
It seems pretty clear to me that the devil tells lies to confuse and lies with an agenda. For Christians, the lies to confuse cause dissension within their ranks, while the lies with an agenda prepare them to follow the anti-Christ.
It seems pretty clear to me that most people who call themselves Christian do not take up their cross daily and follow Jesus.
It seems pretty clear to me that the same people who didn’t recognize John the Baptist as Elijah or Jesus as the Messiah, won’t recognize the anti-Christ.
It seems pretty clear to me that most of what passes for Christianity today needs to be thrown in the garbage.
It seems pretty clear to me that Christians have become the biggest barriers to people finding God.
It seems pretty clear to me that genuine born-again believers are one in a million and that none of them post videos on YouTube.
It seems pretty clear to me that the same scribes, elders, and chief priests responsible for Jesus’ execution are responsible for the executions of all saints, including those to come.
It seems pretty clear to me that most people who say they know God and follow Jesus are lying.
It seems pretty clear to me that those who genuinely love God and genuinely follow Jesus are few and becoming fewer.
It seems pretty clear to me that you don’t protest persecution, you thank God for it and celebrate it.
It seems to me that Jesus didn’t found a religion; he made friends.
THE FINE PRINT
CHARLO, New Brunswick, October 1, 2023 – The devil once crowed that the greatest trick he ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
But the devil is a liar, as we know from scripture, so we shouldn’t be surprised that he’s lying about his so-called greatest trick, too.
People didn’t stop believing in the devil per se; they stopped believing in God. When they stopped believing in God, belief in the devil also got thrown in the trash.
If you want to know the greatest trick the devil ever pulled, ask a former heavenly angel who fell with Satan. Actually, don’t ask a fallen angel; that was just a turn of phrase. What I meant to say is that the former heavenly angels know full well what the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was and what a consummate liar he is, as he sold them all a bill of goods when they were still in Heaven, only for them to find out too late and forevermore that they’d been lied to. What he’d promised them, he could only half deliver on.
The devil is still using the same ol’ half-truths to trick humans into signing on the dotted line of his infamous deal. In exchange for their soul, he promises them not only wealth, prestige, fame, and protection from prosecution, but also that they’ll never die. Sure, he delivers on the wealth, prestige, fame, and protection from prosecution (those are easy-peasy for him and well within his God-given jurisdiction), but what he doesn’t let them know (it’s buried in the contract’s fine print) is that he doesn’t actually have the authority over their immortal soul and what happens to them after Judgement.
Humans are notorious for not reading a contract before signing it. Case in point: How many times have you tapped “Agree” for online Terms of Service without reading past the Terms’ first few sentences? You have no idea what may be buried deep within the legal verbiage of the TOS, but you hit “Agree” anyway so that you can get on with your day.
The deal with the devil’s not much different. He offers his own legal advisors (you’re not permitted to use yours) to help you with the intricacies of the fine print of his contract, but the force of his charm so overwhelms you, you don’t think to question anything he says. You just accept him at his word. To be honest, you’re flattered that he would even want you on his team. You don’t want to mess up a good thing by asking too many questions or any questions at all.
This is how most souls are drawn into the contract without reading the fine print. They agree to the terms without knowing what they’ve agreed to, but the devil, as they say, is in the details. And then, as untold wealth falls into their lap and doors that were previously closed swing open, as the red carpet unfurls seemingly endlessly before them and every worldly pleasure is theirs for the asking – then the truth begins to seep through and the details they hadn’t bothered to inquire about slowly emerge.
There’s no eternal life for those who’ve knowingly and with full intent signed on with the devil. They get eternity all right, but not the kind they’d envisioned, not the kind they’d exchanged their souls for. You see, these people were promised they’d never die, that their soul would migrate from body to body forever more. But that’s just not the case. Paul says we live once and then the judgment. This is the same for everyone, whether they’ve signed on with the devil or not. The body dies and the soul is reserved for judgement. There is no “second chance” in another body. Soul migration is one of many lies the devil tells humans.
What migrates from body to body are disembodied demonic spirits, the ones that fell from Heaven, the original believers in the devil’s lies. In the process of coming under the devil’s authority, these fallen spirits became liars themselves, habitually passing themselves off as reincarnated human souls. Having sold their services to the Father of Lies, demons have to do his bidding, whether they want to or not. They have to lie, whether they want to or not. They have to move from body to body, whether they want to or not (think of the demons that were cast out of the man with the Legion, only to end up in swine that were then herded off a cliff).
The people who got hoodwinked into signing the deal with the devil are in the same boat as the fallen angels. They serve the devil, so they have to do precisely what he orders them to do. Sure, they get some cheap thrills and flashy bling in exchange for their service, but there’s no way out for them. Not for most of them, anyway.
I’ve written before how some people sign the devil’s contract without really knowing what they’re doing. These people are salvageable, but the desire to be saved must come from them. It would be an extraordinary ministry, to help these people – extraordinary and extremely dangerous. By dangerous, I don’t only mean mortally dangerous, but immortally perilous. You would be as much a target of the devil’s temptations as Jesus was, and by the same people.
But the rewards of such a ministry would likewise be extreme. You’d become part of God’s elite search and rescue team for souls, like Jesus, Paul, and the apostles were. You would join their ranks, and like them you would be just as protected, just as exposed to danger, and just as handsomely eternally rewarded at the completion of your mission.
I’m not asking you to help those who signed on with the devil without knowing what they were doing. It’s not for me to make that request; only God can do that. All I’m doing here is mentioning that such a ministry is urgently warranted. Years ago, when I was first born-again, I used to wonder why Christian ministries made such an effort to go on missions to Africa when so many people in first-world countries are just as spiritually needy, if not more so, and none are more needy than the most wealthy and powerful among us. Jesus said: “How hard it is for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom!”, but he also said that what seems impossible to us, is possible with God. The CEOs in the top-floor corner offices, the presidents of universities, the politicians, the lawyers, the judges, the celebrities – most if not all of these people are lost sheep who need to hear the Gospel as much as anyone else, and urgently so if they’ve signed on with the devil and are now secretly regretting it.
We need to be there for the Nicodemus’s as much as for the Mary’s. The devil doesn’t like us messing with his assets, but if his assets come to us of their own free will, like Nicodemus went to Jesus (secretly and under cover of night), who are we to turn them away? They are fair game and we’re not breaking any rules by helping them. The least we can do is to let them know that we’re here and are willing to help.
God will arrange the rest.
What I tell you in darkness, speak ye in light; and what ye hear in the ear, preach ye upon the housetops.
And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
Matthew 10: 26-28
“I WANT TO LIVE!”
CHARLO, New Brunswick, October 1, 2023 – So here’s the thing about God – he doesn’t stay where he’s not wanted.
If you don’t want God in your life, he’ll leave.
But here’s the other thing that’s just as important or perhaps even more important – after God leaves, demons rush in. There’s no such thing as a spiritual vacuum. Either God occupies and administers your spiritual real estate or the devil does. There’s no third option.
When demons take over spiritual real estate that used to be administered by God, things fall apart. Whether a nation or a city or family or an individual – once God is kicked out or willfully blocked from entering, there’s nowhere to go but down down down like the Titanic.
And that’s what we’re seeing now everywhere in the world, especially in former Christendom.
I’ve written before here and here and elsewhere about how kicking God out of a nation disastrously affects that country, but let’s look today at what happens to individuals when they turn from God or deny his existence altogether.
I’ll speak from personal experience because I lived as an atheist before I was born-again 24 years ago. I know what a life without God looks like from the outside and what it feels like from the inside.
From the outside, it can look fine. Prosperous, even. Happy, even. But this is an illusion that is very superficial.
Inside (that is, where no-one can see or when no-one’s looking), it’s a disaster zone. One thing after the other goes wrong – health-wise, relationship-wise, work-wise, study-wise. Not one day goes by when you don’t think about running away from it all, thinking that running away will solve your problems. Sometimes “running away” is called quitting a job or getting a divorce or dropping out of school or going on a drinking binge. Sometimes vacations are running away. But no matter what you do to try to shake off the constant feeling that you HATE YOUR LIFE (or just simply hate life), it follows you wherever you go. So you start therapy or you get a new lover or you try a new fitness regime or a new diet or a new hair style, or you learn a new skill or take up a hobby or buy a new car or laptop or phone, or you spend the day shopping or drinking – anything to take your mind off how hurt and angry you feel inside.
And then at some point you start thinking about killing yourself. This used to be known as suicide ideation, thinking that killing yourself will solve your problems. I actually tried it a few times (obviously not very successfully), but with me it was a classic case of a cry for help. When I was 18, I bought a doll that had a hangman’s noose around its neck. The doll was manufactured as an effigy of an executed woman. I hung this loathsome thing from my bedroom chandelier, horrifying everyone in my family, but I actually liked the doll. I felt sorry for it. I related to it.
People who’ve kicked God out of their lives may also become social justice warriors who spend most of their time obsessing over how victimized they are and who’s to blame for it (never themselves). This is probably the worst way to try to deal with life – obsessing over your problems and blaming others for them. This will, guaranteed, lead you directly into the hell of your own making. And in the process, you’ll become a demon-magnet. Remember the crazy guy in scripture who lived in a graveyard and ran around naked because no chains could hold him? He called himself “Legion” because there were so many demons in him. If he lived today (and trust me, he does), he’d go by the pronouns “they/them”. I became Legion as an atheist, only I kept my clothes on and wore a big smile, so no-one knew what was inside me.
And here’s the thing about people who’ve rejected God and are sorely in need of spiritual help – they’ll turn down whatever spiritual help is offered them. Oh, they’ll reach out eventually for the kind of help they think they need, but the kind of help they really need they won’t even consider. It will repulse them. Again, I speak from personal experience. As an atheist, the older I got and the worse my life grew in every conceivable way, the less I thought of looking to God for a solution to my problems.
It’s not that people didn’t try to help me; they certainly did. And it’s not that people were unkind to me; they certainly weren’t. But offers of help and gestures of kindness didn’t address the root of my problem, which was that I was demon-infested from unrepented sin. So while the kindnesses might have numbed my pain in the short term, they ended up prolonging and ultimately worsening my spiritual agony. In other words, the help the world gave me didn’t help me in the way I needed to be helped. The help the world gave me only made things worse.
Sin and repentance are words that are rarely heard these days, even among Christians. Most Christians blame the devil for their problems. They claim to be “under spiritual attack” and beg for people to pray for them, when what they actually need is to get down on their face before God and repent. They also need to forgive whatever they’re holding against others. Grudges and unrepented sin will sooner or later land you in hell on Earth, followed by hell in Hell. If Christians don’t even know to repent and forgive when they have problems, how can we expect unbelievers to do so?
Individuals who turn from God or try to live without God are on a fast track to perdition. There’s no other way to put it and the odds are totally against them. Their plight reminds me of the scene in the movie Titanic, where Rose gives up hope of rescue and lays down to die. She’s freezing to death floating on a piece of wood in the middle of the North Atlantic, surrounded by a sea of bobbing corpses propped up by their unaptly named life vests. Like the corpses around her, Rose’s skin is ashen, her lips are black, and her hair has frozen into icicles. She’s a goner if ever there was one.
As she drifts in and out of consciousness, she hears a voice calling from a distance. At first, she ignores the voice as background babble that has nothing to do her. But when the voice that she’s been ignoring starts to fade away, something inside her wrenches back to life and she finds the strength to blow the whistle attached to her now very aptly named life vest. Her whistle blows are faint and feeble at first, but grow stronger and stronger until the voice responds eagerly and a rescue boat appears.
I remember this scene when I think about people who’ve all but given up on life. I think about how they ignore God’s rescue call but God keeps calling anyway. As long as there’s still time and a sliver of hope, God keeps calling.
So for the individuals who’ve kicked God out of their lives or who deny his existence altogether, we who know and love God dare not give up on them. We dare not give up. If it’s too late for them and they’re beyond his help, God will let us know, but as long as there’s still any hope – however faint – we dare not give up on them. We never know when their desire to live will roar back to life and they’ll finally open themselves to God.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 