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“BE YE NOT DECEIVED”: FAILED RAPTURE AND END-OF-THE-WORLD PROPHECIES OVER THE PAST 2000 YEARS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 19, 2025 – Below are links to lists of dates and descriptions of failed rapture and end-of-the-world prophecies over the past two millennia. While the lists to date are likely incomplete (only those in the spiritual realm would have a true tally of failed predictions), they still give you a good idea of how many times these events have not only been prophesied but widely and fervently believed.
Depending on where you stand in relation to false prophet grifters, this compilation is either depressing, eye-opening, exasperating, or downright hilarious. Jesus warned us not to be deceived about end-of-the-world prophecies and his second coming, and Paul sternly echoed the warning. And yet, despite the scriptural weight of Jesus’ and Paul’s words and the mounting evidence of failed prediction after failed prediction, people still fall for the same ol’ same ol’ trick of the devil, insisting “this time is different”.
Without further comment:
“IT IS NOT GOOD TO MARRY”
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 13, 2025 – We need to be careful, as born-again believers, not to preach another gospel. Jesus never preached the primacy of family to his closest followers, not in the sense of father, mother, and children. On the contrary, he dismantled the nuclear family unit as a first order of business when he started his ministry, directing his disciples to leave their wives and children and give themselves completely over to God. Jesus himself remained unmarried (that is, spouseless, childless, and celibate), explaining that this state was by far the best for keeping the first Commandment. As Jesus’ followers, we should do not only what Jesus preached but also what he modeled.
Shunning marriage was revolutionary during the time of Jesus’ ministry and for many Christians still is. Jesus never counseled marriage to his followers and in fact did the opposite, pointing out in particular the danger of divorce leading to adultery. Paul chose to remain single and celibate for the same reason Jesus did—to best serve God—and warned that those who marry will likely be drawn towards pleasing their spouses rather than pleasing God. Yet with God’s permission, Paul softened many of Jesus’ teachings to appeal to a wider audience, suggesting, for instance, that for those who have difficulty controlling their “passions”, it’s better to marry than to burn. Paul’s ministry established the worldly church, but we born-again believers are not in the worldly church. We’re in God’s Church as established by Jesus, which means we’re God’s children, and God’s children do best not to marry.
In dismantling the nuclear family unit, Jesus proposed a better family arrangement for God’s children. He stated that all those who do God’s will are family, whether they’re related or not. It’s a beautiful solution that brings together like-minded souls for mutual support and fellowship, and mirrors the heavenly order, because in Heaven there is no marriage. In Heaven, like in God’s Kingdom on Earth, God is our Father and we’re all his children. This is the heavenly order that Jesus reflected in the Church he established, and it remains reflected there to this day.
When the Jews returned to Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile, they were ordered to leave their non-Jewish spouses and children behind. The separation was to be permanent if the returnees wanted to rebuild Jerusalem and live there. There were no exceptions to this rule. Imagine the outcry if such an order were given today, but Jesus did in fact give such an order and a much broader one—encompassing all spouses and children, not just non-Jewish ones. This order, which he gave to his first disciples and so by extension to us, is still in force. Whether you choose to accept that it applies to you is between you and God.
We live in spiritual Jerusalem, as born-again believers, and our work is to help build and fortify our realm. The same directives Jesus gave to his first and closest disciples he gives to us. I don’t know about you, but if Jesus says the best way forward is to be single and celibate, I’ll be single and celibate. I don’t want to compromise. I don’t want to do what’s second best in God’s eyes; I don’t want to offer up a blemished lamb if I have an unblemished one in my flock. I want to give God everything I have – the best of everything – like Jesus did.
And there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
(Matthew 19:12)
HOLDING NOTHING BACK
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 11, 2025 – I think of how disappointing so many of God’s children have been to him, how he put his hopes on Adam, and Adam betrayed him, and so he put his hopes on Adam’s sons, and Cain betrayed him, and so he put his hopes on mankind in general, and mankind in general betrayed him – everyone except for Noah, and so he put his hopes on Noah, and Noah stood firm in God.
And then came Abraham, who also stood firm, and after him Isaac and Jacob, both standing firm. But Jacob’s twelve sons were pretty much a disappointment, except for Joseph. And then, years later, came Moses, and David, and Elijah, and Daniel, all mostly standing firm in God.
And then came Jesus, who was a whole other level of what it means to stand firm. Never once a disappointment to God and never once betraying him, Jesus was the only one God publicly declared as pleasing him.
That’s a hard act to follow, though Paul did his best, as did the disciples, once they were born again.
And then came us.
Poor God! He doesn’t have much to work with these days, though he knows our hearts and so he knows we’re doing our best. At least I hope we’re doing our best, because that’s what we’ll have to declare with a clear conscience when we stand before God at the Judgement. We won’t get away with: “Well, as you know, I tried to do this and I tried to do that, but it didn’t work out so well”, because if we only try and then walk away when things get too hard or too costly, never bringing anything to fruition, that’s not going to stand us in very good stead. That’s not going to get us where we want to go.
And then there are those who presume a reward that should never be presumed. Jesus calls them “goats” and describes them as giving the impression of standing firm, while underneath there’s only evil. These are the professional preachers, the televangelists, the YouTube prophets, the wearers of long flowing robes in echoey halls, all demanding respect and payment for their services while never giving God that one thing he asks of them – their heart.
Because if we don’t give God our heart, he can’t work through us to do what needs to be done. We can’t bring anything of value to fruition without God working through us, no matter how hard we try. Jesus said: “None is good but God.” If God isn’t working through us, nothing we do has any real or lasting value. Sure, we can still do things—lots of things, mountains and mountains of things—but we can’t do anything of value without God.
I think of how disappointing many of us have been to God without knowing it, simply because we chose not to give God our heart. We gave it instead to someone or something else, or we buried it under so many layers of burdens, we forgot we even had a heart, let alone that it was owed to God, because it is owed to God: That’s his first and greatest Commandment.
If you’re holding back from giving God your heart, don’t. If you’re holding back even a little of your heart, don’t. We’re to love God with all our heart, holding nothing back, and to do all things as if unto God. Noah showed us how it’s done. Abraham showed us how it’s done. Daniel showed us how it’s done. But most of all, Jesus showed us how it’s done, so we don’t have the excuse that we don’t know how to give God our heart. All our heart. Here, now, and forever.
No excuses.
LIKE A THIEF – LET NO MAN DECEIVE YOU: ON JESUS’ RETURN
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 8, 2025 – When Jesus said he’d be coming back like “a thief in the night”, he meant just that. He meant it for us (his followers), and he meant it for everyone else, too. Jesus will come back as unexpectedly as a thief in the night for us all, no exceptions. The difference between his followers and those who don’t follow him is that his followers will be spiritually prepared for his coming, whereas everyone else will be spiritually unprepared. But Jesus will still come back at a time that even he doesn’t yet know. That is scriptural.
And scripture, as Jesus reminded us, cannot be undone.
The reason Jesus warned us about the style of his return is that he wanted us to be prepared when it does happen—to expect the unexpected—so that we’ll be doing whatever task we’ve been set to do and won’t be caught side-tracked and back-sliding, and with our spiritual pants down. But the “thief in the night” style of return is how it’s going to be because that’s what’s Jesus said it would be. In other words, we can’t know exactly when he’ll return; all we can know is that he will return and that it will be during a time of great upheaval and spiritual darkness, as he described in the gospels. But Jesus’ return will still be as unexpected as a thief in the night, and that unexpectedness will be for us all, not just for unbelievers.
When Paul mentioned that Jesus’ return won’t come on us like a thief, he meant that we’d be spiritually prepared for when the thief does come. Paul in no way implied that Jesus will only come back like a thief for unbelievers. If Paul had meant that or implied that, he’d be contradicting Jesus, which Paul did not and would not do. Like Jesus, Paul meant that if you’re prepared, you won’t be overcome by the thief when he shows up unexpectedly because you’ve prepared yourself in advance for just such an event. The thief-in-the-night aspect of Jesus’ return was upheld by Paul, not modified to mean that it only applied to unbelievers. Paul very clearly states that although Jesus will come back like a thief in the night, his true followers, being always prepared, will be prepared for that, too. By being prepared, Paul meant they’ll be doing whatever it is God set them to do. Paul’s explanation of Jesus’ return is exactly like Jesus’ explanation
It’s worth noting that Paul also warned us not to be deceived by anyone who claims to know when Jesus is coming back. He explained that Jesus will return only after the “man of sin” has first been revealed, which will only take place after a mass falling away. In Revelation, the man of sin is revealed well into the great tribulation, not before it and not in the early stages, but well into it. This aligns with what Jesus said about his return coming at a time of great upheaval and great spiritual darkness. As bad as things are now, they can’t really be described as a time of great spiritual darkness, as we can still openly worship as Christians in a large part of the world. We’re in a time of increasing spiritual darkness, yes, but not of great spiritual darkness. And the man of sin has yet to be revealed.
Our job as followers of Jesus is to continue to do whatever God has set us to do. This doesn’t change regardless of what’s going on around us. So when the “thief” comes unexpectedly (and come unexpectedly he will), he’ll find us doing what we’ve be tasked with doing, which means we’ll be ever-ready and ever-prepared for his return.
[B]e ye not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled,
neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us,
as that the day of Christ is at hand.
Let no man deceive you by any means:
for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first,
and that man of sin be revealed….
(2 Thessalonians 2:2-3)
HOMETOWN ADVANTAGE: ON MINISTRY WORK
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 4, 2025 – Ministry work isn’t the same for everyone. Not everyone has the same type of ministry. We can see this even way back in the early Church, when Jesus sent some of his followers out two-by-two with strict instructions, while others he told to go home and show their people what God had done for them. Jesus himself modeled various ministry styles, from home churching, to teaching in local synagogues, to open-air preaching in the streets and on hills, to private one-on-one after-hours sessions, where people who didn’t want to be seen with him in public would come to him alone under cover of night.
How we’re to minister to others and to witness what God has done for us depends fully on God. These are not decisions we should make for ourselves. We shouldn’t choose our ministry style based on what we want. We should wait for God to direct us.
The man who used to live wild and naked among the tombs, breaking whatever chains were put on him and cutting himself with stones, wanted to join Jesus’ traveling ministry after he was healed, but Jesus told him that he should instead go home and show the people there what God had done for him. When I first read about this man, I thought Jesus was rebuffing him and trying to let him down easy. But now I realize that Jesus was giving the guy a ministry that was a perfect fit for him and one in which his witness would give him the biggest bang for his buck.
If the man had gone out among strangers to tell them what God had done for him (which is what he’d ask Jesus if he could do), the strangers wouldn’t have had the “before and after” context that the man’s family, friends, and neighbours would have. It’s all well and good to claim that you used to run naked and howling among the tombs until Jesus healed you, but you’re relying on people to believe your claims. Many won’t. The people who knew the man as he’d been and then saw him after he was healed – that was a powerful witness without even speaking a word. It would have been an astonishment to those people just to see the guy wearing clothes and speaking calming and coherently. Far from rebuffing the man, Jesus was gifting him a ministry with clear instructions, and blessing his labors in advance. What a beautiful thing!
A few weeks after I was reborn, I went to a church service in a little town about an hour’s drive from where I was living at the time in South Australia. There was a reception after the service, and when most of the guests had left, I spoke to the minister about my rebirth. He listened politely for a few minutes and then suddenly took me by the hand and led me over to a window. Once there, he tilted my face so that it caught the full sunlight. Then he said something I’ll never forget. It was more a murmuring to himself than a statement to me. This is what he said: “Yes, you’ve suffered.”
Everything I’d told him up to that point wasn’t enough for him to fully believe me; I was a stranger, and all he heard and saw when I first started talking to him was a rush of words and a happy glowing face. He couldn’t connect this joyful woman with the demon-infested wretch I’d claimed I once was. He needed something more tangible before he was willing to buy my story. He needed hard evidence, and that’s what he found, I guess, in seeing for himself the suffering lines etched on my face, lines that had been softened and smoothed by my spiritual healing but were still perceptible in a strong enough light.
There are many people who used to know me as I was, before my rebirth, who google me and arrive at this blog out of curiosity. They read a bit (mostly the “About” page) to see what’s become of me. Of course, to most of them, not much of what they read here makes any sense, because they’re not reborn themselves, and so they dismiss it with a sneer and an eyeroll, laughing at what I’ve become. Some of them think I’ve gone crazy. Some of them think I’m faking it. Some even think, given enough time and booze, I’ll snap out of it.
But for some (and it’s for those few that I write this) – for some, my witness here gives them pause. They’re not sure what to think, but they know something must have happened to me, something that can’t be explained away by mere medical science or latent maturity onset. Because even though the tone of my words is more or less the same as they remember, the words themselves sure aren’t the same. These are not words that would have come out of me when they knew me. I might not have been running around graveyards naked and howling back in the day, but I almost was. I certainly had a similar version of the legion in me. Instead of stones, I’d use knives to cut myself. And the change, when it happened, was as instantaneous and drastic as it was for that man all those years ago – one minute I was howling and cursing, and the next I was weeping tears of joy and hugging a Bible.
Twenty-six years later, I’m still hugging it.
If genuine, our witness and our ministry should be so intertwined, you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. This is why Jesus sent the man back to his hometown, so that his witness would inform his ministry and his ministry his witness. Most people who read this blog are strangers to me; they didn’t know me before my rebirth and so need to take me at my word that I was healed from what I said I was healed from. Not all of them do take me at my word. Not all of them are convinced.
But the people who knew me when I was an atheist and who now read these words – they know something happened to me. They might not know exactly what it was, but they know something happened. The same hometown advantage that the former legion man had in his ministry, I have in mine.
Maybe you have it, too.
Ministry work doesn’t mean you have to go off to a remote village in Africa or start a megachurch in California or street preach in New Orleans during carnival. You don’t choose your ministry based on what other people are doing or what you think you’d like to do. And you certainly don’t choose your ministry based on what other people tell you to do. God chooses your ministry for you, and in so doing, blesses it and provides you with clear instructions. Ministry is not a numbers game tallied by butts on seats or donations totals. (It never was a numbers game.) It’s about doing God’s will and God’s will only, and in so doing showing whomsoever will what God has done for you.
What they then choose to do with that information is between them and God.
CANADIAN DEUTERONOMY 28: THE CURSES
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 1, 2025 – The “flag” pictured above is a photograph of a real burnt maple leaf embedded in dry grass on some random person’s lawn in rural Nova Scotia. Thank God (in every sense of the term) that the random person had the wherewithal (and the technology on hand) to snap a pic of the leaf before it blew away. The grass underneath it is dried out not from fire but from a drought that’s emptied most of the wells and watering ponds across Nova Scotia while also drying up farmers’ fields, destroying crops. Few here in this now atheist-majority country will say it openly, but it’s Biblical. What’s happening here with the fires and the drought across much of Canada is Biblical, and it’s only just getting started.
The blackened maple leaf that blew onto the random person’s lawn came from a fire burning several miles away. The Long Lake wildfire has so far raged through 8,500 hectares (33 square miles) of people’s homes, lakeside cottages, hunting camps, and pristine forest. It’s been out of control since it started on August 13th, and until we get a good steady rain here in Nova Scotia, it will continue to burn out of control. We haven’t had a good steady rain now for nearly three months, which is unheard of in this province, surrounded as it is by the North Atlantic.
In contrast to the burnt maple leaf above, the video below is not real. It’s a fictional account of the coming collapse of Canada, but it’s based on data sourced from the Canadian government (federal, provincial, and municipal). In the video, the relevant statistical trends have been extrapolated and extended to their logical conclusion—total societal and economic collapse by 2030—in a compelling and realistic narrative that is unfolding around me as we speak.
It’s the Deuteronomy 28 curses come to life.
For those of you who are interested, the same channel also has similar videos on the coming total economic and societal collapse of Australia and the UK, again using government-sourced data.
Directly below is a screenshot of a Nova Scotia Reddit thread from a few weeks ago. In it, people are discussing the rain (or lack of it) and the bizarre (to them) patterns of how the rain falls when it does fall, however briefly.
When I first read the thread, I immediately thought of this:
And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered.
(Amos 4:7)
Biblical, indeed.
HEAR, O ISRAEL!
The Lord our God is one Lord:
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, September 1, 2025 – As many of you know, I came to belief in God and in his Messiah, Jesus, directly from atheism. I didn’t meander down a long and twisted path of “Is he?” or “Isn’t he?”, trying to apply logic and deductive reasoning to the existence of God and by extension to the messiahship of Jesus. You can’t logic your way into genuine belief, as your belief exists prior to knowing you believe. In other words, I believed before I knew I believed, because my belief in God came from God, not from me. Genuine belief is placed in us as a measure of God’s Holy Spirit; it isn’t generated by us. Genuine belief comes from God and is God.
You can’t genuinely believe in God based solely on logic and reasoning. You can only genuinely believe in God if God is working through you, by his Holy Spirit. So when I went from unbelief to belief in under a second, it wasn’t my doing. It was God’s doing. All I did was choose to forgive, and God did the rest.
Which brings me to the topic of today’s discussion, which is God, and by extension his Messiah, Jesus. These are two distinct beings, with God being God and Jesus being the Messiah. God is Lord over everything and everyone, and Jesus is Lord over those areas and beings God designates Jesus to have lordship. They are two distinct beings with different and in some cases overlapping jurisdictions, but in the cases of overlap, God still has ascendancy, as Jesus pointed out when he stated: The Father is greater than I.
God’s Holy Spirit is God manifesting in time and space. The Old Testament prophets well knew this, as should we. When the Holy of Holies was built as the inner sanctum within the temple, according to God’s specifications, the Holy of Holies was meant for God to come to visit his people on designated days or sometimes to show up unannounced. It wasn’t meant for a “lesser” spirit that was tapped by God to represent him. It was built for God himself to descend to the temple in Spirit form, as he was and is wont to do when he interacts with earthly beings (not just humans). God had previously descended in Spirit form on numerous occasions in the tabernacle that he specified be built just after the exodus from Egypt. Again, it wasn’t a messenger of God that Moses went to be with in the tabernacle, it was God himself, manifesting as the Holy Spirit.
Old Testament prophets also knew that God’s Holy Spirit was God himself manifesting in Spirit form. Whenever they’d inquire of God or be inspired by God, it was to God directly they’d inquire or by God directly they’d be inspired. They knew it wasn’t a messenger sent from God they were interacting with, but very God himself. Genuine prophets today likewise inquire of God directly through his Spirit and are inspired by God directly through his Spirit. If you’re genuinely reborn, you would know this, because you have a portion of God’s Holy Spirit in you at all times (not just on occasion, like Old Testament prophets). You are one of several perambulating Holy of Holies that Jesus, by his sacrifice, enabled you to be.
God directed Moses to declare:
HEAR, O ISRAEL: The Lord our God is one Lord:
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
Jesus later declared this the greatest of all God’s Commands, and yet it rarely features in any list of the Ten Commandments. It should always be there, front and center. If Jesus says that the most important of all God’s Commandments is that the Lord our God is one Lord, and that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and might, then it’s unquestioningly the most important of all Commandments, and as Jesus’ followers, we need to know it and embrace it and live it and preach it.
Which is a roundabout way of saying the doctrine of the trinity is nonsense and has no place in the hearts and minds of genuine believers. When I was born-again and taught directly by God, as scripture says his children will be, God never taught me the trinitarian doctrine. It’s not in the Bible and it’s certainly not in the Ten Commandments. In fact, I only came to know about the trinitarian doctrine when I first started attending Catholic masses about six weeks after I was reborn. Which is to say, I had to learn about this doctrine from men, not from God. Which is to say, this is one of those dreaded doctrines of men that Jesus (and later, Paul) warned us about and dismissed.
To be honest, I dismissed the trinitarian doctrine the first time I heard of it. The trinitarian concept of God was not the God I knew as my heavenly Father, and certainly not the Jesus I knew as my Lord, teacher, big brother, and best friend who, during his time on Earth, had a greater measure of God’s Spirit in him than anyone before or since, but that still didn’t make him God. It was this exceedingly great measure of God’s Holy Spirit in him that enabled Jesus to perform so many miracles, but that still didn’t make him God. It made him Lord, but it didn’t make him God.
Nor did the trinitarian doctrine reflect the Holy Spirit that I knew was God’s way of interacting with me as a mere mortal, the same Spirit God placed in me by measure at my rebirth, when he adopted me as his child. As Jesus said, “God is spirit”, and so he is to us now, but if and when we get to Heaven, Paul promises we’ll see God as he is, “face to face”.
You can’t limit God to this or that or one or the other, as God is all-powerful and can do all things, far beyond anything we can imagine. But when God stated to Moses that he is One Lord, we need to take him at his word, not spiritually genetically modify him into something he clearly stated he isn’t. We can’t sub-divide God into three co-equal beings that are somehow by some tortured human logic still all “God”, all while thinking we’re adhering to the Commandment that God is one Lord.
God is God, our heavenly Father.
Jesus is God’s Son and the one and only Messiah.
And the Holy Spirit is God manifesting in time and space.
This is not difficult to understand. God never meant it to be difficult. Truth is never difficult, not to those who have God and Jesus in them.
DECEPTION
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 31, 2025 – I wrote a few days ago about how children are easily deceived, especially by people older than them. I remember as an eight-year-old thinking that my 13-year-old babysitter was a trustworthy adult because she was allowed to make Kraft Dinner all by herself. Whenever she’d babysit, I’d do whatever she’d tell me to do (including dutifully eat her rock-hard macaroni with lumpy cheese sauce) because I unquestioningly accepted her full authority over me.
I saw the same unquestioning obedience in the three- and seven-year-old sons of a former boyfriend of mine. Whenever they’d come over for the weekend, I’d take them to the corner store for treats, just the three of us. The littler one would hold on tight to my hand, fully trusting me though he hardly knew me. Whatever candies I’d buy for them, they’d solemnly eat. It was strange for me, not being a mother myself, to see how willingly they complied with my every word.
It’s easier to deceive children than adults because children haven’t yet developed the healthy skepticism that comes with age and experience. Still, many people allow themselves to be deceived even into adulthood, perhaps out of a misplaced desire to recreate the safe haven they felt as children. But we born-again believers don’t have the luxury of willful naivete or of suspending our disbelief and holding on tight to the hands of worldly authorities. We also can’t afford to accept at face value the revelations of self-proclaimed prophets in the worldly church. We need to stand firm in God’s truth at all times, no matter how uncomfortable that might be for us or how alone we stand. God is our Truth, not rumor, innuendo, peer pressure, frenzied mobs, or false prophecies.
Which brings me to the topic of today’s article – deception. A tool of the devil, deception is also used on occasion as a testing strategy permitted by God. When the devil wields deception as a reward (that is, as something that’s been earned), he delivers it as a spiritual stronghold, so that those under its thrall are under his direct authority. Prior to my rebirth, I was constantly under the devil’s spiritual strongholds of one kind or another, especially in relationships, and so I know how nearly impossible it is to see clearly when you’re in them, let alone to break free of them. On the other hand, when God permits deception for testing purposes, he also provides a clear way for us to discern the lie and so to avoid falling for it.
You can’t “logic” a person out of a spiritual stronghold. You also can’t pray them out. Even if you think you’re making headway with someone who’s under a stronghold, they’ll willingly tighten their own chains as soon as you’ve gone home for the night. When the devil uses deception as a reward, he has God-given authority over everyone under the appointed stronghold: Even God won’t intervene in those cases, other than in rare exceptions that lead to spiritual rebirth.
But deception when allowed by God for testing purposes is vastly different. It’s still administered by the devil, but it’s not a spiritual stronghold; it’s not a due reward for choices made: It’s a test that comes in the form of a temptation to believe something that isn’t true. Jesus says that sometimes these deceptions are so extreme, even the “elect” (that’s us!) can be deceived. So how are we to know who or what to believe during these tests?
Paul advises us always to test the spirits, so even when we’re being tested, we need to test the spirits. (Especially when we’re being tested, we need to test the spirits.) However, when we’re being tested, we can’t just go to God in prayer and ask him for answers like we normally do, any more than when we were in school we could ask our teacher for answers when we were writing exams. During testing, we’re pretty much on our own as far as the answers go. That means we need to rely on what we’ve previously learned, and we need to use our discernment.
The best and most recent example of a God-sanctioned spiritual stronghold under the devil is the alleged September 23-24 rapture of the church. Suffice to say it’s just another version of the same-old same-old that’s been making the rounds for nearly 2000 years. The Jesus-is-coming-back-soon hysteria tends to be cyclical, but people still willingly embrace it so the devil keeps trotting it out, confident in its positive results for him. “Jesus is coming back soon!” is one of the devil’s favorite lies, as he harvests a bumper crop of disillusioned souls each time the prophecy fails.
Ironically, when Jesus does actually come back, the devil won’t be plying us beforehand with this particular deception. He won’t be allowed to. Like the virgins who fall asleep just before the bridegroom appears, we won’t know exactly when Jesus is coming until he’s suddenly here. The knowledge will be supernaturally withheld from us by God, who’s also, according to scripture, the only one who knows exactly when Jesus is coming back. Even Jesus himself still doesn’t know when he’s coming back and won’t know until he gets the signal that it’s time to ride.
As for us, our only heads-up will be our ongoing standing order to keep doing our jobs so that when Jesus does appear, he finds us doing what we should be doing during our time on Earth – namely, the specific work that God has given each of us to do. The last thing we want Jesus to find us doing is laboring under the latest lie of the devil.
We aren’t children anymore, to naively entrust ourselves to worldly authority figures or to believe lies because we don’t know any better. We also shouldn’t be easily deceived when we have God’s Spirit of discernment to guide us. Yes, tests on deception can be difficult (they’re meant to be), but God will only test us according to our ability: He doesn’t test us on what we don’t know; he tests us on what we do know, to see how we apply our learning in real-life situations.
As born-again believers, we don’t have to worry about being under demonic strongholds anymore, not as long as we’re under God’s grace. If we genuinely have God’s Spirit with us, we can’t come directly under the devil’s authority. It’s a spiritual impossibility. We can, however, be subjected to tests on deception delivered by the devil. God will permit that. Which means we always need to be on our spiritual toes, because those tests don’t come announced, and when they do come, they come hard and fast, often before we even realize we’re being tested.
This September’s rapture prophecy will play out like the countless other rapture prophecies before it, and the devil will take his payment in souls, like he always does. When the stronghold spell is broken on September 25, the majority of the people now under its thrall will quietly delete their “I had a dream” videos and move onto the next craze, having learned nothing from the experience. Some will even walk away from God altogether, feeling betrayed.
I pray you’re not among them.
ON COVETING AND CREDIT CARDS: A MESSAGE YOU WON’T WANT TO HEAR
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 31, 2025 – I need to premise this article with the reminder that this blog is for born-again believers. By “born-again believers”, I mean people who’ve been converted by God into disciples of Jesus. I mean people who have God’s Holy Spirit in them, not worldly spirits. That’s what I mean by “born-again believers”. If you’re not born-again, this article is not for you.
If you are born-again, please do read on, though it’s possible that you won’t like what you read. Consider this your fair warning. Still, it was written especially for those who won’t agree with the teaching, and I hope they read through to the end, anyway, and pray on it.
As for those of you who will agree with what you’re about to read, the Holy Spirit in me greets the Holy Spirit in you!
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Eve was the first to covet, and she did so in the Garden, being tempted by Satan to want more knowledge than God had given her. Every form of coveting since then is a replay of Eve’s.
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We live in an age when coveting is so deeply entrenched in our everyday activities, we no longer recognize it as sin. All loans, including mortgages and credit cards, are coveting. What is a loan except something you’ve been given access to (for a price) that you don’t need and haven’t earned? How are loans different from Eve wanting more knowledge than she needed or was owed? If you do need something—genuinely need it—you won’t have to borrow to get it, because God will provide it for you without your having to borrow or even to ask. Borrowing is a sure sign of the sin of coveting as well as an indicator of weak faith.
I can already hear the excuses – “how else am I going to afford a house in this market??!!”, “but I only use my credit card to get points!!! I pay it off every month”, “it’s just such a convenience to have everything on one card”, “I never use my overdraft; it’s only there if I need it”, and so on. But the truth is, if you have a mortgage, you’re coveting. If you use credit cards, you’re coveting. If you have an overdraft or other line of credit, you’re coveting. You might not know that you’re coveting, it might not seem to you that you’re coveting, and you might not agree that you’re coveting, but you are coveting.
At the same time, you’re also making of yourself a borrower and of someone else a lender, which is tempting God. Scripture advises us not to borrow or lend, which means not only that we should not borrow or lend ourselves, but also—and equally importantly—that we shouldn’t make borrowers or lenders of others.
And worst of all – it means that you’re ungrateful for everything God has given you free and clear. Essentially, when you borrow, what you’re saying is: “I’m not happy with what God has given me. It’s not enough. I deserve more.”
Which is pretty much what Satan said just before he fell.
I warned you that some of you wouldn’t want to read this. Coveting has been so normalized that even we born-again believers do it without thinking. But coveting is also something by God’s Commandment that we dare not do. So, if we are doing it—even unknowingly—we need to stop.
As always, Jesus is our example of how not to covet. We know he didn’t have any business with usurers (the bankers of the day) because Judas Iscariot was in charge of the group’s money bag. We also know that Jesus operated on the “just in time” philosophy of satisfying needs, relying fully on God to provide for him and his followers. This was made clear in the feeding of the thousands when all they had in the cupboard was a few loaves and fishes. As I’ve written here before, Jesus was no prepper. His faith in God to provide what he needed when he needed it is our gold standard on how not to covet.
What we perceive as our needs are often just wants, and God, in his longsuffering patience, lets us roll with that confusion for a while. But when he sees that we’re open to learning the difference between wants and needs, he’ll help us differentiate between them, though what we do with that knowledge is still up to us. We’re free to keep coveting, if that’s what we want to do, just as we’re free to kill, steal, or commit adultery, but none of those activities are advisable and they all come with heavy spiritual penalties, especially for born-again believers.
If you’re born-again and reading this and you have some kind of loan or line of credit, including a mortgage or credit card, you know what you need to do. Notice that I said “need” to do, not “want” to do, because you’re likely not going to want to give up what you consider your right or convenience. Whether or not Jesus owned property, we don’t know (because it’s not mentioned in scripture), but we do know that he didn’t borrow money to buy property, because he rented places or slept rough. And that was Jesus, our Lord and God’s Messiah. Why should we think we deserve more than Jesus?
The world prods us, mainly through advertisement and cultural norms, to want more than we need or have earned. We’re constantly being hounded to replace things that aren’t yet worn out or to get the latest model when we only just a few months ago got the previous latest model. Unsolicited offers of credit cards show up in the mail daily. Students are encouraged to get student loans. New immigrants are ambushed upon arrival by banks urging them not just to set up savings and checking accounts, but to get credit cards and all forms of loans without any background or credit checks. Coveting has been normalized in the West because greed is now our cultural value and norm. Wanting more than what you need is a sign of ambition, and unbridled ambition is good (or so say the ungodly).
But the only ambition that has any value in God’s eyes is the ambition to do God’s will. That’s why God gave us ambition in the first place, and that’s the only ambition we should have as born-again believers.
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We’re no different than Eve in the Garden of Eden when we want what we don’t need or haven’t earned. Jesus taught us to pray for our daily bread, not for a McMansion in the suburbs or a platinum credit card. John the Baptist advised the soldiers: “Be content with your wages.” Anything beyond that comes from the devil.
ON SUFFERING FOR OTHERS’ SINS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 6, 2025 – One of the most grievous errors of Christianity is the mistaken belief that you can suffer for others’ sins, that you can take on the burden of their suffering and in that way exonerate them and pay their sin price before God. You cannot do that. Only Jesus could do that, and only for very specific sin. The sin price Jesus paid on the cross was Adam’s sin, which he could only do because he himself was sinless. No-one else could have paid Adam’s sin because no-one but Jesus was sinless.
In paying the sin price owed by Adam, Jesus negated the need for any further ritualistic sacrifice and opened the door for “whosoever will” to enter into right relationship with God again. That door was firmly shut until Jesus’ perfect sacrifice. It’s open now, but only to those God draws to him. Even with Jesus having paid the sin price, we’re still all born sinners. No-one is born in right relationship with God: you’re reborn into right relationship, just as no-one is born a child of God but reborn a child of God. These distinctions are critically important, as they form the basis of who and what we are as born-again believers.
The recent media spectacle of the conclave leading to the coronation of Peter the Roman (a.k.a. Pope Leo the 14th) threw a spotlight on the rank and file of the abomination known as the Catholic church. That organization is infamous for selling ways to reduce sin-related suffering for a certain price, the chief one of which is “indulgences”. Luther condemned the selling of indulgences and in fact pointed to indulgences as being his main motivator for breaking away from the papacy. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the “pay for pray” grifts, as indulgence-like mechanisms persist throughout all denominations even today, fooling people into parting with their money under various promotions such as “donations”, “tithing”, and “sowing”. But the idea underlying what amounts to spiritual extortion is the same as for indulgences: Give us your money, and we’ll make your life better.
As born-again believers, we know that the only way we can make our lives better is through genuine repentance, followed by humbly suffering whatever God deems we need to suffer. There’s no shortcut through this process, no matter how much people want to avoid the suffering part. The good news is that after we repent and are back in right relationship with God, whatever we need to suffer – our own personal sin price – is mitigated by our love for God and his love for us. I’m not saying suffering can be made pleasurable; I would never say that. I’m just saying earned suffering doesn’t feel as bad when you’re in right relationship with God. Scripture says that God will wipe away all our tears, and so he does. No-one can kiss away the pain of a spiritual boo-boo quite like our heavenly Father.
As much as we might want to, we cannot suffer for others as a way to pay their sin price before God any more than we can pay a certain amount of money to make our suffering go away. We all need to make our own peace with God and to do so in our own time and our own way. It cannot be done on by others on our behalf. Jesus paid the sin price owed by Adam and was able to do it 1) because he was born sin-free and 2) lived his life here on Earth sin-free and 3) was tapped by God to do it and agreed to do it. Jesus became the perfect sacrifice that ended the need for any further temple sacrifices.
We, on the other hand, were born in sin and continued to sin up until our rebirth, and then on occasion we sinned again, though not grievously if we’re still born-again, not to the loss of our grace given to us by God at our rebirth. Still, getting into right relationship with God was a process we had to go through; it wasn’t a birthright, just as staying in right relationship with God is an ongoing process, not a “one and done” deal, as false prophets would have us believe.
We cannot suffer for others’ sins because we’re not Jesus, meaning that we weren’t born sinless and haven’t lived sinlessly and aren’t tapped by God to suffer for others. As born-again believers in right-standing with God, we can pray for others, we can help others, we can teach others, and we can preach to others, but we cannot suffer on their behalf: We cannot pray away or pay away their sin. They need to suffer on their own and to the full measure allotted by God. This is a spiritual principle that we need to take to heart lest we, too, be fooled by grifters or by our own spiritual arrogance.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 