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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.
PAPAL BULL*
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 17, 2024 – Sometimes the headlines are so obvious, they write themselves. In this case, the pope fired off his latest shot at God and his Church by claiming that all religions are a pathway to God and that we’re all children of God.
Both of these claims are so obviously and laughingly and sadly false – and so easily verifiable as false by even a casual reading of scripture – we can only assume that what the pope said, he said to elicit a violent response from believers.
I initially didn’t want to respond to his latest provocations, any more than I respond to any of his other drivel. The “all religions lead to God” line is so out to lunch, it’s on the same level as “water isn’t wet”. Would you actually try to argue with someone that water is wet? No, you would ignore whoever said it wasn’t and just assume that person is either pulling your leg or is mentally deficient.
But God put it in my heart today to respond, so here I am.
Jesus said that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that no-one comes to the Father except through him. In other words, Jesus and God are a package deal, with Jesus – and Jesus only – being the doorway leading to God. Sikhism leads to God only if you entirely reject Sikhism, just as Buddhism leads to God only if you entirely reject Buddhism and Islam leads to God only if you entirely reject Islam, and so on and so on for every belief system that is not the One True Belief exemplified and taught by Jesus in the Gospels. Zero exceptions.
The pope knows this. Of course he does. But the pope doesn’t answer to God; he answers to the devil and is on the devil’s payroll, so when the devil feeds him the drivel he’s to spew on command, he spews it, no questions asked.
As for everyone being God’s children simply by virtue of existing – John had something to say about that:
“Behold, What manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.” (1 John 3:1)
We are adopted into God’s holy family at genuine spiritual rebirth – adopted out of the world that doesn’t (as John rightly points out) know or understand God and therefore doesn’t know or understand us. We are not born children of God; we are reborn children of God. We are born creatures of God, and should be grateful even for that, but oh – what a privilege and an honor to become God’s children by the inrush of God’s Holy Spirit at rebirth – to be invited into the holy fold with Jesus and his saints and all of God’s holy angels! There is no higher or rarer or more joyous calling.
So, no – we (meaning the general population of the world) are not all God’s children. Unless, of course, when the pope says “God”, he really means “Satan”. That he’s intentionally conflating God and Satan actually makes sense, given the history and purpose of the Catholic church. In which case, yes, all religions (other than the One True Way) are indeed pathways to Satan (a.k.a. the pope’s god), and all who are not of the One True Way are in fact children of Satan (a.k.a. the pope’s god).
Scripture soundly supports this.
That is my response to this latest provocation and attack on God’s Church. As for the pope and anyone who supports his evil institution, I’m beholden (thank you, Jesus) to end with: “Forgive them, Father, they don’t know what they’re doing.”
(* A papal bull is a form of public decree issued by a pope. It’s also more of the same BS from the usual suspects.)
WHEN GOD IS JEALOUS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 16, 2024 – I’ve spent the past 25 years worshiping God. That is, I’ve been born-again for 25 years. But of those 25 years, can I honestly claim that all of them were spent in worship of God?
What about you? Since your rebirth, how many years have you spent worshiping God and God only?
This can be a thorny issue for us born-again believers. We serve a self-proclaimed “jealous” God who wants us to know he’s jealous. He doesn’t hide his jealousy, and he doesn’t consider it to be a bad thing. If he did, he wouldn’t have made loving him with everything we have and everything we are – no compromises, no excuses, and no holding back – his first and foremost Commandment.
But do any of us actually do that?
(Is it even possible to do that?)
Jesus, particularly during his ministry years, likely came the closest to worshiping God the way God invites us to worship him. Because it’s an invitation as much as it’s a Command, to worship God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. It’s not an imposition. It’s not an obligation. It’s not something you have to drag yourself out of bed at 4 a.m. to do, certainly not if you’re genuinely born-again. It’s an invitation to enter into a far better way of being that will benefit you now and into eternity.
I was reminded about God’s jealousy today by none other than God himself. I’m glad he reminded me, because I have a tendency to get, well… diverted. I’m being too kind to myself here, but I think you get my drift. Sometimes the “cares of this world” can become very alluring and very distracting, and in fact they were made to be so, only not for us. We need to be reminded (read: warned) every now and then that the issues constantly absorbing unbelievers, such as family, relationships, career, finances, health, education, politics, etc., are not our issues, not our concerns. We should be aware of what’s going on around us and what’s generally going on in the world, but we shouldn’t be involved in any of it. Aware, but not involved.
The world is not our concern. It’s the devil’s concern. And God has the devil in an iron grip – so, not our concern.
Jesus is our best example of how to keep God from getting jealous. When he started his ministry, Jesus walked away from everything that had previously defined him. He even (and Catholics don’t like to hear this) shunned his birth family – including his mother – in favour of those who do God’s will. He wouldn’t let anyone or anything come between him and his worship of God. This made him a lot of enemies, especially among the people of Nazareth, but that didn’t matter to Jesus. He didn’t compromise his worship of God so that he wouldn’t offend people he knew, and neither should we.
What this means is that if you haven’t by this point accumulated a sizeable number of enemies, bans, blacklistings, etc., among unbelievers, then you’re focusing too much on the cares of this world and not enough on God. If unbelievers don’t cross the street when they see you coming, you’re not doing your job. If unbelievers genuinely want to spend time with you, you’re not doing your job. And no, your job isn’t to bang them over the head with God but to put God first in everything you do, which by definition is going to mean you’ll be at cross-purposes with everyone who doesn’t put God first. I sure as heck didn’t want to be around believers when I was an atheist, and neither should unbelievers want to be around us.
You can’t worship God while at the same time appease those who hate God. These things can’t be. You also can’t care about the cares of this world. Appeasing unbelievers and getting lured into debates over finances or politics is going to get God jealous, and you don’t want him jealous. We have precious little time here as it is, so we need to spend every second of it razor-focused on God and on doing his will.
Considering the above, can any of us honestly say that we’ve spent all the years since our rebirth fully worshiping God?
Probably not. But for whatever time we have left, we can do better.
ETERNAL COOL
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 8, 2024 – One way to tell the approximate filming date of a movie is by the font used in its title and credits. Another way is the hair styles and clothing worn by the actors, including in films set in the future. The technology used in a movie, especially the phones and computers, is also a dead giveaway for when it was filmed. The funny thing is – most movies adopt fonts and hairstyles and clothing and technology that are considered “cool” and cutting edge at the time, though in hindsight they all just look dated, in some cases hilariously so.
This blog (especially the fact that it is a blog) dates itself, too, even without your seeing my hairstyle or clothing or the type of keyboard I’m pounding it out on. If these words outlive me, whoever reads them will know approximately when they were written without having to glance at the date byline. The tone, word choice, and writing style will give them away.
From the above, we see that things date themselves simply by existing, and although it may seem that the phenomenon of fashion is an inescapable fact of time and space, there is one glaring exception to this rule, and that one exception is Jesus.
Jesus is never dated. Sure, we know approximately when he was born and when he went Home, but those dates don’t affect his immediacy. He is still right here with us now, as he promised he would be, just as his presence in the Gospels is likewise timeless. We know he wore a tunic and a prayer shawl and sandals, and that he likely also had a beard and long hair, but these details still don’t date Jesus. It’s more like they originated with him and had their defining moment on him and remain perpetually timeless because of him, so that whenever we see someone with long hair and a beard wearing a tunic and a prayer shawl and sandals, we think: “That person looks like Jesus”. We don’t think: “That person looks like someone from 2000 years ago”. No, we think that someone who dresses and looks like that, looks like Jesus. Current vernacular would say that Jesus “owns” this look, and so he does. At least until the end of time.
The timelessness of the “Jesus look” is based on who Jesus is, which itself is based on the fulness of God’s Spirit that inhabited Jesus during his time on Earth in human form. Someone who has that much of God’s Spirit in them is going to make a far different impression than someone who either doesn’t have God’s Spirit or has only a portion of it. God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow – he never changes – and so his Spirit likewise never changes and therefore comes to us the same today as it did to people 2000 years ago. Being perfect, God’s Spirit has no built-in obsolescence like everything else on Earth, which is why Jesus is as cool and relevant today as he always was, even to those who don’t believe in him.
I was such a person who didn’t believe in Jesus, up until my rebirth 25 years ago. Six months before I was born-again, I went to the library in the notorious red-light district of Kings Cross, Sydney, Australia, where I was staying at the time. I intended to borrow a book by Jean Rhys, but instead of Good Morning, Midnight, the book that caught my attention on the “Je” shelf was about “historical Jesus”. It wasn’t about Jesus the son of God or Jesus the son of man (I wouldn’t have borrowed it if it were) – it was about Jesus the champion of the underdog. Destitute and living at the time in a squalid cockroach-infested room across the street from a safe injection site, I felt very much the underdog, and the story featuring historical Jesus spoke to me. Even as an unbeliever, I thought Jesus was a cool guy. I didn’t become a believer by reading the book, but I did get a sense of Jesus’ timeless relevance and his genuine cool factor. I did get a sense that Jesus could see through people’s BS and that he wasn’t afraid to point out what was wrong and stand up for what was right.
Decades later and now a believer, I understand that God is the source of what makes Jesus so effortlessly cool and relevant. Scripture says Jesus spoke with an authority that people had never encountered before and that they gladly listened to him – even the officers sent to arrest Jesus at a religious feast were so awestruck by the power of his presence that they abandoned their mission, leaving Jesus a free man. The timelessness and force of Jesus, whether as a character in a history book or as a very present Messiah, is thanks to the massive amount of God in him. This translates supernaturally from age to age, so that Jesus’ words – which are God’s words – remain eternally fresh and vital, no matter the year or the language.
We serve a living God, not a dead one or a trendy one whose hair style we’ll snicker at in 30 years. Jesus is here with us now because God is here with us. He’s here in Spirit, enlivening these words and driving home the ones that matter. So if any of my words stick, it’s because they come from God and have been put here just for you.
THE WORD 2.0
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 1, 2024 – Private revelation, we’ve been warned, must first pass the spiritual smell test, which is that it must agree with scripture. If you’ve received a word that is not in agreement with scripture, it’s either a test (which means you have to disregard it) or you got your spiritual wires crossed and heard from a demon rather than from God. In either case, whether a test or a demon, whatever you received you need to trash.
Unless, of course, you’re Jesus.
Jesus’ entire ministry was based on private revelation from God that was seemingly not in agreement with scripture. Mind you, the word Jesus received didn’t overthrow scripture – Jesus himself said he’d come to fulfill scripture, not to abolish it. But where scripture said to love your neighbour and hate your enemy, Jesus said to love your enemy. And where scripture said to give your wife a bill of divorce and be done with her, Jesus said that what God has joined, you shouldn’t tear apart, and that divorce is valid in one circumstance only (i.e., the one his earthly mother and father demonstrated just before his birth). What Jesus did was to reveal the Word that had been wallpapered and painted over with doctrines of man. Sure, you can get a divorce, but only under this one circumstance, and sure, you can love your neighbour, but you have to love your enemy, too, or you’re no better than the hypocrites.
The entire New Testament is private revelation. Does it conflict with earlier scripture? At times, yes, though in letter only, not in spirit. If the Bible were an orange, the OT would be the aromatic and bitter protective peeling, and the NT would be the sweet and tender flesh. We need to peel off the OT to get to the NT, but neither the hard outer peeling nor the soft inner flesh would be able to exist alone, as one complements the other. They both say: “I’m an orange!”, but in different ways.
Jesus was crucified because he allegedly blasphemed God by rewriting parts of scripture. In so doing, he wrote himself into it (or so he was accused), but what he was actually doing was peeling the scriptural orange. He was saying: “Look! There I am!”, but only those with an appetite for Truth could taste Jesus both in the zest of the OT peelings and the juice of the NT flesh.
We born-again believers thrive on private revelation, which is another term for prayer. If we’re not getting private revelation from God on a daily basis, we’re not praying, and if we’re not praying, we’re not doing our job. How else but by prayer are you going to find out what God wants you to do on any given day? How else are you going to find out your marching orders and your mission? By reading tea leaves or your daily horoscope? Do you think Jesus pored through the temple scrolls every morning to find out what he should do for the day? No, there’s no mention of Jesus ever doing that. What we do read in the NT is that Jesus constantly ran to God in prayer, and that God laid out for him whatever he needed to do. Jesus was then free to agree or to reject whatever God had laid out for him, but we know that Jesus always agreed, even when it seemingly contradicted scripture. He said: “I always do that which pleases the Father”, and God said of Jesus: “This is my son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.”
We always need to agree with whatever God lays out for us and we always need to listen to Jesus. We also always need to run to God for direction, advice, guidance, comfort, and companionship. This course of action will likely contradict what the world wants us to do, and it may even at times seem to contradict scripture. But the seeming contradiction to scripture is an illusion only. When scripture says we should honor our mother and father as a Commandment, but Jesus tells a guy that he should skip his father’s funeral (“Let the dead bury the dead”) and immediately follow him, was Jesus advising his wanna-be follower to break the Commandment by dishonoring his father? Of course not. He was simply reminding him to think righteously – that is, as God thinks, not as man thinks.
The guy wouldn’t be dishonoring his father by choosing to follow Jesus instead of attending his father’s funeral, but he would be dishonoring God if he said he wanted to follow Jesus and then turned back to tend to the cares of the world. The decision to follow Jesus is a one-time offer only. You don’t put your shoulder to the wheel and then later decide to unyoke yourself to tend to private matters. You choose God and Jesus over everything and everyone and prove your choice by staying the course regardless of worldly expectations and pressures.
The New Testament isn’t a rewriting of scripture but a deeper reading of scripture – a call to live by the spirit rather than the letter of the Law and to think as God thinks not as man thinks. Jesus perfectly exemplified this in being a lowly Nazarene of dubious parentage and no formal learning. He didn’t lean on his own or the world’s devices; he leaned on God through perpetual private revelation (“pray without ceasing!”) and a core understanding of God’s Word. We, as Jesus’ followers, are to do the same.
TWO SHIPS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 27, 2024 – Every once in a blue moon, I run into people I used to know before I was born-again. Some of these people I *knew biblically* for shorter or longer periods of time; others were just friends. In every case, as soon as they spot me and recognize me and run over to me and we start talking, they immediately start cursing.
I don’t mean they yell at me; I mean they start peppering their conversation with the “f” word. After a few minutes, every second word is “f”.
It happens every time.
It’s a curious phenomenon that I attribute to the demons responding to the Spirit in me. Interestingly, even they (my former lovers and friends) notice that they’re uncharacteristically cursing a blue streak. Some openly wonder at it and apologize, while others appear to try to compensate for it by talking that much faster, which just results in their dropping that many more f-bombs per minute.
I seem to make these people nervous. I don’t try to make them nervous; they just get nervous around me. Better said, I make them incredibly uncomfortable. I look like me (or an older version of what they remember) and my voice sounds like me, but our conversation is always very one-sided because I have absolutely nothing to say to them beyond the usual niceties (“How’ve you been?” “How’re the kids?”). They probably feel hurt by what appears to be my coldness, but I can’t for the life of me think of anything to say beyond platitudes. I look at them, and they’re like strangers to me. I can’t even recall what drew us together in the first place.
I’m also acutely aware that they’re aware that I’m born-again. I know they’re aware and I know how they’re reacting to it because I can see it in their eyes. Some of them I told personally; others heard it from others. But they all know, these people who call to me from across the street. None of them are born-again or even Christians. I would know if they were, the way that John the Baptist in his mother’s womb knew that Jesus was in the vicinity, in Mary’s womb. The Spirit in one reacts to the same Spirit in another, and it’s always a joyful meeting.
These unexpected ambushes by past lovers and friends are anything but joyful. How can they be? I’m not who I was, and I thank God for that. I never want to revisit or reclaim who I was. Demon-ridden Charlotte is not a happy memory for me. I was glad to leave it all behind when I was reborn. I know that many people still see me as I once was and expect me to be an older version of that same person, so they’re confused when they encounter born-again Charlotte instead. I see them trying to dig for the old me, but she’s long gone. I can’t share their opinions anymore, or their values, or their hopes and dreams, any more than I can share their bed. I’m not the same person they knew, and they soon find that out after a few minutes of awkward, halting, f-bomb-laden conversation.
Jesus taught us not to retreat from the world but to hold it at arm’s length. We’re not to get involved in the “cares of the world” because those cares can quickly turn into snares that trap us. As born-again believers, we can’t befriend or share confidences with those who aren’t born-again, as I wrote in an earlier article. We can socialize with unbelievers, like Jesus did with the scribes and Pharisees and publicans, but that kind of socializing is difficult with unbelievers who knew us personally before we were reborn. There are simply too many mixed messages and unrealistic expectations. Too many snares.
I don’t dislike the people I used to know intimately; I just can’t be for them what I once was. I am a stranger to them now, and a born-again one at that, and we have nothing in common except a past that I’ve firmly shut the door on. This doesn’t make for much of a friendship foundation.
But I’ll still wave to them across the street. If they see me and wave, I’ll always wave back. If they choose not to wave, I won’t hold it against them.
And if they ever sincerely want to know about God and Jesus, I’m here for them.
ARE YOU GUILTY OF SPIRITUAL TREASON? THE THORNY ISSUE OF FRIENDS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 25, 2024 – Jesus was brutal when it came to relationships. While he exemplified Paul’s advice to be “at peace” with everyone, he also didn’t hold back when it came to drawing a line between those who did God’s will and those who didn’t. Those who did God’s will Jesus considered not only to be the same as “family” but his actual family, whereas those who didn’t do God’s will were not at all his family, even though they might be his blood relatives.
Like Jesus and Paul, we’re also to be at peace with everyone as much as possible while at the same time understanding who our real family is. Our loyalty is, of course, first and foremost to God, as Jesus taught us it should be. Nothing and no-one should hold a more important place in our lives than our Heavenly Father. If we get that right, everything else will follow as it should. If we don’t get that right, we’ll be floundering and confused.
Who are our friends and who are our foes can be a thorny issue for born-again believers. In this, like in everything else we do, we need to take our cue from Jesus. Who were Jesus’ friends? How did he interact with them? Who are our friends? Are our friends also friends of Jesus? If not, why are we friends with them?
Being at peace with everyone implies being reasonably friendly with everyone (or at least not unnecessarily combative) though not necessarily friends. Our sole friends should be friends of Jesus. In this, there needs to be zero compromise. If we have people in our life who are not friends of Jesus, they can’t be our friends. We can be friendly with people who are not friends of Jesus, but we can’t be friends with them. How can we be friends with someone who hates or mocks or is non-committal towards Jesus? We betray Jesus if we count as friends those who reject him.
The same goes for family members. You should not be emotionally close to blood relatives who are not friends with Jesus. Although Paul talks about how a spouse who is a believer shouldn’t leave a spouse who is not a believer if the unbelieving spouse wants to remain in the marriage, I respectfully disagree with this teaching and I believe Jesus does, too. Specifically, Jesus says that if you don’t hate (and he uses that term purposefully) – if you don’t “hate” your blood relatives and your spouse – that is, unbelieving blood relatives and spouses – you’re not worthy of him.
What does Jesus mean by hate? I believe he means precisely what he says. Hate is an extreme aversion that is visceral (i.e., it occurs at the gut or instinctual level) and cannot be overridden or appeased. Those who hate Jesus do so because the spirits in them hate Jesus. In other words, their hatred of Jesus betrays the kind of spirits that inhabit them. We born-again believers have God’s Holy Spirit in us, which is why we love God and Jesus and hate the spirits of the world. We don’t have to work at loving God and Jesus and hating the world, we just do so by default. Conversely, those who don’t have God’s Spirit in them don’t have to work at hating God and Jesus and loving the world, they just do so by default. Living intimately with people who reject all that is good and holy is not spiritually healthy for you, and if it’s not spiritually healthy for you, it will also cause problems in other areas of your life.
We cannot be friends with those who hate God and Jesus. It’s just not possible. If you’re friends with those who hate God and Jesus, you’re putting someone else ahead of God, which is breaking the first and most important Commandment. “Well”, you say, “how else are my worldly ‘friends’/blood relatives/spouse going to hear about Jesus unless I tell them about him?” Short answer: You can spend time with people who are not friends of Jesus, but they cannot be your friend.
Spending time with someone is not the same as being a friend. Friendship implies loyalty and a deep level of trust that spawns a deep level of emotional intimacy and a mutual sharing of confidences. This scenario cannot and should not occur between those who have God’s Holy Spirit in them and those who harbour spirits of the world. Sharing confidences with those who hate God and Jesus is the same as giving away state secrets to the enemy: It’s spiritual treason. Worldly people may flatter you into thinking you’re their friend, but what’s inside them hates what’s inside you. That is a spiritual fact. How can you be friends with such a soul? Sooner or later, they’ll betray you, and in betraying you show you precisely who they serve.
You will ultimately lose spiritually and every other way if you maintain a close relationship with those who reject God, no matter how loving they may appear toward you on the surface. Again, I’m not suggesting that you should be unnecessarily combative with those who are guided by and serve the spirits of the world; day-to-day life would be intolerable for us if we did that. Taking our cue from Jesus, we’re to treat others as we would want to be treated but save our confidences and closeness for God, Jesus, and genuine born-again believers – that is, for our real family.
THE FISH AND THE DEMON CROSS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 21, 2024 – Members of the early Church were initially known by their accent. Recall how Peter was “outed” on the night Jesus was arrested for speaking with the same accent or dialect as Jesus. Later, John wrote that Church members would be known by their love for each other and for people in general. The Gospels offer no other specific mention of a common identifier to be worn or displayed by followers of Jesus.
As the years passed and the persecution against the Church became more widespread, members would self-identify not by their accents (the Church had grown to include people of all nations by that time) or their love (they had to keep their heads down in public to avoid arrest, not wear their heart of their sleeve) but by the casual tracing of half a stylized fish in the dirt during a conversation with a stranger. If the stranger were also a Church member, he or she would complete the “fish”. If, however, the stranger were not in the Church, the seemingly idle marking in the dirt could just as casually be erased.
The fish symbol was simple and universal across all nations and its adoption was based on the scripture where Jesus told his disciples they would become “fishers of men”. I would assume (and it’s not unreasonable to do so) that this method of self-identification of the Church to strangers continued until the early 4th century, when Constantine halted the persecutions by making Christianity legal. It was at that time that what has become known as “the cross” was universally imposed as the main signifier of Christianity (it allegedly appeared to Constantine in a vision), and the fish identifier fell by the wayside, no longer being needed.
I wrote earlier about the symbolism of the cross in scripture. In his mentions of the cross, Jesus was drawing a parallel between a yoke that extends across the shoulders of one or more plow animals and the crossbar that is affixed to a tree or a stationary pole during crucifixion. Specifically, Jesus was telling us to pick up our crossbar daily, not the full crucifixion apparatus. The condemned didn’t carry the full crucifixion apparatus to their place of crucifixion; they only carried the crossbar, as the pole was stationary and was in many cases simply a tree trunk still rooted in the ground but stripped of limbs, branches, and leaves. Scripture does in fact state that Jesus was hung on a “tree”. So again, the cross mentioned by Jesus is not two poles crossed but the crossbar (what Jesus called the cross) only.
Therefore, I do not believe that Constantine’s cross is the cross Jesus was referring to. In other words, I do not believe that the cross mentioned by Jesus was the full crucifixion apparatus of two crossed poles (or a pole crossing a tree) but the crossbar only, which he likened to a yoke. We are to pick up our cross daily in the same way as we’re to take on ourselves the yoke of obedience and spiritual labour required by God as followers of Jesus; the two – the cross(bar) and the yoke – are intended to conjure one image of basically the same thing – a heavy piece of wood laid across our shoulders.
This distinction between what Jesus meant by the cross and what the worldly church calls “the cross” is critically important, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about it here. The cross as a symbol predates Jesus and, of course, Constantine, and has its origins in pagan religions. As we well know, “pagan” is a polite term for “demon worship”, so the cross was originally a symbol of a demon.
Why would Jesus want his followers to be identified by the symbol of a demon?
Clearly, he wouldn’t and doesn’t. If the cross mentioned by Jesus in scripture were indeed what we’re told it is today (two lines intersecting), why wouldn’t the early Church have adopted the cross as a symbol rather than the fish? Wouldn’t it have been easier and thus more logical for them simply (and casually) to trace a line in the dirt, which the stranger would then hopefully “cross”, than to trace half a fish? The only reasonable answer to this question is that the early Church well knew that two lines intersecting was a demon symbol and was therefore entirely inappropriate to be used for their purposes. It simply would never have occurred to them to use it. The pagan Constantine, on the other hand, along with the people who were forced to join the newly minted worldly church when it became the official religion of the realm in 381 AD, would have had no qualms adopting and adapting a demon symbol for their purposes.
What has become known as the star of David is also a demon symbol, as is the crescent moon which is emblematic of Islam. One day, all three symbols – the demon cross, the demon star, and the demon moon – will be combined into one, denoting these three alleged Abrahamic religions as worshiping the same god. Only the god they’ll be worshiping is not our God.
Knowing the above, I cannot in good faith look at two crossed lines and see them as a symbol of Jesus. Again, I do not believe that Jesus was talking about two intersecting and adjoined wooden poles when he mentions the cross in scripture, as why would he want to be identified with and by a demon symbol? It makes no sense.
What does make sense, however, is how people today who openly worship Satan can simultaneously adorn themselves with “crosses”, pentagrams, goat’s heads, etc., and see no contradiction between their various adornments. The demon symbol cross imposed on Christianity by the pagan Constantine does not now and never did have anything to do with God’s Church.
THINGS THAT GET YOU…
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 19, 2024 – I have a long and storied history of being banned from public online forums, and this supposedly in a time and place when we have constitutionally guaranteed freedom of opinion and freedom to express our opinion openly, as long as we remain civil. I’ve touched on this before. I’m also shadow-banned on nearly every site I leave comments on, but I still leave comments, even knowing no-one will read them. It’s important (to me) that the AIs scrape as much opinion-related information about me as they can. I want the name of JESUS CHRIST OF NAZARETH! emblazoned across my file.
And we all have one of those – a file. Does anyone read them? Likely not. But our files certainly exist and can be pulled and tweaked by the powers-that-be if we become too troublesome.
Jesus had a file. Pontius Pilate read from it at Jesus’ trial. The alleged eyewitnesses in attendance also contributed to the file, but their input was so contradictory, they nullified each other’s witness. Still, it was Jesus’ time, and so despite the lack of verifiable evidence presented to Pilate, the mob’s judgement (“Crucify him!”) held sway.
I was once put through one of those trials, though not for a death sentence. I was facing up to two years in prison. Multiple witnesses were lined up against me attempting to corroborate the evidence presented in my file. The evidence was false, but my simply stating “not guilty” would not have been sufficient to get me out of this particular pickle because the multiple witnesses testifying under oath were police officers, so their word carried significant weight.
However, because it wasn’t yet my time, God got me off on an obscure technicality, which surprised even my lawyer when it came to him suddenly in the midst of the court proceedings. He’d been handed my case the evening before the trial and confessed during our one and only phone call that he had no idea how he would defend me. Hoping against hope, he’d brought some case file books with him to court. Scripture tells us never to prepare our defence in advance, as it will be “given [us] in that same hour what [we] shall speak. For it is not [we] that speak, but the Spirit of [our] Father that speaketh in [us].” I lived this scripture personally that day. The file on this trial is likely still accessible. It took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in December 2000.
Jesus warns us that we’ll be hated simply for existing, and so we are. If we get banned in one place for speaking God’s Truth, we move on to another, whether in physical or virtual space. Where God’s Truth is not welcome, neither are we, but the current rapid expansion of the devil’s turf means that our own turf on Earth is correspondingly shrinking, and we are grossly outnumbered. At this rate, we’ll soon be outcasts not only socially (by being banned) but under worldly law (by being arrested).
Already in Canada, a law is on deck that will make it a crime to state the obvious, even if we genuinely believe what we’ve stated and are backed in our assertions by scripture. We’re protected for the time being, but within a few years that protection will end. God’s Truth is first made unacceptable socially and then punishable under law, first by a prison sentence and then by death. And have no doubt – these are blasphemy laws, as speaking against Satan and his worldly creation is blasphemy to those who love the world.
I’m OK with being banned and actually consider it a job well done. It also shows me where not to waste my time. Being outcast, reviled, excluded, banned, arrested, imprisoned, and martyred goes with the territory of being a born-again believer, as the members of the early Church well knew and as every Holy Spirit-filled follower of Jesus since then personally experiences. Even though our footprint in the world is growing smaller and smaller, the Kingdom has not shrunk. In fact, the Kingdom has only expanded over the past 2000 years. There, we can speak our mind freely and live our beliefs without fear or compulsion, as none but the reborn can gain entrance past the fiercesome Cherubims and the flaming sword.
Thank God for his Truth, thank God for his Kingdom, and thank God for Jesus!
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 