WE ARE NOT SINNERS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 29, 2025 – Just a quick reminder that you cannot be born-again and at the same time be a sinner. To be born-again means to be washed clean of your sins. You can’t be washed clean of your sins and at the same time live in a state of sin, which is what it means to be a sinner. You cannot obstinately, purposely, willfully, unrepentantly, perpetually, and with full and conscious intent choose to live in a state of sin and at the same time have God’s Holy Spirit in you. That would be a spiritual impossibility.
To be born-again means to be washed clean of your sins and to have God’s Holy Spirit in you. When this happens, when God’s Spirit is in you and all around you, you’re no longer a sinner—you can’t be, because sin and God’s Holy Spirit cannot occupy the same spiritual real estate. You’ll still have the capacity to sin while you’re on Earth in a human body, but having the capacity to sin doesn’t make you a sinner: It makes you human.
If people tell you (or worse, insist) that you’re a sinner (which I’ve heard from many a preacher), tell them they’re wrong. Tell them you’re born-again and in right-standing with God. Tell them you cannot be genuinely born-again and at the same time be a sinner. You can be tested and fail (we’ve all, except for Jesus, failed some tests), you can be tempted and fail (we’ve all, except for Jesus, failed some temptations), but these are short-term failures that you put behind you once you repent.
And if you’re genuinely born-again, you don’t delay repenting once God has brought your failure to your attention. You don’t hide from repenting: you crave it. You don’t resent that you have to repent: you embrace it with all your heart and soul. Repenting brings you back into right relationship with God, which is the only place you want to be as a born-again believer. For us, right relationship with God is our spiritual Home.
We born-again believers are not sinners. We do not identify as sinners, and we are not defined by sin. Again, just having the capacity to sin by virtue of still having free will doesn’t mean we’re sinners: It means we’re human.
ON FAITHFORCING
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 29, 2025 – Faithforcing is not in the lexicon, but it should be. We can loosely define “faithforcing” as pushing beliefs on someone who is reluctant or outright adverse to receiving them. Sadly, faithforcing has become the norm in the worldly church. Catholics and evangelicals are the worst offenders, but no denomination is guiltless. When Jesus told us to go out into the world and preach the Good News, he didn’t stipulate faithforcing: he didn’t model Bible-thumping; he didn’t model randomly shouting “God loves you!” in a public square; and he didn’t mandate professing your belief on pain of exile, torture, excommunication, or death.
I remember, as an atheist, recoiling when I witnessed faithforcing, and it still makes me uncomfortable now as a believer. It reminds me of people with certain conditions who blurt out inappropriate words when least expected. The blurting and the inappropriateness of the words make people uncomfortable because it’s all so jarringly out of place. The same can be said of faithforcing. No-one ever genuinely comes to God or genuinely accepts Jesus as their Messiah under pressure of faithforcing.
As scripture attests, Jesus’ family didn’t believe in him until after his resurrection, and yet Jesus never once subjected them to faithforcing. In one instance, faced with his brother James’s mockery and goading, Jesus calmly stated who he was and why he did what he did, but he didn’t try to coerce James into believing in him. He didn’t force James’s back to the wall and say: “Believe in me or die!” (even though those are, in fact, the only two options: belief in Jesus or death). He simply stated the truth in response to James’s provocations but otherwise let his brother be.
If Jesus didn’t resort to faithforcing even his own flesh and blood, why should we do it to ours or to anyone? Forcing, goading, or coercing people into reluctantly or even falsely stating they believe—and rewarding them for their alleged belief—is contrary to Jesus’ example of how to preach the Word. Faithforcing is a lot like people who impose their help on others who haven’t asked for help. This happens to me a lot as a woman, with most of the unrequested help coming from male strangers. I’ve lost count of the number of times men have grabbed my luggage out of my hands or rushed up behind me to “unburden” me of my grocery bags when I haven’t asked or signalled or indicated in any way that I wanted their help. It’s jarring when it happens, and my first thought is never “How kind of this stranger to help me when I haven’t asked him!” but rather: “Oh, sh#@! – I’m being mugged!”
If you’re genuinely born-again, your relationship with God and Jesus is the best part of your life. It’s the central core of who and what you are, and without it, you would be lost in every conceivable way. And because your relationship with God and Jesus is so central to who you are and therefore so precious to you, you naturally want to share it with others so that maybe they’ll want to have what you have. But it’s not as simple as simply wanting to share the Good News, any more than it’s as simple as rushing up behind someone to force what you think is a good deed on them.
When we share our faith with others, we should—like everything we do—be guided by God. In the Gospels, we see how Jesus taught only those who came to him to learn and preached only to those who wanted to hear. He never once engaged in faithforcing. When people are ready to receive what God has to offer, they will on their own accord turn to him and be open to hearing what he has to say. Until that shift happens in a soul, you preach to that soul in vain.
As I mentioned at the outset, faithforcing doesn’t exist in the lexicon, but it should be there, if only as a caution of what not to do. Fueled by pride and motivated by money, faithforcing has not won even one soul for God, though it has filled seats and coffers in churches. Our model of how to share God’s Word is Jesus, and there is no mention anywhere in scripture of Jesus faithforcing anyone or teaching his followers to faithforce.
I came to God not because someone preached to me or faithforced me, but because I finally realized I needed help, and when I cried out for it, God heard me. He didn’t ambush me and force his help on me; he waited respectfully and patiently—and expectantly—until I asked for help.
We’re to do the same for others.
WORK
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 29, 2025 – As born-again believers, we do two types of work while still in a human body: Work for God, and work for the world. It may appear that these two types of work intersect and overlap on occasion, but that’s an illusion. Working for God is something entirely separate from working for the world.
WORKING FOR GOD
First and foremost, work for God is God-inspired, God-enabled, and God-fueled. It doesn’t originate in us; it uses us. We allow God to use us through our prayers. When we pray to God to do his will, he takes us at our word and works through us when and where it’s expedient for him to do so. For this kind of work, we don’t have to do a thing except give God the green light to use us for his purposes.
Teaching and preaching the Word—when inspired, enabled, and fueled by God—is an obvious example of being on God’s work crew. So is healing through prayer. So is dropping a word in someone’s ear at the right time. Never underestimate the power of a word dropped at the right moment in the right ear. Whole mountains have been moved that way. But we’re not the ones moving the mountains. God’s moving them, through us.
A hallmark of working for God is that the work doesn’t feel like work. During his ministry years, Jesus was famous for laboring nearly 24/7 in God’s fields, and he could do so because the preaching, teaching, and healing didn’t feel like work to him. He constantly reiterated that he was doing the work that God sent him to do. When you do the work that God sends you to do, you have supernatural endurance because you’re being supernaturally inspired, enabled, and fueled. You’re not pushing back against it or dreading it or rushing through it to get it done; you’re letting it flow through you.
It’s a beautiful thing, working for God. You lose track of time; you forget about eating, you forget about sleeping – you forget about everything except the work in front of you. Think of Moses on Mount Sinai getting the Law. I’m guessing those 40 days and nights he spent there with God felt like only a few minutes. That’s how it is when you work for God.
WORKING FOR THE WORLD
Working for the world, on the other hand, is something entirely different. It’s laborious; it’s tedious; it’s draining; and you do it just to get it over with. You’re constantly watching the clock, willing the time to pass faster. Working for the world is what we do for a living until God arranges for our daily bread to be provided some other way. Note that working for the world also includes things like housework and grocery shopping. None of these things are required in Heaven. They are worldly cares, not godly ones. Still, while we’re here on Earth, they need to be done.
We dare not shirk our worldly work any more than we’d shirk our work for God. We don’t stop doing our laundry or mopping our floors just because we’re born-again. But we do stop our worldly work on the Sabbath. We dare not not stop our worldly work on the Sabbath.
PAY
Because working for the world is so tedious and draining, we get paid to do it. We get paid to work for God, too, but in a different way. You work for the world, you get the world’s pay, which is money or money-equivalents like worldly privileges and benefits. You work for God, you get God’s pay, which is joy in the constant presence of God and Jesus through God’s Holy Spirit, revelations when you least expect them, and having your needs provided for without your having to do worldly labor for it.
By “having your needs provided for”, I’m not talking about putting a discreet “Donations” or “Support My Ministry” button on your monetized website and hoping for the best. And I’m definitely not talking about getting a salary for preaching (that’s worldly pay; and if you’re born again and taking a salary for preaching, shame on you). I’m talking about God providing supernaturally what you need as you need it, not because you look for it or request it: It just happens by the grace of God.
If it’s happened to you, you’ll know what I’m talking about. If it hasn’t yet happened, hang in there. For some it takes longer than others. It’s one of your tests. Look at how long Jesus worked for God (he was doing it already at age 12!) before his “God pay” fully kicked in at around age 30. Until it did, he labored as a carpenter for his daily needs.
We look to Jesus as our model, not to televangelists or YouTube prophets. If you’re stumping for donations or accepting a salary for preaching and teaching the Word, whatever you’re doing for that money is not work for God. Work for God is paid for by the joy of his presence, the Truth of his revelations, and your daily bread fresh-baked and dropped at your doorstep before you even wake up in the morning.
TL;DR
Though we’re obligated to do worldly work to some degree for the rest of our days on Earth, the highest of all privileges is to work for God and to be paid by God in his way and his time.
FROM GOD OR FROM THE DEVIL? A PRIMER ON PROPHECY
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 21, 2025 – I wrote recently about the Malachy prophecy of the popes, which I do not believe is from God. However, just because it’s not from God doesn’t mean that some organizations aren’t following it like a script even while publicly denying they’re doing so. Furthermore, just because a prophecy isn’t from God doesn’t mean it won’t happen. It might happen, though it typically doesn’t occur as anticipated and usually unfolds as a deception.
God’s prophecies are foretold well in advance and emblazoned across the heavens for all to see, whereas the devil’s are sequestered in underground caverns and revealed only to a select few. Jesus was famous for fulfilling the requirements of prophecy to a “t”, openly stating (in case anyone had any doubt about what he was doing) that he did what he did in fulfillment of prophecy. He rode into Jerusalem on a colt because scripture foretold that the Messiah would do that. He allowed himself to be anointed with oil by one of the Marys because scripture said the Messiah would be anointed in that way. He even allowed himself to be nailed to a cross because prophecy dictated that the Messiah must be crucified. Jesus did whatever God advised him to do, and God used scripture as a blueprint for his directives to Jesus as well as to everyone else.
But how can we tell if a prophecy is from God or from the devil? Being born-again, we have discernment to varying degrees, depending on the measure of God’s Spirit in each of us. Still, the devil and those who serve him can be tricky, and God permits them to try to trick us, either as a test or as a teachable moment when we fail.
There are a few key characteristics to look for when determining the source of a prophecy. One of the main ones is the timing of a prophecy’s fulfillment. God created time and controls time, just like he controls everything else. He also controls our perception of time and its passage. So, prophecies that have a clear time delineation (like the 42-month reign of the beast mentioned in the book of Revelation, or Satan being bound for 1000 years) cannot and should not be taken at face value, any more than the “half an hour” of “silence in Heaven” that precedes the blowing of the first trumpet should be considered as literally a half-hour. These are perception times only, or time taken in the context of longer or shorter passages of time. Their actual duration will only be known when the prophecies occur. Paul says that a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day when it comes to God and his timing. We cannot literally believe that all time and space were created in six Earth days, or perhaps it was six Mars days, or Jupiter days, or Saturn days?…
Why doesn’t God give us precise times for his prophecies? Does he not know when they’ll occur? Of course he knows; God knows everything. But God also needs to get all his ducks in a row, which requires our patience. He also wants to see our authentic response to situations, and for this he needs the element of surprise. How else can he tell whether we genuinely want what he’s offering or are just saying we want it? Even Jesus didn’t know exactly when his ministry would start, and after it started, he didn’t know exactly when his “hour” (his death) would come; he was only informed a few weeks beforehand, during the transfiguration. He then informed his disciples, though they appeared to dismiss the revelation, not really understanding at the time what Jesus was telling them. God clouded their understanding for a reason, just as he clouds ours on occasion.
Thwarting the devil’s plans is yet another major reason why God keeps the timing of prophecy fulfillment hidden. Imagine if the devil knew in advance the exact hour and day of the start of the Final Judgement. He would use that time to prepare and orchestrate Armageddon-like world-wide disasters (we have the technology to do that now) to trick people into running to him for help. Desperate to survive, they’d be willing to give him anything in exchange for safety, even their souls.
Keeping the precise timing hidden is a hallmark of God’s prophecies, for the reasons listed above as well as others. Conversely, prophecies that come from the devil are generally time-stamped and location-specific because that’s what people want in a prophecy. The devil thrives on giving people what they want, especially when it’s against their best interests. People generally want to feel in control of their lives as much as possible; knowing that an event will occur at a certain time and place gives them the feeling that they’re in control, if only to prepare appropriately for whatever’s coming. The devil exploits this weakness in humans, plying them with false prophecy after false prophecy, with an occasional semi-hit to keep them coming back for more.
The devil’s prophecies are also almost exclusively negative, drawing on the call to darkness lurking within most people’s souls. Just as light attracts light, dark attracts dark, and the darker the revelation, the more people are drawn to it. This is why the dark sections of the book of Revelation are so popular and the “light” sections less well known. Some people read the New Testament not for the Gospel message but for the end-times prophecies on mass destruction. That’s not to say that the book of Revelation comes from the devil; I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying that the darker passages garner the most attention, whereas the passages about visions of Heaven are mostly overlooked.
Along with being time- and location-specific and characteristically dark, prophecies that come from the devil have an “off” smell to us born-again believers. People who are not born-again are nose-blind to the “off” smell of the devil’s lies, the way that most voters are nose-blind to the “off” smell of politicians’ promises during an election campaign. To be honest, the smell isn’t something you can logically describe; you just know it when you smell it. Call it discernment; call it intuition; call it a gut feeling – whatever you want to call it, it’s real and it’s accurate.
Keep in mind that the devil’s prophecies can also come to pass; just because prophecies originate from the devil doesn’t mean they won’t happen, though if they do, they tend to happen not quite as anticipated. The prophesied golden age manifests as rule by an iron fist. The proffered fame and fortune manifest as a life of drug-addled wealth-fueled degeneracy surrounded by other drug-addled wealth-fueled degenerates. The promise of immortality manifests as eternity in the lake of fire. So you can’t say the devil didn’t keep his promises; you just didn’t read the fine print and so filled in the blanks with your own hopeful assumptions.
TL; DR: Prophecies form the basis of our hopes and fears for the future. If they’re from God, it’s a slam-dunk that they’re going to happen; we just don’t know exactly when. Prophecies from the devil, on the other hand, are typically time-stamped, feeding our need to know and to be in control of our lives. However, the devil’s prophecies rarely occur, and if they do, they’re never quite as expected in a negative way. To paraphrase Jesus, you can’t get fruit from a thistle. If you want to know what the future holds, stick with God’s promises and God’s promises only.
ABOMINATIONS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 18, 2025 – I’ve had the unsought advantage over the years of getting to know psychopaths up close and personal, sometimes in deeply intimate relationships. By advantage, I mean I’ve learned how to stay outside their sphere of control; by intimate, I mean physical intimacy, because no-one can get emotionally close to a psychopath. That door is welded shut.
Living and moving in close proximity to psychopaths at various times (including now), I learned from them how not to be. Psychopaths are very useful for modeling bad behavior. It’s almost textbook paint-by-number bad in some cases, but it’s still informative from an observational point of view. I had to learn the hard way to step back and observe these people from an emotional if not a physical distance and to train myself not to let my feelings (other than my gut feeling) get involved. You learn the hard way not to get emotionally entangled with psychopaths, though I’m not sure it’s a lesson you ever fully learn.
Still, the hard way is the only way anyone ever learns how to deal with psychopaths. That’s because we keep trying to attribute to them the same “essential humanity” that we attribute to non-psychopaths. This failing is on us; we can’t blame them for being what they are. And frankly, I have yet to meet a psychopath who hasn’t more or less instantly self-identified as a psychopath to anyone with eyes to see. Now that I know what to look for, I can spot them as easily as a shiny nickel in the middle of the road. They’re like a fox in the henhouse or a wolf in the sheep pen. The trick is to be the henhouse (not the hen) and the fence (not the sheep). We’re to observe from a safe distance, not intervene or engage. Beyond the perfunctory, it’s never advisable to engage with psychopaths.
Which brings me to today’s topic – psychopathic nations. Whole nations can be psychopathic, not just individuals. That’s not to say that all the people in those nations are psychopaths; I’m not saying that at all. But a nation can still be psychopathic without all its people being so. To be considered psychopathic, a nation just needs to display certain key psychopathic traits, such as being perpetually self-absorbed, lacking in empathy, lacking in self-awareness, manipulative, a cunning and unapologetic liar, coldly calculating, an unabashed user and abuser of others, seeing others as less than human and therefore unworthy of humane treatment, adept at playing one party against another, perpetually protesting its innocence, perpetually proclaiming its victimhood, and perpetually justifying its exceptionalism by explaining why it should get away with doing things that other nations should not get away with doing. A psychopathic nation also appears to take pleasure in inflicting pain on its victims, all while either ignoring or downplaying the pain, or claiming it’s deserved.
How can a psychopathic nation be dealt with in a global community? Should it be isolated and contained by laws, such as those passed by the UN? That’s already been tried, but it hasn’t worked because our current psychopathic regimes have dismissed the laws as not applying to them. Should psychopathic nations be punished militarily? That’s also been tried but has so far failed because other nations get tricked, guilted, or bullied into bolstering the psychopaths’ defenses. Perhaps these nations should just simply be ignored? If you’ve ever dealt with psychopaths one-on-one, you’ll know that ignoring them rarely works. Psychopaths crave attention not as an ego-stroker but as a control mechanism. If they have your attention, they’re controlling you, so if you’re ignoring them, they’ll do whatever it takes to regain your attention, and no method is off the table. Even if they have to kill you to get you to look their way just one more time, they’ll kill you. Psychopathic nations are the same.
Which explains why these countries are always doing things to get attention. Attention-getting is their calling card on the world stage. So, for instance, they’ll unexpectedly attack another nation while it’s engaged in peace talks, catching it off-guard. This is not a new tactic but certainly a dirty one and again reveals the attacking nation’s underlying psychopathy. And since a psychopath doesn’t want to be admired or even liked, just in control, a psychopathic nation is not in the least fazed by the world’s nearly unanimous condemnation of its dirty tricks. It will instead frame the condemnation as persecution. Weeping crocodile tears, it will state that it has a right to defend itself from potential future aggressions. It will offer no apologies, because a psychopath never feels the need to apologize. Beyond self-pity, self-aggrandizement, and nearly boundless lust, a psychopath never really feels anything.
Yet for all their horror show of characteristics, psychopathic nations should not be despised. They represent both a collective reward for our bad behavior and a temptation that we dare not become. In this regard, psychopathic nations are a cautionary tale of what not to be, how not to act, and who not to serve. Because it’s as glaringly obvious as that shiny new nickel lying in the middle of the road that psychopathic nations don’t serve God. I don’t know who or what they serve, but it’s not my Father in Heaven; it’s not Jesus’ Father. Our Father is not being served by psychopaths. Something or someone is being served, but it’s not God.
How, then, are we to deal with not-God-serving psychopathic nations? Do we ignore them? At our peril; the more you ignore psychopaths, the more and worse they’ll do to get your attention. Do we cautiously and supportively interact with them, fingers crossed and hoping for the best? Again, we’d do so at our peril; psychopaths cannot be trusted and will only interact with us to find out our weaknesses, which they’ll later use against us. Or do we simply run and hide? You can’t hide from relentless control-seeking enemies, other than when your flight is directed by God and under God’s protection, keeping in mind that psychopathic nations, like psychopaths, can only inflict as much pain and destruction as has been earned, either as a negative reward or as a tightly controlled test sanctioned by God. It’s also worth noting that as time goes by, more and more nations will turn psychopathic.
So, what can we do? Or, better said, what should we do? As with individuals, nations with psychopathy should not be interacted with other than for the merest of perfunctory gestures. We should instead stand at a safe distance and observe them. We should be the henhouse, not the hens; the fence, not the sheep. We should not get involved; we should quiet our emotions. Like a sniper lying stock-still far above his target, we should keep psychopathic nations in our crosshairs but never pull the trigger. It’s not our job to pull the trigger. God has not given us that job.
It’s our job to do God’s will, and Jesus very clearly told us: “Watch”.
So we’re to serve God and watch, but otherwise let the abominations be.
24/7
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 17, 2025 – What you do when no-one is around to see or hear you is the measure of where you are in your spiritual development. Those in the worldly church would claim that we’re already saved and that Jesus knows we’re sinners and shed his blood to cover our sins, so we’re good to go and no use fretting over every little slip-up. But we know this isn’t true, and that our every thought, word, and deed can and will be used against us, if not in the here and now, then in the Final Court of Law. So we’re careful, oh so careful, of what we think, say, and do. We’re careful because we know that everything is being monitored and recorded, always by God but also a good chunk of the time by enemy forces. There’s nowhere we can go to get away from this reality.
We born-again believers are in Church 24/7, whether awake or asleep, which means that we’re in prayer with God 24/7. Your eyes on these words is a prayer to God. And when you finish reading these words and go elsewhere online, that will be a prayer, too. Everywhere you go online is a prayer, just as everywhere you willingly take your body is a prayer and every word you allow out of your mouth is a prayer and every thought you consciously generate and/or entertain is a prayer. All your free-will everything is a prayer to God. This spiritual fact needs to be taken onboard by every born-again believer: Your entire sleeping and waking reality is a prayer.
This is where knowing and loving God as your heavenly Father comes in handy, because who wouldn’t want a trusted father-figure always within whisper reach? It doesn’t faze me at all that God knows everything about me in real time and that it’s all being recorded for posterity. It doesn’t faze me at all that I can’t turn off God’s access to me even if I wanted to. This state of being doesn’t faze me, it comforts me, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Satan’s access to me, on the other hand, is not comforting. The surveillance state that’s covertly being built and insinuated into our every word and movement should never be perceived as a comfort, because unlike God’s 24/7 surveillance, Satan’s surveillance is being done solely to be used against us. We’re told the collection of our data is for marketing purposes or to create a better user experience, but the fact is our technological trail is a dossier being compiled on each of us, though we’ve committed no crime. Simply by agreeing to use high-tech tools, we allow ourselves to be fingerprinted, voice-printed, image-printed, gait-printed, and even scent-printed. We permit our every email to be scoured, our every image to be captured, and our every document to be seized – but for what? Evidence? And if evidence, towards what?
By clicking or tapping “Agree” in the various terms of service agreements we come across online, we’ve already put ourselves on trial and are willingly compiling evidence against ourselves. Everything but our thoughts is known and recorded (that you’re reading this is known and recording by Satan) and thrown onto the sacrificial fire of AI training modules. Everything but our thoughts is known and recorded, but they’re coming for those, too. It’s just a matter of time before the majority (nearly every human) will willingly agree to a brain implant that will allow access to their thoughts not as they emerge filtered through their lips or fingertips but as they pour raw from the source. You do not want to agree to take this implant, because if you do, you’ll be lost to God. There’s no other way to put it but that you’ll be lost, and that forever. No exceptions and no redo: the ultimate “one and done”.
I’m glad that God knows everything about me in real time and is with me 24/7. I’m glad he knows my thoughts and I welcome him into my mind as I welcome him into every other part of me. I hide nothing from him. But Satan and his surveillance state I do not welcome. I allow their intrusions this far and no further, only what is necessary. God will let me know what is necessary and caution me against the rest, as he’ll do for you, if you’re born-again.
The access we permit our enemy (and the surveillance state is unquestioningly our enemy) is on us, so we need to be careful. We’re careful with God, anyway, so we know what it means to be careful, though with God it’s for learning purposes, for guidance, and always towards our spiritual improvement. With Satan’s surveillance, we need to be careful in a different way because that form of near 24/7 data capture only wants our harm. Its sole purpose is our harm.
We need to understand this and proceed accordingly.
NEVER OUR SOULS: THE ROLE OF SATAN IN GOD’S PLAN
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 9, 2025 – We live in a world of chaos and confusion not because God wants it that way but because sin makes it that way. Chaos and confusion are sin’s calling card: the more abundant the sin, the more widespread the chaos and confusion. For the time being, God has given Satan administrative authority over the sin realm, but not because Satan is chaotic and confused; far from it. He’s coldly methodical and precise, entirely lacking in emotional warmth, and a consummate liar. This makes him very good at his job, though his mandate comes with tight restrictions and clearly defined limits that are impossible for Satan to exceed.
When I say impossible, I mean impossible. Satan can only do what God permits him to do, and God will only permit him to do either what we’ve earned or what God stipulates as a test. Satan’s not off somewhere in an underground bunker, hidden from God and plotting his maker’s overthrow. No. Satan is a wide-open book to God and, again, can only do what God permits. He’s entirely under God’s thumb. And if those who serve Satan attempt to exceed the prescribed limits, their reward is excruciating and unending. And their attempt will fail.
Being in the world, we’re under the administrative authority of Satan, but our souls are safely tucked away in the Kingdom, where Satan has no authority and cannot enter. Still, our bodies are subject to whatever Satan-imposed rules and laws are permitted by God. We’re surrounded by Satan’s handiwork and that of his faithful servants: We eat, drink, and breathe desecrated creation. This would be intolerable to me if I weren’t certain of God’s love for me and didn’t fully trust his plan.
I can’t say that I hate being here, but I can say that I almost hate it. I don’t hate the entire world, just those things that are under Satan’s authority. What God has lovingly formed and given to his children to brighten their days and quicken their time here – those things I cannot hate. But what Satan does, I hate.
Chaos and confusion are spiritual pollution emitted by sin: the more widespread the sin, the greater the chaos and confusion. The world measures carbon emissions and other industrial pollutants, aiming to eliminate them, but maybe we should instead be measuring chaos and confusion levels, aiming to eliminate those and the sin that causes them. Purge the sin, and the sin-associated chaos and confusion disappear as well. Although spiritual pollution is far more toxic and long-lasting than any other type of pollution, Satan considers it a measure of his success. High sin pollution levels indicate a bumper crop of morally compromised souls that are ripe for even further compromising. It’s to those souls that Satan looks for followers.
He has two kinds of followers, Satan: Those who know they’re following him, and those who don’t. When I say they know they’re following him, I mean they’ve sworn an oath to that effect and signed a contract submitting to him, agreeing to his terms. You’d be surprised how many have done this, or perhaps you wouldn’t be surprised. If you’re not born-again and reading this, perhaps you’re one of those who formally signed on with Satan through one of his proxy organizations and became his follower. If so, you would certainly know how many of you there are, if only in general terms. You would know that there are far more of you than the non-oath-takers realize because you see signs of your brethren everywhere. This is, after all, Satan’s realm, so it only makes sense that his sworn followers would be so… ubiquitous. For me, a born-again believer, I find their ubiquity galling, but I take heart in knowing that their power and reach are strictly limited by God. So I look past all the destruction they’re permitted to do; I look past it to God and his creation, to the parts that they can’t touch. There are still some parts they can’t touch—not even with the full force of evil—and it’s those parts that comfort me.
Satan’s other followers are people who haven’t formally sworn an oath, but they still serve him (or better said, serve his purposes) by the choices they make and their hardheartedness towards God and his Messiah. These followers make up most of the world’s population and are easily deceived and manipulated. If you told them they follow Satan, they’d probably laugh at you, though some might secretly like the idea, having no deeper understanding of Satan than what they learned from his propaganda channels, such as Hollywood. Satan is his own biggest promoter, and his speciality is selling himself as the provider of your every desire. Who could resist such a sales pitch? Thank God we can, like Jesus did in the desert, but most people can’t resist, which explains why so many are witting or unwitting followers of Satan. Their unholy desires are their undoing.
I don’t hate Satan. It’s not in me to hate him. We need to respect God’s decision to use Satan to administer God’s tests and negative rewards. We don’t need to respect Satan, but we should respect that God placed him where he did and that he has a role to play in God’s plan, just like Judas Iscariot had a role to play, and played it, and Jesus still showed him love. I’m not saying to show Satan love (no sympathy for the devil here), but we show God love when we trust and respect his plan, even if we don’t fully understand it, and even if it means that someday, like Jesus, we have to give up our bodies to Satan, though never our souls.
PRAYER FOR GOD’S CHILDREN
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 9, 2025 – God is the consummate father, protecting and watching over his children throughout their time here on Earth. We’re not spiritual latchkey kids, we children of God; we’re not left to fend for ourselves while our heavenly Father is off elsewhere delivering judgement or rescuing stray sheep. No. God is perpetually with us through his Holy Spirit. At no time are we left alone.
For those who love God, his presence is a comfort. For those who hate him, it’s a threat.
And yet, being children—and even with our Father’s constant presence—we’re prone to stumbling into tricky situations, either through our own naivete, our own stupidity, or as a God-mandated test. In other words, we either bring these tricky situations on ourselves by our poor choices, or God will allow them to be brought on us to gauge where we are in our spiritual development. But unless our hour has come (that is, unless it’s time for God to take us Home), our heavenly Father will always intervene to help us in our trials.
God’s intervention can take many forms, depending on the type of danger and our initial response to it. The form it most frequently takes is shielding us, either supernaturally or physically or both, until the danger has passed. God did this most famously for baby Jesus when he was under a death threat by Herod’s kill decree. God also later intervened for Jesus, supernaturally shielding him so that he could walk unscathed (and seemingly undetected) through the enraged mobs at the temple and in Nazareth. These are just a few instances of God’s interventions that are mentioned in scripture, but the truth is that God intervened every day, all day, to protect Jesus, just as he intervenes every day, all day, to protect us.
Being whisked away and kept hidden is essentially the default position of God’s children whenever they face danger, particularly if they haven’t brought it on themselves. For the latter part of his ministry, Jesus basically lived his life on the run, as did the members of the early Church, for whom living in hiding, physically and miraculously, was the status quo. God keeps his children, then as now, either on the run or safely tucked away until the threat had been removed or their hour had come. As we know from the New Testament, being a member of the early Church was essentially a death sentence in some regions—but oh, what a glorious Homecoming! There’s no better way to lay down your life than in full service to God.
As the age draws closer and closer to the prophesied time of the end, we born-again believers should expect a revival of the days when we were hunted, imprisoned, and executed, though truth be told, the hunting, imprisoning, and executing hasn’t stopped for the last nearly 2000 years, even with the state-engineered institutionalization of Christianity. Genuine believers have always been a target if not for ‘permanent removal’ then at least for conversion from spiritual wrongthink, or what the worldly church calls heresy. Inquisitions, which were essentially church-and-state-sanctioned witch hunts of born-again believers who refused to come under the papal yoke, spanned nearly a millennium. And today, if I were to show up in certain Muslim-ruled countries with Bible in hand, I’d be forcibly ejected, imprisoned, or even in some cases stoned to death. We don’t have to wait for the coming of the so-called Anti-Christ to be persecuted; anti-christs have never stopped persecuting the Church since its establishment by Jesus. This is why it’s so crucial to remain always under God’s powerful protection.
In scripture, God promises us that he will never leave us or forsake us, and Jesus adds that he, too, will be right here with us. Both God and Jesus are keeping their promises, but neither of them ever mentioned that we’d have an easy go of it here on Earth, even with their constant presence. Being children of God and followers of Jesus pretty much paints a bullseye on us spiritually and socially, a branding that separates us from those who aren’t children of God or followers of Jesus and makes it socially, politically, and even legally permissible to ridicule and openly hate us. Jesus had to contend with the ridicule and hatred, and he warned us that we’d have to contend with it, too, though it’s a small price to pay for admission into God’s Kingdom on Earth, also known as Jesus’ Church.
Let whoever will mock me. I don’t hear them. It’s just so much background noise that has no meaning or value to me and blends in with all the other meaningless and valueless background noises that form the soundscape of a place that is not my home. Earth was never meant to be our home. It’s a place of testing, a place we’re just passing through, a temporary haven made for us by God but increasingly taken over by forces bent on destroying God’s creation, including us. Yet even amidst the constant noise and progressive encroachment of our turf by the enemy, we have the only peace that matters, thanks to the comforting and perpetual presence of God and Jesus.
There is no time when they’re not with us, whether we’re conscious of it or not. There is no time when they’re not with us, though there will come a time when none of us will be here anymore. God’s final intervention will be Jesus returning in glory with his angels to gather together the last of God’s children and take them Home. Once they’re safely whisked away, God and Jesus will also leave, never to return here again.
May you not be among those left behind. This is my prayer for you – that you not be among those left behind when the last of God’s children go Home.
Amen.
For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavillion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock. (Psalm 27:5)
ON GETTING AWAY FROM IT ALL
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 9, 2025 – I understand why Jesus started his ministry work by spending 40 days and nights alone in the desert. I also understand why John the Baptist lived most of his life in the wilderness, and why so many prophets throughout the ages have chosen to live alone and in isolation, not just away from the “madding crowd” but from everyone, especially religious people. By “religious people”, I mean those who claim to believe in God but actually only hold to a belief system made up of rituals, recitations, pageantry, creeds – learned behavior, not something that emerges organically from God’s Holy Spirit living in a soul. Holding to a belief system is not genuine worship. All religions are premised on holding to a belief system, which is how you can distinguish genuine faith from religion. People who genuinely believe in and worship God aren’t religious, and their belief is not a system but evidence of the presence of God’s Holy Spirit in them.
I understand why Jesus started his ministry work in total isolation and why John the Baptist and others like him chose to live in the wilderness, not just retreat to it on occasion. The world is a hectic, frantic, and noisy place perpetually at odds with God and constantly reaching out to turn you this way and that, to lure you off the straight and narrow. But as noisy and frantic as the anti-God crowd is, the religious crowd is even more frenetic and shrill.
So many people now claim to be prophets, to be hearing from God—to have a dream or a vision or a word—but it all smacks of self-promotion. From the pope and headliner televangelists all the way down to obscure YouTubers with a handful of subscribers, they’re in it for the money, and if not for the money, for the power, and if not for the money and/or the power, then for their ego, forcing your back against the wall to get you to agree with them. Yet for all their pomp and bluster, they’re not pointing you to God and Jesus, they’re pointing you to themselves and their donations button. That’s one way to know they’re false prophets.
Not everyone’s voice needs to be heard when it comes to God and his Word. God himself is a ‘still quiet voice’, not a pushy one, not a shrill one, and not even one that demands our attention, though no-one deserves our attention more than God. Yes, God does command on occasion, but he mostly invites. He doesn’t push himself on anyone and has never once forced anyone’s back to the wall, demanding they agree with him. Nowhere in scripture do we see God pushing himself on anyone. Jesus didn’t push himself on anyone either, which set him apart from the false prophets and rabble-rousers that thronged the streets and public houses of the dying Jewish state, vying for people’s attention and money.
Yes, I understand why a genuine prophet needs to get away from the racket, because it is a racket in every sense of the term. It was a racket back in Elijah’s day and it’s a racket now. Too bad we can’t deal with the false prophets the way that Elijah did (or better said, the way God did), but that’s not what Jesus wants us to do. Taking our cue, as always, from Jesus, we know just to get away when it’s time to get away.
And how shall we do that? Shall we live like the homeless, brazenly setting up camp on a busy sidewalk or quietly tucked away at the far end of a park? Shall we roam restlessly from place to place, never spending more than a night here or there, or should we hunker down maybe at a monastery and stay long enough to bring a garden from seedling to harvest? Where can God’s children go to get away from it all? Where does God want us to go?
Jesus went to the desert, to wilderness places, to mountaintops. Sometimes he even just walked across large bodies of water, alone. I don’t think the location really mattered; it was the isolation factor that mattered, the solitary factor: the one-on-one time with God. Because that’s what the world wants to take away from you more than anything else – your God-given right to be in God’s presence and spend alone-time with him. They don’t forcibly take that from you; they try to convince you that it isn’t possible or isn’t desirable or simply isn’t for you (and here’s something much better!), but nothing’s better than alone-time with God. You cannot convince me otherwise.
Jesus couldn’t be convinced, either, which is why he was always going off by himself to pray and advising us to pray alone. It’s hard to get alone-time with God when people are hanging around, though it can be done. Jesus did it on the cross.
Moses also famously preferred alone-time with God above all else. He scaled a burning mountain not once but twice, enduring 40 days and nights without food or drink or sleep to be in God’s presence, though I’m guessing it didn’t feel to him like 40 days and nights. That’s how it is when you’re in God’s presence; you lose track of time, or better said, you lose the perception of the passage of time. And when he could no longer go up a mountain to be alone with God, Moses built a tabernacle according to God’s specifications and spent alone-time with God there.
Thanks to Jesus’ sacrifice, we no longer need to go to mountaintops or tabernacles or into designated spaces to be alone with God. We don’t have to stand with our eyes closed or our hands clasped or upraised. Jesus said there’d come a time when such formalities would no longer be required. We can be alone with God—that is, we can pray—anywhere and at anytime.
I always laugh a little bit inside when I read about the “No Praying” restrictions in certain religious sites, like at the Al Aqsa Mosque on the temple mount in Jerusalem where, by law, only Muslims are “allowed” to pray. As a born-again believer, I can pray just walking down the street or sitting on a bus or sometimes even during a conversation. I don’t appear to be praying, but I am. And because I can pray anywhere and at anytime without anyone except God and Jesus knowing I’m praying, I could surely pray at the Al Aqsa if I went there. So I laugh a little bit inside me when I hear about the “no-prayer zones” in Jerusalem and at other sites that are sacred to the world, like abortion clinics. For us, there’s no such thing as no-prayer zones. They simply don’t exist, no matter how many signs are erected or by-laws enacted or police officers assigned to enforce them. We can pray anywhere and at anytime without appearing to pray, and no-one can stop us.
Which leads me to conclude that maybe getting away from it all isn’t always necessary. Sometimes, yes, but not always, not when we can be alone with God even in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Laws against praying don’t apply to those who follow Jesus and his advice on how to spend alone-time with God. It’s one of the many gifts, rights, and privileges God has given to his children, and the world cannot—dare not—intervene.
A WORD ON DEMONIC AFFLICTION: PART 1
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 6, 2025 – The early Church had no trouble discerning and identifying evil spirits. In fact, a large chunk of Jesus’ ministry was casting out them out. Demonic attacks didn’t appear to be a rare affliction but an everyday reality for the people of the time. Was that because it was an unusually evil age, or have our spiritual spidey-senses grown dull to the presence of evil spirits manifesting in people’s behaviors?
I think we born-again believers know the answer to that. It can be dangerous to speak unfiltered truth to the world. Several years ago, not long after I was reborn, I witnessed a man on a street in Toronto who was clearly in the throes of demonic possession. Someone had called the police, and a crowd had gathered to watch him rage. When I came upon the scene in passing, a female police officer was ordering the onlookers not to approach the man or try to restrain him. I went up to the officer and mentioned that the man had demons and should be dealt with accordingly. She turned to me abruptly and told me she could arrest me for saying that. Startled by her threat, I asked her what she meant, but she looked away and muttered something into her collar mic. I took that as my cue to leave.
Making God’s truth illegal to speak, write, or even think is a growing trend, so it’s not surprising that many people who are knowledgeable about demonic affliction choose to remain silent about their expertise. This includes not only clergy, but people working in medical and academic fields. Like most of us born-again believers, I learned about evil spirits from scripture, but I also learned about them from dealing with them first- and second-hand. Specifically, I had demons in me prior to my rebirth, and I’ve seen demons working in others, both before and after my rebirth.
I share my knowledge and personal experience about evil spirits when God gives me guidance to do so. I didn’t have God’s go-ahead to talk about demons with that police officer in Toronto all those years ago, which is why it turned out as it did: a lesson in what not to do. Like Jesus, we’re not to go looking for people who are unduly afflicted by evil spirits, though if they come to us freewillingly, genuinely looking for help, or someone comes to us on their behalf, God will give us the ability to help them. By “unduly afflicted”, I mean demonic affliction that exceeds what has sadly become the world’s everyday reality of low-level demonic activity. Everyone who is not born-again is afflicted by evil spirits to some extent; some more, some less. We born-again believers are surrounded by evil spirits and will remain surrounded by them until we get Home.
Although we, by God’s grace, cannot have demons in our soul, we can be a target of evil spirits through temptations. We know this both from scripture and from our own experience. Evil spirits cannot reside in the same soul as God’s Holy Spirit, which means that a soul either has God’s Spirit in it or evil spirits; there is no third option. Up to the time of my rebirth, I had evil spirits in me; since the time of my rebirth, I’ve had God’s Spirit in me. No-one can convince me otherwise, the change was so instantaneous and radical, and my love for God and his Word so all-consuming and enduring. Nothing but spiritual rebirth can do that to a soul.
I’ve mentioned here on this blog before (and also here, here, and here, etc.) that spiritual rebirth involves the exorcism (casting out) of evil spirits to make way for God’s Spirit. The same soul cannot simultaneously host God’s Holy Spirit and demon spirits: This is a spiritual law that cannot be broken. When God signals that his Holy Spirit is about to enter a soul, the demons occupying it must vacate. They have no choice but to vacate. I don’t know exactly how many demons had to vacate my soul just before my rebirth, but I do know that it was more than seven. That’s because, later on my rebirth day, when I was reading the gospels for the first time and got to the verse on Mary Magdalene where it says: “out of whom went seven devils”, God said to me: “That’s what happened to you, only there were a lot more than seven.”
Demonic affliction is neither new nor rare. It’s the default spiritual state for everyone who isn’t born-again. I lived with progressively worsening demonic affliction prior to being reborn, and I now live with God’s Holy Spirit in me, so I have deep, personal, first-hand experience of both states of being. When God gives me leave, I will discuss my experiences here further.
[TO BE CONTINUED]
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 