“PRAY NOT FOR THIS PEOPLE”
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 10, 2025 – As born-again believers, we’ve been instructed by Jesus to love our enemies, which means we’re to pray for them and bless them even in the most egregious of situations, like when they’re killing us.
But what if God tells us specifically not to pray for them? What if he tells us to leave our prayers and let him deal with the situation in the way it needs to be dealt with?
I think of Peter rushing to tell Jesus that he’ll defend him to the death, and Jesus accusing him of being Satan.
I think of Jesus’ mother and sisters coming to “rescue” him in Capernaum, and Jesus refusing even to acknowledge them as kin.
I think of Saul ordering his troops to save (for later sacrifices) the conquered king and choicest animals from a city they’d just razed, and God condemning Saul for all eternity because of it.
God doesn’t want us praying for people he doesn’t want prayed for. He doesn’t want us protecting people he doesn’t want protected. He doesn’t want us rescuing people he doesn’t want rescued. What God does want (and what Saul found out too late) is our unhesitating and full obedience to him in all circumstances and at all times. So, if the spiritual status quo is the directive to pray for our enemies, we pray for them, but if God specifically says not to pray for them, you pray at the peril of your immortal soul.
God doesn’t want misplaced “love”, because misplaced love is no love at all. Love is only love if it comes from God. If God directs you not to pray for someone or for an entire people, you don’t pray for them, not one peep. You stand at command and voice your obedience, like the angels in Revelation stood in willing obedience while God delivered his terrible justice. You don’t badger God to change his ways and his laws, like the demonically inspired woke perpetually badger politicians. You don’t tell God he’s got it all wrong and this is the right way forward, the compassionate way forward, the “christian” way forward. No. You do whatever God advises you at any given time. You never question God, even if he advises you against loving and praying and blessing and sacrificing.
Because this ain’t about you and what you think is right, any more than it’s about the woke and what they wrongly insist is right. This is about God and what God knows is right. And if God says to you (like he said to Jeremiah): “Pray not for this people”, then you’d better not pray for them.
Remember what happened to Saul.
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Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and adultery.
(1 Samuel 15:22-23)
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Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to me: for I will not hear thee.
(Jeremiah 7:16)
NO-ONE BUT GOD
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 10, 2025 – If you start with the concept that nearly everything they do, they do to kill you, then it all makes sense. They want you dead, though not necessarily physically dead: they want you spiritually dead, which means they want you worshiping the god of this world, like they do.
First and foremost, they want you spiritually dead, and once they accomplish that, what happens to you physically is of little concern to them. When I say of little concern, what I mean is that they want to keep you at least sufficiently functional that you’ll be able to spiritually kill others. That’s your job once you’ve been spiritually killed yourself, to spiritually kill others.
If you start with the understanding that they want you spiritually dead, then everything they do makes sense. There are no “good guys” and “bad guys” among those who are not born-again, there are just dead guys who are out to make everyone else dead.
You can only protect yourself if you truly understand this. And by protecting yourself, I don’t mean that you’re the one doing the protecting; I mean that you’re looking to God to protect you, and to God only, because God is the only one who can protect you.
Jesus well knew this before he started his ministry, which is why he left his family and friends behind and struck out on his own. He understood that even his family and friends were trying to spiritually kill him, though likely they didn’t know what they were doing. And there’s the rub – the devil uses people to get to you because he can’t get to you directly; you’re too protected. So he uses others, and he uses them in ways that appear to be good, even godly. In most cases, the people being used are unaware they’re being used. But you need to be aware they’re being used because that’s the only way you can put yourself under the full protection of God.
The worst thing that can happen to you as a born-again believer is to die spiritually. You must never let that happen to you, not under any circumstance. The devil is betting that he can spiritually kill you, while God is betting that he can’t. The same conversation the devil had with God about Job he’s having about each one of us, with God firmly taking our side, as he did for Job, and setting clear testing boundaries that the devil cannot overstep.
Yet for all his support, God’s not stopping the devil from tempting us; after all, that’s why he keeps the devil around. Tempting us is the devil’s sole purpose, and he’s very good at it, diabolically good, which is why we need God’s guidance and protection night and day. In fact, the devil’s so good at what he does, you don’t even know he’s doing it, he makes everything seem so easy and natural and right.
Our temptations, when they come, rarely look like temptations. They’re so meticulously planned and timed, they don’t appear to come from the devil. If anything, they seem on occasion to be blessings and signs from God, which is why we need to walk our every step with God. We won’t make it through our temptations unless we walk our every step with God. We should do nothing without first consulting God and then unhesitatingly doing whatever he says, like Jesus did. This is how we remain fully protected even while God is permitting us to be tempted by the devil.
If you’re a born-again believer, the world really is out to get you. Still, you don’t need to be afraid of the world or of the devil’s diabolical temptations, not while you’re under the guidance and protection of God. As Jesus reminded us, the most they can do is kill the body. Jesus lived that mindset during his ministry years, which is why he was bold and fearless in every situation, right up to and including the moment of his physical death.
So yes, even though nearly everyone on Earth may in fact be trying to kill us, we should fear nothing and no-one but God.
BE RIGHTEOUS STILL
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 3, 2025 – In the instant before my rebirth, when I was still an atheist, God offered me the choice of two options and showed me a vision of two possible outcomes. In the first part of the vision, he showed me the outcome that would result if I chose to forgive, and in the second part, he showed me the outcome that would result if I chose not to forgive. Specifically, I was shown that if I chose to forgive, all my pain would disappear, and if I chose not to forgive, my pain would not only continue but worsen.
God offered me the choice and showed me the outcomes visually as well as by understanding. No words were spoken.
This vision has remained with me as a guide to this day.
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I mention the above because God gave me a choice that involved two options and their respective outcomes, and one of those outcomes was not good. Yet even though it wasn’t good, it also wasn’t immediate horrific death. God didn’t say: Choose this, and you’ll live forever, or choose that, and you’ll die immediately and horribly. Even with the bad outcome, I was offered the possibility of continuing my life on Earth, though in a progressively ever-worsening spiritual state and with the understanding that the opportunity I was being afforded at that time would not come around again.
Thank God I chose to forgive, but still, choosing not to forgive was also an option. I wasn’t forced to make the choice to forgive; I wasn’t threatened with immediate death if I chose not to forgive: I was simply shown the outcomes of each choice, urged to choose the option that would resolve my pain, and left to make the decision for myself.
I mention the ever-worsening spiritual state that results from choosing unforgiveness because many who have been given the same offer as I was given have chosen not to forgive, have chosen revenge. When you choose revenge over mercy, your life reflects that choice. When you take matters into your own hands, you suffer the consequences, with an emphasis on suffer. The suffering that comes to you after you exact what you think is your rightful revenge is of your own doing. In other words, you’ve brought your suffering on yourself and have no-one but yourself to blame.
Even worse, if you choose this course of action after rejecting the option that would free you of your pain, God himself can’t help you anymore. You might be mollified temporarily by earthly mollifications (booze, drugs, wealth, career success, deviant sex, and other diversions), you might even be shielded from further consequences for a time by making a deal with the devil, but your pain will never be purged like it would have been had you chosen mercy when you had the chance.
Geopolitically, nations undergo the same process as individuals, as nations are made up of individuals whose characters collectively determine the course of that nation. When the measure of righteous individuals in a nation is surpassed by the unrighteous, that nation begins an unstoppable decline into hell. Daniel writes of nations that had their dominions taken away and yet continued for thousands of years, though in a progressively humbled state. Examples include Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Lebanon, and Syria. Their glory days are long behind them as they limp through the millennia, sinking deeper and deeper into poverty and chaos despite countless efforts at reform. Fast on the heels of the historically declined nations are the newly declining ones of former Christendom (Canada, US, UK, etc.). As with individuals, once the definitive decline begins, it cannot be reversed; it can be slowed, but not reversed.
Not one nation today is on the spiritual ascendent, and we can expect this trend to continue. There is a misguided notion of a future global messianic or Golden Age, a sort of Heaven on Earth, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Since the coming of Jesus, Heaven is as close to Earth as it will ever be. The Zion foretold in scripture is here and now, in the spiritual realm of God’s Kingdom on Earth. Scriptural Zion will only ever be in the spiritual realm, which is why Jesus pointedly stated that his Kingdom is not of this world.
Every choice we make during our time on Earth has consequences. At a pivotal point in our lives, God presents each of us with the opportunity to choose righteousness over revenge. The choice we make at that time cannot be undone and will determine our place in eternity, with few exceptions. If you’re genuinely reborn, you’ve chosen righteousness. Your job now is to keep on choosing righteousness, even if it means immediate and horrific death.
[H]e that is righteous, let him be righteous still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still.
And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed…. As concerning the rest, they had their dominion taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and time.
WHEN LOVE ISN’T LOVE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 2, 2025 – One of the most startling scenes in the Bible is when Jesus turns on Peter and thunders: Get thee behind me, Satan! You value the things of man, not the things of God. We can only imagine Peter’s confusion when Jesus came out with that. And what had Peter done to earn the rebuke? He’d offered to defend and protect Jesus to the death. But instead of gratefully acknowledging Peter’s (seemingly) generous offer, Jesus attacked it and revealed it for what it was – inspired by Satan.
I like this scene because it unflinchingly exposes the misapplication of love. Far too many Christians falsely believe that “love is love” and as such takes precedence over all other human interactions. They are taught by their pastors to love selflessly, illogically, persistently, and yes, even aggressively, including where their love is not welcome. They are taught to love in all cases and under every circumstance, but is that really what Jesus taught his followers to do?
I would argue “no”. Jesus taught us to be obedient to God in all cases and under every circumstance and showed by his example what obedience looks like. In the scene referenced above, Peter responded with misapplied love rather than responding with obedience to God. Jesus was in the process of revealing the prophesied and God-ordained trial he had to undergo, but all Peter heard was that Jesus would suffer, and he wanted to protect Jesus.
How many times have we done that in the course of “being Christian”? We think we’re doing the right thing by wanting to protect people from their trials, but in trying to protect them, are we valuing the things of God or the things of man? Are we in fact acting as emissaries of Satan rather than of Jesus?
As born-again believers, we’re called to love our enemies. It is the highest calling of any human. But loving your enemies means praying for them and blessing them; it doesn’t mean forcing your unwelcome affections on them. You don’t tell your enemies you’re praying for them and blessing them; you just pray for them and bless them where they can’t see or hear you doing it. You do it in secret, like Jesus advised. That is genuine spiritual warfare.
Christians can be the most insufferable and creepy people on the planet when they go around parading their “love” and forcing it on people who don’t want it. What good is it to tell people that God loves them if those people hate God or don’t believe he exists? The number one reason why I despised Christians when I was an atheist is because they tried to push their beliefs on me. I didn’t push mine on them, but they insisted on pushing their beliefs on me. Their pushiness didn’t make me a believer. They thought they were doing something good by “sharing” and preaching, but all they were doing was making me despise them and their message even more.
Jesus emphasized that the first Commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. We are to treat others as we would want to be treated and to pray for and bless even our enemies, but all our love goes to God. All our obedience goes to God. That is the first and greatest Commandment.
Jesus didn’t go around forcing his love on people; he healed those who came to him for healing and taught those who came to him to learn. There is not one verse in the Gospels where Jesus is seen shouting “God loves you!” to random strangers. If Jesus didn’t do it, neither should we.
If you don’t want to be rebuked like Peter, you need to value the things of God, not the things of man. Love God and be fully obedient to him. If God has ordained someone for a trial, let them go through that trial. If God has ordained you to help someone, help them.
Only by giving all your love and obedience to God will you know when to openly love and when to step back.
NEVER ALONE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 1, 2025 – This is a difficult discussion to have, mainly because not everyone agrees with these sentiments, and some are violent in their disagreement. Worldly Christians in particular bristle at the teaching and accuse me of misapplying scripture. But it’s not a misapplication of scripture to say that our relationships in this world should be the same kind of relationships that Jesus had. It’s not a misapplication of scripture to say that we should live as Jesus lived. It’s a teaching, not a misapplication of scripture. It’s a teaching.
If we read the lines and between the lines of scripture, we can clearly see the kind of relationships Jesus maintained and sought during his ministry years. First and foremost, it didn’t include the kind of relationships that worldly Christians consider their core emotional touchstones. Jesus did not have a good relationship with his immediate family. They didn’t believe that he was the Messiah and even tried to stop his ministry when he lived in Capernaum. In response to their disbelief, Jesus kept them as arms’ length. He didn’t despise them. He didn’t reject them. He didn’t curse them. He saw them as a trouble point and so treated them accordingly.
He also, as far as we know, didn’t maintain any friendships with childhood friends in Nazareth or with anyone from Nazareth. The siblings Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, along with a few of the better-known female followers, appear to be Jesus’ only friends outside of his disciples, and his disciples he met only after he started his ministry work. John the Baptist he knew because he was his cousin, but how close they were is debatable. Jesus, of course, knew everything he needed to know about John, but John was somewhat on the fence about the messiahship of Jesus. At times he seemed to believe, while at other times he seemed to doubt. This waffling kept John and Jesus at a distance from one another.
Jesus had no close relationship at all with anyone in established religion. In fact, the religious powers-that-be were Jesus’ worst enemies, just as today they are ours. Anyone who receives a salary for preaching is not your friend. There are zero exceptions to this rule.
The humans we choose to be close to during our time on Earth should reflect the kind of choices Jesus made. Jesus’ choices should guide ours. Being friendly with someone is not the same as being friends, any more than sharing a meal with someone is indicative of closeness. We should never reject people because they’re not born-again. Jesus didn’t reject his family, even when they refused to accept him as the Messiah. He didn’t reject them, no, but he also didn’t spend much time with them, and he didn’t reveal much of himself to them.
Like Jesus, we can only have close relationships with people who are fully committed believers and have accepted Jesus as the Messiah. We can be friendly and spend time with people who are not believers, but we have to be careful what we say to them. They may come across as supportive and sympathetic, but consciously or not – intentionally or not – they will one day betray us. One way or another, they will betray us. Scripture is very clear about that.
It’s better in the end to be alone than to have false friends, just as it’s better not to marry and not to have children. These teachings are directly from scripture. I thank God every day that I don’t have a spouse or a child. I thank God every day for the vast Heaven of believers who are my family and friends in the spiritual realm. Being alone as a born-again believer doesn’t mean one is actually alone. I’m never alone.
If you’re born-again, you know what I mean.
GORGE ON GOD
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 1, 2025 – It’s a hazard of the prophet trade always to see things in a negative light. The positives are there, too, but only as an afterthought, as something in the hazy distant future. To most real prophets, we are never in the positive in the here and now. We are in the negative and trending deeper into the negative.
That’s one of the ways you can discern a false prophet from a real one. A false prophet will almost always paint a rosy picture of the near future. The messiah is coming! The rapture is coming! Our deliverance is coming! A real prophet will tell you things are bad and about to get far, far worse.
Sure, they’ll get better some day, but only for a very few.
And not here on Earth.
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Isaiah 22:12-13 is one of those passages that haunt me this time of year. People gorge themselves as if they’re starving and goad you to do the same. I have known what it is to go without food and the strangest part of it was that even when I was given food, it was never enough. I was still hungry. I could eat to the point of vomiting and still be hungry. That’s how it is when you perceive at a sub-conscious level that you don’t have enough to live on. Your mind tricks you to keep on eating to prepare for the dearth. It’s a survival mechanism.
I think that’s why the poor these days are almost always fat. The rich are skinny and the poor are fat. It’s a rare poor person who’s skinny, unless they’re also a drug addict or living in Africa. It used to be that the rich were fat and the poor were skinny. That’s how you could tell who had wealth and who didn’t. Now the rich are skinny mainly because they take appetite suppressants or overexercise or stick their fingers down their throats to vomit up what they couldn’t stop themselves from eating. Because even the rich feel like they’re starving. Underneath their smug self-imposed exercise regimes, they’re constantly hungry, only they don’t know for what.
We feast on food when we should be feasting on God. Isaiah 55:1-2 explains what we should be doing. We should let our soul delight itself in fatness. We should be gorging and feasting on God and his Word, not on food and this world. Jesus invited us to feast on him not in a physical or metaphorical or even metaphysical sense, but in a spiritual sense. Jesus invited us to live Isaiah 55:1-2 while also living Isaiah 22:12, with no contradiction.
The point of this article is to get you to live these verses deeper. You can never have too much God. Gorge yourself on God and you’ll move farther and farther from the feasts of this world and from the need to participate in the feasts of this world. You won’t have to consciously remove yourself; it will happen as a natural (or better said, supernatural) consequence.
Gorge on God. Weep and mourn for the passing of this world, but gorge on God.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 