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NO-ONE BUT GOD
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 10, 2025 – If you start with the concept that nearly everything they do, they do to kill you, then it all makes sense. They want you dead, though not necessarily physically dead: they want you spiritually dead, which means they want you worshiping the god of this world, like they do.
First and foremost, they want you spiritually dead, and once they accomplish that, what happens to you physically is of little concern to them. When I say of little concern, what I mean is that they want to keep you at least sufficiently functional that you’ll be able to spiritually kill others. That’s your job once you’ve been spiritually killed yourself, to spiritually kill others.
If you start with the understanding that they want you spiritually dead, then everything they do makes sense. There are no “good guys” and “bad guys” among those who are not born-again, there are just dead guys who are out to make everyone else dead.
You can only protect yourself if you truly understand this. And by protecting yourself, I don’t mean that you’re the one doing the protecting; I mean that you’re looking to God to protect you, and to God only, because God is the only one who can protect you.
Jesus well knew this before he started his ministry, which is why he left his family and friends behind and struck out on his own. He understood that even his family and friends were trying to spiritually kill him, though likely they didn’t know what they were doing. And there’s the rub – the devil uses people to get to you because he can’t get to you directly; you’re too protected. So he uses others, and he uses them in ways that appear to be good, even godly. In most cases, the people being used are unaware they’re being used. But you need to be aware they’re being used because that’s the only way you can put yourself under the full protection of God.
The worst thing that can happen to you as a born-again believer is to die spiritually. You must never let that happen to you, not under any circumstance. The devil is betting that he can spiritually kill you, while God is betting that he can’t. The same conversation the devil had with God about Job he’s having about each one of us, with God firmly taking our side, as he did for Job, and setting clear testing boundaries that the devil cannot overstep.
Yet for all his support, God’s not stopping the devil from tempting us; after all, that’s why he keeps the devil around. Tempting us is the devil’s sole purpose, and he’s very good at it, diabolically good, which is why we need God’s guidance and protection night and day. In fact, the devil’s so good at what he does, you don’t even know he’s doing it, he makes everything seem so easy and natural and right.
Our temptations, when they come, rarely look like temptations. They’re so meticulously planned and timed, they don’t appear to come from the devil. If anything, they seem on occasion to be blessings and signs from God, which is why we need to walk our every step with God. We won’t make it through our temptations unless we walk our every step with God. We should do nothing without first consulting God and then unhesitatingly doing whatever he says, like Jesus did. This is how we remain fully protected even while God is permitting us to be tempted by the devil.
If you’re a born-again believer, the world really is out to get you. Still, you don’t need to be afraid of the world or of the devil’s diabolical temptations, not while you’re under the guidance and protection of God. As Jesus reminded us, the most they can do is kill the body. Jesus lived that mindset during his ministry years, which is why he was bold and fearless in every situation, right up to and including the moment of his physical death.
So yes, even though nearly everyone on Earth may in fact be trying to kill us, we should fear nothing and no-one but God.
BE RIGHTEOUS STILL
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 3, 2025 – In the instant before my rebirth, when I was still an atheist, God offered me the choice of two options and showed me a vision of two possible outcomes. In the first part of the vision, he showed me the outcome that would result if I chose to forgive, and in the second part, he showed me the outcome that would result if I chose not to forgive. Specifically, I was shown that if I chose to forgive, all my pain would disappear, and if I chose not to forgive, my pain would not only continue but worsen.
God offered me the choice and showed me the outcomes visually as well as by understanding. No words were spoken.
This vision has remained with me as a guide to this day.
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I mention the above because God gave me a choice that involved two options and their respective outcomes, and one of those outcomes was not good. Yet even though it wasn’t good, it also wasn’t immediate horrific death. God didn’t say: Choose this, and you’ll live forever, or choose that, and you’ll die immediately and horribly. Even with the bad outcome, I was offered the possibility of continuing my life on Earth, though in a progressively ever-worsening spiritual state and with the understanding that the opportunity I was being afforded at that time would not come around again.
Thank God I chose to forgive, but still, choosing not to forgive was also an option. I wasn’t forced to make the choice to forgive; I wasn’t threatened with immediate death if I chose not to forgive: I was simply shown the outcomes of each choice, urged to choose the option that would resolve my pain, and left to make the decision for myself.
I mention the ever-worsening spiritual state that results from choosing unforgiveness because many who have been given the same offer as I was given have chosen not to forgive, have chosen revenge. When you choose revenge over mercy, your life reflects that choice. When you take matters into your own hands, you suffer the consequences, with an emphasis on suffer. The suffering that comes to you after you exact what you think is your rightful revenge is of your own doing. In other words, you’ve brought your suffering on yourself and have no-one but yourself to blame.
Even worse, if you choose this course of action after rejecting the option that would free you of your pain, God himself can’t help you anymore. You might be mollified temporarily by earthly mollifications (booze, drugs, wealth, career success, deviant sex, and other diversions), you might even be shielded from further consequences for a time by making a deal with the devil, but your pain will never be purged like it would have been had you chosen mercy when you had the chance.
Geopolitically, nations undergo the same process as individuals, as nations are made up of individuals whose characters collectively determine the course of that nation. When the measure of righteous individuals in a nation is surpassed by the unrighteous, that nation begins an unstoppable decline into hell. Daniel writes of nations that had their dominions taken away and yet continued for thousands of years, though in a progressively humbled state. Examples include Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Lebanon, and Syria. Their glory days are long behind them as they limp through the millennia, sinking deeper and deeper into poverty and chaos despite countless efforts at reform. Fast on the heels of the historically declined nations are the newly declining ones of former Christendom (Canada, US, UK, etc.). As with individuals, once the definitive decline begins, it cannot be reversed; it can be slowed, but not reversed.
Not one nation today is on the spiritual ascendent, and we can expect this trend to continue. There is a misguided notion of a future global messianic or Golden Age, a sort of Heaven on Earth, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Since the coming of Jesus, Heaven is as close to Earth as it will ever be. The Zion foretold in scripture is here and now, in the spiritual realm of God’s Kingdom on Earth. Scriptural Zion will only ever be in the spiritual realm, which is why Jesus pointedly stated that his Kingdom is not of this world.
Every choice we make during our time on Earth has consequences. At a pivotal point in our lives, God presents each of us with the opportunity to choose righteousness over revenge. The choice we make at that time cannot be undone and will determine our place in eternity, with few exceptions. If you’re genuinely reborn, you’ve chosen righteousness. Your job now is to keep on choosing righteousness, even if it means immediate and horrific death.
[H]e that is righteous, let him be righteous still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still.
And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed…. As concerning the rest, they had their dominion taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and time.
WHEN LOVE ISN’T LOVE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 2, 2025 – One of the most startling scenes in the Bible is when Jesus turns on Peter and thunders: Get thee behind me, Satan! You value the things of man, not the things of God. We can only imagine Peter’s confusion when Jesus came out with that. And what had Peter done to earn the rebuke? He’d offered to defend and protect Jesus to the death. But instead of gratefully acknowledging Peter’s (seemingly) generous offer, Jesus attacked it and revealed it for what it was – inspired by Satan.
I like this scene because it unflinchingly exposes the misapplication of love. Far too many Christians falsely believe that “love is love” and as such takes precedence over all other human interactions. They are taught by their pastors to love selflessly, illogically, persistently, and yes, even aggressively, including where their love is not welcome. They are taught to love in all cases and under every circumstance, but is that really what Jesus taught his followers to do?
I would argue “no”. Jesus taught us to be obedient to God in all cases and under every circumstance and showed by his example what obedience looks like. In the scene referenced above, Peter responded with misapplied love rather than responding with obedience to God. Jesus was in the process of revealing the prophesied and God-ordained trial he had to undergo, but all Peter heard was that Jesus would suffer, and he wanted to protect Jesus.
How many times have we done that in the course of “being Christian”? We think we’re doing the right thing by wanting to protect people from their trials, but in trying to protect them, are we valuing the things of God or the things of man? Are we in fact acting as emissaries of Satan rather than of Jesus?
As born-again believers, we’re called to love our enemies. It is the highest calling of any human. But loving your enemies means praying for them and blessing them; it doesn’t mean forcing your unwelcome affections on them. You don’t tell your enemies you’re praying for them and blessing them; you just pray for them and bless them where they can’t see or hear you doing it. You do it in secret, like Jesus advised. That is genuine spiritual warfare.
Christians can be the most insufferable and creepy people on the planet when they go around parading their “love” and forcing it on people who don’t want it. What good is it to tell people that God loves them if those people hate God or don’t believe he exists? The number one reason why I despised Christians when I was an atheist is because they tried to push their beliefs on me. I didn’t push mine on them, but they insisted on pushing their beliefs on me. Their pushiness didn’t make me a believer. They thought they were doing something good by “sharing” and preaching, but all they were doing was making me despise them and their message even more.
Jesus emphasized that the first Commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. We are to treat others as we would want to be treated and to pray for and bless even our enemies, but all our love goes to God. All our obedience goes to God. That is the first and greatest Commandment.
Jesus didn’t go around forcing his love on people; he healed those who came to him for healing and taught those who came to him to learn. There is not one verse in the Gospels where Jesus is seen shouting “God loves you!” to random strangers. If Jesus didn’t do it, neither should we.
If you don’t want to be rebuked like Peter, you need to value the things of God, not the things of man. Love God and be fully obedient to him. If God has ordained someone for a trial, let them go through that trial. If God has ordained you to help someone, help them.
Only by giving all your love and obedience to God will you know when to openly love and when to step back.
NEVER ALONE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 1, 2025 – This is a difficult discussion to have, mainly because not everyone agrees with these sentiments, and some are violent in their disagreement. Worldly Christians in particular bristle at the teaching and accuse me of misapplying scripture. But it’s not a misapplication of scripture to say that our relationships in this world should be the same kind of relationships that Jesus had. It’s not a misapplication of scripture to say that we should live as Jesus lived. It’s a teaching, not a misapplication of scripture. It’s a teaching.
If we read the lines and between the lines of scripture, we can clearly see the kind of relationships Jesus maintained and sought during his ministry years. First and foremost, it didn’t include the kind of relationships that worldly Christians consider their core emotional touchstones. Jesus did not have a good relationship with his immediate family. They didn’t believe that he was the Messiah and even tried to stop his ministry when he lived in Capernaum. In response to their disbelief, Jesus kept them as arms’ length. He didn’t despise them. He didn’t reject them. He didn’t curse them. He saw them as a trouble point and so treated them accordingly.
He also, as far as we know, didn’t maintain any friendships with childhood friends in Nazareth or with anyone from Nazareth. The siblings Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, along with a few of the better-known female followers, appear to be Jesus’ only friends outside of his disciples, and his disciples he met only after he started his ministry work. John the Baptist he knew because he was his cousin, but how close they were is debatable. Jesus, of course, knew everything he needed to know about John, but John was somewhat on the fence about the messiahship of Jesus. At times he seemed to believe, while at other times he seemed to doubt. This waffling kept John and Jesus at a distance from one another.
Jesus had no close relationship at all with anyone in established religion. In fact, the religious powers-that-be were Jesus’ worst enemies, just as today they are ours. Anyone who receives a salary for preaching is not your friend. There are zero exceptions to this rule.
The humans we choose to be close to during our time on Earth should reflect the kind of choices Jesus made. Jesus’ choices should guide ours. Being friendly with someone is not the same as being friends, any more than sharing a meal with someone is indicative of closeness. We should never reject people because they’re not born-again. Jesus didn’t reject his family, even when they refused to accept him as the Messiah. He didn’t reject them, no, but he also didn’t spend much time with them, and he didn’t reveal much of himself to them.
Like Jesus, we can only have close relationships with people who are fully committed believers and have accepted Jesus as the Messiah. We can be friendly and spend time with people who are not believers, but we have to be careful what we say to them. They may come across as supportive and sympathetic, but consciously or not – intentionally or not – they will one day betray us. One way or another, they will betray us. Scripture is very clear about that.
It’s better in the end to be alone than to have false friends, just as it’s better not to marry and not to have children. These teachings are directly from scripture. I thank God every day that I don’t have a spouse or a child. I thank God every day for the vast Heaven of believers who are my family and friends in the spiritual realm. Being alone as a born-again believer doesn’t mean one is actually alone. I’m never alone.
If you’re born-again, you know what I mean.
GORGE ON GOD
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 1, 2025 – It’s a hazard of the prophet trade always to see things in a negative light. The positives are there, too, but only as an afterthought, as something in the hazy distant future. To most real prophets, we are never in the positive in the here and now. We are in the negative and trending deeper into the negative.
That’s one of the ways you can discern a false prophet from a real one. A false prophet will almost always paint a rosy picture of the near future. The messiah is coming! The rapture is coming! Our deliverance is coming! A real prophet will tell you things are bad and about to get far, far worse.
Sure, they’ll get better some day, but only for a very few.
And not here on Earth.
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Isaiah 22:12-13 is one of those passages that haunt me this time of year. People gorge themselves as if they’re starving and goad you to do the same. I have known what it is to go without food and the strangest part of it was that even when I was given food, it was never enough. I was still hungry. I could eat to the point of vomiting and still be hungry. That’s how it is when you perceive at a sub-conscious level that you don’t have enough to live on. Your mind tricks you to keep on eating to prepare for the dearth. It’s a survival mechanism.
I think that’s why the poor these days are almost always fat. The rich are skinny and the poor are fat. It’s a rare poor person who’s skinny, unless they’re also a drug addict or living in Africa. It used to be that the rich were fat and the poor were skinny. That’s how you could tell who had wealth and who didn’t. Now the rich are skinny mainly because they take appetite suppressants or overexercise or stick their fingers down their throats to vomit up what they couldn’t stop themselves from eating. Because even the rich feel like they’re starving. Underneath their smug self-imposed exercise regimes, they’re constantly hungry, only they don’t know for what.
We feast on food when we should be feasting on God. Isaiah 55:1-2 explains what we should be doing. We should let our soul delight itself in fatness. We should be gorging and feasting on God and his Word, not on food and this world. Jesus invited us to feast on him not in a physical or metaphorical or even metaphysical sense, but in a spiritual sense. Jesus invited us to live Isaiah 55:1-2 while also living Isaiah 22:12, with no contradiction.
The point of this article is to get you to live these verses deeper. You can never have too much God. Gorge yourself on God and you’ll move farther and farther from the feasts of this world and from the need to participate in the feasts of this world. You won’t have to consciously remove yourself; it will happen as a natural (or better said, supernatural) consequence.
Gorge on God. Weep and mourn for the passing of this world, but gorge on God.
NOT OF THIS WORLD
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, December 17, 2024 – What confused them most was his ordinariness. They didn’t expect him to be so down-to-earth, to live the way he did and to be from the place they said he was from. They didn’t know his full backstory; only a few did for the longest time (his mother hiding the details for good reason). You can’t really blame them for not knowing those details, but you can kind of blame them for seeing and not believing. I mean, what he did – all those miracles – was pretty out-there, especially for someone who otherwise appeared so ordinary. How could they see all those miracles and still not believe?
Would we also have seen and not believed?
I think I would have, initially. I think I would have seen and not believed. Like them, I would have looked for the magician’s sleight-of-hand, the crowd’s mass delusion, the scroll that unrolled to exclaim “I Want To Believe”, with a UFO hovering in the background. I would have doubted and I might even have mocked, because I did doubt and I did mock before I believed. I likely would have hung back and heckled, at least at the beginning. Hopefully only at the beginning.
And I don’t think for me it would have been a eureka moment, like it was for many of the first believers. It would not have been like a lightbulb going on or a penny dropping. I think it would have been more a case of demons throwing me to the ground, followed by a brief but violent exorcism, like it was for me in the here and now. Pride doesn’t have eureka moments. The penny never drops in a proud soul. We have to be broken, not mollified. The filth needs to be expunged by brute force, and then we can see.
The ordinariness of his followers also confuses them, even to this day. How can such an afflicted and poor people be God’s? And if they are, why is God not blessing them with the wealth of Solomon, the beauty of Esther, and the fecundity of Jacob? Why are so many of them poor, plain, and childless? Surely their low station in life is proof that they are cursed? And why are they so happy to be “cursed”?
We’re happy because we’re blessed not in the eyes of the world but in the eyes of God. Our wealth is the priceless redemption we got from our Savior. Our beauty is the vision of our perfected body in Heaven. And our fecundity is the fruit we bear by our spiritual labours. There are no greater blessings than these, but this confession confuses them even more.
How do you explain the joys of poverty to those who crave untold wealth? How do you explain the bliss of submission to those who want to be fawned over and served? How do you explain the freedom of letting go to those who demand perpetual apologies and a land that is not just a promise but a guarantee?
His ordinariness amidst all those miracles is what gives him away, God’s suffering servant. His Kingdom is never of this world.
THE BEST GIFT YOU’LL EVER GET
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, December 15, 2024 – The “free gift” of redemption is not a ticket to Heaven. I wasn’t handed a one-way ticket to Paradise with an open departure date when I was reborn. I was given redemption through spiritual rebirth, which means I was cleansed from original sin and from my own sins via an exorcism that rid me of the spirits of the world and prepared a place within me for God’s Spirit.
God’s Holy Spirit will not live in the same soul as spirits of the world unless those spirits are first given the boot. I enabled God to give them the boot when I chose mercy instead of revenge. I did not exorcise me; God exorcised me, through his Spirit. All I did was say “yes” to his way, which then allowed him to rid me of the worldly spirits. But he first needed my agreement before he could do that. Spiritual laws are very precise.
The free gift of redemption was paid for by Jesus. I didn’t have to pay anything for it. What I got as my free gift was a squeaky-clean soul and a one-on-one relationship with God and Jesus, through God’s Holy Spirit. I instantaneously became part of God’s holy family. With God, I become his adopted daughter, and with Jesus, I became his follower and sister. These relationships grew and deepened as my faith grew and deepened, the same way a newborn’s relationships exist at birth but only gain form and depth in the mind of the child as he or she grows and matures.
What we do with our free gift – that is, how clean we maintain our souls and how well we get to know God and Jesus – determines whether or not we’ll ultimately make it home. We not only have to say “yes” to God’s way to get our free gift; we also have to keep saying “yes” and “yes” and again “yes” to God’s way all the way to the end of our time on Earth. Jesus told us that “those who endure to the end will be saved”, meaning not that we have to endure to the end of the end times, but to the end of our own personal allotted time. By enduring, Jesus meant that we need to continue to say “yes” to God’s way, regardless of the circumstances, as he clearly demonstrated through his own arrest, imprisonment, torture, and execution. If we don’t endure in God’s way to the end, as taught to us by Jesus, we won’t make it home.
There are many false prophets who claim that spiritual rebirth is a ticket to Heaven. Whether they make this claim in error or out of malice, I don’t know. I guess it depends on the individual: some make the false claim out of ignorance, while others make it out of a calculated desire to mislead. Regardless of the motivation, claiming that salvation is guaranteed by spiritual rebirth is dead wrong, as is the claim that you simply have to “believe” to be saved or be a Christian to be saved.
The free gift is indeed free, but it’s just a starting point. Though not a ticket to Heaven, redemption does put us on the path to Heaven and gives us all the help we need to get there. Think of it like this: if you’re genuinely born-again, you were fished out of stormy seas, gently lowered onto a life raft, presented with a pair of oars, and pointed toward a shining beacon that indicates land. You were also given all the supplies you’ll need to survive until you make it to land. Whether or not you choose to continue rowing toward the beacon is up to you. It’s entirely up to you.
You’re not forced to row in the direction you were pointed to and you’re not even forced to keep rowing. You can do whatever you want with your free gift. But if you are genuinely born-again, you’ll want to row toward the beacon and you’ll want to keep on rowing. You’ll want to do exactly as you were directed because you can’t imagine doing otherwise (because you’ve done the “otherwise” before you landed in the lifeboat, and you know where it leads).
The gift of redemption is free to those who choose God’s way, but admission to Heaven requires persevering in God’s way to the end. We must never presume that we’ll make it to Heaven; hope for it, yes, long for it, always, strive for it, you betcha, but presume it, never, as only “those who endure to the [very very] end will be saved,” and we’re not there yet.
Redemption and everything that goes with it is the best gift you’ll ever receive during your time on Earth. What you choose to do with your free gift will determine your eternity.
GOD’S HOLY ANGELS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 27, 2024 – Earlier this fall, God had me attend church services again, and to my credit I at least didn’t storm out like the last time God sent me. This time, he mostly had me sit at the back and talk to him (pray) and read the Bible. Sometimes he moved me closer towards the front and told me to listen to the minister for a while. In one of my listening sessions, a minister mused about whether he’d ever seen an angel.
This got me thinking about my own encounters with God’s holy angels and about what Jesus says about angels – namely, that we’ll be like them if and when we make it to Heaven. And then I started thinking about all the times in the Bible where angels appear, and the circumstances of their appearances, and whether they appear as humans or in glory. This got me digging deeper into each of the angelic appearances in scripture, and before I knew it, God had me writing this article.
We know from scripture that we’re not to call on angels or to worship them. We’re also not to pray to them or obsess over them or be unduly curious about them. But we should be knowledgeable about them, since, as Jesus promised, we’re going to be like them if we make it to Heaven. This and this only (what Jesus said) is what drives me to want to know about angels. Note that I’m talking here about God’s holy angels; the fallen ones are not our concern.
Below is a list of the main characteristics of God’s holy angels. All this information comes either from scripture, from my own or others’ personal experience with angels, and from God and Jesus teaching me about them.
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SUBMISSIVE TO GOD: God’s holy angels are 100% submissive to God. Their complete submission to God means that God’s Spirit can work powerfully through them. God directs them, is the source of their supernatural strength, and enables them to perform miracles. During our time on Earth, we likewise learn to let God direct us, be the source of our strength, and enable us to perform miracles. In fact, you could say that since our rebirth, everything we’ve done revolves around learning how to be more and more submissive to God. This is how we’re preparing to be “like the angels”.
ANGELIC BODIES: God’s holy angels can appear to us in their glorified (heavenly) form or in human (earthly) form. The specific form they take depends on their mission and the message God wants to convey. Interestingly, holy angels never appear as females, whether in glory or in human form, despite their popularization in modern culture primarily as females. When in human form, holy angels always appear as males. When in heavenly form, they are neither male nor female but appear to have more the characteristics of a male due to their imposing size, lack of breasts, and obvious strength. God’s holy angels in their glorified forms are breathtakingly beautiful, whereas in human form, they can be quite ordinary looking. By ordinary, I don’t mean unattractive, I just mean they don’t have attention-getting looks. That’s because they don’t want to draw attention to themselves. That’s not why they’re here. They’re also relatively low-key in manner when they’re in human form, at least the angels I’ve encountered are. In their glorified form, the angels are anything but low-key.
BFFs: If you’re born-again, God’s holy angels are your friends. This doesn’t mean you can call on them or hang out with them on a whim; it just means they’re not your adversaries. When God or Jesus sends them to you, they come to help you by doing precisely what they’ve been instructed to do. Only if you make it to Heaven will the angels be your friends in the fullest sense of the word, and forever. It’s comforting to think that we already have angel friends waiting for us in Heaven.
NOT ON CALL: Despite being our friends, God’s holy angels will never come to us if we call on them. They are not at our beck and call. They do not take orders from us. They only do what God or Jesus expressly sends them to do. Fallen entities, on the other hand, are eager to take orders from us, but they do so with the intention of eventually turning the circumstances against us. At no time and in no way will demons do anything for our ultimate benefit. Their mission is to tempt and spiritually destroy us, not help us. Do not ever call on angels. Do not pray to them, do not worship them, do not adulate them. If you call on angels, you’ll get demons. NEVER CALL ON ANGELS. I cannot stress that enough.
ENTERTAINING ANGELS: When God’s holy angels appear to us in human form, we won’t know at the time that we’re interacting with (or as the Bible puts it, “entertaining”) angels. This knowledge will be supernaturally withheld from us. Only afterwards will God (sometimes) let us know that we had an angel encounter. We can see this in Abraham’s interactions with the “men” who were on their way to Sodom, just before its destruction.
I’ve had interactions with angels a few times (that I know of) since my rebirth. You can ask God to let you know if someone you’ve encountered was an angel, and he’ll tell you, if he thinks you need to know. Interestingly, I’ve been mistaken for an angel on a few occasions, just by sitting silently at the back of a room or a church and praying. The people who mistook me for an angel were very disappointed to find out afterwards that I was only human.
INTERVENERS: God sends his holy angels to assist people on Earth, including sending them to intervene in situations or try to prevent people from falling for a temptation. I’ve had this happen a few times, where a “man” seemingly randomly showed up and interjected himself into a conversation or confrontation I was having, and then quickly disappeared. Again, at the time, I had no idea that the intervening stranger was an angel; it was only afterwards that God revealed it to me. I remember one instance in particular, where the angel was pleading with me to soften my harsh treatment of someone, and I can still see the deep sadness in his eyes when I refused to back down. I remember wondering at the time why a stranger would be so invested in the argument I was having (it didn’t appear to have anything to do with him) and I wished afterwards that I’d listened to him. But I didn’t listen to him, and I paid the price spiritually.
HIGHLY INTELLIGENT: Angels get all their power from God through his Holy Spirit, so they have an enormous breadth of knowledge and depth of wisdom that humans cannot rival. Even AI is hard-pressed to keep up with God’s holy angels and in fact can’t, as whatever God knows, his angels can be informed of, and God knows everything, past, present, and future. Still, there are some limits to the knowledge granted by God to his holy angels. For instance, the angels don’t know exactly when the tribulation will start or the world will end. Only God knows that.
NOW YOU SEE ‘EM, NOW YOU DON’T: God’s holy angels have an uncanny habit of showing up suddenly and just as suddenly disappearing. They do this whether they’re in their glorified or human form. They don’t send you their calling card and let you know they’re on their way; they’re just there and then not. It’s a good habit for us to emulate, being exactly where we need to be when we’re needed, and not being in the way when we’re not. This is a habit we can only form by being fully submissive to God and doing exactly as he says when he says to do it.
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These are some of the main characteristics of God’s holy angels. There are many more, of course, some of which I know but most of which I assume I don’t. As I mentioned above, I only know what scripture informs me, what God and Jesus tell me, what I learned from encounters with angels myself, and what I’ve learned from other people’s encounters. Have you learned anything about holy angels that God’s given you the go-ahead to share with us? If so, let us know in the comments below!
THE PREACHER
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 27, 2024 – The greatest preacher I ever knew never stood before any congregation. She didn’t have a YouTube channel or a TV show, and she never solicited donations. She had no degree nominals after her name, not having attended Bible college or even high school. I think she only went as far as Grade 7.
I never saw her with a Bible in hand, yet I know she had a Bible – a big heavy expensive leather-bound one with glossy pictures. She kept it on a table next to her bed. But more important than having a Bible, this preacher knew and loved God as her Father and Jesus as her Lord and Savior. She was unshakeable in her faith, though she never said as much. She never said: “I believe.” She never said: “I’ve accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior.” She never said: “My faith is strong enough to move mountains.” She didn’t have to say those things because she preached them by her deeds and showed firsthand what loving your neighbours and your enemies looks like in real life. She didn’t preach the Gospel in words; she didn’t have to. She preached the Gospel by living it.
Of those of us who were blessed to know the preacher, we all knew she was a believer. She never hid her faith in God from anyone. But not all of us (at the time) shared her beliefs, and some of us mocked her for them. Truth be told, some of us tormented her for them, but she never returned fire with fire. She never told us we would burn in hellfire for all eternity, though certainly that was in the cards for us and would have been justly earned. She never tried to scare us into believing or warn us into believing or bribe us into believing or harass us into believing. The preacher simply lived her beliefs so that she and the Gospel were one and the same, like Jesus and the Gospel were one and the same and like all true believers eventually are one and the same with the Gospel, if they stay the course. I rejected the Gospel at the time, and so I rejected the preacher.
And yet, when I was born again, this preacher is the first person I told, because I knew that she was the only person who would not only genuinely care what had happened to me but would also understand what had happened. She’d only known me up to that point as an atheist but had never tried to force-feed me God’s Word. And then she knew me as a believer, and we became friends.
The greatest preacher I ever knew was my grandmother, my mother’s mother. I learned from her what sharing the Gospel with unbelievers means, and it almost never involves words. Here’s what it involves: Patience. Giving without expecting anything in return. Loving without expecting to be loved in return. Being kind to the unkind and gracious to the rude. Being ever-thoughtful and ever-cheerful. Keeping silent in the face of attacks, even biting your tongue if necessary. Speaking only kindly of the unkind and holding nothing against anyone. Being patient, and again being patient. And never ever giving up hope, no matter how bleak the prognosis.
If you look closely at these characteristics, you’ll see how they align perfectly with the Gospel message. The greatest preacher I ever knew preached the Word without saying a word about the Word.
This is how we need to preach.
YOUR MISSION, AND DUCKS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 27, 2024 – For Jesus, the most important thing in his life was to finish the work God sent him to do. He was on a mission from the time he was old enough to understand who he was. We, as born-again believers, are also on a mission, and so we need to be acutely aware not only of who we are as children of God but why we’re here. We need to be acutely aware of our mission, not just for a few hours on Sunday morning, but every day, all day, until the day we go home.
Like Jesus, we have work to finish that God has given us, and the work that God has given us takes priority over every other work in our lives as well as every other aspect of our lives, including eating and sleeping. If it doesn’t – if something or someone is more important to you than finishing the work that God sent you to do – then you need to realign your priorities. Nothing and no-one should come between you and doing that work.
Jesus, as we know from his final words on the cross, finished the work his Father gave him. When he finished his work, his time here was up. The finishing of his work and the ending of his time on Earth were the same. These events should be the same for us as well: If we finish our work, it will be time for us to go home; when it’s time for us to go home, we’d better have finished out work. We don’t want to be the one standing before God at the Judgement with unfinished business, having been given the time and resources and opportunity to do our work, but choosing not to do it, choosing to do something else instead. We don’t to be that person. Nobody wants to be that person, because that person won’t go home.
Do you know what your work is and why God sent you? If you don’t know, I can’t tell you. No-one can tell you except God. Only God can tell you what your work is, and only God can give you your assignments, day by day, letting you know each morning how best to spend the time he’s graced you with. And have no doubt that it’s God who gives you the time and the space and the ability and the resources to do what needs to be done that day. No-one does that for you but God. You don’t do it for yourself and others don’t do it for you: only God does it. He may appoint people to help you, but it’s God inspiring and enabling them, just as it’s God inspiring and enabling you, so give God the praise. Always give God the praise.
It’s important to remember that despite being followers of Jesus and modeling the choices Jesus made during his time on Earth, we have different missions than Jesus. His mission is not our mission. But like Jesus, we all have very special and very specific work that’s unique to each of us alone. My mission is not your mission, as no two missions are the same.
Jesus knew from a young age what his mission was because he was born already with God’s Spirit in him; he didn’t have to be reborn, like we did. Our life began the instant we were reborn, but we were already adults at our rebirth. Jesus got a head start on us. That’s why he knew already at age 12 what his mission was, or what he called “my father’s business”. It was some time into my rebirth before God let me know my mission, and when he did, it was up to me whether I wanted to accept it.
There are very few things in life that I can say that I know beyond a doubt, and one of those things is that I was born again on a beach in Australia 25 years ago, when God-only-knows how many demon spirits were exorcised from me (and only God knows, because he’s the one who exorcised them), after which God gave me his Holy Spirit and I became his child. That I was reborn I know for sure and beyond a shadow of a doubt. There’s nothing anyone could say or do that would make me doubt or deny that this happened to me.
With the same absolute certainty, I know my mission. I didn’t know it on the day I was reborn; God revealed it little by little over the years until I was ready. I had to wait until l was ready to know fully what my mission was. If I’d known it before I was ready, I’d likely have tried to start it anyway and would have stumbled and fallen. Jesus tried to start his mission before he was ready, and his parents had to haul him back. That was a teachable moment for both Jesus and us.
Being ready to carry out your mission doesn’t just mean knowing what you need to know or developing the skills or having the resources that you need to carry out the mission. Being ready also means waiting for the right time, for the signal from God indicating that all the right ducks are in a row. Because if all the right ducks aren’t in a row, no matter how ready and prepared you are, your mission is going nowhere. That’s a guarantee. Like Jesus, Paul had to wait for several years, knowing his mission and being ready to do it, but waiting for the ducks. He wiled away his time mending tents and growing closer and closer to God and Jesus, until God gave the signal that it was time.
Some of you reading or hearing this will already know your mission; many of you won’t. For those of you who do know your mission, remember (like adult Jesus) to wait for God’s signal to start, if he hasn’t already given it to you. For those of you who don’t yet know your mission, pray to God to find out, and when he does tell you, accept it fully and unhesitatingly on his terms.
And keep those terms between you and God, unless God tells you otherwise.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 