A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER

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BILL C-9 AND THE WINDING DOWN

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 20, 2026Bill C-9 is now law in Canada. If I were to shout from the rooftops certain Bible passages, I’d be arrested, fined, and imprisoned for “hate”. I can still (for the time being, at least) read those passages to myself or whisper them to others in private, but the minute I take my show on the road (or to the rooftops), I could potentially be accused of a hate crime. How did Canada, once a staunch Christian nation, fall so far, so hard, and so fast? By turning away from God. By opening the floodgates to demon-worshipers. By choosing evil rather than good.

A nation is safe from demon-inspired laws like bill C-9 as long as it maintains a certain quota of God-fearing souls. Once that quota has slipped below the threshold (and only God knows that threshold), demons take over. So, you see, it’s not the fault of the politicians (a.k.a. lawmakers) who propose, craft, and pass the laws. It’s easy to blame politicians because their corruption and almost comical levels of incompetence make them easy to blame, but it’s not their fault. All they do is take orders from the demons that rule over them. They earned those demons when they took the oath and sold their souls for their ambitions, but if they hadn’t done that, they wouldn’t “win” elections and be in the position of authority to make laws in the first place. So, no, it’s not the fault of the politicians that we have poisonous laws like bill C-9. It’s the fault of the people they pass the laws for.

Being under the thumb of worldly powers, politicians can only do what Satan permits. Satan himself is under God’s thumb and can only do what God permits. If God, through his perfect justice, permits laws like bill C-9 to exist, then those laws have been earned – not imposed, earned: Spiritually earned. This is a hard truth that even those who call themselves Christians have a difficult time accepting. God has permitted his Word to become illegal in Canada because the demons have won that spiritual turf here fair and square, thanks to the godlessness that now reigns in the souls of most Canadians.

This would never have happened in earlier iterations of this nation. Up to and including the time of my grandparents’ generation, most Canadians were God-fearing and lived their lives accordingly. But one by one, as each God-fearing soul went to his or her reward, Canada began to spiritually slip and slide, slowly at first and then precipitously, until finally landing where it is now with a whump. This ain’t Kansas anymore. This ain’t even (not to my mind) Canada anymore. It’s the devil’s turf, and we’re to play by the devil’s rules or pay the devil’s price.

Knowing this is the devil’s turf doesn’t make me any less a child of God. Living in Canada under laws like bill C-9 doesn’t make me any less a child of God. The whole world (as Jesus told us) is under the authority of Satan, but the Kingdom isn’t. The Kingdom will never be under Satan. I may be in the world physically, but spiritually I’m in the Kingdom. Satan has no hold on me here.

While I am yet in Canada, I will pick and choose my words carefully, taking my cues from God. The early Church also had to pick and choose their words when out in the world. In this, we’ve come not full circle but full spiral, with the peak of the bell curve behind us, not before us. Our numbers are dwindling, not growing. The world grows darker, not brighter. We are the winding down of the Church, not the beginning.

But still we’re here. Jesus promised us he’d be with us until the end of time, and so he is. To the great chagrin of those who hate and vilify God’s Truth, Jesus is still here and his Church is still here. And no matter how much they loathe us—no matter how much our presence torments them—we will remain here to the end.

No law on Earth can change that.

FOUND

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 2, 2026 – One of Jesus’ major accomplishments (among his many, many major accomplishments) was to move his followers away from worshiping buildings and rituals and artifacts and towards worshiping God in what Jesus called “spirit and truth” – that is, worshiping God sincerely, unfeignedly, and through the power of his Holy Spirit. If you worship God in spirit and in truth, you’re always in worship mode: your worship is as natural and involuntary as your breathing. Jesus said we wouldn’t need to go to the temple in Jerusalem or to participate in any of the rituals and sacrifices that take place there. Those requirements were finished with Jesus’ sacrifice. The only ritual Jesus commanded us to observe was the Passover, which we were to alter as he showed us and to do so in memory of him. No other rituals are required.

The dawn of the age of the New Testament was the death of the age of religion. We are in the New Testament age now. Souls that are cleansed with the blood of Jesus need no further sacrifice, as that sacrifice was one-and-done and perfect, as per scriptural requirement. We need no additional messiah, as Jesus is our one-and-only Messiah, and we need no additional god, as our heavenly Father is our one-and-only God. These are the foundational facts of our beliefs embedded within and throughout the old and new testaments: One sacrifice, one Messiah, one God. We need no other.

I get pestered occasionally (I use the term “pestered” lovingly here) by polite young men who walk up and down my street in twos, asking strangers if they’d like to go to church. I’ve been pestered walking up my driveway, pestered walking out of the grocery store parking lot, and pestered just ambling along on my daily constitutional. They are very persistent, these young men, and each time they ask me if I’d like to go to church, I tell them I’m already in church, that I’m in church all the time. This always elicits from them that tight frozen-in-place smile people reserve for those they suspect might be crazy, but it does do the trick of getting them to back off and leave me alone, if only for the rest of my walk. I’m not sure which ‘church’ they’re so eager to get random strangers to attend, but judging from the fact that they’re always formally dressed and always in twos, I suspect it might be the so-called Church of Latter-Day Saints. Maybe next time I’ll ask them.

Worshiping in spirit and in truth means that we’re always in church. There’s no division between our lives and our worship, just as it was with Jesus. In our Church, which is also known as the Kingdom, spiritual Jerusalem, and Zion, there are only genuine born-again believers. We de facto become members of this Church at rebirth; there is no other way to enter it. We worship God through the abiding presence of God’s Holy Spirit in us, which was given to us at our rebirth. The presence of God’s Holy Spirit in us also enables us to have constant communication with God and Jesus. They are constantly with us, just as Jesus promised us they would be, as long as we remain in our regenerated state of grace. This is our life; this is our worship; this is our Church. All three are the same. We have no need for religion, and in fact it would be a spiritual step backwards for us to involve ourselves in religion. We are not the worldly church; we are the Church.

Being the Church, we constantly worship in fellowship with our brethren bornagain believers. This is what Paul called the cloud of witnesses that surrounds and envelops us, even if we don’t see them or hear them or know them by name. Through the power of God’s Holy Spirit, we are constantly with each other in Spirit, just as we’re constantly with God and Jesus in Spirit. This was another promise Jesus made to us, that we’d be one with God and with each other as he was one with God.

These truths permeate us even as God’s Spirit permeates us, protecting, informing, and comforting us. You’re comforted reading these words, knowing that I’m with you as much as Jesus and God are with you, through the power of God’s Holy Spirit. All your genuinely reborn brethren are with you—right here, right now—through God’s Holy Spirit. We are that cloud of witnesses, the Church with no building, no artifacts, and no ritual beyond the one that Jesus commanded us to observe. We are in this Church not by human invitation or self-will, but by divine decree, for which we have God and Jesus’ sacrifice to thank.

We worship God in spirit and in truth, making no division between our worship and our lives. Jesus said that God is looking for people to worship him in this way. At our rebirth, we didn’t (as the religious saying goes) “find God”; God found us.

SILENT WITNESS

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 11, 2026 – If they want to believe it’s love, let them: It’s all they have. We know it isn’t God’s Love, but we’re blessed to be able to receive God’s Love, so the least we can do, being so blessed, is to let them believe what they want, even if it’s a lie.

Especially if it’s a lie.

One of the great mercies we can afford as children of God is to let people believe what they want to believe. If that’s all they want, that’s all they’ll get. It would be wrong of us to take away that small comfort of a lie told to them so many times it’s become truth to them. We should never take away their lie. It’s not ours to take.

Paul writes about people so far gone—so lost in sin—that God just lets them be. He doesn’t send Paul to preach to them; he just lets them be.

Some people, not sent from God, argue that we should urgently witness to these souls, and the louder the better – that we should invade their claimed spaces and subject them to the spiritual equivalent of waterboarding. But these preachers have been sent on a fool’s errand that will only end in loathing and rage on both sides. You cannot override what God has decreed, and if God has decreed them lost (like the people written about by Paul, or the people just before the flood, or the people in Sodom just before it rained fire and brimstone), then lost they’ll be. You don’t want to fight against God’s decrees because to do so would be to deny God’s justice and to fight against God himself. We can’t do those things and still call ourselves God’s children. Let the worldly church fight the fight not blessed by God, if that’s what they want to do. But we, like Paul, must stand back and stand down because to do anything else would be to defy God.

It was not easy for Paul to see the level of sin he saw and remain silent. It’s not easy for us, either. In these cases, we must change our tactics, knowing that nothing we say will persuade them to change. So we say nothing. We treat them with the same courtesy that we would want to be treated with (as commanded by Jesus), but we say nothing about their sin. We don’t involve ourselves in their sin; we don’t celebrate their sin; we don’t question their sin; we don’t even acknowledge their sin: Taking our cue from Paul, we separate ourselves from their sin, speaking of it only among ourselves, if necessary, but otherwise remaining silent.

We are silent not out of fear of them but out of fear of God.

Our silence is witness enough.

ELDAD AND MEDAD, AND US

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 11, 2026 – Eldad and Medad have their 15 milliseconds of Biblical fame buried deep within Numbers. If you rush through the book, you might miss it. Still, Eldad and Medad rank as prophets, because scripture tells us that God’s Spirit spoke through them. They are a prototype of us bornagain believers, a forerunner of what God had in store for his people, so long as they are God’s people.

Eldad and Medad were not among the 70 elders officially designated by Moses to receive a share of God’s Spirit. They had remained behind in the camp when the summoned chosen dutifully filed into the tabernacle to be tapped. And yet God chose the two men to receive his Spirit outside the tabernacle, having seen something in those two that Moses initially missed.

However, as soon as the Spirit fell upon Eldad and Medad and they started prophesying, a boy who heard them ran to tell Joshua, who then rushed to tell Moses, expecting him to immediately silence them. To Joshua’s way of thinking, because Eldad and Medad were not of the 70 chosen elders, their prophesying was undercutting Moses’ authority.

But Moses didn’t see it that way. He knew the two men were prophesying by God’s Holy Spirit, by direct appointment of God. And so instead of commending Joshua for his loyalty, Moses reprimanded him, saying:

Enviest thou for my sake? would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!

(Numbers 11:29)

As Moses’ protégé, Joshua got schooled and schooled hard in that exchange. But he obviously also learned from it, because later he himself would be guided and emboldened by God’s Holy Spirit, becoming not only a great leader but also one of only two of the original 600,000+ men who left Egypt who ultimately made it to the promised land.

Moses and Joshua’s exchange reminds me of the New Testament passage where the people are shouting “Hosanna in the highest!” during Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem. The Pharisees command Jesus to silence them, to which Jesus replies that if he did silence them, the very rocks beneath their feet would cry out instead. The lesson here is that you can’t interfere with Spirit-led prophesying, as it comes directly from God. Attempting to do so only makes disciples and prophets even of rocks and mountains and trees, which will then proclaim the glory of God everywhere and unfettered.

Moses’ wish that “all the Lord’s people were prophets” finally came true when Jesus founded his Church nearly a millennium and a half later. Everyone in that Church is born again, each with a unique measure of God’s Spirit according to God’s grace. Like Eldad and Medad, all of us bornagain believers are God’s prophets, whether we are recognized by the world (and the worldly church) as such or not. You cannot have God’s Spirit in you and not be a prophet of God, as having God’s Spirit is the very definition of a prophet: “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy”.

We all remember the instant when God first put his Spirit in us – how suddenly we “saw” and how easily we prophesied! Nothing could have silenced us in those early days of our rebirth any more than the disciples could have been silenced at Pentecost: The force of God’s Spirit was overwhelming. I can imagine that Eldad and Medad experienced much the same thing, though with them it wasn’t spiritual rebirth: It was more a visitation of God’s Spirit, like it was for all prophets of God prior to Jesus founding his Church. Still, like us at our rebirth, Eldad and Medad were unstoppable in their prophesying, which Moses in his God-given wisdom recognized for what it was. There was a place and a purpose for Eldad and Medad, just as there was a place and a purpose for Moses and his 70 chosen elders, just as there’s a place and a purpose for us, God’s saints, during the prophesied falling away.

And yet despite the force of God’s Spirit when it first enters us, none of us are fully spiritually formed at that time, not even Jesus. We begin with a bang at our rebirth and grow from there. Jesus had a head start on all of us, being conceived of the Holy Spirit, but he still had to go through his paces, he still had to make his mistakes and learn from them, he still had to bide his time and patiently wait. Part of the waiting was for his sake and part for the sake of others, so that God could strengthen Jesus for his appointed tasks while also getting all his ducks in a row. God likewise has us wait at times. When that happens, it may seem like we’re spinning our spiritual wheels, going nowhere, but that’s just God’s way of preparing us by letting us steep, like tea: the longer we steep, the stronger we get.

We just need to be careful not to grow cold and bitter while we steep.

FORTY SACRED DAYS: THE TRANSITION

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 6, 2026 – The Jesus who rose from the dead looked nothing like the rabbi Jesus. In fact, he looked so different, it’s likely his own mother didn’t recognize him. Certainly, his disciples didn’t, and they’d been with him for three whole years, night and day, talking to him, listening to him, memorizing every curve and angle of his face, the way you soak in every last detail of a loved one. And yet even they—his chosen few—thought he was just another stranger, and an ill-informed one at that, when they first came upon him on the road to Emmaus. They didn’t have a clue they were talking to their risen Lord until he outed himself at dinner.

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during that encounter! I bet Jesus could barely hold back a smile at their fumbling earnestness. Did God supernaturally withhold Jesus’ identity from them? Scripture says he did. It was probably another test of sorts, the way we’re tested when God withholds the identity of angels from us. He wants to see how we’ll interact with strangers when we don’t know we’re being watched. I never know I’ve had an angelic encounter until the angel is long gone. Still, there’s something about them even as I’m talking to them that triggers something inside me. Something that nags at me the way something nagged at the disciples on the road to Emmaus. They described it as their hearts burning within them, a knowing without knowing what it was they knew. The same thing happens when we encounter God’s holy angels here on Earth and, to a lesser degree, when we encounter other genuine bornagain believers in person.

We can only wonder where Jesus went and what he did in the 40 days leading up to his ascension. We know he spent several hours with his disciples and other followers, but that time accounts for only a small portion of the nearly six weeks. Was he here on Earth the whole time, or did he do some day trips and maybe even a few overnighters in Heaven? He told the “good thief” on the neighboring cross that he’d be with him that day in Paradise, so we can assume from this scripture that Jesus did have physical as well as spiritual access to the heavenly realms prior to his publicly witnessed ascension. How much access, we don’t know. (Maybe we don’t need to know.) It’s still fascinating to think about how he slipped back and forth between Heaven and Earth not only “in the spirit” but physically, like the holy angels do, all decked out in his shiny new but unrecognizable-to-those-who’d-known-him-before body that was being upgraded to heavenly standards day by day.

In contrast to the wide reach of Jesus’ ministry during the preceding three years, very few on Earth got to see the risen Jesus before he ascended. And even of those who did get to see him, some still doubted it was him because he looked and sounded and moved so different from the Jesus they knew. It might have seemed to them that it was Jesus but not Jesus, because it actually was Jesus but not Jesus, the way we’ll be us but not us if we make it to Heaven – same soul, but different body, different voice, different movement.

Different memories.

Jesus has never stopped teaching us, not from the moment Moses first mentioned him all the way up until now. But in those 40 sacred days between his resurrection and ascension, Jesus taught us something very special: He gave us a glimpse into what awaits us if we make it Home. And what did he teach us? That we’ll look entirely different from what we do now, and that our bodies will have entirely different capabilities. For instance, we’ll be able to appear and disappear at will. Among humans, we’ll appear human, though not recognizable (people who knew us before won’t know who we are). We’ll be able to eat food (yay! lol). We’ll be able to move between the heavenly and earthly realms with the same ease as God’s holy angels. And we’ll continue to help and teach much in the same way as we help and teach now, only with greater authority: We’ll command attention without demanding it, and our words will have impact, due to the fulness of God’s Holy Spirit that will be in us.

When all is said and done, this is what I’m waiting for – that glorious transition from here to there, from the earthly to the heavenly, spiritually and physically. I thank God for giving Jesus the grace of time to show us what that transition looks like.

“AS THE DAYS OF NOAH”: NO MORE CONVERSIONS

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 2, 2026 – In describing the final stages of the end times, Jesus likened them to “the days of Noah”. But what did he mean by that? The book of Genesis tells us that those days were unimaginably evil, and that the evil was not just confined to people but had manifested in all the animals as well. We also know from the Gospels that the people in Noah’s age appeared to be blissfully unaware of the horror that was about to be unleashed on them and that they went about their daily lives as if God and his judgement didn’t exist.

Sound familiar? Jesus could well have been describing our own age.

Noah, as we know from scripture, was the only one who “found grace” in God’s eyes. Not his wife, not his three sons or their wives, only Noah. Still, Noah’s grace was sufficient to spiritually cover his family and a certain number of animals, and so they, too, were spared from the watery grave that would claim everyone and and everything else. But it was only Noah who was righteous and had found grace in God’s eyes. This point is important.

When God commanded Noah to build the ark, giving him the exact design specifications as well as the reason for building it, Noah obeyed God to the letter. He didn’t argue with God about the seemingly impossible construction timeline (according to the book of Jubilees, just over one year) or about excluding everyone but his immediate family from the ark. He didn’t beg God to spare his village or at least the children in it. He didn’t rail at God for not giving anyone else a chance. He simply put his head down, nose to the grindstone, and did as God commanded.

There were no more conversions to God’s way of righteousness after Noah received his instructions. We know there were no more conversions because God implicitly states in scripture that only Noah found grace in his eyes. Once God had decided enough was enough and that judgement was due, the line was drawn separating Noah from everyone else. No-one else squeaked through even at the eleventh hour because no-one else was given the chance to squeak through.

As a bornagain believer, you are likely well acquainted with the anguish of praying for people who are deep in sin, only to have God gently chide you not to pray for them anymore. I remember the first time that happened to me; I witnessed a different side of God’s mercy. Paul describes it as God giving people over to their sins: If they choose evil, God lets them have evil. He positions us as witnesses (silent or otherwise) to his Truth, but he lets the sinners be, and he tells us likewise to let them be.

I believe that Noah was tunnel-visioned after he received his ark-building instructions from God. I don’t believe, as some Bible commentators have proposed, that Noah frantically preached to his unrepentant evil generation. I believe that he just let them be in their sins and focused instead on doing God’s will, which in this case was to build the ark and prepare for the flood. I believe this because over and over again, scripture informs us that after a certain point, God washes his hands of sinners. He no longer tries to correct them or to send anyone to try to correct them; he just lets them be.

We see this in the days of Noah, we see this in the days leading up to the destruction of Sodom, and we see this in the days leading up to the fall of Jerusalem prior to the Babylonian exile. Conversions to righteousness don’t happen, not after a certain point. We read in Ezekiel 9 how none are spared but those who are already righteous in God’s eyes. Even little children are not spared. We need to stare this fact directly in the face and see it for what it is. We dare not look away; we dare not pretend it isn’t so; else, we’ll waste precious time doing what we shouldn’t be doing by praying and preaching to the already lost, and in so doing disobeying God.

And still the sinners will sneer: “Where then is your precious God’s mercy?”, to which the only reply can be: “In letting you live the life you choose, in letting you sin freely, since you’ve shown that’s all you want. In allowing you to reject God—to disbelieve he even exists—while still giving you what you want: That’s God’s mercy.”

When Jesus says the final stages of the end times will be like the days of Noah, he means, among other things, there’ll be no more conversions. He means the line will already have been drawn separating the righteous from the unrighteous, from those who have found grace in God’s eyes and those who have not. The book of Revelation underscores this truth in showing that, after the sealings that take place prior to the opening of the seventh seal, there are no more conversions. Not a one.

In the past, I have stupidly—that is, without God’s guidance— prayed for people who were already lost. When God finally intervened and told me not to pray for them anymore, he explained that he doesn’t want them to be hounded. He loves them even though they’ve rejected him, and he wants them to have whatever little bit of happiness they can eke out from whatever time they have left. He tells me: “This is all they have. This time here, now – this is all they have. Let them be.”

And so I let them be. I put my nose to the spiritual grindstone, and I let them be.

You must do the same.

He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still….

Revelation 22:11            

          

PASSOVER INCOMING!

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 31, 2026 – Just a quick reminder that Passover starts tomorrow evening (April 1st, at sundown) and continues into the Feast of Unleavened Bread, ending at nightfall next Wednesday. So if you haven’t yet bought/made your unleavened bread and wine (or wine substitute [I’m using grape pop lol]), now’s the time. Jesus directed us to observe the Passover in memory of him, and to do it as he showed us, so do it we must. It’s obligatory, not optional. Obligatory. And God directed us to observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread throughout our generations, so observe it we will. Yeast out, matzah in!

Now’s also the perfect time to dig back into the Exodus and read the entire account of Moses in Egypt, up to and including the children of Israel’s flight into the wilderness. We bornagains live in that spiritual wilderness; and like the children of Israel, we too are protected by the constant presence of God’s Holy Spirit. They had God’s Spirit without; we have God’s Spirit within.

So, Hallelujah, God Bless You, and Bottom’s Up!

THE BIBLE IS NOT ENOUGH

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 3, 2026 – I love the Bible. I’ve written here and here and elsewhere how important the Bible is to me. I carry one with me wherever I go, and at home I’m surrounded by them. I favor the King James version, though I’m open to other translations.

But the Bible alone is not enough. The Bible alone can’t take you where you need to go. Just before he went Home, Jesus told his followers that there were so many more things he needed to say to them, but they weren’t ready to hear them yet. So he promised he’d send God’s Spirit of Truth to teach them when they were ready.

Jesus’ promise to his early followers is also his promise to us. Jesus didn’t say to make an idol of God’s written Word and bow down to it as the sole authority. No; he never once said that. He himself contradicted the Old Testament on occasion, such as when he overrode Moses’ permission on granting divorces or when he directed us to love our enemies rather than to curse them. This wasn’t just a radical reinterpretation of accepted scripture; it was a whole new Word.

Those of us who are genuinely bornagain are still being taught by God’s Spirit of Truth. This was Jesus’ promise to us, his followers, and Jesus never breaks his promises. Still, there are those who claim that private revelation must accord with scripture, and if it doesn’t, it’s not from God. What would those same people say about Jesus’ private revelations forming the basis for the Gospel, seeing how in so many instances those revelations defied scripture?  

We are constantly being taught by God through his Spirit of Truth. We are directed by God, informed by God, cautioned by God, chastised by God, humored by God, and most of all loved by God, all through his Spirit, as promised by Jesus. We all received a measure of God’s Spirit at our rebirth, and it is through this Spirit residing in us that we’re able to receive God’s revelations, which are actually just God’s teachings, which are actually just God talking to us, one-on-one, as our Father, as any loving father would talk one-on-one to his beloved child. Each of us receives God’s words according to our individual abilities at any given time, just as Jesus promised.

As I said, I love the Bible and I enjoy reading it every day. But I love my one-on-one time with God more. I cherish his private revelations to me just as much as I cherish his public ones in scripture. In some cases, I cherish the private revelations more because they’re so deeply personal and show God’s overwhelming love for me. Some of these revelations I share; most of them I don’t, depending on God’s guidance. Jesus shared some things publicly, other things he shared privately (among his disciples and friends), and some things he didn’t share at all but kept them just between him and God. Jesus promised us we’d have that same intimacy with God—the same access to private revelation—when the time came.

Thank God it’s come.

I love the Bible, but the Bible alone is not enough.

I love God’s Word, but I love God more.

THE ONE JOB SAFE FROM AI

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 19, 2026 – Matt Shumer is a self-professed artificial intelligence (AI) expert. I’m not knocking him for that; just stating a fact. He’s also likely not bornagain, so he can be forgiven for not knowing AI’s defining feature  it’s not a soul. And not being a soul, it can never have God’s Holy Spirit in it.

We have God’s Spirit in us. That’s our defining feature. Being bornagain doesn’t mean we’re eternally saved (that determination comes at the Judgement); being bornagain means that God’s Holy Spirit is in us at all times, not just on occasion like with the Old Testament prophets. God’s Spirit is in us in the same way God’s Spirit was in Jesus during his time on Earth. But this indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit can never happen to an AI because it isn’t a soul.

I’m a soul. You’re a soul. All beings on Earth created by the Living God are souls. We don’t have a soul; we are a soul. This part of me that’s communicating with that part of you is communicating soul-to-soul, and that’s the part of us that’s eternal. Our bodies are mortal, but our souls are immortal. I’m speaking to you from my soul, not from my brain (or any other part of my body). An AI can’t do that because an AI isn’t a soul.

And not being a soul—not being a living being created by God—an AI can never be regenerated and therefore can never have God’s Holy Spirit in it. Which means that an AI can never be a prophet, as it can’t know God.

Matt Shumer, that AI high-tech guy I referenced above, recently published a paper (likely AI-generated lol) warning people that AI was coming for their jobs. We’ve heard this warning before from other people, but coming from Shumer the warning was particularly intriguing, given that he’s made his fortune promoting AI. Shades of Dr. Frankenstein warning that his monster is about to break free of its chains? Perhaps. There’s an undercurrent of fear in Shumer’s “manifesto”, but also a hint of parental pride.

Shumer took especial pains to address anyone who wasn’t as impressed with AI’s achievements as he thought they should be. He cautioned them not to judge AI by the free models or cheap subscriptions available online (which he insisted are already outdated and outperformed, like flip-phones compared to the latest smart phone models). Instead, we’re to seek out and purchase the most recent and advanced AI options, and to constantly update them. This is because AI is not improving linearly but exponentially. Even yesterday’s model has been superseded by the one released just this morning.

This fast-paced consumer-driven AI hamster wheel that Shumer invites us to jump onto like some high-tech Noah’s ark is allegedly our only hope for surviving an AI-dominated future. And this future, according to Dr. Shumerstein, has already begun. He urges us not only to embrace this ever-evolving tool, but to make it an integral part of our everyday lives. If we can’t stay ahead of AI developments (it’s allegedly, according to Shumer, already too late for that), we can at least be aware of those developments and leverage them to our benefit. This is the only way to avoid being replaced by AI in our jobs.

But the one job Shumer didn’t mention as being entirely beyond AI’s capacity is the job we landed by default the day we were born again – the job of being God’s prophet. Not being a soul, AI can never have God’s Holy Spirit living in it and so can never speak as a prophet of God. It can repeat God’s words, but it can never directly hear from God. God will never speak directly through an AI, which means it can never prophesy.

So, as long we remain bornagain and in good spiritual standing with God, our jobs are safe.

WE NEED A PANDEMIC

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 17, 2026 – We pray wrong. We see a drought and pray for rain. We see a broken nation and pray for healing. We see ungodly people doing ungodly things, and we pray for God to forgive them. But what we should be praying for is an outbreak of righteousness, an epidemic of doing good, a pandemic of people choosing what’s right in God’s eyes, even when it flies in the face of what the world thinks is right. At the same time, we need to pray for God to strengthen us to levels he hasn’t strengthened us before, so that we can persistently and under every circumstance model godliness, model godliness, model godliness, until it spreads like a holy contagion to everyone around us.

We need a pandemic of godliness.

You can’t change God’s justice. You can’t call for a review of God’s terms just because you don’t like them. God sent Jonah to warn the Ninevites that their city would be destroyed in 40 days. When the King of Nineveh heard Jonah, he didn’t ignore him or mock him. He didn’t try to silence him. He didn’t threaten to arrest him for hate speech or for creating a public disturbance. No, the King responded by instituting a nation-wide emergency. All Ninevites were to drop whatever they were doing and immediately sit in sackcloth and ashes, including their animals. And they were to fast until the king told them to stop. No arguments and no exceptions. They couldn’t even drink water. The King believed that if Nineveh did this, God might change his mind about destroying them.

Note that the King didn’t simply pray to God to forgive the Ninevites’ sins. Nor did he curse God for the threatened destruction. He instead took the most drastic godly action possible and used his authority to make sure that everyone else did. “But, Charlotte”, you might be thinking, “People today aren’t going to this. They’re not going to stop whatever they’re doing and go along with whatever the government or other authority tells them to do.” You might be surprised. During the last “pandemic”, whole populations stopped whatever they were doing and donned masks. Whole populations obediently stood six feet apart. Entire industries were shut down, schools and businesses were shuttered, people self-isolated at home – some welded in from the outside – until they were given permission to leave. Whole populations complied with the most drastic of decrees without question. And they did all this for months – even years – because they were afraid to catch a cold. You’d be surprised at what people can be persuaded to do under the right authority.

When God saw the Ninevites’ collective show of repentance, he called off the planned destruction. Note that God’s justice didn’t change; the Ninevites changed, and in changing their behavior, they changed their due reward.

All nations today are on the fast-track to destruction. We need a pandemic of godly behavior to stop the destruction or at the very least to delay it. Praying for God to forgive us and save us is not going to cut it this time. Like Nineveh, it’s too late and we’re too far gone. We need instead to pray for people to make godly choices – to choose what’s right in God’s eyes. And we need to pray this prayer while making godly choices ourselves, every day, all day, without exception. Our prayers will only have authority if we ourselves model what we’re praying for.

We urgently need a pandemic of godliness. It begins with localized outbreaks of making good choices.

Let’s get that pandemic started now!

So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not. 

(Jonah 3:5-10)