MEADOWVILLE, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, December 2, 2021 – I write this for those of you who have side-stepped the tyranny thus far and who have no intention to stop side-stepping it.

As you know, there are very few of us left. I wanted to reach out to you to let you know you’re not alone, and to encourage you to continue the side-stepping. Not defying, side-stepping. Finding ways around the obstacles, like Jesus did, always following what Jesus did. Continuing your life as before, but side-stepping while you’re doing it. Kind of like stepping over and around steaming piles of doggie-do on the sidewalk. No need to plow through them when you can just side-step around them. God will show you how.

The news of the world is not good today (when is it ever?). One by one, countries are falling to ever-worsening tyranny. Of course, tyranny is nothing new. It’s just that most of us in the Western world were lulled into thinking we would never have to deal with it in our day and on our own turf, and yet here we are.

Boot, meet face.

Jesus lived under a double-whammy tyranny of the Roman occupation and a tyrannical king. Even so, that didn’t stop him from doing what he came to do. God enabled him to side-step the tyranny until it was his time.

The ever-worsening tyranny outside our windows shouldn’t stop us, either. We just need to avoid certain places until it’s our time.

I wrote earlier about how the tyranny has created a dividing line between those who submit to it and those who don’t. There is no instance anywhere in the Gospels of Jesus submitting to tyranny, medical or otherwise. He just didn’t do it. He was a healer; he didn’t need to go to the world for healing: the world came to him. Anyone who claims that Jesus would have gone to the world for healing or would have told his followers to go to the world for healing doesn’t know God and doesn’t know Jesus and has no authority to speak in their names.

The Old Testament tells us what God thinks of worldly medicine men. King Asa, after relying on Syria to help him win a war rather than relying on God, then suffers a rapidly-deteriorating foot disease that ultimately kills him. Instead of going to God for help, King Asa goes to a series of doctors, all of whom fail him. This reminds me of the woman with the issue of blood who spends everything she has on doctors for 12 years, to no avail. But when she reaches out to Jesus as he passes by, she’s instantly and thoroughly healed. It was that simple. No reason to believe that every healing can’t be that simple, o ye of little faith!

We side-steppers know that God, through his Spirit, is the source of all genuine healing. Jesus healed by the power of God’s Holy Spirit. We, as Jesus followers, also heal by the power of God’s Holy Spirit. To turn our backs on God, like Asa did, and to go to the world for healing, like Asa did, is not an option for us, will NEVER be an option for us. Those who truly love God and truly follow Jesus will agree with this 100%.

No bribe is large enough and no threat is dire enough to make us change our minds. Jesus tells us that the most the world can do to us is kill our body. Well, we have to shed our body, anyway, to get to Heaven, so if that’s the worst the world can do, there really isn’t anything to fear, is there?

We just need to hang onto God’s hand for the rest of our time here. Side-step the tyranny until God signals our time is up, but otherwise hang on tight to God’s hand and follow behind Jesus.

We can do this.

We’ve come this far doing it.

We can keep on doing it to the end.