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“ARE YOU HAPPY?”
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 19, 2021 – It’s a strange thing for me, as a former atheist, to hear about someone who is a self-described “former Christian”.
I cannot imagine life without Jesus and God. What I mean to say is that there is no life outside of Jesus and God. Without them, all you do is stumble from one disaster to the next, one drink to the next, one obsession to the next, never really understanding why things are the way they are or why your life is so full of pain. And so you look for an explanation by blaming others or political systems or (worst of all) yourself. Without Jesus and God, there is no real peace and no real joy, because the presence of Jesus and God, through God’s Holy Spirit, is the sole source of happiness. Jesus called this a “wellspring” surging up inside you that never runs dry.
So when I hear about people who claim to be former Christians, I can only assume they were never Christians to begin with. Because having been a born-again adult for nearly the same length of time as I was an atheist adult, I’m able to compare the two states of being, and there is no way I would give up being a Christian. There is nothing that anyone could offer me to stop being a Christian – no amount of money, and no degree of threat. And yes, I will likely be tested on this (and I pray to God that I’ll hold my spiritual ground when the time comes), but on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being miserable and 10 being happy, I easily rate my born-again years as a solid 10 and my godless years, sadly, as a 1.
It’s not that there weren’t occasional flashes of something approaching happiness when I was an atheist. I found a certain measure of peace walking through the woods or along a shoreline. Sometimes I would find that same fleeting peace roaming deserted city streets at night or, oddly enough, in a library. Reading was my main escape from the omnipresent emotional pain of my atheist years, along with men, booze, travel, and learning about things (that is, learning about everything except God). I was perpetually chasing one lust after the other, one enthusiasm after the other, hoping for I don’t even know what, maybe some kind of resolution or eureka moment when “the truth” would suddenly burst into view, or someone would tenderly confirm that I had value beyond the fading desirability of my youth.
When you’re young and outwardly confident, as I was as an unbeliever, things come to you easily. People bend to you. When you mess up, they make allowances for you. You get second chances, and then third chances. I was always an exception to the rule; whatever charm I had, I worked it, and it worked well for me, or so I thought at the time. I rode the heady wave of pride, thinking I had it all figured out, thinking I could get whatever or whoever I wanted just by sheer force of will. But waves have troughs as well as crests, and all waves eventually come crashing down on a shoreline somewhere, leaving nothing behind but a bit of froth and a few bubbles.
I mention these things not because I remember my atheist years fondly (I definitely do not), but because I cannot fathom on any level that someone would consciously want to give up being born-again. Being in God’s Kingdom is exactly as Jesus says it is – the pearl of such great value that you sell everything you have to buy it, or the treasure that you hide in a field and then sell everything to buy that field so you can possess the treasure forever. Being born-again, you unhesitatingly give up everything in exchange for the presence of God’s Spirit, because there is nothing of greater value on Earth. Nothing comes close. My worst day of being a believer is still leaps and bounds better than my best day of being an unbeliever.
Do I still get sad as a Christian? Of course I do. I still have free will and emotions. People can still hurt me, and I can still do stupid things and hurt myself. But instead of running to a bottle or to other people for comfort when I get sad, or running into the woods or down to the ocean, I run to God and am healed in an instant. As an atheist, it took me days, months, or even years to get over things, and some wounds festered for decades until I was finally healed at my rebirth.
So you see, I’ve seen life from both sides – as an unbeliever and a believer. As an atheist, I was afforded all the privileges of youth, while as a believer, those privileges are long gone. But if I had all those privileges of youth as an atheist, why was I so miserable? Even more mysteriously, if I no longer have those youthful privileges as a believer, why am I so happy? Am I crazy? Certainly, there are those who knew me as an atheist and who see me now who think I’m crazy, because I’m cheerful without apparent cause. No-one can have as little as I have materially and still be happy. Right?
There was a professor in university I was inordinately fond of (to put it politely). When I was no longer his student, I wrote him a long letter, to which he responded with a few lines of pleasantries, ending with the (for me at the time) jarring question: “Are you happy?” It was an odd inquiry, given our history, and I remember being angered by it. In writing to him, I had hoped to reignite something, not discuss “happiness”, which was to me at that time a thing of little value.
That was a long time ago. I still have the letter somewhere, though I haven’t read it for years. I think if I received such a letter (or one like it) today, I would be thrilled that someone took the time to write to me, and so grateful for the extension of kindness underlying the pleasantries. As for the very pointed question at the end, I would immediately have grabbed a pen and piece of paper and scribbled in response: “Yes, yes I’m happy! Thank you so much for asking! And I hope you’re happy, too!”
These words I could never have written with any sincerity as an unbeliever, though as a believer not to write them would be a lie.
Yes, I am happy. I have been happy since the day I was born again over 20 years ago. This simple fact would have been unfathomable to me as an unbeliever. The presence of God’s Spirit makes you happy. Happiness that endures through decades is not craziness; it’s “evidence of things unseen”.
Which is why I cannot understand why someone would want to be a “former Christian”. Why would you give up the pearl of great price or the eternal treasure buried in your field? There is nothing in the world that comes close to being born-again. God’s Holy Spirit is the greatest of all treasures, which is why Jesus turned down the temptation to own “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them” in exchange for giving up God. Think about it – Jesus was offered EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD and the power that goes with having everything in the world, and he turned it all down because the presence of God’s Spirit was of greater value.
We born-agains live every moment of our lives with God’s Spirit. How incomprehensibly blessed we are! “All the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them” still fall short in value to what each of us has inside of us here and now, and to what God has promised us if we stay the course to the end. Those who are genuinely born-again would NEVER give this up.
We need to reaffirm what it means to be a Christian.
THIS GENERATION’S HARD FORK: THE GREAT RESET
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 18, 2021 – Ours is a history of hard forks in the road.
It stretches all the way back to the time outside of time when God separated light from darkness and saw that the light was good.
From there, one hard fork followed another, each one following the Light, each one following the Good.
From Adam, who was the fork in the road separating mankind from the rest of creation, came Eve, who was the fork that enabled mankind to continue his kind.
Then came the hard fork out of Adam and Eve’s home in the Garden of Eden and the start of the long trek towards Heaven.
Noah was the hard fork out of a fallen world to a renewed one, Abraham the hard fork out of heathen nations to a Hebrew one, Joseph the hard fork into Egypt as a safe haven, and Jacob the hard fork birthing the nation of Israel.
Centuries later, Moses hard-forked the nation of Israel out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, King David’s hard fork established the throne of the messiah, and Jesus took upon himself the hard fork of all hard forks that continues to this day, ushering in God’s Kingdom on Earth.
For the past 2000 years, since the coming of the Kingdom, the hard forks have consistently separated those who genuinely follow Jesus from those who don’t. Jesus’ first followers hard-forked from those who rejected him and became Christians; within the geopolitical realm of Christendom that evolved from the Holy Roman Empire, genuine Christians hard-forked and became Protestants; within Protestantism, genuine believers hard-forked and became various smaller denominations; from which individuals, time and time again, hard-forked into home churches and ministries, wanting only to follow Jesus rather than the doctrines of men.
Today, we face yet another monumental hard fork in the road. Through an unrelenting world-wide campaign of media-induced fear, coupled with the controlled demolition of economies, livelihoods and cultures, those who maneuver governments from behind the scenes have laid the groundwork for a “great reset”. But it won’t only be the economies, livelihoods and cultures that are reset – no, it will be us, or better said, mankind. And those who refuse to go along with the reset will initially be shut out of society (just as those who refuse to wear masks are now shut out) and then forcibly relocated to isolation facilities until they change their mind. Those who continue to oppose the reset will be deemed public security risks and locked up indefinitely, or killed.
This is the hard fork in the road that we now approach. The wide path follows the so-called great reset, and the narrow path follows Jesus. Like most of the other hard forks, the narrow path will be difficult and few will choose it. Of those few, even fewer will follow it to the end.
Satan has not much changed either his aims or his tactics since the Garden of Eden when he tempted Eve by promising her that eating something that appeared to be good would make her better. The great reset likewise appears to be good and is promising to make us better, but at what cost?
Eve took the bait and lost Paradise.
Satan has not much changed either his aims or his tactics, and our outcome will be the same as Eve’s if we take the bait now.
ENEMIES WITHIN
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 18, 2021 – Christians are constantly bombarded with propaganda about their “enemies”, which we are led to believe are unbelievers (or what used to be called heathens). What I find interesting is that Jesus never had anything to do with unbelievers. He rarely mentioned them and he never tried converting them. He simply let them be.
There’s no indication in scripture that Jesus considered unbelievers to be his enemies. He didn’t rail against the Roman occupying forces. He didn’t chastise the Romans for their pagan beliefs. Again, he just let them be because he didn’t see them as his enemies. Had he considered them his enemies, he would have said so, but he didn’t. They were of no concern to him.
On the other hand, Jesus was very clear about who he considered to be his enemies: He said our worst enemies are those under our own roof. In saying that, he wasn’t referring only to people who physically live under our roof, but to those who are (or say they are) closest to us in professed belief.
After all, it wasn’t Pontius Pilate who condemned Jesus to death; it was the temple elders, the religious powers-that-be in Jerusalem at the time, who demanded that Jesus be crucified. Pilate, the pagan, found nothing in Jesus’ behavior that warranted execution and was resolved to let him go, but the temple elders of the Sanhedrin wanted Jesus dead. These were some of the same men Jesus had dined with on occasion and debated with on the streets and in the synagogues and temple. He was not a stranger to them, nor they to him. They were all children of Israel and children of Abraham, supposedly professing the same beliefs as Jesus, but that was clearly not the case when they had him arrested, tortured, and then crucified.
Another group constantly getting the finger pointed at them as “enemies” are the demonic (unholy) spirits. These unseen but still very potent beings have been blamed for everything from lost car keys to mass murder, but at no point are they actually to blame. Demonic spirits, under God’s guidance and with God’s permission, can tempt, but they cannot coerce; they can do what is asked of them or is permitted by God, but they cannot do anything of their own free will because they no longer have free will. Demonic spirits have no power or agency of their own; they only have what God gives them: in other words, they can only do God’s will.
Note that Jesus never once blamed the unholy spirits for any of his problems. He spent a good deal of time casting them out of people (the demons were entirely under his authority, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit), but he never told his followers to mount any kind of spiritual warfare against them. Even so, many Christians today ignore Jesus’ example and continue to wage prayer battles against these unseen forces, thinking they are accomplishing something useful by wearing amulets to ward them off or reciting pre-scripted “prayers” as protection.
So, if unbelievers and demons aren’t our enemies, who are?
Our enemies are the same as Jesus’ enemies – namely, those who say they believe, but are either lying or have been deceived into believing lies. Just as Saul (before his conversion) was the disciples’ worst nightmare, our worst nightmare will also be those who believe they are doing God’s will. In other words, our worst enemies are not unbelievers or demons, but people who call themselves Christians.
Remember that Judas Iscariot was one of the twelve. Like Jesus and his genuine followers throughout the ages, we will likely also one day be betrayed by those who say they’re believers. And our response will have to be the same as that of Jesus and all martyrs – to forgive and bless our tormentors, even as they’re killing us.
TEMPTATIONS AND TESTS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 18, 2021 – Your body lives in the world, but your soul lives in God’s Kingdom on Earth.
Your body is constantly tempted by things of the world, but it is your soul that is being tested.
Your body is tempted; your soul is tested.
That is life in the Earthly Kingdom.
Most of the temptations are of the garden variety and involve relatively unimportant things like food, sex, and money. These are things your body may crave but your soul, if you’re born-again, generally ignores. Jesus ate the food that was offered to him, but he didn’t line up for it. He said: “I have meat to eat that you know not of”. Jesus by-passed the sexual aspect in his relationships with women, saying: “Those who are considered worthy of the Kingdom neither marry nor are given in marriage”. Jesus used the money that was given to him, but he didn’t focus on making any. He said: “Render onto Caesar the things that are Caesars, and unto God the things that are God’s”.
These temptations of food, sex, and money are of low importance in the Kingdom. You are expected to want what your body wants, but not to be driven by those desires. You should limit them by God’s Commandments, and if you don’t, you’ll suffer for it. You’ll know what I mean when it happens to you (and yes, I speak from experience).
Your emotions, on the other hand, are not garden-variety temptations. Your emotions, and the actions that result from them, may very well be the things that get you condemned, even if you are born-again.
We live in an age where raw emotional expression is strongly encouraged and considered a sign of good mental health. Suppressing emotions is now generally frowned upon and “feelings” are deemed of higher importance – even in a court of law – than verifiable facts. However, if you live in the Kingdom, you should beware of your emotions, as most of them are in fact temptations.
You cannot live your life based on your feelings. As a born-again believer, you have the power, through God’s Spirit, to overcome the temptations that sometimes well up and threaten to overcome you. You don’t need to be offended. You don’t need to want revenge. You don’t need to desire something or someone so much that you lose all reason and become obsessed. These are temptations. These are tests. You can learn how to pass all of them.
Here’s how:
When someone insults you, don’t be offended. Paul says if there’s anything good about someone, think about that. Focus on that. Remember only that. Jesus says to love your enemies by blessing them instead of cursing them. You love them simply by blessing and praying for them. You don’t have to like them. The liking part may or may not come later (it usually does). Your job is to choose to forgive, and to choose to bless, and to choose to pray. These are all decisions of your will that you can make even while you continue to dislike the person you’re forgiving, blessing, and praying for. You don’t have to feel like doing these things; you choose to do them. And God will take it from there.
The same with revenge. When you feel the urge to get back at someone either through words or actions, choose to see only the good in them, choose to forgive them, choose to bless them, and choose to pray for them. Again, these are all choices. Simple choices; simple decisions of the will. You probably won’t feel like making these choices, but you’ll do them anyway because you understand that your body is being tempted, and you want your spirit to pass the test.
Obsession means that you’re wallowing in temptation. Obsession means that you’ve been tempted and tempted and tempted and tempted, and each time you’ve given into the temptation and failed the test. By the time you’ve reached the point of obsession, you’re neck-deep in temptation and it’s almost too late for you.
Note that I said “almost” too late. You can still choose not to give into the temptation. No matter how compromised you’ve become, you can still choose not to think or speak or do what you know has no place in the Kingdom. There is still time to make the right choice and pass the test, but not much time. Reaching the stage of obsession is a big red flag that you’re nearing a crisis point that will resolve either in your favour or not in your favour. It’s up to you.
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When we leave one country and enter another, our belongings are usually searched at the border. The authority doing the searching is looking for things that are not permitted to be brought into the country. If some unpermitted thing is found, we are turned away or sometimes even arrested.
The same thing happens when we leave this world, only instead of our luggage being searched, it’s our souls. And if anything is found in them that can’t be brought into Heaven, we’ll be turned away.
Don’t let emotional temptations keep you from getting into Heaven. Failed tests are unrepentant sin. You cannot get into Heaven with unrepentant sin on your soul.
Recognize emotional temptations for what they are. Hatred, revenge, self-pity, manipulation, jealousy, resentment, lust, obsession – these are all temptations. Don’t let them overcome you; overcome them through the power of God’s Holy Spirit. No emotion, no matter how overwhelming, is stronger than you if God is working through you.
Let him.
When temptations goad you into thinking, saying or doing things that you know you shouldn’t, fight back by choosing to see the good, choosing to forgive, choosing to bless, and choosing to pray. That’s how you’ll overcome your temptations and pass your tests, until the day comes when you’re waved through the border, unobstructed, into God’s Heavenly Kingdom.
SAY HIS NAME
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 18, 2021 – Names are important, and the Bible is full of them. I never went to Sunday school as a kid, so I’m just now (“better late than never”, right, Nanny?) memorizing the names of the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 disciples of Jesus. The problem is, the names change spelling, depending on the source; even more confusing, one person can have multiple names, or the same name can be applied to multiple people. (And don’t get me started on ALL THE MARY’S!)
People also underwent name changes when they underwent spiritual transformation. Abram became Abraham, Jacob became Israel, Saul became Paul, Hebrews became Christians. Getting sold into slavery also got you a new name. When Joseph lived among the Egyptians he was called Zaphnathpaaneah, and Daniel among the Babylonians was Belteshazzar.
Names are important. Sometimes they’re so important that angels show up months before a birth to tell you exactly what to call your kid. That happened to John the Baptist’s father and to Jesus’ mother. So much for the element of surprise, but at least it saved the parents the hassle of knitting yellow booties; they just went straight for the blue wool!
When Jesus exorcised demons, he always demanded to know their name, and they had to tell him. They had no choice. Jesus would then speak their name when commanding them to leave (they also had no choice about leaving). Their name became part of the exorcism, because names are important.
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On Earth, there are many other people, both alive and dead, who have the same name as us. In Heaven (if we make it there), we will all have unique names given to us by God. Just as our DNA is unique, as reflected in the one-of-a-kindness of our fingerprints, ears, irises, and every other natural part of us (including our gait and our scent), there will only be one of us in Heaven with that God-given name for all eternity. However, we will not know our name before we arrive in Heaven, so forget about bugging God to know it. I can share from personal experience that he won’t tell you.
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God has nearly an infinite number of names. He reveals some of them in scripture (Heavenly Father, Almighty God, Jehovah, Jah, Jahweh, I Am) which we use publicly, while others he shares with his children privately. In fact, he invites his children to name him in the same way we give pet names to those we love. In this, the power is not so much in the names we choose, but in the force of our love as we speak those names. Jesus called God “Abba”, which is Aramaic for “Father” or better said “Daddy”. It denotes a deeply personal relationship with God not as a “being” who is “out there somewhere” and to be visited only on occasion through formalized rituals, but as someone who is ever-present, intimately known, profoundly loved, and needed on a visceral level. This is how I know God, and I have many names for him that only we know.
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The Christian naming ceremony (called “christening”) used to be a big thing in the Western world. It was combined with infant baptism and occurred around the third week after birth. My parents are Roman Catholic, so when I was three weeks old, they dutifully carried me, godparents and other witnesses in tow, to the church basement to be baptised. However, little did they know that the name they’d chosen for me was not considered “Christian” by the church officials, and so away I was sent, still unbaptised and officially unnamed. Over the next few weeks, my godmother came up with a name that could use my originally chosen moniker as a nick-name. The second trip to the church basement was not done with as much fanfare (no cake that time), but at least I had some water splashed on me and was entered into the church roll of names, where I imagine I still exist, despite my best and ongoing efforts to be excommunicated.
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Many people share the same name. I’ve had the opportunity to meet my name-twin virtually when I started getting emails that were meant for her. I still get some of her emails on occasion and find it amusing when I forward them to her. Our own name is such an intimate identifier of us that to see it applied to someone else can be jarring. Within our own families, we hand down names along with wealth, property, and treasured belongings, but to share the same name with strangers just feels, well, strange.
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Names are important, and the world, like the Bible, is full of them. Even so, God tells us that only one name really matters – the name that we pray in, the name that we come before God in, the name of the Messiah, and the name that is above all names: the name of JESUS.
JESUS THE CARPENTER, THE SON OF GOD
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 31, 2021 – Nothing happens by chance in God’s economy. Free will and divine intervention do not cancel each other out. So it wasn’t just “blind luck” that Jesus was born and raised a carpenter’s son. As his followers, we tend to focus on Jesus as Lord, teacher, Messiah, and Son of God, but before he was all those, he was the son of a carpenter who then grew to become a carpenter in his own right, with all the skills, aptitudes, and duties that come with it.
So I got to thinking about Jesus the son of a carpenter and Jesus the carpenter. Because his father was a carpenter and he the family’s first-born son, Jesus would have been expected to carry on his father’s trade. That meant that Jesus would have grown up trailing around behind his father doing carpentry work. Jesus’ first memories probably involved carpentry, either while the family was still in Egypt or back in Nazareth.
I’m not a carpenter, so to get a better idea of what a carpenter does, I looked up the job description for carpenter online. I was surprised to see that it emphasizes math skills. You need to be good at math and calculations to do carpentry work. You also need to be able to read blueprints and take instruction from supervisors on job specifications, so you need a good memory and the ability to “see” what is not yet there based on someone else’s description and guidance. Carpentry is an intensely physical job. You need to be physically strong, but not like an ox, more like a lion, as carpenters need to crouch, bend, kneel, and stretch, and have good upper-body strength. As well, carpentry requires good hand-eye coordination, the ability to gauge and estimate measurements, and a good sense of balance, with no vertigo tendencies.
Reading about these skills and aptitudes opened up a whole new “Jesus window” for me. Jesus was not only spiritually strong, he was physically strong. He had good upper body strength along with good strong legs that enabled him to carry and place heavy loads and stand for hours while doing his work. He had good hand-eye coordination, good visual acuity, and good balance, like an athlete. He could reckon measurements with his eyes and then translate those measurements into form. His hands would have been calloused, but strong and nimble. How do I know all these things about Jesus? If he hadn’t had those skills and traits, he wouldn’t have been a carpenter.
This was not a weak man. This was not an effeminate man. Jesus was not born the son of a carpenter by chance, but by design. The skills he learned at his father’s side from the time he was old enough to remember were skills that he eventually transferred to his ministry work. Ministry also requires a strong and agile body along with strong faith. Ministry also requires a sharp mind with good reckoning and gauging skills and the ability to see what is not in front of your eyes. And ministry also requires the unwavering ability to take instruction and guidance from God the Ultimate Supervisor, and to ensure a foundation is strong and true before it is built on.
So after I looked up all the traits and skills that are required of a carpenter, I thought about Jesus the Son of God and what he would have brought to the carpentry trade. I thought about how hard he worked at his ministry, often not even stopping for meals or rest, and how everything he did was uncompromising and done to his best ability. I thought about how he was always ministering to the needs of others and spent his nights and days helping whoever came to him for help. I thought about his sharp wit (sharp enough to outwit even the temple elders) and his love for children. I thought about his fondness for wine and good food. I thought about his gentleness and respect towards women, and how he defended them over and over again, whether before a mob or his own disciples. I thought about how he consistently championed the honest and the lowly over the hypocritical and the rich.
And I took all these qualities and traits and fondnesses of Jesus the Son of God and applied them to his carpentry work. And I thought – Oh, to have just one piece that was created by Jesus! It would have been made with such love and to perfection! There would have been no flaws in it, no cut corners. The foundation would have been true, the joints smooth, and the finish like glass. He would have formed it with the same care and meticulousness as if he were making it for God, because that’s how Jesus was, whether as the son of a carpenter or the Son of God: He did everything as if unto God. And he would always have finished his work on time and to specification.
I thought of all the pieces he possibly made – the cups, the plates, the platters, the bowls, the frames for doorways and the doors themselves, the frames for windows and the shutters themselves. I thought about the furniture – the tables, the chairs, the stools, the cupboards. I thought about how he helped build people’s homes and sheds and barns and fences, and how he helped build the tools to build them. I thought about how he learned to hitch animals to the plow and how those animals would have welcomed Jesus’ gentle touch and low murmurs, thinking this human was different from the others. I thought about all the gifts and toys he would have made as surprises for his family and friends, and for the children in the village, because Jesus would not have made things just for money; he would have made them to help people and to make them happy.
Oh, to have just one piece that Jesus made! But those relics of his carpenter years are long gone. Wood, unless petrified, is not meant to last.
And then my mind took a turn, and I thought about Jesus the Son of God and the hastily hacked, crudely assembled wood pieces that were his execution device. I wonder, as he hung on the cross, if he thought about how poorly the wood was cut, and whether his inner carpenter was appalled at the crudeness of the huge nails and how inappropriate their size was to their use. I can see Jesus – not “gentle Jesus, meek and mild”, but strong and capable carpenter Jesus – shaking his head at the poor workmanship he had to suffer in his final hours after all those years of striving for perfection. I wonder if he gave God an earful about that, and if they had a good silent chuckle together, the way only a father and son who love each other without restraint can share a laugh even under the direst of circumstances.
You don’t forget the skills that you learn at your father’s feet. The smell of freshly cut wood would have been in Jesus’ blood. It would have been for him the smell of home. And so I think the fragrance of the green wood and the almost comical crudeness of the cross would have brought a measure of comfort and welcome distraction to Jesus in his final agonizing moments in human form. And I think God did all of this for this very reason, to comfort Jesus, and that Jesus was not born the son of a carpenter by chance, but by design.
I remember reading a while back about the ritual gesture carpenters make when they finish a job: They take the cloth that they used to clean the dust from the wood, fold it neatly, and place it to the side of the finished piece. This indicates that the work is done.
When Peter entered the tomb on the third day, he saw the burial cloths lying in a heap together, but the cloth that had covered Jesus’ face was separate, folded neatly and set to one side. Who but a carpenter would have sent such a clear and unmistakable sign not only that his work was accomplished, but that he – the son of a carpenter, the Son of God – had done this?
Nothing happens by chance in God’s economy.
Jesus was a carpenter by design.
LOYALTY TO GOD
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 31, 2021 – Just a reminder that we, as born-again followers of Jesus, live in God’s kingdom on Earth.
Our loyalty should be first and foremost and ONLY to God, as it was for Jesus.
That means we put God before everything and everyone. So if someone asks you to do something that conflicts with what God would want you to do, you say no.
You don’t apologize and you don’t explain; you just say “no”.
God comes before family.
God comes before friends.
God comes before country.
God comes before work.
God comes before possessions, including bank accounts and investments.
God comes before everything and everyone that is “not God”.
Your full loyalty should be to God and God only.
If your family, friends, country, work, or possessions are somehow coming between you and God, leading you to do something that you know is not right, separate yourself from them.
Remove them from your life.
Put them far, far away from you.
Remember also that Jesus told us not to swear oaths of any kind (including oaths of allegiance), and that our answers should be a simple “yes” or “no”, as “anything more comes from the devil.”
We serve a great God. He deserves all our loyalty, and he will never (unlike people and worldly systems) betray us.
If you make the choice to give God your full loyalty, he will honor your choice by giving back to you a hundred-fold in blessings.
There is no downside in giving your loyalty to God. No other kingdom on Earth – no matter how rich and powerful – can rival God’s kingdom on Earth.
You are blessed beyond measure to be part of it.
When you give your loyalty to God, he gives his loyalty to you.
You make a deal.
(And if you had even the slightest inkling of what that meant, you would be down on your face thanking and worshiping God night and day, like the 24 elders in the book of Revelation.)
Your loyalty should be first and foremost and ONLY to God, as it was for Jesus.
Just a timely reminder for those who need it.
CONFESSION
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 29, 2021 – It is never enough for evil that you simply tolerate it, that you allow it to exist at a distance and disdained.
No: Evil wants you to embrace it.
And to do that, you must first deny Truth.
This is the aim of torture – to get you to change your confession. If the torturers wanted you dead, they would simply kill you, but then you would leave this world still confessing Truth. This would not do. So the torturers keep you alive just long enough for you to change your confession.
It’s a ritual, torture, and like all rituals it is dispassionate and aloof, a set process that considers the victim only as a subject to be broken spiritually through the breaking of the subject’s will. It is a science experiment taken to extremes, a clinical trial where the participants don’t agree to the terms, but then again are not required to agree. It is cold, impersonal, seldom unsuccessful, and thoroughly diabolical.
We think about torture as something from days gone by and in distant places, but torture is as common here and now as it ever was. Propaganda, which is agenda-driven lies, is mind torture, and propaganda is the language of the world. We are surrounded by propaganda, just as surely as we are surrounded by billions of people who devoutly confess the world’s propaganda and just as devoutly want YOU to confess it.
The sole opposition to propaganda is God’s Word.
Jesus warned his followers that they would be tortured, that they would be outlaws, hunted and despised. Jesus warned us not to frighten us but to prepare us so that we could prepare ourselves and others.
We live in the realm of mind torture, where darkness is hailed as light, lies as truth, poison as cure, unnatural as natural, up as down, and black as white. If we dare speak out to counter the propaganda, we are attacked, ridiculed, shut down, side-lined, banned, canceled, threatened, and silenced. It takes a strong will to withstand these onslaughts. It takes a mind focused on God and his Word and driven by God’s Holy Spirit, not by the Father of Lies.
You can just as effectively be poisoned by the tiniest increments of toxins consumed over a long period of time as by a large dose delivered all at once. In fact, propaganda works best as a torture device when it can whittle away at you day by day, day by day, day by day, until one day you wake up confessing lies.
It is not enough for evil that you simply tolerate it. Evil wants you to embrace it, to confess it.
Your job, as a follower of Jesus, is to resist evil and to continually counter it with God’s Word. This is a process that is day by day, day by day, day by day, and that will not cease until you’ve drawn your last breath. There is no final victory here on Earth, no laying down of weapons, no waving of the white flag by the enemy. Not in this realm, not while we’re here this body.
If we’re to remain loyal to God’s Word, we have no choice but to keep fighting. The enemy will not give up. The propaganda will not cease. The lies will only become more extreme and the devotees to the lies more viciously devout. Remember that through the lens of propaganda, YOU are the enemy, and the enemy must be neutralized and then destroyed.
It is never enough for evil that you simply tolerate it. Evil wants you to confess it, to embrace it, to BE it.
Never let that happen.
TRUST NO-ONE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 29, 2021 – During his time on Earth, Jesus trusted no-one but God.
He lived in very close quarters with his disciples and other followers, but scripture tells us that he trusted none of them because he knew what was in their heart.
He taught them, yes.
He shared meals with them, yes.
He spent most of his days and nights with them, yes.
He even equipped them to go on missions to preach the Word, heal the sick, and cast out demons, but he didn’t trust any of them.
He knew what was in their heart.
He knew their weaknesses.
If you’re wise like Jesus, you’ll also trust no-one but God. You can function as born-again believers within greater society and within your circle of believers without having to trust anyone. The minute you let your guard down and reveal things that are meant to remain between you and God, you set yourself up for betrayal.
There is a reason why God emphasizes in scripture that he will never leave us or betray us. It’s his warning that everyone else WILL eventually betray us, one way or another. Judas Iscariot wasn’t the only disciple to betray Jesus on the night of his arrest: They all did.
Let your best friend be Jesus and your father be God. Give them all your confidences. Give none to anyone else.
Trust no human, not your spouse, not your children, not even your parents or grandparents or great-grandparents, not your siblings, not your cousins, not your aunts, not your uncles. Trust none of them, because Jesus says that those under your own roof – those in your own family – will be your worst enemies.
Confess your sins to one another (as Paul advises us to do), but share your heart’s desires with no-one but God and Jesus.
ONE STEP AHEAD
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 29, 2021 – We live in an age when breaking news is literally at our fingertips through internet-connected devices. But by the time the news reaches headline-making status, the event that prompted the headline is already a done deal and the spin is in full swing. What actually happened and what is reported to have happened are rarely the same thing. “Confusion comes from the devil”, as do most earthly happenings. The trick is not only to see through the confusion but to remain beyond its reach.
And there is only one way to do that.
Jesus, during his time on Earth, was always one step ahead of the game. He knew, courtesy of God’s Spirit, what was going to happen before it happened and so was able not to manipulate or stop the happening, but to be where he needed to be when it took place. This is a gift God gives to certain of us at certain times, as is needed. It was, for instance, given to Noah before the flood, to Lot before the destruction of Sodom, to Moses before the plagues struck Egypt, and to Joseph before Herod issued the decree to slaughter all the young children in Bethlehem.
These are insider tips sent from God to help the recipient escape or survive whatever is about to take place. They are sometimes delivered by angels, either in their Heavenly or earthly form, but more often they come directly from God. Again, they are not meant to stop what is coming, but to alert or warn and to prompt a response before the fact, before it is too late.
When you sign on to become a follower of Jesus through spiritual rebirth, you are automatically registered for “insider tips from God”. You receive them as a function of your rebirth and your status as a citizen of God’s kingdom on Earth. No internet-connected device is required. Not surprisingly, most of these tips come seemingly out of the blue, as the events on which they’re premised have not yet made headlines.
What do you think would have happened to Lot had he not heeded the warning to leave Sodom? Do you think God would have reconsidered destroying it to save Lot and his family? What about Noah – do you think the flood would have been delayed had Noah simply ignored God’s urging to build the ark? And Joseph? Would Herod’s thugs have somehow overlooked baby Jesus if Joseph had decided to remain in Bethlehem?
Obviously, we will never know the answers to those questions, since Lot, Noah and Joseph all heeded the warnings, but I would not want to be the one who ignores God, thinking that “this, too, will pass”. If and when God tells you to go, you go. You don’t negotiate a different “go time” or ignore the warning, hoping it will pass. You go. You go in the middle of the night with just the clothes on your back, if need be. You go alone or you take with you only whatever or whoever God tells you to take. But you go.
You just go.
Jesus has given us a general warning in scripture (Matthew 24, Luke 17, etc.) about events that will affect ALL of his followers, without exception. John also gave us a big heads-up in the book of Revelation. Note that I am talking about Jesus’ genuine followers here, not casual Christians. No genuine follower of Jesus lives in this world without persecution or the repercussions of persecution. We are, as Jesus phrased it, “hated without cause”, and that hate naturally brings with it physical danger.
We are entering a time of world-wide upheaval. Every government is moving in lockstep to impose what amounts to martial law on their people. A net has been dropped over us in the form of a pandemic declaration, and now that net is tightening like a noose. We have a very short window in which to act: We either remain trapped under the net along with the rest of the world, or we escape.
There is no third option.
I am not saying to drop whatever you’re doing right now and run screaming into the night. No, I am not saying that. I am simply reminding you, as is my duty (as is the duty of all believers), that the world is a dangerous place for followers of Jesus, and the danger level is rapidly shifting to extreme with the coming of the “great reset”. You would have to be very naive to believe that what is happening with pandemic restrictions and economic and political chaos is organic. What we’re seeing is a controlled demolition of all the world’s systems, with controlled headlines to cover the controlled aspect of the demolition. And if you think that born-again Spirit-filled followers of Jesus are going to be welcome in the satanic new world order being constructed on the ruins of civilization, there’s some prime oceanfront property in Arizona with your name on it.
We need to remain vigilant. We need to be on heightened alert. We need to be watching not the devil’s controlled headlines but what God is doing in the foreground and the background and all around us, especially behind the scenes. Now is not the time to sit back and murmur “this, too, will pass”. Now IS the time to hunker down with God and his Word, “loins girded”, and ready to leave at a moment’s notice.
Lot didn’t flee Sodom in fear, but with urgency. Noah didn’t build the ark in fear, but with certain assurance of how and why it had to be built. Joseph didn’t flee Bethlehem in fear, but with hope of finding a safe haven in Egypt for Mary and Jesus. We do not need to live our lives in fear, even with what is most certainly coming down the pipeline in the form of worsening persecutions. We are to live our lives in Love and Grace, knowing that God has our back and will give us fair warning when the time comes.
No internet required.
No headlines required.
Just full faith in God, and a willingness and readiness to act when God says “Go!”
That is how we – like Jesus and all believers before and since – survive: by staying one step ahead, courtesy of God.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 