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SILENT WITNESS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 11, 2026 – If they want to believe it’s love, let them: It’s all they have. We know it isn’t God’s Love, but we’re blessed to be able to receive God’s Love, so the least we can do, being so blessed, is to let them believe what they want, even if it’s a lie.
Especially if it’s a lie.
One of the great mercies we can afford as children of God is to let people believe what they want to believe. If that’s all they want, that’s all they’ll get. It would be wrong of us to take away that small comfort of a lie told to them so many times it’s become truth to them. We should never take away their lie. It’s not ours to take.
Paul writes about people so far gone—so lost in sin—that God just lets them be. He doesn’t send Paul to preach to them; he just lets them be.
Some people, not sent from God, argue that we should urgently witness to these souls, and the louder the better – that we should invade their claimed spaces and subject them to the spiritual equivalent of waterboarding. But these preachers have been sent on a fool’s errand that will only end in loathing and rage on both sides. You cannot override what God has decreed, and if God has decreed them lost (like the people written about by Paul, or the people just before the flood, or the people in Sodom just before it rained fire and brimstone), then lost they’ll be. You don’t want to fight against God’s decrees because to do so would be to deny God’s justice and to fight against God himself. We can’t do those things and still call ourselves God’s children. Let the worldly church fight the fight not blessed by God, if that’s what they want to do. But we, like Paul, must stand back and stand down because to do anything else would be to defy God.
It was not easy for Paul to see the level of sin he saw and remain silent. It’s not easy for us, either. In these cases, we must change our tactics, knowing that nothing we say will persuade them to change. So we say nothing. We treat them with the same courtesy that we would want to be treated with (as commanded by Jesus), but we say nothing about their sin. We don’t involve ourselves in their sin; we don’t celebrate their sin; we don’t question their sin; we don’t even acknowledge their sin: Taking our cue from Paul, we separate ourselves from their sin, speaking of it only among ourselves, if necessary, but otherwise remaining silent.
We are silent not out of fear of them but out of fear of God.
Our silence is witness enough.
ELDAD AND MEDAD, AND US
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 11, 2026 – Eldad and Medad have their 15 milliseconds of Biblical fame buried deep within Numbers. If you rush through the book, you might miss it. Still, Eldad and Medad rank as prophets, because scripture tells us that God’s Spirit spoke through them. They are a prototype of us bornagain believers, a forerunner of what God had in store for his people, so long as they are God’s people.
Eldad and Medad were not among the 70 elders officially designated by Moses to receive a share of God’s Spirit. They had remained behind in the camp when the summoned chosen dutifully filed into the tabernacle to be tapped. And yet God chose the two men to receive his Spirit outside the tabernacle, having seen something in those two that Moses initially missed.
However, as soon as the Spirit fell upon Eldad and Medad and they started prophesying, a boy who heard them ran to tell Joshua, who then rushed to tell Moses, expecting him to immediately silence them. To Joshua’s way of thinking, because Eldad and Medad were not of the 70 chosen elders, their prophesying was undercutting Moses’ authority.
But Moses didn’t see it that way. He knew the two men were prophesying by God’s Holy Spirit, by direct appointment of God. And so instead of commending Joshua for his loyalty, Moses reprimanded him, saying:
Enviest thou for my sake? would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!
(Numbers 11:29)
As Moses’ protégé, Joshua got schooled and schooled hard in that exchange. But he obviously also learned from it, because later he himself would be guided and emboldened by God’s Holy Spirit, becoming not only a great leader but also one of only two of the original 600,000+ men who left Egypt who ultimately made it to the promised land.
Moses and Joshua’s exchange reminds me of the New Testament passage where the people are shouting “Hosanna in the highest!” during Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem. The Pharisees command Jesus to silence them, to which Jesus replies that if he did silence them, the very rocks beneath their feet would cry out instead. The lesson here is that you can’t interfere with Spirit-led prophesying, as it comes directly from God. Attempting to do so only makes disciples and prophets even of rocks and mountains and trees, which will then proclaim the glory of God everywhere and unfettered.
Moses’ wish that “all the Lord’s people were prophets” finally came true when Jesus founded his Church nearly a millennium and a half later. Everyone in that Church is born again, each with a unique measure of God’s Spirit according to God’s grace. Like Eldad and Medad, all of us bornagain believers are God’s prophets, whether we are recognized by the world (and the worldly church) as such or not. You cannot have God’s Spirit in you and not be a prophet of God, as having God’s Spirit is the very definition of a prophet: “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy”.
We all remember the instant when God first put his Spirit in us – how suddenly we “saw” and how easily we prophesied! Nothing could have silenced us in those early days of our rebirth any more than the disciples could have been silenced at Pentecost: The force of God’s Spirit was overwhelming. I can imagine that Eldad and Medad experienced much the same thing, though with them it wasn’t spiritual rebirth: It was more a visitation of God’s Spirit, like it was for all prophets of God prior to Jesus founding his Church. Still, like us at our rebirth, Eldad and Medad were unstoppable in their prophesying, which Moses in his God-given wisdom recognized for what it was. There was a place and a purpose for Eldad and Medad, just as there was a place and a purpose for Moses and his 70 chosen elders, just as there’s a place and a purpose for us, God’s saints, during the prophesied falling away.
And yet despite the force of God’s Spirit when it first enters us, none of us are fully spiritually formed at that time, not even Jesus. We begin with a bang at our rebirth and grow from there. Jesus had a head start on all of us, being conceived of the Holy Spirit, but he still had to go through his paces, he still had to make his mistakes and learn from them, he still had to bide his time and patiently wait. Part of the waiting was for his sake and part for the sake of others, so that God could strengthen Jesus for his appointed tasks while also getting all his ducks in a row. God likewise has us wait at times. When that happens, it may seem like we’re spinning our spiritual wheels, going nowhere, but that’s just God’s way of preparing us by letting us steep, like tea: the longer we steep, the stronger we get.
We just need to be careful not to grow cold and bitter while we steep.
FORTY SACRED DAYS: THE TRANSITION
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 6, 2026 – The Jesus who rose from the dead looked nothing like the rabbi Jesus. In fact, he looked so different, it’s likely his own mother didn’t recognize him. Certainly, his disciples didn’t, and they’d been with him for three whole years, night and day, talking to him, listening to him, memorizing every curve and angle of his face, the way you soak in every last detail of a loved one. And yet even they—his chosen few—thought he was just another stranger, and an ill-informed one at that, when they first came upon him on the road to Emmaus. They didn’t have a clue they were talking to their risen Lord until he outed himself at dinner.
I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during that encounter! I bet Jesus could barely hold back a smile at their fumbling earnestness. Did God supernaturally withhold Jesus’ identity from them? Scripture says he did. It was probably another test of sorts, the way we’re tested when God withholds the identity of angels from us. He wants to see how we’ll interact with strangers when we don’t know we’re being watched. I never know I’ve had an angelic encounter until the angel is long gone. Still, there’s something about them even as I’m talking to them that triggers something inside me. Something that nags at me the way something nagged at the disciples on the road to Emmaus. They described it as their hearts burning within them, a knowing without knowing what it was they knew. The same thing happens when we encounter God’s holy angels here on Earth and, to a lesser degree, when we encounter other genuine bornagain believers in person.
We can only wonder where Jesus went and what he did in the 40 days leading up to his ascension. We know he spent several hours with his disciples and other followers, but that time accounts for only a small portion of the nearly six weeks. Was he here on Earth the whole time, or did he do some day trips and maybe even a few overnighters in Heaven? He told the “good thief” on the neighboring cross that he’d be with him that day in Paradise, so we can assume from this scripture that Jesus did have physical as well as spiritual access to the heavenly realms prior to his publicly witnessed ascension. How much access, we don’t know. (Maybe we don’t need to know.) It’s still fascinating to think about how he slipped back and forth between Heaven and Earth not only “in the spirit” but physically, like the holy angels do, all decked out in his shiny new but unrecognizable-to-those-who’d-known-him-before body that was being upgraded to heavenly standards day by day.
In contrast to the wide reach of Jesus’ ministry during the preceding three years, very few on Earth got to see the risen Jesus before he ascended. And even of those who did get to see him, some still doubted it was him because he looked and sounded and moved so different from the Jesus they knew. It might have seemed to them that it was Jesus but not Jesus, because it actually was Jesus but not Jesus, the way we’ll be us but not us if we make it to Heaven – same soul, but different body, different voice, different movement.
Different memories.
Jesus has never stopped teaching us, not from the moment Moses first mentioned him all the way up until now. But in those 40 sacred days between his resurrection and ascension, Jesus taught us something very special: He gave us a glimpse into what awaits us if we make it Home. And what did he teach us? That we’ll look entirely different from what we do now, and that our bodies will have entirely different capabilities. For instance, we’ll be able to appear and disappear at will. Among humans, we’ll appear human, though not recognizable (people who knew us before won’t know who we are). We’ll be able to eat food (yay! lol). We’ll be able to move between the heavenly and earthly realms with the same ease as God’s holy angels. And we’ll continue to help and teach much in the same way as we help and teach now, only with greater authority: We’ll command attention without demanding it, and our words will have impact, due to the fulness of God’s Holy Spirit that will be in us.
When all is said and done, this is what I’m waiting for – that glorious transition from here to there, from the earthly to the heavenly, spiritually and physically. I thank God for giving Jesus the grace of time to show us what that transition looks like.
PASSOVER INCOMING!
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 31, 2026 – Just a quick reminder that Passover starts tomorrow evening (April 1st, at sundown) and continues into the Feast of Unleavened Bread, ending at nightfall next Wednesday. So if you haven’t yet bought/made your unleavened bread and wine (or wine substitute [I’m using grape pop lol]), now’s the time. Jesus directed us to observe the Passover in memory of him, and to do it as he showed us, so do it we must. It’s obligatory, not optional. Obligatory. And God directed us to observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread throughout our generations, so observe it we will. Yeast out, matzah in!
Now’s also the perfect time to dig back into the Exodus and read the entire account of Moses in Egypt, up to and including the children of Israel’s flight into the wilderness. We bornagains live in that spiritual wilderness; and like the children of Israel, we too are protected by the constant presence of God’s Holy Spirit. They had God’s Spirit without; we have God’s Spirit within.
So, Hallelujah, God Bless You, and Bottom’s Up!
NEVER SILENCED: ON BILL C-9 AND OTHER SIGNS OF THE COMING GREAT TRIBULATION
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 29, 2026 – One of the most definitive signs that we’ve entered the Great Tribulation will be the death of the worldly church. That means no more casual Christians, no more denominational Christians, and no more Christians-of-convenience (i.e., people who claim to be fleeing persecution as Christians in order to gain the generous asylum benefits of Western nations). During the Great Tribulation, the only people openly professing belief in God and claiming to be followers of Jesus will be genuine bornagain believers – that is, those who would rather be killed than deny who they are, because killed they will be, and brutally.
We can see from the ongoing presence of the worldly church that we’re not yet—thank God—in the Great Tribulation. We’ve been in the end times now for nearly 2000 years, but we haven’t entered the final stage. We’ll know when we do because, as I’ve mentioned, every vestige of Christianity will have been wiped from the earth, other than for the very rare and increasingly rarer saints, all of whom will have a bounty on their heads.
The end will be very much like it was in the beginning. Public preaching will be outlawed, and we’ll be forced into hiding and hounded from place to place until finally being arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and executed. Once the worldly church has been universally banned—like it is already in North Korea—only genuine believers will remain. No-one else will want to suffer for The Name.
The Canadian government is in the process of enshrining into law a bill (C-9) that removes the “good faith” protection from Canadians when they openly express what they sincerely believe, if what is being expressed is considered “hate speech”. Canadians were granted carte blanche permission by law to openly express what they sincerely believe back in 1970, but when “hate” laws were later thrown into the mix, stating your beliefs and using scripture to back them up started to come under scrutiny, especially when those beliefs concerned the “alphabetization” of Western society or the mass arrival in the West of demon worshipers claiming to worship God. That scrutiny has now turned into a clawing back of the permissions that I and most Canadians once took for granted. When this bill is passed into law within a month or two, much of what I’ve written here in this blog may be cause for me to be fined and/or thrown into jail for promoting so-called hate (otherwise known as God’s Truth).
The push-back to this looming law started as soon as the bill was introduced in Canada’s parliament last fall, but none of it will be successful because the bill has God’s permission. In other words, God himself – not parliamentarians and not even the devil – has deigned that Canadians have forfeited their “good faith” protection. As a nation, Canada has, in its “words and doings”, fallen so far away from God that it’s no longer recognized spiritually or geopolitically as a Christian nation. When a people remove themselves from God, God removes himself from them, and the demons rush in to claim the vacated spiritual turf.
We know that the world is under the authority of Satan, but Satan can only do what God permits him to do, and God will only permit him to do what has been earned either as a reward or a test. God is all-knowing and his justice is perfect; the Canadian parliamentarians aren’t pulling the wool over God’s eyes by sneaking through a law that targets his Word. Jesus reminded Pontius Pilate that he had power over Jesus only because God gave it to him, that God permitted Pontius Pilate to have power over Jesus for a time and for a reason because “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose”. The power referenced by Jesus didn’t come from from Pontius Pilate but from God, just as the removal of the “good faith” protection under Canadian law doesn’t come from Canadian parliamentarians but from God.
The imminent passing of bill C-9 into law is yet another sign that we are nearing the start of the Great Tribulation. Other nations formerly known as Christian have passed (or are in the process of passing) similar bills into law. With their passage, the threat of fines and/or imprisonment will so constrain the application of God’s Word to everyday life—will so water down what can be shared publicly—that preaching will soon become little more than a feel-good pep talk made agreeable even to unbelievers. This reward, sadly, has been earned. The worldly church will persist for a while, but in such an increasingly emaciated and bloodless form to be nearly inconsequential. When the church is finally outlawed in the name of cultural diversity or some other doctrine of devils, it will be a mercy killing, as the late-stage worldly church will be Christian in name only.
We, however, the Church founded by Jesus Christ and empowered by God’s Holy Spirit, will continue until Jesus comes back to take the last of us Home. We in the Kingdom cannot be silenced, any more than the two anointed witnesses prophesied to preach during the Great Tribulation will be silenced. We may be banned, yes; fined, yes; outlawed, yes; hounded, yes; imprisoned, yes; and killed, yes, but never silenced, because even in our death, the Word God spoke through us will resound.
No law on Earth can stop that.
“Heaven and Earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”
Matthew 24:35
THE ONE JOB SAFE FROM AI
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 19, 2026 – Matt Shumer is a self-professed artificial intelligence (AI) expert. I’m not knocking him for that; just stating a fact. He’s also likely not bornagain, so he can be forgiven for not knowing AI’s defining feature – it’s not a soul. And not being a soul, it can never have God’s Holy Spirit in it.
We have God’s Spirit in us. That’s our defining feature. Being bornagain doesn’t mean we’re eternally saved (that determination comes at the Judgement); being bornagain means that God’s Holy Spirit is in us at all times, not just on occasion like with the Old Testament prophets. God’s Spirit is in us in the same way God’s Spirit was in Jesus during his time on Earth. But this indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit can never happen to an AI because it isn’t a soul.
I’m a soul. You’re a soul. All beings on Earth created by the Living God are souls. We don’t have a soul; we are a soul. This part of me that’s communicating with that part of you is communicating soul-to-soul, and that’s the part of us that’s eternal. Our bodies are mortal, but our souls are immortal. I’m speaking to you from my soul, not from my brain (or any other part of my body). An AI can’t do that because an AI isn’t a soul.
And not being a soul—not being a living being created by God—an AI can never be regenerated and therefore can never have God’s Holy Spirit in it. Which means that an AI can never be a prophet, as it can’t know God.
Matt Shumer, that AI high-tech guy I referenced above, recently published a paper (likely AI-generated lol) warning people that AI was coming for their jobs. We’ve heard this warning before from other people, but coming from Shumer the warning was particularly intriguing, given that he’s made his fortune promoting AI. Shades of Dr. Frankenstein warning that his monster is about to break free of its chains? Perhaps. There’s an undercurrent of fear in Shumer’s “manifesto”, but also a hint of parental pride.
Shumer took especial pains to address anyone who wasn’t as impressed with AI’s achievements as he thought they should be. He cautioned them not to judge AI by the free models or cheap subscriptions available online (which he insisted are already outdated and outperformed, like flip-phones compared to the latest smart phone models). Instead, we’re to seek out and purchase the most recent and advanced AI options, and to constantly update them. This is because AI is not improving linearly but exponentially. Even yesterday’s model has been superseded by the one released just this morning.
This fast-paced consumer-driven AI hamster wheel that Shumer invites us to jump onto like some high-tech Noah’s ark is allegedly our only hope for surviving an AI-dominated future. And this future, according to Dr. Shumerstein, has already begun. He urges us not only to embrace this ever-evolving tool, but to make it an integral part of our everyday lives. If we can’t stay ahead of AI developments (it’s allegedly, according to Shumer, already too late for that), we can at least be aware of those developments and leverage them to our benefit. This is the only way to avoid being replaced by AI in our jobs.
But the one job Shumer didn’t mention as being entirely beyond AI’s capacity is the job we landed by default the day we were born again – the job of being God’s prophet. Not being a soul, AI can never have God’s Holy Spirit living in it and so can never speak as a prophet of God. It can repeat God’s words, but it can never directly hear from God. God will never speak directly through an AI, which means it can never prophesy.
So, as long we remain bornagain and in good spiritual standing with God, our jobs are safe.
FAMILY?
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 10, 2026 – In the worldly church, much is made of the ideal “holy family” of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. But the truth is that during his ministry years, Jesus didn’t get along very well with his family. They were estranged and at odds with him, refusing to believe that he was the Messiah. They even at one point tried to stop his ministry, prompting Jesus to declare publicly that his real family was “those who do the will of [his] Father in Heaven”.
Scripture says that God will take us “one of a city” and “two of a family” – not whole cities and not whole families, but only a select few (or less) from each. This, too, is at odds with worldly church propaganda, which falsely promotes the assured heavenly destination of even the shakiest of believers. What we can see from the Gospel narrative is that the holy family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph existed for brief moments in time, not constantly throughout their years as a family unit. Mary and some of Jesus’ other blood relatives didn’t even accept Jesus was the Messiah until after his crucifixion.
I mention all this because we too, as born-again believers, likely have unbelieving families. It’s baked into scripture and therefore into our lived reality. If Jesus went through the experience of being the sole believer in his family, so will we. It’s nothing to fight and nothing to lament.
Still, living among and socializing with spiritually hostile blood relatives can be a trial in the truest sense of the word. It’s meant to be a trial and we’re expected to handle it properly. By “properly”, I mean like Jesus handled it. And how did he handle it? By limiting his interactions with his unbelieving relatives. By refusing to compromise who and what he was in God’s eyes. By putting his duty to God ahead of his duty to his blood relatives. By prioritizing doing God’s will and God’s will only.
It can be a minefield to tread among unbelieving relatives, especially when some of them are actively working against you. When Jesus said that we’ll find our worst enemies among our own kith and kin, and he wasn’t overstating or being dramatic. God will permit Satan to use these people to test us, because where more frequently do we “let our hair down” and just be ourselves than among those we grew up with? It’s in these familiar and intimate settings that God wants to see how we respond to provocations. Out in the world among strangers, we act and react self-protectively—at arm’s length—whereas within the bosom of our families we tend to do and say things without overthinking them. It’s in these raw uncalculated moments that God can best assess our spiritual development.
A case in point for me is having “pagan” witches and freemason witches as relatives. How am I, as a born-again believer, to interact with these servants of Satan? The same way my believing grandmother used to interact with me before I was born-again – with patience, with kindness, and with copious behind-the-scenes prayers. It helps for me to remember the many kindnesses these relatives did before they signed on with the devil. Paul says that if there’s anything good in a person, we should think on that, and so I do. While it’s highly unlikely that these people will ever renounce their satanic oaths, that’s not my business. My business is to pray for whoever God guides me to pray for in the way that God shows me. The rest I let be.
Even within his own immediate family, Jesus experienced the emotional minefield of interacting with spiritual enemies. Thanks to the record of the Gospels, we know how he dealt with them. We are to do the same.
THE CHURCH INDESTRUCTIBLE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 9, 2026 – Jesus never intended for us to gather in a building to pray and worship. In fact, shortly before his crucifixion, Jesus said that going to the temple in Jerusalem and doing the things that were done there (rituals, rites, sacrifices, etc.) would soon no longer be required, that the temple of stone would be replaced with the temple of his risen body. By “temple”, he meant the Church. As born-agains, we know that the Church is the collective of Holy Spirit-filled believers that exist on Earth at any given time. Even without a building (and especially without a building), the Church will exist until Jesus comes back to take the last of his followers Home.
Paul also, in laying the foundation for the worldly church, never designated certain buildings as prayer and worship sites. When he talked about the church in this or that city or town, he meant people who identified as believers (some were born-again believers, some weren’t) who lived there. He was not referring to a building or (God forbid) a denomination. To Paul, the church was made up of those who believed that Jesus was the prophesied Messiah. Rebirth wasn’t a prerequisite in Paul’s worldly church as it was in Jesus’ Church. If you’re genuinely born-again, you know what I mean.
Then somewhere along the way, the building itself started to be called “the church”, and people rallied around the building instead of rallying around God and Jesus. So when the building a.k.a. church was emptied or demolished, the impression was that the body of believers had likewise shrivelled and died. This is the devil’s doing, to inspire a building to be called a church rather than the body of believers to be called the Church, as Jesus intended. This is the devil’s doing, and he’s been very successful at dividing the falling house of nominal believers through creeds, denominations, and deconsecrated structures.
The demolishing of buildings designated as churches, or their revamping into condos, mosques, or other worldly or spiritual uses, is mainly for optics, like a notch in the devil’s belt or a feather in his cap. Yes, the worldly church, built as it is on the shaky ground of self-identifying belief rather than God-inspired belief, is ultimately destined for destruction, but the Church whose cornerstone is Jesus cannot be destroyed. It is by very definition indestructible. Having its presence solely in the spiritual realm, the Church of genuine born-again believers is fully protected by God through his Holy Spirit and will persist until Jesus comes back in glory to take his remnant Home.
We, the Church built on Jesus, are not called to worship and “fellowship” in a building that is little more than a social club but to reach out to one another constantly in prayer, to support one another constantly in prayer, and to love one another constantly in prayer. Jesus said that’s how we’ll be known, by our love for one another – not for our love for the world, but for one another. I pray for you and you pray for me, even if we don’t know each other by name or know that the other exists. We can rest assured that the Church Indestructible does exist (if it didn’t, none of us would be here), and it is for this Church that we’re to send up our most fervent prayers.
Because as long as the Church exists, the world exists; and as long as the world exists, there is still hope for some. But when the last of us leaves – and God’s Holy Spirit leaves with us – hope will be no more.
START NOW
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 9, 2026 – It’s a terrible thing to waste the time that God’s allotted you, to do the things he’s told you not to do and not to do those things he’s told you specifically to do. You’ll not be held guiltless at the Judgement for wasting your allotted time and for disobeying God. Maybe you think you’re somehow exempt, but so too did the children of Abraham, who thought that by being children of Abraham they could bypass Judgement, but Jesus told them they were wrong. You, too, are wrong if you think that by virtue of being “saved” you’re home-free, no questions asked. If you were genuinely born-again, you’d know there’s no guaranteed ticket Home. There’s the grace of God that you live by now and the mercy of God at your death. Nowhere in scripture are you guaranteed Paradise.
But still, you do play a role in getting Home, and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. God wants to see that you want what he’s offering more than what the devil is offering, and you’ll be tested to that effect. Anyone can say they believe in God or they believe in Jesus or they want to go to Heaven, but it’s in the doing that your heart is revealed. Not in the saying but in the doing, especially your response to God’s correction and to doing what’s right when everyone around you is given the go-ahead to do what’s wrong. In that situation in particular – when the law of the land is contrary to God’s law, or when the will of the majority is set against you – God watches closely to see what you’ll do. This is a big part of how you earn your ticket home: by choosing to do what’s right in God’s eyes even when the world punishes you for it.
You cannot get to Heaven by convincing yourself that you’re going, any more than you can be born-again by convincing yourself that you’re reborn. Jesus says the Spirit goes where it wills; God determines who is reborn, not you or your pastor. God decides who is born-again and God himself performs the rebirth, which is an exorcism of demonic spirits followed by an inrushing of God’s Holy Spirit into the reborn soul. If you were genuinely born-again, you’d know that the Holy Spirit will not dwell in the same soul as demons.
It’s a terrible thing to waste the grace of time that God’s allotted you. Your sole focus should be God. Your sole ambition should be aligning your will with God’s, like Jesus did. If you’re not doing that to the best of your ability, start now.
THE GIFT
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 4, 2026 – There was a guy, a few weeks before Christmas, who was slumped in an old manual wheelchair at what is probably the coldest, windiest, and busiest intersection in Halifax. That day it was also snowing. But the old man didn’t seem to notice the snow, or if he did, didn’t care. He was on a mission. He was crying over and over again “Jesus is coming!”, and he’d obviously cried it so many times by the time I’d arrived, his voice was a croak. And yet despite the cold and the wind and vocal cords strained to breaking, the man didn’t abort his mission. He continued to preach. In response, the throngs of people hurrying by didn’t so much as lift their eyes from their phones. To them, he wasn’t there.
I stopped for a minute to listen to him. He was elderly and gaunt and looked ill. He also wasn’t dressed for the cold. I thought at first he was just another panhandler like the dozens of panhandlers plying their trade along that busy strip, but I didn’t see a cup or upended hat near him. He wasn’t begging. He was giving rather than taking.
Nearly two months later, I can still see him in his wheelchair with the snow and crowds swirling around him. I can still hear his voice. He hasn’t been back to that corner since, or at least I haven’t seen him. Maybe he’s moved on to another intersection elsewhere in the city, or maybe that was the only time he’d preached. Maybe some force drove him out into the bitter cold and wind that day to cry those few words over and over, some force that he didn’t quite understand and yet obeyed. I’m glad he did.
Because even though he isn’t there, I still see him. I still hear him. His simple message still rings in my head loud and clear: “JESUS IS COMING!” And whether Jesus comes today or tomorrow or in another 2000 years, he is coming. That is a guarantee. And whether we receive his coming with joy or with shame – well, that’s the whole point of the old man’s message.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 