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IF THE GOOD LORD IS WILLING
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 11, 2024 – I don’t think Jesus sat down every night before going to bed and wrote out a list of things he wanted to do the next day. I don’t think he wrote out a list of resolutions, either, at the Jewish version of New Year’s Eve (if there was such a thing back then). I don’t even think he wrote grocery lists.
What I do think Jesus did during his ministry years is fall asleep every night with a clear conscience, with nothing to repent. He would almost always sleep deeply and well – even on heaving boats in the middle of a storm – and when he woke up refreshed in the morning, God let him know what he had to do that day. Jesus rarely knew in advance what his daily tasks were. He woke up and waited for God to inform him.
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
As a young believer, I often wondered how Jesus’ ministry could possibly have spanned three years when the gospels don’t seem to relay three years’ worth of activity. But as I matured as a believer, I came to understand that Jesus wasn’t on the move 24/7. Like the Israelites staying put in the desert for long periods of time until God gave them the signal to strike camp and move on, Jesus sometimes stayed put wherever he was, like in the desert during his temptation or during his stint at Capernaum. Mind you, he didn’t laze around playing video games and eating pizza pockets during those times, as John attests (“if everything Jesus did was written down, I reckon the whole world couldn’t hold all those books”); he probably just did the same things over and over, like healing the sick and teaching at the local synagogue. He would do those things in the same place until God told him it was time to move on.
It’s critically important to note that the decision to stay put or to move on never fell on Jesus. It was never Jesus’ decision. It was always God’s decision and Jesus always obeyed: “I always do that which pleases the Father”.
I mention this because how Jesus lived his life is how we need to live ours, which is why I can’t emphasize enough that Jesus waited for God to direct his plans. Many of us make up physical or mental to-do lists about all the “godly” things we want to accomplish within a certain period of time. We set these tasks for ourselves, sometimes on our own initiative and sometimes at the goading of others who have questionable motives. But, like Jesus, we need to be waiting for God and God only to set our tasks for us. We should never run ahead of God. Sure, we can let God know what we’d like to do (he always wants to hear our ideas), but we should only follow through on our plans if we get the clear go-ahead directly from God.
Throughout scripture, we’re reminded again and again to let God handle our reins and direct our steps. This includes doing whatever we do at God’s direction and in God’s time, not just in God’s way. In his letter, James teaches us that we’re to say: “if the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that,” rather than simply to state we’ll go here or there in such and such a time to do such and such. I remember my grandmother being fond of saying: “If the Good Lord is willing”, and then stating what it is she wanted to do and when she wanted to do it. This phrase – “if the Good Lord is willing” – used to be common among believers in adherence to James’s teaching, but it’s fallen out of fashion in favour of self-directed to-do lists.
We need to go back to letting God and God only plan our lives and finalize our tasks, even if it means we wake up every morning with no clue whatsoever what we’re going to do that day.
“Wait on the Lord: be of good courage and he will strengthen your heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.”
(Psalm 27)
THE ONLY WAY FORWARD
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 2, 2024 – Becoming more like Jesus doesn’t mean we have to grow our hair long and wear sandals. It means we make the same choices he did and embrace the same values he did, not because we’re trying to mimic him for the sake of mimicking him, but because he did things right.
If you’re genuinely born-again, you want to do things right. The desire to do things right is your default position in everything you do. You don’t consciously make it your default position; it becomes your default position at rebirth.
I was born-again from atheism, so I don’t share the mindset of people who are happy to remain in churchianity. When I say I don’t share their mindset, I mean I don’t understand it. I’ve never experienced it. For me, it’s been either zero belief or 100% belief. For me, there was never anything in between, by which I mean that in-between place where most people in churchianity dwell who say they believe but don’t live their belief.
When Jesus raised Jairus’s daughter from the dead, he took only three of his disciples and the dead girl’s parents into the girl’s room. There is a reason why Jesus did this and why it was meticulously recorded in the Gospels. Outside were crowds of people who mocked Jesus for saying the girl was not dead, just sleeping, but also outside and far far away were the rest of Jesus’ disciples whose faith wasn’t as strong as Peter’s and James’s and John’s. I wonder how they felt when Jesus looked past them and chose instead those three disciples to accompany him for the miracle. Was it a wake-up call for them, an incentive to grow their faith? Or did it shame them? Hurt them? (Maybe even get them a little angry?) All the disciples had been called at the same time to follow Jesus, but some had become much stronger in their faith than others. Why was that? Why did some grow fast and deep in faith, while others lagged behind?
We know it wasn’t for lack of opportunity that some of the disciples progressed more slowly than others. I mean, they were all living and working with Jesus. I can’t imagine a better opportunity to become more like Jesus than by watching him and hearing him and interacting with him day after day. So what makes people drag their heels in their faith journey? What side-tracks them? What makes them draw the belief line this far and no further?
Jesus gives us the answer:
If any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.
Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.
This is not the first or the only time that Jesus tells people they have to leave their old life behind if they want to be his follower. It’s a theme that runs through the gospels from start to finish. But Jesus didn’t tell people to leave their families, quit their jobs, and give up all their possessions for his sake. Jesus wasn’t gaining anything from having them do these things. It wasn’t for his benefit that Jesus had them walk away from their old lives – it was for their own benefit. They were the ones who would gain from it.
And what would they gain? A closer relationship with God and everything that goes with having a close relationship with God. And how would they gain it? By relying more and more on God than on people and possessions. By leaving their minds undistracted and unburdened by “the cares of this world”, they’d be free to focus fully on the task at hand, as directed by Jesus.
The call to walk away from your old life is as loud and clear as it was when Jesus chose his first disciples. The call has not changed, even though some claim it was only for the early church, not for us today. But I disagree. Clinging to your old life lies at the root of weak and superficial faith, and weak and superficial faith explains why so many people who say they believe end up spinning their wheels in churchianity. Not making God their priority, they can’t receive what God wants to give them. Sure, they’ll have their family, but at what cost? Sure, they’ll keep their job and their possessions, but at what price and for how long?
Rebirth is like a birth: you arrive with nothing and are given everything you need to survive. But imagine a newborn refusing to let go of its placenta and umbilical cord. Imagine a newborn refusing to use its lungs to breathe. Imagine a newborn refusing to suck on a breast but instead crying for the blood transference that fed it in the womb. That newborn wouldn’t survive very long.
Yet that newborn is not unlike a Christian who refuses to let go of his old life.
Becoming more and more like Jesus is a call we need to answer every day. We do this by making the same choices Jesus did and for no other reason than that they were and are the right choices. If Jesus unequivocally says we’re to leave everything behind, we leave everything behind, and we do so not for Jesus’ sake, but for ours. We can’t claim to have a close relationship with God if we’re hanging onto the world’s umbilical cord. Letting go of our old life – giving it all up for God – is not only the best way forward for genuine believers, it’s the only way forward.
ARE YOU PRAYING TO GOD OR TO THE WALL?
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, October 28, 2024 – Jesus taught us to love our enemies. He also reminded us that before we petition God in prayer, we need to make sure we’re not holding anything against anyone or God will not hear us. He will simply refuse to allow our petition to be heard. That’s a pretty bold statement, that God will refuse to hear us. Did Jesus really mean that, or was he just speaking figuratively?
I believe that Jesus really meant what he said. God will not hear our prayers if we go before him holding a grudge. Even worse, when we go to God in repentance, God will refuse to forgive us unless we first forgive others. We can go through all the motions of repentance as loudly and elaborately as we want, or as quietly and humbly, but either way we’ll accomplish nothing if we’re harbouring so much as a smidge of unforgiveness. In other words, we might as well be talking to the wall if we come before God holding a grudge, as our prayers will go nowhere.
God outright refusing to forgive us is also a bold statement. Nonetheless, I believe it’s true and vitally important to the repentance equation, although it’s nearly always left out of sermons about repentance. We’re told by our pastors that it’s good to repent and that we need to repent and that we should do so often, as if the act of repenting in and of itself is all it takes for God to forgive us. Rarely, if ever, are we reminded that we must first resolve our grudges or our repentance cannot be accomplished. In other words, if you go before God with hate in your heart, God will not only not forgive you, he won’t even acknowledge your petition, no matter how many times you pester him.
Repentance only works if you first forgive. That’s what Jesus taught us.
Then why do so many people beg God’s forgiveness while holding onto grudges? Some people are even holding onto grudges against God while asking God to forgive them! But as Jesus taught us, there’s no point in asking for forgiveness if you haven’t first forgiven. This includes forgiving people you know personally as well as (and just as importantly) those you don’t know personally, like politicians or people you’ve read about in the news.
When you go before God, your heart should be squeaky clean of any form of grudge or judgement whatsoever. You should be holding nothing against anyone, including the neighbour down the street who has a habit of firing up his lawnmower at 7 in the morning. So many Christians wonder why God doesn’t seem to hear their prayers let alone answer them, and there’s the reason why – grudges. If you want God to hear you loud and clear and to answer your prayers as they’re leaving your mouth, come to him with a clean heart. Love your enemies by praying for them and blessing them.
Hold nothing against anyone, and God will hold nothing against you.
SPIRITUAL AIR FRESHENER
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, October 24, 2024 – Ideally, we as Christians should be able to walk into any Christian-designated church building or service or organization anywhere in the world and feel not only welcome but “at home”. We should feel like family to the people working or worshiping there. We should never feel alien or as if we don’t belong. We should never feel “othered”. This is my ideal take on being a Christian in the world.
Realistically, though, there are few if any Christian church buildings, services, or organizations where you feel welcome or at home if you’re a stranger to the people in them. You’ll be received more like Paul just after his conversion than like Jesus after his resurrection, or at least that’s been my experience over the years since my rebirth. Maybe it’s because I’m a woman or because I always show up at these places alone. Maybe being a woman on my own makes me suspect. I don’t know. I generally find the men and the children to be somewhat warmer and more welcoming than the women, but again that might just be because I’m a woman. When they see me, the wives tend to pull their husbands closer (lol) and pepper me with questions, the main one being “And is your husband coming, too?….”
As I mentioned a few articles back, God has me doing the rounds of churches and church-run organizations again. It’s always an eye-opener, attending services and partaking of the hospitality of these places. I make a concerted effort to enter them as if I have the right to be in them, because I do have the right to be in them. Every Christian has the right to be in a place designated as a Christian space or organization. There are zero exceptions to this rule. Sometimes I have to say outright to whoever is giving me the stink-eye and third-degree: “I’m a Christian”, and let that proclamation sink into their hearts and minds and hopefully soften them a bit towards me. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. I haven’t (yet) been chased out of any place, like Jesus was chased out of his hometown synagogue, but I have walked out on numerous occasions, mostly when things were being said or done that I didn’t agree with, or when the sad state of the people and the space was too much for me to bear.
You can feel when a church or organization is on life support, the same way you can tell when a sick animal is nearing death or a business is about to go bankrupt. There’s a pall of leanness that hangs over the proceedings, darkening and dimming and dampening, even though the official word is that everything is just fine. The first thing you notice when an end is nearing is the lack of cleanliness, like the smell of old product left moldering on store shelves or the heaviness of a room that hasn’t been aired out in years. Animals stop cleaning themselves in the days leading up to their death, either because they’re too unwell to do it or they don’t care about doing it anymore or they have more important things to attend to than grooming (Heaven now being in their sights). Sometimes I think I should be taking cleaning products with me when I go to church services so I can do some impromptu wiping and dusting when no-one’s looking.
I remember, when I was first reborn, that I wanted to clean the bathroom in the church I was attending. I was there every day, and I considered it would be an honor to clean that bathroom. But the priest wouldn’t let me do it, without giving me a reason why. Only later did I find out it was because the bathroom, which was readily accessible from the sidewalk outside the church’s front doors, was habitually used by drug addicts to get their fix. Sometimes they’d be found passed out. Sometimes they’d be found dead. It was basically a hazmat zone, that bathroom. Still, every now and then I would drop by the dollar store to get some air fresheners for it. I felt that the least I could do was make the place smell a little better, even if the filth went too deep to remove.
Sometimes that’s all we can do now as born-again believers – place spiritual air fresheners here and there to give the impression that things aren’t as dire as they are. The same thing was done in the decades leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem, both before and after Jesus’ first coming. The few who cared did what they could to turn people back to God, but the majority wanted nothing to do with him. Did they know their efforts were in vain, those few who cared? I think they did, the same way Moses knew that only two among the millions of adults who streamed out of Egypt would ultimately make it to the promised land. But like Jeremiah trying to stop himself from preaching about God, the people who cared couldn’t help themselves. They couldn’t contain their love for God; it just burst out of them, even if they knew that all their efforts (or most of them) were in vain.
So they rolled with it. And rolling with it, they were maligned, mocked, threatened, hated, expelled, persecuted, imprisoned, and sometimes even killed, and nearly always by the very people they were trying to help. It didn’t stop them, though, those few who cared. They considered it a privilege and a good sign to suffer for the Word.
As God leads me, I will continue to roll into whatever building, service, or organization that is officially designated as Christian, expecting not to be particularly welcome but also not letting the stink-eye stop me. Every designated Christian space (and the resources offered there) is a space that’s been set aside for me – for us – and I will gratefully make use of them for as long as they exist. I encourage you to do the same, though you might want to pack a few baby wipes and some spiritual air freshener, just in case.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LOVE GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, SOUL, MIND, AND STRENGTH? (PART 1 OF 2)
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, October 17, 2024 – What does it mean to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength?
As born-again believers, we need to know exactly what it means, because Jesus said it’s the first and greatest Commandment. As such, it should be our lived experience, day in and day out. If we don’t know what it means to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength – if we can’t articulate what it means if someone asks us – we won’t be able to do it because we won’t really know what it looks like. We’ll know the expression, but not the meaning.
I went to a church service yesterday. I’ve been to the same service for the past few weeks, and each time I’ve attended, the minister reminds the parishioners that they’re to love God with all their heart, soul, and mind. It’s a recitation that he reads, not something that he says off the cuff. It’s baked into The Book of Common Prayer, so I’m guessing it’s recited during all the services in that church, or at least during most of them. Yet I wonder, for all the recitations, how many of the parishioners who hear this Commandment actually put it into practice.
But back to us born-again believers – how are we to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength? Because love him we must, and precisely in that way. If we know that we should love God with everything we have and everything we are and yet choose not to, we could lose our grace, and there’s no getting that back. Without grace, we can’t get into God’s Kingdom on Earth or God’s Kingdom in Heaven, which means that whatever time we have left here will be more or less Hell on Earth and our only possible final destination the lake of fire.
Considering how critically important the first and greatest of all Commandments is, maybe we should take a moment to think about what it means for us in our own lives. Holy scripture is deeply one-on-one and personalized, not “one size fits all”. What the first Commandment means to you may not be what it means to me or even what it meant to Jesus during his time on Earth.
So, what does is mean to you to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? How does your obedience to that Commandment play out in real time in your life?
Please think about these questions, and we’ll continue our discussion tomorrow.
YEARNING FOR WILL-FREE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, October 8, 2024 – Who we are as a person is measured by what we do when we think no-one sees us. As born-again believers, we have an advantage in this measuring process because we know that God sees us all the time and that nothing – including our thoughts – can be hid from him. Knowing that God sees us always and under every circumstance, we’re careful in what we do and say and think, even and especially when no one (except God) is around.
I was at a church service a few days ago, sitting at the back, and was startled to see one of the young men tasked with collecting cash “offerings” slip some of those offerings into his pants pocket. I glanced at the minister, but he didn’t appear to see what I saw. I left the matter in God’s hands.
We’re surrounded, it seems, by Judas Iscariots. In the world, we expect to be lied to, cheated, and stolen from, but not in a church. Judas fooled all of Jesus’ disciples and followers into thinking he was just like them, but Jesus knew from the start who and what Judas was and what he would do when it was time. At some point in his three-year discipleship, Judas started stealing from the group’s money bag and plotting to betray Jesus, and no-one appeared to notice except Jesus. Did Judas arrive in the group already fully formed as a consummate liar, thief, and backstabber, or did he become those things over time?
A soul is a miraculous creation. For us humans, our souls are made by God in Heaven and then placed in earthly bodies. The precise instant of that soul transfer from the eternal realm to time-and-space is still open to conjecture, but that it does occur is without a doubt. Just as certain is the soul’s vacating of the earthly body at death and its instantaneous return to the eternal realm.
Does our soul come desirous of all things good? I believe it does. God made our souls in his image, which means he made us desirous of him. If that is in fact a fact, then how do we get Judases? Where do they come from?
Free will. The ability to choose not only the good but also the bad has been our undoing. God knew it likely would be, and yet he still “gifted” us with the right to choose him or not to choose him. Why would he do that?
Knowing God as I do now, I know that he doesn’t want automatons as children. He doesn’t want lip-servers or people who feel obligated to serve him rather than who are sincerely desirous to serve him. He, our living and loving Father, wants living and loving children, and so he gives souls the choice to willingly serve him or not, to willingly choose the good or not, to willingly love him or not. And even those souls who willingly choose him he further tests to make sure their decision is sincere and not just a momentary whim. Those who choose against him he leaves the door open to, for a time, in case they change their mind.
What we do when we think no-one sees us is the true measure of our soul. And it’s our soul that’s judged on Judgement Day, not our bodies or our bank accounts or our credit rating. It’s our soul that persists into eternity and never ceases to exist. Our soul had a beginning, but it will have no end. Knowing this, and knowing how relatively short our human journey is and how everything we do impacts the state of our soul, how can we not be careful – even excruciatingly so – of our every word, thought, and deed?
I am terrified of the power God has to condemn my soul. I’m not afraid of the devil or his demons, I’m not afraid of hurricanes and earthquakes, I’m not afraid of war or of those who want me dead so they can plunder my body and seize my inheritance – I only fear God, as Jesus said we should. And fearing God, I am mindful, ever so mindful, to choose the good, even and especially in my thoughts.
What doesn’t sit right with God can have no place with me. I don’t want what doesn’t sit right with God to have any place with me, and yet choosing the good has made me many enemies over the years, some even masquerading as friends.
There is no free will in Heaven. I know for a fact there isn’t, but only complete and utter and willing submission to God. This is what I yearn for.
I’ll be glad when my free will is over.
DOGS AND SMALL CHILDREN
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, October 8, 2024 – Why is that people whose heritage is God, when they turn from God, become worse than the heathens around them? What drives them not only to wallow in the spiritual ditch but to purposely crawl into the pit below it and to drag others down with them? When the children of Israel had filled up the full measure of their sin and everything in Jerusalem was being destroyed – including Solomon’s temple – God placed the small remnant of believers into the hands of the destroyers for safe keeping. He couldn’t even trust his own people to look after his own people anymore. They had become completely unsalvageable.
This pattern repeats over and over in the Bible, just as it does in unrecorded history at street level. My hometown of Halifax used to be a conservative “Christian” city with a church on every corner and all stores and businesses firmly shut on Sundays. Throughout the weekdays, the main downtown thoroughfare was alive with shoppers streaming in and out of bakeries, butchers, hardware stores, record stores, clothing stores, stationery stores, toy stores, cinemas, and department stores. The only places serving alcohol were licensed restaurants, and those had heavy government-imposed restrictions on them regarding serving hours and terms of service for alcoholic beverages: You couldn’t order a drink unless you also ordered a full sit-down meal. The bars were few and far between and relegated to the side-streets and alleyways in the sleazy part of town down by the harbour, where only the drunkards and the sailors on shore leave (and the scantily clad ladies who entertained them) dared to venture after dark. Loitering and vagrancy were illegal, as was littering. This is the Halifax I grew up in.
Fast-forward to today, and more than half the shopfronts along the garbage-strewn main thoroughfare are covered in faded “For Lease” signs. Of the few businesses still doing business, most are bars that are closed during the day. The street’s primary retail offerings are a sex store and a witch paraphernalia supply store, open seven days a week. The panhandlers outnumber the shoppers, while the homeless sleeping on the sidewalk outnumber the panhandlers. The charge of vagrancy was declared unconstitutional in the 1990s and struck from the lawbooks. Loitering in public places is also now allowed.
The churches are still here, though, at least the ones that haven’t been turned into condos yet. You can spot them by the rainbow flags draped over the entrances and windows. But unlike in the “old days”, when churches were open to the public 24/7, the doors are now locked and bolted except during services, and even then they’re guarded by watchful men in dark suits. I’ve gotten the stink-eye from those men more than once for being a “stranger” amidst the sparse and frail congregations.
What happened to change the Halifax of my childhood into the Halifax of my adulthood? The same thing that happened to all cities and towns in former Christendom over the past two or three generations, which is the same thing that happened to all cities and towns in the former promised land millennia ago. Turning away from God and the consequences that follow always look the same, regardless of the time or place.
I can only wonder when our Babylonian moment will finally come, because come it will. When we’ve filled up the full measure of our sin in what Jesus called the fulfilling of the times of the gentiles, total destruction can be the only reward. Like the vast majority of the children of Israel, the vast majority of the children of Christendom are stiff-necked and unsalvageable. They will never turn back to God.
And of our many heathen enemies around us, which will God appoint to harbour the tiny remnant of remaining believers? Which of our enemies will God have us submit to so that we can live to fight another day? Jeremiah willingly went with the Chaldeans. Daniel willingly went with the Babylonians. Paul willingly went with the Romans. Will we be directed to go with the atheist Chinese? Or maybe the Sikhs? Or the Muslims?
As a born-again believer, I feel I have more in common with my heathen enemies than with my own people. Is this how Elijah felt around Ahab and Jezebel? Or how Jeremiah felt around the false prophets? Or how Jesus felt when he dined with the Pharisees? I am a stranger in my own land and perceived as a stranger even in Christian churches. To use modern parlance, I am “othered” wherever I go. I fit in nowhere and am welcome nowhere. I am eyed suspiciously and questioned, and as soon as my back is turned, I am whispered about.
A born-again believer is a strange and terrible thing in today’s Canada.
But at least dogs and small children like me.
OUR ISRAEL
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, October 7, 2024 – The current geopolitical state of Israel is a nation that through treaties, landgrabs, strong-arming, bloodshed, collusion, deception, backroom deals, and sheer chutzpah has willed itself into being. I have no problem with this. Most nations on Earth have been established in more or less the same way, though usually over longer periods of time and mainly as spoils of war. Nation-building can be a thoroughly nasty and unequitable business.
What I, as a born-again believer, do have a problem with is the equating of the current geopolitical state of Israel with the Israel prophesied in the Bible, because the two are not the same. Saying that today’s geopolitical state of Israel unquestioningly deserves to exist because God promised a certain people the inalienable right to occupy a certain landmass in perpetuity is a misinterpretation of scripture. Yes, originally the promised land was indeed a specified landmass “flowing with milk and honey” that the children of Israel were to take by force as a spoil of war, with God himself fighting their battles. This occurred just after the exodus from Egypt over 3000 years ago, but a lot has happened since then, the main happening being Jesus.
Once Jesus had conquered death through his resurrection and was crowned King of Israel, a whole new realm emerged – spiritual Zion, otherwise known as the Kingdom of God. This was supernatural nation-building, but without the usual backroom deals and collusions. None were needed, as the prophesied promised land is entirely God-driven, God-sanctioned, and God-protected. It is the Israel foretold in scripture that will have no end and will be inhabited solely by God’s people. It is a spiritual realm, not a geopolitical one, and it exists here and now. I know, because as a born-again believer I live in it. I am a citizen of the prophesied Israel, as are you, if you’re genuinely born-again.
The misinterpretation of scripture by those who use scripture as a reason to justify the establishment of the geopolitical state of Israel is, I believe, unintentional for most people. That is, most people misinterpret scripture out of ignorance, not malice. They don’t purposely conflate spiritual Zion with geopolitical Zion. They simply don’t know the difference and/or don’t make the effort to learn the difference. As such, they become the so-called useful idiots of the bad players.
And there are bad players lurking in the background. Many of them. Multiple entities purposely conflate the two Israels and use emotional manipulation to garner support for the geopolitical one. But why do they do this? What’s in it for them, and what’s their end game?
Jesus told us that the world is under Satan, and we have no reason not to believe Jesus. Worldly powers and authorities (including those in the worldly Christian church) get their marching orders from Satan, to whom they’ve sworn an oath. Satan is their god, and they must do whatever Satan commands them to do. If they don’t, they (and their families) suffer his wrath.
This army of satanically driven powers and authorities, both worldly and supernatural, steers the ignorant masses towards adopting certain beliefs, using earthly and supernatural means. God permits Satan to operate within tightly restricted bounds and only upon his approval (as exemplified in Job), all leading to a certain end. This end, of course, is the unveiling of the false messiah and the establishment of the false messiah’s world-wide kingdom, as prophesied in the book of Daniel and warned by Jesus.
What does the geopolitical state of Israel have to do with the establishment of the false messiah’s kingdom? Basically everything. Scripture tells us that the false messiah will sit on a throne in the temple, having full control of the world and demanding to be worshiped as God, and that the temple is in Jerusalem. The building of the so-called third temple must come first, and this can only happen if the preferred site for the temple (the alleged site of the previous two temples) is entirely under the authority of the geopolitical state of Israel.
As of today, this site is not under Israeli authority. The Jordanian-controlled Al-Aqsa Mosque sits on top it and the Muslims refuse to budge. The only way they and their mosque can be dislodged is through all-out war that gifts the site to the geopolitical state of Israel as a spoil of war. Just before the false messiah is ready to take his seat in the temple, such a war will erupt.
Based on this interpretation of scripture, the resurrection of the geopolitical state of Israel has been done for the sole purpose of paving the way for the coming of the false messiah and his global domination. Ironically (or perhaps not), the biggest supporter and enabler of this paving project is the worldly Christian church, which sees in the revival of Israel not only the fulfilling of (misinterpreted) scripture, but the return of Jesus after the removal of the false messiah. This purposeful manipulation of the worldly church by bad players both within and without the church has been the prime mover not only in establishing “Israel” in 1948, but in financing it, supporting it, arming it, and defending it. Without the ongoing support of the worldly church through political and other machinations, the geopolitical state of Israel would struggle to exist.
I am no fan of the current geopolitical state of Israel. For that matter, I’m no fan of the current geopolitical state of Canada, either (even though I’m a Canadian), any more than I’m a fan of any other geopolitical state on Earth. I think they’re all satanic, every last one, and I support none of them. Still, I have no intention of getting in the way of “Israel”, as what has been decreed by God through his prophets will come to pass. “Israel” will successfully take by force the historical promised land, and the prophesied false messiah will sit on the throne of the third temple. Trying to stop or hinder what has been prophesied is a fool’s errand. Jesus warned us about the false messiah not so that we’d fight against him or his enablers, but so that we’d be aware of them and not fall under their spell.
As born-again believers, we should not join the worldly church in its support of a movement to enthrone the false messiah, regardless of the church’s motivation for doing so. God permits evil to thrive not because he loves evil but because he honors his promise to grant us free will. If we choose evil, God will permit us to have evil. But we shouldn’t choose evil believing it will lead to good (that is, that the fall of the false messiah will usher in the return of Jesus). Evil cannot lead to or beget good. If you choose evil, your reward can only be evil.
As a born-again believer, I encourage other born-again believers to adopt a hands-off approach to the current geopolitical state of Israel. It is not our concern. Our concern, as always, is serving and worshiping God, following Jesus, and helping our fellow believers in the Kingdom. We’re to watch and be aware of what’s going on in the world, but we’re not to get involved in it. Like the geopolitical state of Israel, the world is not our concern. It is under the authority of Satan, and God himself has put it there. To fight against the world is to fight against an authority ordained by God. We must never do that.
In the meantime, though, and for the rest of our time on Earth, we can revel in the knowledge that we live in God’s Kingdom, which is the true prophesied Israel of spiritual Zion, and that we live here thanks to the sacrifice of Jesus the Messiah and the love and grace of our Father, the Almighty God.
LET HIM LOVE YOU
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 28, 2024 – The guiding question, for us as born-again believers, shouldn’t so much be “Do you love God?” but “Do you let God love you?”
Yes, of course, we love God. Our love for God goes with the territory of being a born-again believer. We don’t have ask ourselves or question ourselves about that. We love God because we’re born-again.
Still, loving God doesn’t necessarily mean we let him love us to the extent that he wants us to love us. Many of us put limitations on how much we’ll let God love us. How do we do that? By excluding him in our everyday decisions, like when to get up and when to go to bed, or what to eat, or what to wear. Maybe we let him guide us which verses or chapters or books to read in the Bible, thinking that’s his area of expertise and we should always defer to him in those matters, whereas “whole wheat or white?” should rest entirely on our own unguided decision.
But God wants to be there, too. He wants to advise us on our bread choices, noting that white bread toasts up nicer than whole wheat, but whole wheat makes a sturdier sandwich. He wants to show us the benefits of giving into heavy eyelids even when it isn’t our usual bedtime and the rewards of getting up when you wake up, rather than just rolling over and going back to sleep.
Jesus said that he always did that which pleased the Father, but Jesus couldn’t have known what pleased God unless he asked him, unless he invited him into every aspect of his daily rounds, not just Bible-reading or church-going.
God wants us to let him love us inside and out, upside and down, and every second of every minute of every hour of every day. But he’ll never impose his love on us or presume that we’ll let him love us even as his children; we need, like Jesus, to purposely and willingly open ourselves to God’s love.
And how do we do that?
Through prayer.
Prayer, as we know, is simply talking to God. It’s not a recitation or a script. You don’t have to do it on your knees or on your face or with your hands clasped or raised. You just talk to God the way you talk to anyone else. He’s your Dad, and he’s always with you through his Spirit, waiting for you to acknowledge him and engage him. This is how you open yourself more and more to God’s love, like Jesus did, and how you learn “always to do that which pleases the Father”, like Jesus did. You welcome God into every nook and cranny of your life – you close him off to none of it – and then your floodgates open and his love rushes in. This is the abundant life that Jesus promised us – not abundance of material wealth, not abundance of years, but abundance of spiritual wealth, through the overflowing of God’s Holy Spirit in everything we do and are.
This is how we let God love us the way he wants to love us. Talk to him all the time (“pray without ceasing”) and follow his advice without question. If he says take the white, take the white; if he says take the whole wheat, take the whole wheat. Don’t lean on your own understanding or that of the world. Don’t do something this way or that way simply because you’ve always done it like that: Ask God to guide you each and every time.
Love God, yes, because being born-again you cannot not love him, but even more importantly let him love you.
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“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”
Jeremiah 33:3
IS POVERTY BAD?
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 18, 2024 – Institutional Christianity (a.k.a. the worldly church) spends a great deal of time and effort “helping the poor” and “less fortunate”. There seems to be not only a pervasive but unquestioned belief among worldly Christians that poverty is a bad thing that needs to be eradicated or at the very least urgently addressed and appropriate measures taken to mitigate it. But this approach to relieving poverty blatantly overlooks the fact that: 1) Jesus himself purposely chose to be poor during his powerful ministry years, and 2) Jesus taught his followers to divest themselves of their possessions and to follow his lead of living in poverty. Such a contradiction between the teachings of the Gospels and the efforts of the worldly church needs to be further investigated.
First of all – what is poverty? I’m not interested in the United Nations’ definition of the concept but in the lived experience of Jesus, as portrayed in the scriptures. Poverty, for Jesus, wasn’t something he arranged to happen; rather, poverty was the direct result of choosing to serve God and God only. It was life streamlined to the bare minimum of material goods required for day-to-day functioning, under the motto “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof”. All the energy that otherwise would be directed to securing daily needs can then be directed to serving God.
As I’ve pointed out before, Jesus was no prepper. He also wasn’t afraid to go hungry or to sleep rough when required. He famously got caught out on several occasions without enough food to feed himself or his followers, but when that happened, he called on God, and God either miraculously supplied the food (as in the miracles of the loaves and fishes) or used the situation as a teaching and prophecy moment (as in the unripened and then withered fig tree). Nowhere in the Gospels is Jesus described as soliciting donations to open a soup kitchen or run a food bank. What we do see is him advising his faithful followers not to worry about what they were to eat, drink, or wear, as God would provide for them.
Poverty, then, for Jesus, was a preferred state of being that was both a result and condition of serving God. It wasn’t a lack that needed to be remedied or a punishment that needed to be endured or even a test; it was simply an outcome of serving God. But being “poor” of material wealth opened up a torrent of spiritual wealth, thanks to Jesus’ total dependence on God. This is what Jesus exemplified and invited his followers to experience for themselves. In fact, the first thing he had his disciples do when they started to follow him was unburden themselves of all their material possessions (houses, lands), quit their jobs, and leave their families behind. He didn’t direct them to go homesteading or plant a Victory Garden. He didn’t advise them to buy gold and bury it for safekeeping. He simply offered them an invitation to follow him and serve God, and the direct consequence of their decision to accept his invitation was radical poverty – that is, radical dependence on God.
It’s important to distinguish between Jesus choosing to serve God and Jesus choosing to live in poverty. He didn’t choose to live in poverty like some kind of economic martyr; he chose to serve God, which necessarily required him to stop serving mammon. If you stop serving mammon, you no longer have the rewards of mammon, which typically involve having excess, though for a price. What you get in serving God is just enough to survive, which frankly should do us born-again believers just fine until we get Home.
One of the devil’s most infamous temptations was to offer Jesus untold wealth and possessions in exchange for serving him, but Jesus bluntly turned him down. Jesus also told a rich religious leader who’d come to him for advice to sell everything he had, but this wasn’t what the religious leader had hoped to hear, and it depressed him. Many worldly Christians throughout the ages have likewise gotten depressed at the thought of having to give up their worldly possessions and walk away from their careers and families to follow Jesus. They counter their aversion by claiming that Jesus’ modeling of radical poverty was specific to the early Church, not something that applies to today’s established Church. All I can say to anyone who believes that lie is that they obviously haven’t read the Gospels and don’t know Jesus.
Why is poverty the preferred state of being for Jesus and his followers? Because serving God and being poor go hand-in-hand: You cannot serve God and mammon. You cannot claim to be serving God while at the same time be out running around chasing a buck. If you do that, you’ll be double-minded and serving two masters, which means you’ll really only be serving the devil. Serve God and God only, and you’ll be rewarded by God with whatever you need to survive: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and everything you need will be given to you.” Yes, you may on occasion go hungry or thirsty or end up sleeping rough, but those are not in and of themselves bad things and God will use those situations to your benefit. He will also use them to bless others by giving them the opportunity to help you. There’s no greater blessing for anyone on Earth than to help God’s children with a need, be it with a cup of cold water, or a well-timed meal, or a place for them to lay their head for the night.
Secondly, poverty ‘cleans the slate’ of mental pressures and filters associated with worldly wealth. I have never been wealthy, but I know people who are, and I see how the constant building and management of their wealth consumes them. It’s not something external to them but the core of their identity, so that if their wealth declines, they feel that they themselves have diminished. This is a sad state of affairs. Just as sad is that wealthy people tend to judge others based on their net worth, so that they look down on the poor and fawn over the wealthy. This is also a sad state of affairs.
Thirdly, serving God and choosing to live with only the blessings he provides is a form of lifelong fasting. We know that fasting extends to every aspect of our lives, not just food, and is spiritually beneficial. Making do with the bare minimum and even at times patiently accepting doing without makes us more grateful for what we do have, while also making us that much more reliant on God and therefore bringing us closer to him. God once described money to me as “spiritual cancer”, and he wasn’t wrong (he’s never wrong). The less spiritual cancer God’s children have, the better.
These considerations are just the tip of the iceberg on the benefits of what is known as being poor, as exemplified by Jesus in the Gospels. If Jesus so valued poverty that he willingly agreed to it as a condition of serving God, then why does the worldly church frame poverty as a negative state of being? Certainly, we need to distinguish between people who choose to serve God and so willingly become poor, and those who are poor for reasons not related to serving God. Yet even so, is poverty for whatever reason truly a bad thing? In other words, are people less happy poor than they are rich? I can only speak from my own experience, but by far the happiest people I know are the poorest, and the most miserable and dissatisfied are the wealthiest.
Paul describes in one of his letters how he learned to rejoice whether he’s abased or abounding. I have been both, and I know in hindsight that periods of being abased have always brought me that much closer to God, whereas periods of abounding have tended to draw my attention elsewhere.
So, when all is said and done – is poverty bad? Not according to God and Jesus. By all means, we can “help the poor” whenever we want (as Jesus said we could, to get the expected spiritual rewards), but don’t for a second think that the people receiving the help are any worse off spiritually than those giving the help. We’re no longer in Old Testament times, when material wealth was considered a sign of God’s favor. The New Testament opens up a whole new understanding not only of the value of poverty, but its role and necessity in the life of a true believer. The worldly church might consider giving it a read sometime.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 