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ON VICTIMHOOD
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 9, 2024 – One of the most common lies that the devil tells is that we’re victims, that we’re not to blame, that it’s not our fault. He’s been very successful with this lie throughout the ages, which is why he continues to tell it. Most people would prefer to hear that they’re victims (and to benefit from their perceived victimhood financially, socially, or otherwise) than to acknowledge that they’ve brought their suffering on themselves.
Jesus was the only one who didn’t earn the pain he suffered. The rest of us – including us born-again believers – suffer what we’ve earned either through our disobedience to God or as some kind of test. In either case, our response to our suffering needs to be the same – patient endurance and forgiving those who hurt us. We will never achieve peace or resolution of our pain if we fight it or refuse to own it by saying: “I haven’t earned this; it’s not fair”.
God’s justice is perfect. The way the world is today, here and now, is perfectly just according to what has been earned, mitigated by God’s mercy for those who’ve shown mercy. Those who live by the dictates of the world will stubbornly refuse to accept that “the pain you feel is the pain you’ve earned” and so will fight against anyone they see as hurting them in some way. Fingers will be pointed, blame will be cast, and thoughts of revenge and self-pity will take root and flourish. This is how pain is recycled and amplified into greater pain and is the main reason why most people grow worse and worse emotionally as they age, irrespective of their finances, social standing, or worldly achievements.
We in the Kingdom cannot refuse to accept that the pain we feel is the pain we’ve earned. We cannot cast ourselves in the role of victim or point fingers of blame. Yes, people will do cruel things to us (some of which we’ve earned, some of which are tests), but our default response must always be the same – “Forgive them Father, they don’t know what they’re doing” – and our forgiveness must be total and absolute, not partial and conditional.
We don’t revisit past pains. We learn from them, but we don’t bring them up again either in conversation or in our own minds. We are as if they never happened, the way God is as if the sins he’s forgiven us never happened. We’ll be tested on that. And if we fail that test, we’ll have to redo it until we get it right.
The notion of blameless victimhood is satanic. It is one of Satan’s most successful lies not only because people fall for it almost without exception, but because it leads to worse and worse outcomes the longer it remains unresolved. Victimhood spawns more victimhood, moving in a downward spiral that draws other people into the victimhood narrative like into a deep dark whirlpool. All those who encourage the victimhood are likewise pulled in and drowned, mainly in the alleged victim’s self-pity.
I am not saying we should be distant or cruel to those who are suffering. We’re here on Earth to be present and kind, not distant and cruel. At the same time, we also need to remember that those who live according to the world’s dictates will not accept God’s Truth about the source of their suffering, so there’s no point in trying to inform them about it. You’ll only enrage them and make things worse for them (and for yourself). Better to let them be and to offer kindnesses as a balm, as God directs you to offer them. But never join them in their finger-pointing or plans for revenge. To do so would be to declare that God’s perfect justice is imperfect.
On the other hand, those of us in the Kingdom must never hesitate to remind ourselves and each other that all our pain, whether earned or as a test, must be endured patiently and with God’s help. We don’t run to the world for sympathy or restitution. We don’t fight wars or back those who do. We don’t protest. We don’t sign petitions. We don’t vote. We love our neighbours and our enemies equally, and we treat others as we want to be treated, not necessarily as we are treated. We don’t get involved in the affairs of the world, because the world is under the direction and authority of Satan, with God’s permission. We don’t ignore the world or withdraw from the world; we need to be aware of what’s going on in the world, all while holding it at arm’s length, like Jesus did, and being kind, like Jesus was, but otherwise letting it be.
The world is God’s perfect justice unfolding in real time, and you don’t mess with perfection.
We’re not here for a good time and we’re not here for a long time. We’re here to get done whatever we need to get done, doing it to the best of our ability and in full submission to God. That is the summarized job description of a born-again follower of Jesus.
And when we’re done doing whatever it is we need to get done and are in right standing with God, we get to go Home.
Oh, Happy Day!
ANYTHING WE SAY, THINK, OR DO CAN AND WILL BE USED AGAINST US
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 8, 2024 – Just a timely reminder that God sees everything. He also hears everything and knows our every thought. There’s nowhere to hide from God: He’s all-knowing, all the time.
There’s another layer of surveillance that most people don’t like to think about, let alone talk about (and I include born-again believers in the “most people” designation here). This secondary surveillance layer has some restrictions but still sees most of what you do and hears most of what you say. Your thoughts, however, are off-limits (for now). This secondary layer is the fallen entities assigned to you.
We all have them. Even born-again believers have them. Jesus had battalions of them following him around, harassing him, outing him as the Holy One of God, and generally making a nuisance of themselves trying to trip him up. Even Satan himself made occasional cameo appearances in Jesus’ earthly life. Thank God, none of them ever found so much as a speck of dirt on Jesus, but the entities following us around have a much higher success rate. That just goes with the territory of our not being Jesus.
Unlike Jesus, we all fail some of our tests and temptations. We all let a word or two slip past our lips that we shouldn’t have let slip but chose (for whatever reason) not to stop. Jesus reminded us that we’ll be accountable for those words come Judgement Day, and you wanna bet the unholy contingents trailing us are taking copious notes to be presented at that time. To believe otherwise is not to take Jesus at his word.
I thank God, my Heavenly Father, that I am under his surveillance. His constant presence through his Holy Spirit gives me comfort. I know that at any time I can talk to him and that he hears me and will answer me. I know he is right here, right now, as he is with you. This is a promise given directly to us born-again believers by Jesus. God’s Spirit is our connection between us and God and between us and Jesus, and nothing and no-one can break that connection except God. And God will only break it if we show by our words and thoughts and actions that want to break it.
May none of us ever do that.
I also thank God (or better said, I learned to thank God) for the other layer of surveillance because it keeps me on my spiritual toes. God watches over us with love, guiding us and reminding us of how we need to be. The fallen entities, on the other hand, are constantly looking for a chink in our spiritual armour, a moment of weakness that they can massage into sin and then leverage toward our fall. God permits this layer of malicious surveillance over his children (with, as I mention, some notable restrictions, such as not being able to read our thoughts or to hear our conversations with him), knowing it will make us that much more circumspect in our choice of words and actions.
That’s the theory, anyway. The practice (on our part) takes some doing to get it right.
As I mentioned at the outset, this is a reminder that we’re all under surveillance 24/7, and that while God’s surveillance is done lovingly and with good intent, the other surveillance is not. We need to be aware not only of the layers and levels of surveillance, but also in the crucial differences between them. God only should we fear (with zero exceptions), but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be aware (and wary) of what the unholy entities are up to and the kind of dirt they may or may not have on us. God doesn’t want us to be naïve about this but to understand it as a spiritual fact of life and to deal with it accordingly. A rankling conscience signifies the need for repentance, and repentance should never be delayed.
A third artificial level of near-constant surveillance has grown up over the past few decades that involves digital technology. For quality, it trails at a significant distance behind the other two surveillance layers and is more opportunistic than benevolent or malicious, but still, it’s there, and we should be aware of it.
Technology, as a tool, can never be good or evil: It simply exists. How the technology is applied determines whether its use is for good or for evil. Unfortunately, most of the technology being applied today is more the intrusive, snitching, and exploitative variety, clearly demonstrating which layer of spiritual surveillance is behind its inspiration and privacy-defying application.
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The tl;dr of this article is to be aware of the constant surveillance, but not to be paranoid about it. Cling to God and heed his advice, even if it doesn’t make sense to you at the time or is the polar opposite of what you feel like doing. Know that your prayer time with God (which should be all the time) is just between you and him and that your thoughts are also only shared with God. The constant presence of God is meant to be a comfort (Jesus promised us he would send the Comforter), so receive it as such. As for the other two layers of surveillance, be aware of them and maybe even be grateful for them, “for we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
NOAH’S NEIGHBOURS AND THE ELEPHANTS IN THE ROOM
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 7, 2024 – During the long slow decline of Judaism, in the years between the rebuilding of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile and the coming of Jesus the Christ, the enemies of the children of Israel would get elephants drunk, poke their feet with sticks to enrage them, and then send them rampaging into Jewish towns and villages, trailed by enemy soldiers. These “war elephants” were styled after those used by Hannibal in his battles against the Romans and were considered a superweapon for their sheer size and weight alone. Not meaning to kill, the otherwise docile giants couldn’t help but cause death and destruction in their drunken fury. Tolkien’s mumakils are based on these beasts.
The human capacity to twist the natural use of God’s creation into unnatural and evil purposes seemingly has no bounds, which is why God on occasion issues a Time Out. These may take the form of a flood or world-wide war or genocidal event whose intent is to reset human desire back to basic survival mode. Ravaged by destructive forces, the blood-thirsty quickly devolve into the just plain thirsty who spend their days looking for potable water and scraps of food rather than plotting revenge. The famished, sick, and freezing, as both Hannibal and Hitler found out too late, make for poor soldiers.
If the current level of excessive twisting of God’s creation is any indication, we’re long overdue for a Time Out. Perhaps we’re already in the midst of one, but instead of a flood of water, it’s a flood of euphemistically labeled “newcomers” pouring over the borders of former Christian nations; instead of a declared war, it’s an invasion of military-aged males with military-grade experience masquerading as asylum seekers.
But have no doubt, we’ve earned these interlopers. They’re a reward, not a test or imposition: a reward. We collectively had them coming after we consistently, resolutely, and proudly turned away from God and embraced the ungodly. Given free reign to choose, we showed by our choices that we wanted a world without God, and he’s now in the process of giving it to us.
There are now so many drunken rampaging elephants in the room, it’s impossible to ignore them let alone avoid them. We see them coming but are warned to unsee them; we try to unsee them but succeed only at seeing them all the more. We are by turns drowning and being trampled, with no safe haven but under the shadow of God’s Hand.
And so we scurry under here and crouch, panting and wounded. We dare not venture beyond these confines, even after our breathing has calmed and our bleeding has stopped. Here is where we need to stay, aware of the carnage happening all around us but just as aware that we can do nothing to stop it. Earned rewards cannot be stopped, though they can be mitigated while there’s still time.
Is there still time? Can the floods be rerouted and the elephants made docile again? Can we lure these great beasts out of the room and back into the jungles where they belong? Is there still time to mitigate the damage and recalculate our rewards, or is it already too late?
How much time did Sodom have?
How much time did Noah’s neighbours have?
Is this a Time Out or a Time’s Up?
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I see and am commanded (not by God) to unsee, but I only take my Commands from God.
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A PALE HORSE
What the world says:
The rider emerged from the river on a dappled grey horse at the Trocadero at the base of the iconic and resplendent Eiffel Tower. A parade of flag bearers from all countries assembled behind the rider as they walked together through the streets of Paris to raise the Olympic flag and sing the Olympic anthem.
It was magnificent and humbling.
What the Bible says:
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
WHEN BLASPHEMY COMES CALLING
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 28, 2024 – In light of what’s been going on at the 2024 Olympic games in Paris, just a timely reminder that Jesus told his followers to be offended in nothing.
He also taught us to love our enemies.
Paul cautioned us to repay evil with good, which is another way of saying to love your enemies.
Outrage and finger-pointing only fuel the hatred, piling hate on hate, which is precisely what the devil wants us to do and expects us to do. Outrage is what the devil is aiming for with his provocations: Don’t give into him.
How the world and the worldly church respond to evil is their business, but we’ve been taught differently. As followers of Jesus, we’re to be offended in nothing and to love our enemies by praying for them, wishing them well, and blessing them in any way we can.
That is our calling as born-again believers and our sacred duty as children of God.
Repaying evil with good and hate with love is also the highest form of spiritual warfare, but it can only be done with God’s help. If you’re struggling to love your enemies (and make no mistake; they are your enemies), ask God to help you. Moses repeatedly fell on his face before God, begging him to forgive the sins of his people. Jesus said of those crucifying him: “Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.” We need to do the same.
God will judge both the quick and the dead; we’re not to judge. God will deal with our enemies in his time and in his way, just as he deals with each one of us. In the meantime, we’re to love and pray for our enemies without question and without caring what the world (or the worldly church) thinks of us. Where they see weakness and foolishness, God sees strength and righteousness.
We are to repay evil with good; as for blasphemy, we’re to respond with prayer and a kind word.
That’s our job as God’s ministers.
Just a timely reminder.
ON THE GREAT TRIBULATION AND DRAWING LINES
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 27, 2024 – God is good at drawing lines. He does it all the time. He drew a line between the children of Abraham and everyone else, and then between the children of Israel and everyone else. Prior to that, he drew a line between what was acceptable in the Garden of Eden and what wasn’t, and what wasn’t acceptable in the Garden was unceremoniously expelled. A similar line was drawn between the pre-Flood and post-Flood eras, and between pre-Sodom and post-Sodom (that is, Sodom and no Sodom, respectively).
Then there’s the biggest line God’s drawn thus far, which is the line between everything before Jesus and everything since Jesus, which we know as the Old Testament and New Testament times or the dividing of time into BC and AD. Shortly after that line was drawn, the second temple was destroyed and all of Judaism with it.
I mention lines because there’s a big one in the offing, again to be drawn by God. I’m talking about the line between the end of the pre-tribulation era (what Jesus called the “beginning of sorrows”) and the start of the Great Tribulation. It’s mentioned in the book of Daniel and in the book of Joel. Jesus also talked about it in the Gospels, as did John in his book of Revelation. That line, when it’s drawn, will be the penultimate line. The final line will herald God’s Judgement on the world and its complete annihilation.
But that line – the final one – may still be a long time coming. Only God knows when it will be drawn. The line I want to talk about now is the one that comes before that line, the one that divides the beginning of sorrows from the Great Tribulation, because when that line is drawn, there’ll be no more conversions.
As born-again believers, we need to be aware of when there’ll be no more conversions, as it will be a pivotal point in the evolution of our Church. It will change how we interface with the world and with each other. The Church proper began with the conversion of the disciples on the morning of Pentecost, ten days after Jesus’ ascension. That was the first time that God’s Holy Spirit was given to believers upon rebirth as a constant indwelling presence. And just as suddenly, unexpectedly, and definitively, God’s Holy Spirit will one day cease to be given, and only those who already have God’s Spirit will retain God’s Spirit. Everyone else will retain one or more of the various fallen spirits of the world.
I have not made a secret of my wanting to go home at God’s earliest possible convenience. In that, I’m like Jesus when he said to his disciples: “How long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you?”, only you’re not my disciples and I don’t mean you personally. I just mean I want to go home as badly as Jesus did. I want to go home not only because of what God’s shown me awaits me in Heaven, but because of the horrors that will be unleashed on Earth once God draws that penultimate line between the beginning of sorrows and the Great Tribulation, and there are no more conversions.
Jesus talks about that time as the worst that’s ever been or ever will be. John in Revelation provides a few more details, none of which would make me want to prolong my stay, if I were still here. After each of the horrors is unleashed, the unbelieving survivors, instead of repenting and turning back to God, curse him instead, as if Job’s wife were hissing in their ears, egging them on. But the few believers who do remain will have to be like Job, ever faithful in their suffering and not giving into the temptation to just “curse God, and die”.
There’s a false teaching that’s gained steady traction over the years regarding conversions that will be made throughout the Great Tribulation period, right up until the time that Jesus comes back for his Church. These conversions will not happen because there will be no more conversions after the start of the Great Tribulation. There will be believers, but no new believers, and the Church will continue to dwindle in size, likely all the way down to or below the original number that it was on the day of Pentecost, which was somewhere in the vicinity of 3,000 souls. When Jesus asked: “When the son of man returns, will he find faith on earth?”, he meant for us to seriously consider the implications of that question.
Nowhere in the book of Revelation does it say that anyone repents after the seventh seal is opened and the first trumpet is blown. Nowhere in Jesus’ narratives in any of the Gospels regarding the time of what Jesus calls “great tribulation” does he mention conversions. What he does talk about is the necessity for believers to patiently endure to the end. What he does mention is the proliferation of highly seductive false teachers and false messiahs, implying an accompanying proliferation of highly convincing false conversions and false proselytizing, all leading to an end-times globalized false church.
We’re already, as a Church, neck-deep in false teachers, false messiahs, and false converts. In fact, the entire worldly church, which sprang up like a weed around the True Branch probably the very next day after the Church was planted at Pentecost, is premised on false teachings and false conversions. These, 300 years later, were supercharged into overdrive by the pagan Constantine, when he founded what eventually grew into a pearl-clutching version of the Holy Roman Empire, renamed the Holy Roman Church and its protestant and orthodox offshoots.
We are safe inside the line God has drawn separating his True Church from the worldly church – the Kingdom from the world – but that doesn’t mean we aren’t exposed to the false church’s seducing lies. God permits us to be exposed even as he protects us behind his firmly drawn line because tests must be conducted and loyalties measured. How else are we to solidify and affirm our place and positions in Heaven? It is not and has never been enough simply to state: “I believe” and then to live our lives indistinguishable from the rest of the world, other than for some strategically placed Christian-themed bling. As the adage goes, “talk is cheap”, which is why tests of faith are necessary.
Jesus makes a very clear distinction between the time he calls the beginning of sorrows and the time he describes as the worst there ever was. These are two very distinct time periods, divided by a line drawn by God himself. In describing these two distinct periods, Jesus cautions us that many will try to convince us that the time of great tribulation has already arrived. He tells us to beware these people and not to follow them or be seduced by their rhetoric. In today’s terms, they’re the breathless “Jesus is coming back soon!” crowd or those who are constantly drawing parallels between world events and the mark of the beast or the rise of the anti-Christ. Not being born-again, they’re inhabited and informed by seducing spirits whose sole purpose is to lure believers away, to mislead and misguide us, and ultimately to humiliate and demoralize us into forsaking God.
When God draws that line between the beginning of sorrows and the Great Tribulation, there will be no more conversions, but there will still be a testing of the remnant Church and a falling away of some. Being sealed by God means you have God’s Spirit within you and are protected by God; it doesn’t mean you have an automatic ticket to Heaven. I wish it did, but it doesn’t. We are vulnerable to losing God’s grace right up until our final breath here, otherwise Jesus wouldn’t have advised us to “endure to the end”. He didn’t say “endure until you’re reborn” or “endure until the first trumpet is blown”, he said “endure to the end”. Our hardest tests will come at the end of our time here on Earth, as they did for Jesus. And then our own line will be drawn, the one that God will draw specially for each of us, his children – the line separating us from this life and the one to come.
But our work here is not yet done. We all need to be reminded of this every now and then, just as we need to be reminded to take a break from our labours every now and then. Jesus took breaks, and so should we. But we should never feel that we can retire from active duty and rest on our laurels. The time for rest is not yet, not for us. We don’t rest here. We’ll rest when we get Home.
I do not want to be here when the Great Tribulation begins. It’s bad enough living through the age of the beginning of sorrows, which the world has been in now for a while. The demons are growing ever bolder with the passage of years, and every passing of a believer is shrinking the size of our Church. We need to be very careful not to take God’s grace and protection for granted, but to assiduously, and with what Paul called “fear and trembling”, treat everyone – not just believers – as we would want to be treated, especially and particularly in our thoughts. This is true spiritual warfare. Jesus said that treating others as we would want to be treated is the summation of Holy scripture. In that, as in everything else, we need to take Jesus at his word.
When the line is drawn and the conversions stop, the hardest of all tests will begin for the remnant of God’s Church still on Earth. Pray, as Jesus urged us, not for a long and prosperous life in the here and now but to endure to the end and to be called Home before that horror show begins.
GENUINE BELIEF IS BASED ON GENUINE REBIRTH
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 27, 2024 – When I was born-again from atheism, I believed before I realized I believed. I didn’t listen to arguments either for or against the existence of God or the messiahship of Jesus and then make a conscious decision to believe. I died and came back to life: I died not believing and came back to life believing.
How is this possible?
Belief is only possible through the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit. There is no other way to genuinely believe than through God’s Spirit. You can say you believe, but unless you’re genuinely born-again, your “belief” is premised on your adopted, adapted, absorbed, and accumulated knowledge, not on belief – that is, your false sense of belief is premised on what you’ve learned, not on what you are.
Genuine spiritual rebirth engenders belief as a (what philosophers call) first principle. Wherever God’s Holy Spirit dwells, there is belief unshakeable because it’s sourced in the presence of God’s Spirit rather than in accumulated human knowledge.
I, as a born-again believer, believe not because I’ve chosen to believe or want to believe or learned to believe, but because I cannot not believe. It is impossible for me, with the presence of God’s Holy Spirit in me (which is the very definition of being born-again), not to believe because I am perceiving my life through the lens of God’s Holy Spirit, and God’s Holy Spirit has no doubt.
Before I believed, that is, before I was born-again, the spirits of the world lived in me and reigned over me, and I perceived my life through their crooked and dirty lenses. At that time, I doubted. In fact, all I did was doubt. I believed in nothing because the spirits of the world are not premised on belief: they’re premised on anti-belief. They cannot believe because they do not and will never (in the truest sense of the word) have the presence of God’s Holy Spirit in them. Without God’s Spirit in them, they cannot believe; they can only doubt. This is why the world, which is full of these doubting spirits, is constantly roiled in chaos.
I write this for born-again believers. You know that your belief is sourced not in your own accumulated knowledge or in a decision of your will but in God’s Holy Spirit indwelling you. You know this spiritual fact more than you know your name, your sex, or your nationality. Your belief is unshakeable because it’s not built on the shifting sands of accumulated knowledge but is an expression of the presence of God’s Holy Spirit in you. This cannot be understood by those who are not born-again because they are not perceiving life through the lens of God’s Spirit; they are perceiving it through the spirits of the world, which by very definition dwell in doubt and cannot believe.
So when Jesus says that you need to believe in him to be saved, he is in fact saying that you need to be born-again to be saved, as there is no genuine belief without genuine rebirth. The genuineness of a rebirth is evidenced by the presence of God’s Holy Spirit in a soul, turning a doubter into a believer.
I believe not because of anything I did or wanted but because of what God did within me.
WAYNE HANKEY: IN MEMORIAM
“But if you will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places….” (Jeremiah 13:17)
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 27, 2024 – Yesterday was the first time I’d been to his library, and the last thing I expected to see when I walked through the door was a teapot. It was part of a display of fine porcelain that I didn’t bother to investigate any further, it seemed so out of place and yet so apropos for the man who had given birth to the library all those years ago. In fact, a teapot was one of the main things I remember about him – how he would hold a tall silver one aloft while parading a procession of young men to his rooms after lectures, like a pied piper in flowing academic robes.
They would always trail behind him, those chosen few, at what you might call a respectful distance. And it was always young men, never young women. From my third-storey perch in the empty lecture hall, looking down, I could see him pontificating on one point or another and the young men listening in silence, as if afraid to interject or respond. So many were afraid of him for no reason. A big personality is no reason to fear someone.
I liked Hankey. I didn’t know him on a personal level, but our few interchanges as student and professor, reader and librarian, examiner and examinee, were cordial and professional. I also felt that he was kind to me during our brief conversations. I respected his rank and role, and knowing he didn’t like women in “that way”, I kept my feminine wiles to myself when I was around him. Being female, I don’t think I made much of an impression on him one way or another. I doubt that he even knew my name.
He was a local boy who’d “made good” through membership in the old boys’ club. That aspect of him I didn’t know about until after I was reborn, long after I’d finished university. The few times I attended mass at St. Mary’s Basilica in Halifax as a new Christian, I would see him sitting up at the front with others in the club who attended mass as an agreed-upon condition of their club benefits. Once or twice our eyes met, but he showed no flicker of recognition. I remember wondering why he was even at a Catholic mass, as I was sure he was an Anglican minister. Only later, when the scandal went mainstream just before he died, did I learn that he’d been defrocked by the Anglicans and quietly embraced by the Catholics.
The silence that met his untimely (or some may call it very opportunistically well-timed) death lingers to this day. Even after two and a half years, there’s been no university memorial service, no public occasion of mourning. The usual outpouring of accolades for a man who’d held near-celebrity status on campus for decades has been entirely absent. The reported cause of death has also been vague, though there is some speculation it had something to do with his heart. His body had grown as large as his personality in his later years, so even the offhand mention of “heart” by someone in the media was sufficient for most to nod a silent “oh” and question no further, thinking it must indeed have been his heart that had done him in.
I can only imagine all the sleeping dogs that heaved a huge sigh of relief at the news of his death, the dirt piles under their rug safe once more from public scrutiny.
This is what I remember about Wayne Hankey – a booming voice that preached God to me as a wide-eyed undergrad atheist; an ornate silver teapot held high and steaming; long flowing academic robes fluttering in the breeze; one library lorded over and another given birth to; and a gaggle of young men perpetually trailing behind him. From this you can see that I didn’t really know him, not personally and not academically, but someone has to say something. Someone has to say: He lived. He made his mark. He imprinted on people. He was and still is part of our lives. And as such, he deserves a kind word on parting, regardless of his alleged crimes.
Even Satan got a mention in the Gospels.
The official silence around Wayne Hankey’s death is not right. I know that those in the club have been silenced and are afraid to say anything, but I have no such muzzle and I don’t share their fear.
And so, being free, I shout from the rooftops:
THANK GOD FOR THE GOOD THAT WAYNE HANKEY DID IN HIS LIFETIME!
THANK GOD FOR HIS MANY KINDNESSES!
HE WAS LARGER THAN LIFE AND TRULY ONE-OF-KIND!
I LIKED HIM.
HE WILL BE MISSED.
Charlotte Creamer (FYP 1983-84)
WHEN THE WORLD PRESSURES US TO SIN
HALIFAX, N.S., July 22, 2024 – Jesus once famously stated that “the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath”.
The same could be said of the Commandments.
The Ten Commandments were made for man, not man for the Commandments. God gave us the Ten Commandments not as a burden but as a support, not as a barrier to living as we choose but as a guide to be applied in our everyday lives and especially in moments of temptation and pressure from the world.
As such, the Ten Commandments are a gift, not a curse, and should be cherished and adhered to and applied every day, not just carted out and quoted on certain occasions. They are a gift not only for their invaluable guidance but also because they assure us – with God’s full backing and endorsement – that we never need to compromise, not for anything or anyone, and not under any circumstance.
Pressure to break a Commandment is a temptation that we should never give into because we don’t have to give into it. That assurance is writ in stone by the very hand of God.
I read an article this morning on mainstream Canadian media about ordained Christian ministers getting involved in the state-sanctioned and state-enabled suicide ritual known as “MAID” (medical assistance in dying). When I say “involved”, I mean their presence was requested by the patient or the patient’s family for spiritual support during the suicide ritual.
For clarification purposes, genuinely spiritually supporting someone who is actively and unrepentantly committing suicide means doing everything you can to persuade that person not to commit suicide. Anything else is aiding, abetting, (and worse) condoning sin, which is not something a Christian minister should be doing. Suicide is self-murder, and the Commandment forbids murder of oneself or others. This Commandment is as clear-cut as every other Commandment. MAID is murder, not just suicide, and everyone who signs off on it or is present during the murder/suicide and doesn’t try to persuade the person not to commit suicide is guilty of murder.
Even so, how those who reject God and his Commandments perceive MAID is not our business. It is not our business, as born-again believers and citizens of God’s Kingdom, to impose our views on the world. Jesus never imposed his views on the world, but he also never cowed from stating his opinions on any matter when asked. We, his followers, should follow his example in this as in all things.
Jesus also told us that the world is under the administrative authority of Satan, as directed and sanctioned by God, so we’re not to intervene in the laws the world passes. They are worldly laws that have nothing to do with us and frankly we need to mind our own business when it comes to the passing and upholding of these laws. We should be aware of them, yes, but not try to strike them down or petition against them. State our opinion on the matter? Certainly, when requested or directed by God. But otherwise, we should let the world be.
Worldly laws (like MAID) exist because God has permitted them to exist, in the same way he permitted Moses to introduce bills of divorce – because people are so hard-hearted against God and his Commandments. Laws like MAID and divorce are not meant for children of God – that is, those who are reborn of God’s Holy Spirit. Laws like MAID and divorce are meant for those who are children of Satan – that is, those who are not reborn of God’s Spirit and instead have the spirit(s) of the world in them. This, sadly, includes most ordained Christian ministers these days.
If someone asks your support or presence during a planned breaking of a Commandment, you respectfully refuse to give your support or to be present. That is your duty and your right as a born-again believer. Or you can agree to be present, but only with the expressed intent to intervene – through persuasion and prayer only – to prevent the Commandment from being broken. You never, under any circumstance, condone the act of breaking of a Commandment, but you also should never attempt to force compliance with a Commandment or threaten someone into compliance. Jesus never did.
The freedom of an individual’s will is unconditional in this realm, and we need to respect people’s right to choose as much as God respects their right to choose, which is unconditionally. Still, if we’re requested to attend a planned breaking of a Commandment, we need to state our position on the matter unequivocally and unapologetically. We should never, and I repeat NEVER, be knowingly complicit in the breaking of a Commandment just because we’re asked to do so, whether in our role as a minister of God or not. If we knowingly choose to willingly lend our support in the breaking of a Commandment, the spiritual blowback on us will be enormous and may even result in our eternal damnation.
This is how important the Commandments are but also how important it is that we honor people’s free will. Pray for those whose stated plan is to break a Commandment, but also keep in mind that being present during the planned breaking of the Commandment – other than in an openly adversarial role – is support for the breaking. That is a spiritual fact.
The Commandments are a gift from God that we need to apply every day in our lives. The world may tempt us or pressure us into breaking them, but we can stand firm in the knowledge that we have God’s full backing to uphold the Commandments under every circumstance, regardless of the worldly consequences.
I would rather be punished by the world for upholding the Commandments than punished by God for breaking them.
PRAYING THE WITCH AWAY: SPIRITUAL WARFARE FOR BORN-AGAIN BELIEVERS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 14, 2024 – Someone contacted me the other day, wondering what could be done about a witch in the family. I had written about this dilemma a few months ago, and my answer remains the same: You continue being a follower of Jesus. That’s how you deal with a witch in the family.
What does being a follower of Jesus mean? You live the Gospel teachings.
What are the Gospel teachings? Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; treat others as you want to be treated; love your enemies; and keep the Commandments.
Keep the Commandments. All of them. Especially the one about honoring your mother and father, keeping in mind that honoring means to be respectful of them in your words, deeds, and thoughts. If you have issues with your mother and father, you take them to God, not to your minister or random strangers on the internet or “health professionals” or friends, neighbours, relatives, or spouses. You take your issues to God and God only, in prayer, and ask God to help you keep the Commandment.
Spiritual warfare isn’t waving crosses around and dousing the offending person in holy water. Spiritual warfare is being kind to people who are unkind to you – kind to them in your thoughts as well as in your deeds. Being kind to them in your thoughts is the most difficult and highest level of spiritual warfare, but also precisely the level of warfare that we’ve been called and equipped to do as born-again believers.
Spiritual warfare is also helping people who come to you in sincerity looking for help. For those people, God will give you the means, wisdom, and wherewithal to help them. But like the person who contacted me about the witch in his family, the people coming to you for help might not always want to hear let alone heed your advice. They will probably want immediate action to end the offending behaviour, but that’s not what the Gospel teaches us. We don’t wave a magic wand and make everything nice and good in an instant. That’s not what we’re called to do. We respect other people’s free will to make the choices they make; we don’t have to respect their choices if they choose against God, but we do have to respect their free will. God does.
We also need to remember that prayer (which should always be our default in every situation, whether good or bad) is not talking to God but talking with God. If you’re not hearing from God (that is, if your conversation is one-sided), you’re not praying, you’re petitioning. You can petition God all you want, in the same way as you can send someone a letter in the mail when you instead could just visit them in person. Prayer is visiting God in person.
As a born-again believer, you should always visit God in person. Jesus sacrificed himself so you could do that.
Once upon a time a long time ago, I was the witch in the family. My grandmother prayed for me without telling me she was praying for me, and she did so for nearly 36 years. That’s a long time to be praying for someone while seeing the someone you’re praying for get progressively worse and worse. My grandmother didn’t confront me or throw holy water on me or wave crosses at me: She simply was kind to me in all her interactions with me and prayed for me with a grandmother’s heart, in her room with her door closed, not announcing it.
God showed me all this after I was born-again; that is, he explained it to me after I was born-again, because although I’d seen evidence of it at the time, I hadn’t understood what was being done behind the scenes, being blind and deaf and dumb as I was.
We don’t get to the top of the mountain by flying there; we can’t fly there, because we don’t have wings. We get to the top of the mountain by walking there step by step, prayer by prayer, kind thought by kind thought, helping hand by helping hand, prayer by prayer by prayer by prayer.
The world is under Satan. God made the world and then put it under Satan’s administrative authority. All those who aren’t God’s people are Satan’s. There is no third option. With the majority of the world being under Satan’s administrative authority (with God’s permission), it’s no wonder that we all now have at least one witch in the family, likely more. But the answer isn’t to rant at them or warn them of their coming perdition if they don’t change their ways: They’ll be too blind, deaf, and dumb to hear you, like I was when I was a witch. Pray for them. Treat others as you want to be treated. Love your enemies. Keep the Commandments.
Being a follower of Jesus rarely involves grand gestures in the worldly realm of Satan; the grand gestures take place behind the scenes – in God’s realm in your prayer closet and in your heart, soul, and mind.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 