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LIKE A THIEF – LET NO MAN DECEIVE YOU: ON JESUS’ RETURN
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 8, 2025 – When Jesus said he’d be coming back like “a thief in the night”, he meant just that. He meant it for us (his followers), and he meant it for everyone else, too. Jesus will come back as unexpectedly as a thief in the night for us all, no exceptions. The difference between his followers and those who don’t follow him is that his followers will be spiritually prepared for his coming, whereas everyone else will be spiritually unprepared. But Jesus will still come back at a time that even he doesn’t yet know. That is scriptural.
And scripture, as Jesus reminded us, cannot be undone.
The reason Jesus warned us about the style of his return is that he wanted us to be prepared when it does happen—to expect the unexpected—so that we’ll be doing whatever task we’ve been set to do and won’t be caught side-tracked and back-sliding, and with our spiritual pants down. But the “thief in the night” style of return is how it’s going to be because that’s what’s Jesus said it would be. In other words, we can’t know exactly when he’ll return; all we can know is that he will return and that it will be during a time of great upheaval and spiritual darkness, as he described in the gospels. But Jesus’ return will still be as unexpected as a thief in the night, and that unexpectedness will be for us all, not just for unbelievers.
When Paul mentioned that Jesus’ return won’t come on us like a thief, he meant that we’d be spiritually prepared for when the thief does come. Paul in no way implied that Jesus will only come back like a thief for unbelievers. If Paul had meant that or implied that, he’d be contradicting Jesus, which Paul did not and would not do. Like Jesus, Paul meant that if you’re prepared, you won’t be overcome by the thief when he shows up unexpectedly because you’ve prepared yourself in advance for just such an event. The thief-in-the-night aspect of Jesus’ return was upheld by Paul, not modified to mean that it only applied to unbelievers. Paul very clearly states that although Jesus will come back like a thief in the night, his true followers, being always prepared, will be prepared for that, too. By being prepared, Paul meant they’ll be doing whatever it is God set them to do. Paul’s explanation of Jesus’ return is exactly like Jesus’ explanation
It’s worth noting that Paul also warned us not to be deceived by anyone who claims to know when Jesus is coming back. He explained that Jesus will return only after the “man of sin” has first been revealed, which will only take place after a mass falling away. In Revelation, the man of sin is revealed well into the great tribulation, not before it and not in the early stages, but well into it. This aligns with what Jesus said about his return coming at a time of great upheaval and great spiritual darkness. As bad as things are now, they can’t really be described as a time of great spiritual darkness, as we can still openly worship as Christians in a large part of the world. We’re in a time of increasing spiritual darkness, yes, but not of great spiritual darkness. And the man of sin has yet to be revealed.
Our job as followers of Jesus is to continue to do whatever God has set us to do. This doesn’t change regardless of what’s going on around us. So when the “thief” comes unexpectedly (and come unexpectedly he will), he’ll find us doing what we’ve be tasked with doing, which means we’ll be ever-ready and ever-prepared for his return.
[B]e ye not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled,
neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us,
as that the day of Christ is at hand.
Let no man deceive you by any means:
for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first,
and that man of sin be revealed….
(2 Thessalonians 2:2-3)
SCREAM
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 6, 2025 – Lies will be the undoing of this generation, the telling of lies and the believing of them.
Lies will be their legacy, where once there stood the promise of a Church.
I can’t listen to their lies anymore. I can’t listen to them and think “oh, there’s hope for them still”, when what they want isn’t hope but lies. If they wanted hope, God would give it to them. He would meet them half-way—more than half-way—but it’s not hope that draws them downward. They settle for lies not because there’s no promise of hope, but because the lies are prettier and warmer and fuzzier.
But even that’s a lie.
I know a woman who stayed with a husband who deceived her for decades. His philandering was notorious, and yet she still beamed with pride whenever he stood at her side. No amount of urging from family or friends could convince her to leave. She was as if mesmerized and accepted his betrayals as a condition of their marriage.
I have seen the same fatalistic acceptance in other women in other marriages, the same delusional pride. I was like them until I wasn’t. But even when I was like them, I wasn’t really like them, because I tried to leave but couldn’t, until I could.
Lies will eat at you till there’s nothing left but a gnawing that will follow you down. But the pain doesn’t stop at death. This is a truth I learned standing on the edge of a subway platform in Sydney’s red-light district. Each day like clockwork, a handful of the drug-addled and tormented would slump silently under the rush of an oncoming train. It wasn’t the raving who’d slump. It was the silent. Kings Cross Station was like a place of sacrifice, though maybe it wasn’t “like” a place of sacrifice but was a place of sacrifice. I was an atheist when God told me that my pain wouldn’t stop there, and though an atheist, I believed him. And so I stepped back just as someone yanked me back, and I never thought of suicide again.
Nine months later I was reborn.
I wonder, in hindsight, how many standing on that platform heard God’s voice and ignored it. Maybe they were silent because they were listening and considering. We can’t know this except by revelation, but I believe that all of them heard it. I believe that, even knowing he would be ignored, God would still tell all of them what he told me, still give each one of them one last chance. Even as a legalistic formality he would do it, like he directed his prophets to preach as a formality to the terminally hard-of-heart so that they can’t claim at the judgement they were never warned.
God covers all the bases, because that’s what he does. He’s perfect in everything.
They called Jeremiah the “failed prophet”, his enemies. Refusing to do as he directed, they called him bad at his job and accused him of betraying his people. But his job was given to him by God and he was anything but bad at it. We all have a touch of the failed prophet in us, standing as a silent witness among our enemies and sometimes not-so-silent. Sometimes we need to scream God’s Truth like Jeremiah had to scream it or burst. It’s hard to scream with love, so the message isn’t always warm and fuzzy. This is why they called Jeremiah the failed prophet because he wore sackcloth instead of angora. You can scream better in sackcloth.
My grandmother had a cedar chest full of angora sweaters that she prized. She’d carefully maintained them over the years after she became too old to wear them herself. I coveted them, and when it was my time to wear the sweaters, she reluctantly agreed. I wrecked them all within a week. Angora is very delicate as well as warm and fuzzy. All that cedar and all those decades of care didn’t stand a chance against a spoiled teenager’s thoughtlessness.
I think my grandmother knew what would happen if she let me wear them, but she sacrificed them anyway. When I gave them back to her bedraggled and deformed, she didn’t scream at me. She just sighed and took them and did her best to nurture them back to what they’d been. But they were never the same and I didn’t covet them anymore. And so they laid a few decades more in the chest, flattened and defeated, until my grandmother was moved out of her house and into a home. I don’t know what happened to the cedar chest let alone to the silent witness of the sweaters. I was in Australia standing on the edge of a subway platform when she was moved.
I wear sackcloth now. Only sackcloth. It’s been gifted to me and I wear it as instructed.
It helps me scream.
CANADIAN DEUTERONOMY 28: THE CURSES
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 1, 2025 – The “flag” pictured above is a photograph of a real burnt maple leaf embedded in dry grass on some random person’s lawn in rural Nova Scotia. Thank God (in every sense of the term) that the random person had the wherewithal (and the technology on hand) to snap a pic of the leaf before it blew away. The grass underneath it is dried out not from fire but from a drought that’s emptied most of the wells and watering ponds across Nova Scotia while also drying up farmers’ fields, destroying crops. Few here in this now atheist-majority country will say it openly, but it’s Biblical. What’s happening here with the fires and the drought across much of Canada is Biblical, and it’s only just getting started.
The blackened maple leaf that blew onto the random person’s lawn came from a fire burning several miles away. The Long Lake wildfire has so far raged through 8,500 hectares (33 square miles) of people’s homes, lakeside cottages, hunting camps, and pristine forest. It’s been out of control since it started on August 13th, and until we get a good steady rain here in Nova Scotia, it will continue to burn out of control. We haven’t had a good steady rain now for nearly three months, which is unheard of in this province, surrounded as it is by the North Atlantic.
In contrast to the burnt maple leaf above, the video below is not real. It’s a fictional account of the coming collapse of Canada, but it’s based on data sourced from the Canadian government (federal, provincial, and municipal). In the video, the relevant statistical trends have been extrapolated and extended to their logical conclusion—total societal and economic collapse by 2030—in a compelling and realistic narrative that is unfolding around me as we speak.
It’s the Deuteronomy 28 curses come to life.
For those of you who are interested, the same channel also has similar videos on the coming total economic and societal collapse of Australia and the UK, again using government-sourced data.
Directly below is a screenshot of a Nova Scotia Reddit thread from a few weeks ago. In it, people are discussing the rain (or lack of it) and the bizarre (to them) patterns of how the rain falls when it does fall, however briefly.
When I first read the thread, I immediately thought of this:
And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered.
(Amos 4:7)
Biblical, indeed.
THE COMING PERSECUTIONS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 24, 2025 – Today, we’re going to have a little lesson in geography, followed by a lesson in survival. Geography is important for us to know, because some geographical areas are dangerous for Christians to be in. Let’s call those areas “no-go zones”. Survival is important for us because if we don’t survive, Christianity will die.
GEOGRAPHY LESSON
Pretty much the entire Middle East is a no-go zone for Christians, as is much of Asia. The northern half of Africa’s not looking so great, either. If you took a globe and put your thumb on Jerusalem and then traced a circle with your pinky—hand outstretched and keeping your thumb on Jerusalem—most of the countries that would fall within the circle are either by law or by culture hostile to Christians. Not coincidentally, most of those countries are Muslim.
Countries that are by law hostile to Christians have outlawed anything to do with Christianity. That means no church buildings, no church services, no Christian bling (like crosses), and no Bibles are allowed. The penalties for breaking those laws range from imprisonment to beatings to execution. Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia are some of the worst places you could be caught reading a Bible while wearing a cross. In nearly every instance, you would be killed.
Countries that are by culture hostile to Christians are places like India, Lebanon, Egypt, and Nigeria. Christianity is not illegal in these countries, but it might as well be. Christians in culturally hostile places suffer varying degrees of persecution, while their places of worship and faith-based health or educational institutions are habitual targets of vandalism, arson, and even bombings. It’s not as dangerous for Christians to be in areas that are culturally hostile compared to areas where Christianity is outlawed, but it’s still not advisable to be there. No Christian should be living or traveling in these countries. They are no-go zones.
SURVIVAL LESSON
And here comes the whole point of this brief geography lesson – the survival of Christianity. The stupidest thing a Christian can do is to choose to live or travel in an area that is either by law or by culture hostile to Christians. This is hands-down the stupidest thing that a Christian can do. It’s right up there with calling the head of the Catholic church “pope” (which means “papa”, as in “father”) when Jesus explicitly said to call no-one on Earth “father” because we have one Father, who is in Heaven.
Christians who choose to live in or to visit areas that are hostile to them are not adhering to Jesus’ directives. At no time does Jesus tell his followers to put themselves in danger by going to or remaining in areas that are hostile to them. He himself modeled what we’re to do when we encounter persecution or open hostility – we’re to leave that area and go where we’re not being persecuted. This is a directive straight from Jesus. It’s also basic common sense.
God doesn’t want his children purposely choosing persecution. To purposely choose persecution is to tempt God, even when it involves evangelizing. Living in or visiting places that are no-go zones also shows extreme hubris, not courage; hubris, not wisdom, unless you’ve been explicitly directed by God to go to those places, like Jesus was directed to go to Jerusalem when it was his time.
By “explicitly directed”, I mean just that. I don’t mean adhering to the so-called Great Commission of going into all the world and preaching the Good News. That is not an explicit directive. That is a general directive that needs to be applied wisely and in accordance with Jesus’ example of how to evangelize. Using the Great Commission as an excuse to to fly to Iran with a suitcase full of Bibles is just plain stupid, and Jesus didn’t teach his followers to be stupid. He taught us to be wise as serpents, so let us be wise as serpents.
But if we don’t go to no-go zones that are hostile to Christians, how will people there hear the Good News?
Good question, and the answer is:
Internet.
Radio.
God.
I’m living proof that you don’t need someone evangelizing you to be born-again. God himself exorcised me on a lonely beach in Australia and then put his Spirit in me, adopting me as his child. No-one preached to me (no-one dared preach to me, I was so rabidly anti-Christ as an atheist). No-one pressed a smuggled Bible into my hands. God simply and patiently waited for me to break and then immediately rushed in to save me when I cried out for help. No person could have done for me what God did that day. To believe otherwise is extreme hubris.
It’s worth mentioning that most of the areas that are now no-go zones for Christians were previously evangelized, meaning that most of the people there are deprived of the Word not by circumstance but by free-will choice. Jesus was once preached and lauded in those streets, but he’s since been rejected in favor of other beliefs. It’s also worth mentioning that most of the populations in the no-go zones can travel to areas that are not no-go zones and so can hear the Word there if they choose to hear it. But if even after hearing the Word they reject it, we need to respect their free-will choice and let them be.
COMING PERSECUTIONS
Along with showing places that are hostile to Christians, today’s geography lesson highlights that the no-go zones are expanding. Places that used to be Christian strongholds, like Turkey and Lebanon, are now openly hostile to the Word. These places are lost and will not return. Christians living there need to leave.
At the same time, those of us living in the West know only too well that Christianity’s days are numbered here, too. For example, Christians are now a minority in my home country of Canada, where Christian ministers serving in the military are forbidden to say “God” or “Jesus” in their public sermons (or even to call their sermons “sermons”). It’s not illegal to be Christian here, but Canada is becoming increasingly hostile to followers of Jesus by lumping Christianity in with all other religions and instituting laws and normalizing cultural practices that favor “diversity, equity, and inclusion” over religion.
So, while we’re not yet openly persecuted in the West, we experience what can be called soft persecution. With the sole exception of the United States, all Western nations are promoting and permitting soft persecution. The “othering” of Christians and silencing of the Word will continue until it shifts into open cultural hostility, followed by the outlawing of Christianity altogether. This shift will happen very quickly and, I believe, very soon.
If we want to see what most of the West or even the entire world will look like some day, we need only to look at the Christian no-go zones of today
And when that “some day” comes, where will we go?
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.
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)
DOUBLE VISION
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 25, 2025 – “Vin Mariani” was a sweet alcoholic medicinal concoction popular in Europe in the mid-to-late 1800s. It’s main claim to fame was the addition of coca to the brew, an ingredient which allegedly cured everything from fatigue to muscle weakness to melancholy. Many famous people swore by the efficacy of this elixir, including the reigning pope at the time. In fact, Leo the 13th was so enamored with the stuff, he declared it his favorite drink and bestowed upon its inventor the Vatican’s golden seal of approval.
Sadly, Vin Mariani is no longer with us, but its non-alcoholic offspring—Coca-Cola™—very much is. Did you know that Coca-Cola was inspired by Vin Mariani? And guess who swears by Coca-Cola as his all-time favorite drink? Our very own Pope Leo the 14th, who, by the way, bears an uncanny physical resemblance to Pope Leo the 13th (see pics above). Just look at the noses and the set of the lips! Just look at those eyes!
And did you know that the separated-at-birth Leos the 13th and 14th both ascended the papal throne at age 69? Or that #13 holds the record for being the oldest pope ever, reigning until his death at age 93? (Maybe they should have added longevity to Vin Mariani’s list of attributes!) Will our Coca-Cola-fueled #14 give #13 a run for his money and set a new all-time papal age record? We might want to hope so, considering what various prophecies claim is in store for the end of Pope Leo the 14th’s reign.
Along with being renowned for his tippling of Vin Mariani and his record-setting papal age, Leo the 13th is also famous for a vision he allegedly had while celebrating mass at the Vatican chapel in 1884. Just as he was about to leave the altar, the heavens opened and the pope was privy to a conversation between God and Satan. No-one else attending the mass could see or hear the conversation, but several eye-witnesses claim that Leo the 13th fell into a trance-like state and remained motionless for about 10 minutes, his face upturned and ashen. (Sounds like ol’ Leo could have used a swig of Vin Mariani!) When he regained movement, the pope hastily left the chapel and retreated to his office, where he likely did have a swig or two of the Vin (or something stronger), and likely also wrote the vision down.
While a full and official account of what Leo the 13th saw and heard in the chapel that day was never made public, snippets of the vision’s contents have trickled out over the years via the ecclesiastical rumor mill. From what can be pieced together so far, the alleged conversation between God and Satan concerned the destruction of the church, with Satan requesting the power and a specific amount of time to destroy Catholicism. God granted him both. The specific amount of time was 75 to 100 years.
A few decades later, a Portuguese girl who later became a nun would allegedly be given a similar vision of the destruction of Catholicism and Rome in what has since become known as the the third secret of Fatima. That vision was written down, sealed, and given to the Vatican for safe-keeping until it was unsealed and made public in the year 2000. And we’re all now very much aware (or should be) of Malachy’s prophecy of the final pope—Petrus Romanus—presiding over the destruction of the church and Rome. We’ve also determined that Leo the 14th, with his Roman (Italian) heritage and his surname of Prevost, which is an anagram of Petrus (Peter), is in fact the prophesied Petrus Romanus, or Peter the Roman, hidden in plain view.
So now we have a Coca-Cola-swigging pope, Leo the 14th, who’s nearly the spitting image of his immediate predecessor namesake pope, Leo the 13th, who also happened to swig a drink that was the immediate predecessor of Coca-Cola, with both popes having ascended the papal throne at age 69 and both being directly connected to a series of visions concerning the destruction of Catholicism and Rome. Are these all just coincidences and “woo-woos” that mean nothing? Let’s hope so. Let’s sincerely hope so. As much as I have issues with Catholicism (“issues” being a polite term), the destruction of the worldly church is not good for anyone, including us born-again believers. Yes, our own beloved Church, being safely tucked away in the spiritual realm, will continue strong and undefiled until Jesus comes back in glory to take the last of us Home, but the death of the worldly church will signal the start of a very bad time here on Earth, culminating in the institutionalization of luciferianism as the sole acceptable belief system, or what John in the book of Revelation describes as the reign of the beasts.
The timing, according to all the above-mentioned prophecies, appears to be set and permission granted. Demonic elements within the worldly church are organizing the destruction from within. This is not an attack from without but from within, and a diabolically well-organized one at that. As much as we want to forestall the destruction of the worldly church, especially in consideration of what its end signifies, the forces of evil embedded within it are longing for its annihilation and laboring tirelessly towards that end. And we appear to have a timeframe for the destruction: no later than the end of the reign of Leo the 14th, a.k.a. Petrus Romanus—Peter the Roman—the current pope, aged 69, who may or may not live past the all-time papal age record of 93. If the prophecies are accurate, we can’t stop what’s coming, but we can make good use of whatever time we have left.
So, be bold, my fellow born-again believers! Be true to your mission! Be brave! Do whatever you can to get God’s Word out while there’s still time. And if you find that your energy is lagging—that your spirit is willing, but your flesh is weak—have a coke.
HABEMUS PAPAM: POPE PETER THE ROMAN
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 8, 2025 – So, we have our Pope Peter the Roman after all, hidden (as they say) in plain sight.
“Prevost” is an anagram of “Petros V”, and “petros” is the Greek form of “Peter”.
Definition auto-compiled from two websites (one, two):
Petros is a name of Greek origin that means “rock”. It is an alternate form of Peter. The name derives from Latin “petra” (Petrus), from the Ancient Greek “petra” / “Petros”, from the Aramaic word “kephas”, which in turn derives from the Syriac “kefa”, all words meaning “stone, rock”.
“Kephas”, of course, is what Jesus surnamed his disciple Simon, the one we know as Peter and allegedly the first pope.
Pope Petros, who is of Italian heritage, will now sit in Rome, satisfying the prophecy for “Peter the Roman” in every conceivable way.
In case you’re new to this game, here is the last verse of Malachy’s prophecy, translated into English:
“In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit Peter the Roman, who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations, and when these things are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people. The End.”
So again, there we have it. They done did it. They followed the script to the letter, and now, I guess, we’re doomed.
Pope Petros is 69. I give him 20-25 years at most, which gives the rest of us about 20-25 years before the “S” really Hits The Fan.
Remember – this is a script they’re following. It’s not a prophecy; it’s a script.
Malachy might have intended it as a prophecy, but they’re following it as a script.
As my grandmother would say (if she spoke Latin): Deus adiuvet nos omnes.
WHO’S DIRECTING YOUR PLANS?
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 2, 2025 – We all have plans. Lots of them. From the time we wake up in the morning until the time we go to sleep at night, we’re making plans: Work plans. Meal plans. Shopping plans. Travel plans. Sometimes we even make plans to make time to make plans.
And yet, with all our planning, who’s directing us? Are we inspired by God’s Spirit or by our own will and impulse? Do we do what we do because we think we should do it (because someone has told us we should do it)? Or do we do what we do because God has advised us, one on one, to do it?
Who exactly is directing our plans?
The day I was born-again, I started reading the Bible. Better said, I started eating and drinking and absorbing God’s Word. I was spiritually ravenous. Like a newborn at the teat, I sucked and slurped and couldn’t get enough. And yet, there were some parts of God’s Word that were hard to swallow at the time. They stuck with me because they seemed to stick out. And every time I would read through the Bible, I would trip over them.
One of those parts is in James’ letter:
“Go to now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:
Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.
For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.
But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.
Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” (James: 4:13-17)
It seemed to me at the time that James was being a stickler. What did it matter if we prefaced our plans with “If the Lord will”? Surely God would support all our efforts to do good in his name and that of his precious son? Surely nothing that we did in his or Jesus’ name would go to waste? Surely everything we did with our heart in the right place would be duly noted and weighed in our favor? Surely it couldn’t be considered “evil” or “sin” if we did what we did with good intentions?
You would think. At least that’s what the world tells us: “His heart was in the right place”, “he had good intentions”, “he meant right”. I mean, wasn’t it James himself who told Jesus to get out there and do things to prove to the world that he was the Messiah (only to be knocked back by Jesus with that very same advice James would later give to us in his letter)? The world’s way of doing things is to do something because it seems like it should be done, or to jump in head-first and worry about the details later. Duty and compulsion. That’s the world’s way.
But is it God’s way?
Scripture very plainly says we’re to be patient and wait for God’s directive and timing. We’re always to be patient and wait for God’s directive and timing. We can’t assume tomorrow, let alone next year: We can’t even assume the rest of today. We always need to be patient and wait for God’s directive and timing.
Years ago, I tried to start a Bible study. I did everything I thought I needed to do to prepare for it, but no-one showed up. Day after day I waited in the appointed meeting room at the appointed time, but no-one showed up. Even the people who’d contacted me to tell me they were coming were no-shows. Eventually I gave up and realized that God didn’t want me to do the Bible study, at least not at that time. It was a very humbling experience for me, but also a profound teaching moment.
If God isn’t in it, it has no value. If God isn’t personally directing your steps, you’re better off standing still and remaining silent. How many of us make wild and empty gestures thinking we’re doing the right thing – “the Christian thing” – but how many of us will instead end up like King Saul, who also thought he was doing the right thing by sparing the choicest livestock for later sacrifice, even though God had specifically told him to kill everyone and everything and take nothing with him?
Make sure your offers of sacrifice are God-directed and not self-directed. There is no such thing as “a Christian thing to do”: There is only what God wills and what he doesn’t will. All our plans, whether directly in service to God or in our more mundane daily rounds, need to be inspired and directed by God. If they’re not, they’re not worth doing, and they might (like Saul) even get us condemned.
James was absolutely right in saying that we need to defer to God in making our plans. He wasn’t being a stickler; he was stating the scripture-based obvious. Some of us just take a little longer than others to get it.
SEED
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 24, 2025 – They dream of us, the kind of dreams you don’t tell your spouse or your significant other or even your therapist. (And never your mentor.) Dreams so raw, they rush in a fever as soon as they wake to look us up. But we have nothing to do with those dreams; they aren’t from us. We aren’t responsible for them. We haven’t sent them. God uses us as we’ve given him permission to use us, in some cases begged him to use us, and so he makes use of us. Some of our best work for the Kingdom is done entirely without our knowledge and solely because we begged God to use us.
After the first dreams comes the obsession. Not for all, but for some. Flashbacks that progress to a slow reaching out and then a quick pulling back when they find who we’ve become. Then the headshaking and sneering and dismissal, but still the thoughts. Always the thoughts. Back of the mind, front of the mind. Seed planted. And, for some, more dreams.
The first heart-pounding contact tests the waters. They don’t tell their spouse or significant other or therapist about that, either. Sometimes we engage and sometimes we don’t, depending on what God advises. Sometimes it’s best just to stay out of it completely and let God use us as we’ve given him permission to use us. God knows exactly what to do at precisely the right time, when and where to plant seed. We don’t. We’ll likely only make a mess of it.
Did you know that we’re being tested by those dreams, too? Not just the dreamers – we dreamees are also being tested. We’re being tested in how we respond. Which is why we need to defer to God and not take matters into our own hands. We must never forge ahead thinking we’ll wing it and that we can handle it and that we have everything under control, because we can’t handle it and don’t have anything under control. The forces working against us, though nowhere near as strong as God, are still degrees of magnitude more powerful than us. We cannot deal with them on our own, and to believe that we can is a trap.
I’ve been caught in that trap, many a time, and had to learn not to take the bait. I had to learn to defer to God, always defer to God. We’ve not sent the dreams, but they’ll come looking for us. How we handle them is a testament to who we’ve become.
Some of our best work is done entirely without us.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 