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WHY NAZARETH?
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 21, 2025 – From the time he was old enough to know his own name, Jesus knew he was the Messiah. It was never a mystery to him, his messiahship, and even at the ripe old age of twelve, he was eager to be out and about doing his Father’s work. But God held him back for nearly two more decades, putting him through his paces and forming him quietly behind the scenes… until one day he emerged suddenly as Jesus the Christ.
But of all the places Jesus could have debuted as the Messiah, why Nazareth? Jesus had already started his ministry work when he made the announcement that shook the very foundations of the spiritual realm. He’d already built a reputation as a preacher and healer, working countless miracles in villages throughout Judea and beyond, and gaining a loyal and growing following.
But Nazareth – Jesus’ hometown was a whole other kettle of fish. There, Jesus was still just the son of a carpenter, big brother to a brood of brothers and sisters, and Mary’s eldest son. Sure, the villagers enjoyed listening to Jesus read from the scrolls, as was his habit on the Sabbath, but when he stood up that day to read the passage from Isaiah that foretold the coming of the Messiah and then announced that he was the fulfillment of that prophecy – well, you could have heard a pin drop. No ecstatic applause greeted his pronouncement. No flowers or teddy bears rained down on him. Just shocked silence, followed by murmurings and occasional angry outbursts and the growing realization among those present that a very great blasphemy had just been committed.
Surely Jesus must have known, when God advised him to choose his hometown to come out as the Messiah – surely Jesus must have known precisely the response he would get from his fellow Nazarenes. When they all leaped to their feet and drove him out of the synagogue and then out of the town itself, aiming to stone him to death and throw him off the cliff, Jesus must have known this would happen.
Death by stoning was the execution method prescribed in the law for cases of blasphemy, and calling oneself the prophesied messiah was the height of blasphemy. Had Jesus purposely set himself up to be executed? I mean, if he’d come out as the Messiah someplace else, someplace where he wasn’t known as the carpenter’s son but as a miracle worker and preacher par excellence – if he’d come out as the Messiah as a stranger in such a favorable environment, it’s highly likely he would in fact have been received as the Messiah and would have gotten his due shower of flowers and teddy bears from the adoring crowds. People might even have strewn their cloaks in his path, like they did when he rode triumphantly into Jerusalem a few years later, just before his crucifixion. But this adulation wasn’t going to happen in Nazareth, where the last thing he was considered was a prophet, let alone THE Prophet spoken of by Moses.
So we can only assume that Jesus chose Nazareth to come out as the Messiah specifically because he wanted to set himself up for future execution. He knew the response he would get from the Nazarenes, and he knew that they would not let it go, that they would report him to the temple elders, and that he would be a hunted man from that point on. But he also knew (because God assured him) that nothing would happen to him on that day or on the days to follow, and that he would continue the work that God had sent him to do until it was done.
We, too, if we’re genuinely born-again and are out and about doing our Father’s work – we, too, have had our moment of standing up in our local synagogue and announcing who we are, only to be met, like Jesus was, with shocked silence, averted eyes, and growing murmurings against us. Like Jesus, we’ve painted a spiritual target on our backs simply by proclaiming who we are, and by so doing, set the ball rolling towards our own execution. This I know for a fact.
And yet, like Jesus, I say: “Bring it on”. God will protect us until it’s our time, and when our time comes, God will be right there with us, like he was with Jesus. Being under the world’s condemnation and having a target on our back is part and parcel of being a born-again follower of Jesus. If you don’t accept being hated and hunted solely for who you are, you’re in the wrong line of work.
Just as surely as we had our Nazareth moment when we came out as born-again, we’ll have our Jerusalem moment when it’s our time. Jesus knew exactly what he was doing when he came out in Nazareth as the Messiah: He was setting himself up for the glorious “baptism” of the cross, which would be his (and our) only way Home.
ARE YOU SPIRITUALLY ALIVE OR SPIRITUALLY DEAD?
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 16, 2025 – There’s a conundrum that we born-again believers must contend with every day. Better said, there’s a spiritual fact that we need to accept as our indisputable reality: In their soul, which is the seat of their will, humans have a measure either of God’s Spirit (which is holy) or of the world’s spirit (which is demonic). There is no third option, no “vacant” or “neutral” humans, no mix-and-match co-habitational arrangement where God’s Spirit shares a soul with demons. You either have God’s Holy Spirit in you, or you have unholy spirits. It’s either one or the other.
No third option.
As a born-again believer, I find this spiritual fact disturbing. I don’t think about it very often, and when I do, I don’t linger on the details. It’s enough for me to know that it’s a fact and to accept it as such.
Scripture tells us that at spiritual rebirth, we pass from death to life. We know this is true not just because scripture tells us it’s true, but because we’ve experienced it ourselves first-hand. It’s our lived reality. When God’s Spirit entered into us, we were alive for the first time in our lives. It’s a funny thing to say “we were alive for the first time in our lives”, because weren’t we alive all along, from the instant of our conception?
Physically, yes, we were alive, but spiritually, no. Other than for Jesus, we’re all born spiritually dead. We don’t come into the world spiritually innocent; we come burdened with Adam’s sin. It was Adam’s sin that brought death to the world – spiritual death, which is far worse than physical death. People who are not born-again and who are afraid to die don’t realize they’re already dead in the only way that matters.
When Jesus instructed one of his followers to “let the dead bury the dead”, he was letting us know the distinction between believers and unbelievers. Believers are spiritually alive, and unbelievers are spiritually dead. Believers belong to God (the living God), whereas unbelievers belong to Satan (lord of the dead). At the same time, unbelievers are plagued to varying degrees by demonic spirits, who also belong to and get their directives from Satan; no unbeliever is free of the demon plague. This is the source of all their emotional and mental illnesses, as well as the cause of most of their physical ailments.
As I mentioned at the outset, I don’t think about the spiritual state of humanity very often because the collective prognosis is so bleak. We’re surrounded by dead people, most of whom don’t even know they’re dead. They were born in their sins and will die in their sins, and that’s how they want it to be. They don’t want to hear about sin. They don’t want to hear about God and Jesus. Even as they rush to undergo every conceivable test and pretest to detect even the faintest presence of this or that disease, they deny their essential spirituality and the reality of their spiritually dead state.
What are we, as born-again believers, to do about these spiritual corpses? Recall that Jesus said: “Let the dead bury the dead” and to let “the blind lead the blind”. He didn’t tell us to run after them and ply them with scriptural passages or try to force-feed them the Gospel. He said to let them be. He called them dead and blind, and he said to let them be, to leave them to each other.
This is another disturbing spiritual reality that I don’t think about very often or when I do, for very long. Here in Canada, a self-described former Christian nation, we’ve reached near Sodom-levels of dead souls. Sure, “spirituality” is widely embraced and promoted, but not God and Jesus. (Don’t you dare mention God and Jesus!) Every other home has a “dreamcatcher” or a buddhist garden statue. Every other family has a pagan or a practicing witch. Whenever there’s a disaster, “thoughts” can be offered “in solidarity” with those who are suffering, but not prayers. (Don’t you dare mention prayers!) The most powerful force in the universe is not welcome here.
The spiritually dead state of unbelievers is not a figure of speech but a hardcore spiritual truth. We are surrounded by demon-infested spiritually dead people who are either unaware of their condition or, if they are aware, don’t care or have embraced it. Some have even free-willingly made a contract with Satan. You are either born-again and spiritually alive or not born-again and spiritually dead. There’s no third option. Being spiritually dead leads to eternal death, just as being spiritually alive leads to eternal life. You can’t be spiritually dead and end up in Heaven. That’s a spiritual impossibility. The only destination for spiritually dead souls is the lake of fire.
Which is why I don’t think about this spiritual conundrum very often. I’m confronted with it every day, but I don’t let myself dwell on it. It’s enough to know that this is our reality, that this is the world we live in for whatever time God allots us here. Rather than dwell on the spiritually dead, I choose instead to think about God and Jesus, about Heaven, and about feeding those sheep who do want to live. This is our mission, to feed those sheep as God gives us guidance.
We can’t help the dead who want to remain dead. They are not our mission. But we can help the sheep who choose life. That’s what Jesus did in his ministry, so that’s what we’re to do in ours.
PROPHECY FULFILLMENT OR THE DEVIL’S LIES? ON THE DREAMS AND VISIONS OF CHILDREN
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 16, 2025 – Eve didn’t know that the devil was lying when he told her that eating from the forbidden tree would be good for her. Eve didn’t know the devil was lying because no-one had ever lied to her before. She’d never experienced deception. She took what the devil told her at face value because she had no reason not to take it at face value. Lies and malicious intent were not yet part of her life experience. And because they weren’t yet part of her life experience, she wasn’t hardened to them. She had no battle scars. She had no personal repository of lie-related hard-learned lessons to draw from.
And so, in her naivete, she ate the forbidden fruit, and finding it tasted good, she went running to Adam and repeated the devil’s lies and he ate the forbidden fruit.
And their world came crashing down.
As born-again believers, we have no excuse for not being aware that someone might be lying to us. We have ample life experience, and even more crucially we have discernment through God’s Holy Spirit and his written Word. While having these resources doesn’t mean we won’t be lied to (we will), it does mean we’ll be better able to know when we’re being lied to.
Like Eve, people sometimes lie without knowing they’re lying, because they too have been deceived. The world and the worldly church are full of such people (both the deceived and the deceivers; the sheep and the wolves), and so we need to be careful when interacting with them. We not only need to bring the repository of our hard-learned life lessons to all our interactions, we also—and more importantly—need to run everything past God and compare it against his Word, even when what we’re being told is allegedly from God. Not to do our due diligence in this regard would be a profound failing on our part.
I thank God I’ve been lied to, and lied to copiously and mercilessly, throughout my life. I thank God, because I’ve learned from these hard lessons not to take people and what they say at face value. When scripture warns that Satan can appear as an angel of light, we need to take this warning to heart. Jesus calls Satan the Father of Lies because lying is Satan’s nature: It’s who and what he is. Satan cannot not lie (except when he’s in God’s presence), as truth is entirely absent from his being. And if he does on occasion slip a fact or two into his lies, he does it only to bolster his deceit.
We’re constantly being bombarded by lies from the devil and his followers, most of whom don’t even know they’re followers of the devil (or that they’re repeating his lies). Many of the lies concern God and Jesus, especially Jesus’ return to Earth in bodily form. If it sometimes appears as if the lies are a coordinated effort, it’s because they are a coordinated effort. It goes something like this: Satan gets permission from God to release another zinger, he relays the lie to his followers, and his followers launch the lie campaign.
One of the most prominent lie campaigns in the worldly church is “Jesus is coming back soon”. It’s been making the rounds now for nearly 2000 years, waxing and waning according to the “signs of the times”. The direr the times and the more glaring the signs, the more widespread and hysterical the campaign. We’re in the midst of another blitz now, only this time the devil has upped his game by preying on children or better said weaponizing children to deliver his message. Most children are very much like Eve in the Garden of Eden in that they don’t know when they’re being lied to. Certainly, children can learn to lie at an early age, but they’re unlikely to recognize they’re being lied to when the lie comes from an adult or an adult-like figure.
Enter the adult-like figures of the devil and his demons. Shimmering like angels of light, these deceivers come to children in their dreams and in visions, whispering beautiful lies. The children relay what they saw and heard to their parents, who then proudly repeat the dreams and visions to others, usually by recording what the children have said or what the children claim to have seen and heard. The devil’s followers pick up the recordings and spread them far and wide. And yet, through all this, no-one appears to question the source of the revelations. No-one appears to suspect that what the children saw and heard might not be coming from God.
Which is why we born-again believers need to ask the hard questions and apply our experience and God-given discernment without discrimination. This may earn us the ire of the proud parents and make us targets of the deceivers, but we still need to do it. I don’t mean we should confront the people pushing what may in fact be lies (nothing can be gained by confronting them); I just mean we need to discern for our own purposes and not contribute to the devil’s campaign.
As born-again believers, we can’t take at face value what children claim to have seen and heard. They’re like pre-fallen Eve in their spiritual gullibility, and we need to recognize that. I find it interesting that the promoters of the children’s dreams and visions invariably quote the scripture about God pouring out his spirit in the end times so that “your sons and daughters shall prophesy”, as if to imply that questioning what the children saw is the same as questioning God’s Word.
I’m not questioning God’s Word here (I would never question God’s Word); I’m questioning whether the latest phenomenon of children having dreams and visions of Jesus coming back soon is a fulfillment of prophecy or a lie of the devil. We need to question the spirits, meaning we need to question whether they’re from God or not. We need always to question the spirits, even in our own dreams and visions. Not to do so would not be doing our due diligence as followers of Jesus, making us as vulnerable to the devil’s lies as Eve.
HOLY HATE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 14, 2025 – Hate is getting a bad rap these days, but it shouldn’t. As born-again believers, we need to hate as much as we need to love. The two are not exclusive, hate and love, but rather different expressions of the same passion for God. If you don’t hate sin, you don’t love God.
Sin is another word that’s been getting a bad rap lately. The same people who talk smack about hate also dis sin, if they mention it at all. For the hate haters, sin doesn’t exist, at least not to them. I guess if you claim something doesn’t exist, you can’t be held responsible for it.
But we know only too well that sin exists because it was sin that once separated us from God. We were all deeply acquainted with sin, we born-again believers, and so based on our former deep acquaintance can stare sin straight in the face and call it what it is. We have no problem identifying sin or calling sin “sin”. We don’t look the other way and pretend it doesn’t exist. We don’t call it “a lifestyle choice” or “born that way”. We don’t dismiss it as a “product of his or her environment”. We don’t promote it as “progress” or “cultural expression”. We don’t give sin medals. We see sin for what it is and have no problem calling it out. We have no problem hating sin. In fact, hating sin is one of the chief characteristics of a born-again believer.
If we don’t hate sin, we don’t love God.
Allow me to state for the record that I hate and I hate unapologetically. I hate with a passion and a fervor, and I let my hatred burn where it ought. There’s a firepit in my soul that God made especially for my holy hatred. There I tend my hate and let it burn. I don’t quench it. I don’t deny it. I let the flames rise freely and steadily and hot, as God intended.
But it’s sin I hate, not people. This distinction must be made and held tightly – it’s sin I hate, not people: the sin within people, the sin done by people, the sin condoned by people. I don’t brush sin off as not my concern. I’m not cold to sin. I’m not indifferent to it. If you sin anywhere near me, don’t expect me not to hate your sin. Don’t expect me to embrace your sin and celebrate it. Don’t expect me to soothe you in your sin. Expect me to hate your sin and to call it sin. The same everything I give to loving God, I give to hating your sin.
We born-again believers need to revel in our holy hate for sin. It’s another way of expressing our love for God. Never let anyone tell you that you can’t hate or that your hate is wrong. “Love the sinner, hate the sin” is not a blithe byline but a core Kingdom doctrine. Note that it’s “hate the sin”, not look past the sin or lightly rebuke the sin. Hate is what is called for when it comes to sin: Hate, pure and strong; hate that is God-sanctioned and God-fueled, the kind of hate that drove Jesus to overturn tables in the temple.
Love the sinner, HATE the sin.
Nothing less will do.
THE PARABLE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 9, 2025 – There were two prototype churches during Jesus’ ministry – the inner circle made up of Jesus and his close followers, and the outer circle made up of casual followers who came and went. After Pentecost, these prototypes became, respectively, the Kingdom Church, peopled by Holy Spirit-filled born-again believers, and the worldly church, peopled by everyone else who calls him- or herself a Christian. The two churches remain to this day.
As a born-again believer who came to faith instantaneously and miraculously, I am mystified by people who choose to remain in the worldly church (because it is a choice to remain there, a personal choice). I can’t fathom the mindset where someone would say “I’ll commit this much of myself to God, but no more”. I can only assume the lack of commitment comes from not knowing the first Commandment or, knowing it, choosing not to follow it.
Before I was a believer, I knew many people in the worldly church. There wasn’t much to distinguish them from me, other than that some of them attended a church service on occasion or wore a cross under their shirt. They drank with me, cursed with me, did all manner of whatever with me, but then checked the “Catholic” or “Protestant” box on official forms. I even ridiculed their beliefs to their faces, and they just laughed. Their casual approach to God is one of the main reasons why I never at that time seriously considered looking to God for answers to my many problems, though even if I had considered looking to God, I wouldn’t gotten anywhere until he actually called me.
When God calls you, it’s a one-and-done deal. He doesn’t call you, is rejected by you, and then comes back later to try again. You get one shot. If you accept his call, he’ll test you to gauge your sincerity. If he finds you sincere, he’ll convert you and you’ll be born again, but the tests won’t stop there. They’ll keep on going until you draw your last earthly breath.
Most people in the worldly church have been called and are now being tested for their sincerity. They’re drawn to what God’s offering, but they’re also partly drawn to what Satan is offering. God is patient and so is giving them an allotted time to sort things out. During this time (the duration of which is known only to God), their commitment typically waxes and wanes, though as long as it remains above a certain measure, they’re still in the worldly church, which means there’s still hope for them. But, again, no-one knows the time God allots to each soul. When time’s up and that soul is still dithering, it’s lost forever. This spiritual fact should scare the you-know-what out of everyone in the worldly church.
I was born-again from atheism and so didn’t go through the worldly church phase. When God called me, I immediately threw my full lot in with him, holding nothing back. God knew this (knowing my heart) and so converted me (healed me) on the spot, giving me a portion of his Holy Spirit. The tests, though – the tests have been non-stop for me as a born-again believer, and I’ve struggled with many of them. The higher you climb the mountain, the more rugged the terrain and the tougher the conditions.
Jesus had to teach his casual followers in parables because they weren’t able to receive God’s Truth straight up. His close followers could receive it, but his casual followers needed it veiled. If any of you reading this are still in the worldly church, here’s a parable for you:
There once was a donkey. He was a nice enough donkey, as donkeys go. With few exceptions, he nearly always did what his master asked of him. And because the donkey was more obedient than stubborn, his master kept him and was kind to him and continued to feed and shelter him for many years.
But as time passed, the donkey grew less and less obedient and more and more stubborn. His master noticed this and tried to correct the donkey’s behavior. At first, he tried correcting him with a gentle hand, but the donkey ignored him. So then he tried correcting him with a heavier hand that slightly hurt the donkey (though just enough to get his attention and show him that his master meant business). Still, the donkey persisted in his bad behavior, growing more and more stubborn with each passing day.
The master was at a loss for what to do. He was fond of the donkey, but because of his stubbornness, the donkey was of no use to him. And so, one day, the master made the difficult decision to let the donkey go.
The man who came and took the donkey away didn’t care that he was stubborn.
He was a salami maker.
ON PRAYER PRIDE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 7, 2025 – When I was an atheist, one of the things that bothered me the most about Christians was their insistence that they pray for me. They’d tell me that they wanted to pray for me, sometimes asking me if that was OK, but most of the time not. If they did ask, I would turn them down with a sneer. No means no, even when it comes to God’s blessings.
The pride that some Christians take in praying for others still bothers me as a born-again believer. Prayer is the most powerful force in the universe, and it should never be used lightly or against the wishes of the recipient. It should also never be done from a position of pride. Or better said, it can’t be done from a position of pride, any more than it can be done lightly or against people’s wishes. Christians may think they’re praying in these cases, but all they’re doing is the spiritual equivalent of spinning their wheels. They’re accomplishing nothing good and going nowhere.
After I was born-again, God let me in on a secret that he’d held from me for decades as an unbeliever. He revealed to me that my grandmother had secretly prayed for me all those years. She’d prayed for me without telling me (and yes, without asking me) because God had guided her to do so, and she prayed from a place of grandmotherly love, not from pride. She did it in secret, and she did it out of obedience to God.
When I was born-again, my grandmother was the first person I told, because in my mind she was the only person I knew who’d understand what had happened to me. What I didn’t know at the time was that God had me rush to tell her because the news of my conversion was part of his payment to her for her labors. She wasn’t just the only person I knew who’d understand what had happened to me, she was the one person who needed to hear it, and God made sure she did. Scripture says there’s more joy in Heaven over one sinner who repents, and that same joy is felt in genuine believers like my grandmother. We believers get paid first and foremost in joy, the kind that only comes from God through his Holy Spirit. Sure, we get other blessings, too (God is very generous to his children), but the main payment is joy.
We need to pray only for those God guides us to pray for, in obedience to him, not to “Christian prayer tradition”. Jesus wasn’t a fan of public prayer and used it only in rare cases where circumstances demanded it be used and where God guided him to use it. Otherwise, he followed his own advice of retreating to his prayer closet (or to anyplace private) and praying in secret for those God guided him to pray for. Jesus is our model for how to pray, not YouTube prophets or televangelists or street preachers. We’re to pray in secret and only with God’s go-ahead, and to pray from a place of love, not pride.
Prayer is the most powerful force in the universe; we need to respect it as such.
THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 2, 2025 – A love of the truth, the desire for truth, the need for truth – these all exist at a gut level in those who love God. Where there is no love for the truth, there can be no love for God. Without a love for the truth, there can be a seeming love for God, a casual affection for God, but no genuine love. Only those who have a love for the truth can genuinely love God.
There’s a reason why the first Commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. God made it the first Commandment, because if we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, the other Commandments will be easy for us to keep. By “easy to keep”, I mean self-evident. It’s self-evident that if we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we’ll keep his Commandments. It would be self-contradictory for us not to keep them.
I’ve been talking about love for the truth in the past few articles because love for the truth is central to our reality as born-again believers, and I don’t think it gets enough press. Love, of course, gets lots of press, but love for the truth often gets pushed to the side, being the plain-speaking and so less desirable sister. We’re taught by the worldly church to love everyone without distinction, but rarely are we encouraged to speak God’s truth at all costs. This is a great failing on the part of the worldly church, not to emphasize the primacy of love for the truth.
God is Truth and the sole source of it, and so to have a love for the truth is to love God (even if you don’t believe he exists). When Jesus started his ministry, the first thing he did was to leave everything and everyone behind. And why did he do that? Because worldly values and love for the truth cannot peacefully co-exist. If you have a genuine love for the truth, you cannot compromise, and the world requires constant compromise.
Jesus’ first disciples likewise had to choose between the world and love for the truth. Thank God they chose truth! As soon as Jesus called them, they left everything and everyone behind, understanding that there could be no compromise in Kingdom work.
I am deeply saddened when I hear words like “diplomacy” and “tolerance” being used to describe Christians’ interactions with the world. These words have never been used to describe Jesus’ interactions and so should never be used to describe the interactions of those who claim to be Jesus’ followers. We cannot be diplomatic and tolerant and have a love for the truth at the same time. Diplomacy and tolerance are worldly values, not Kingdom values.
Like the early Church, we born-again believers can have a certain degree of community with each other, but only if it’s predicated on a love for the truth. I’ve made it my mission on this blog not to compromise, not to be diplomatic, and not to be tolerant of untruths, which has not made me many friends. But I’m not looking to make friends here, at least not at the cost of compromising my love for the truth. I have friends enough in the heavenly realm. It’s more important that I speak God’s truth, and God’s truth cannot be compromised to spare someone’s feelings.
Jesus never once minced his words, even if it meant he trampled on people’s sensibilities. In this, as in everything else, we’re to follow Jesus’ lead. I don’t mean we should be purposely cruel for the sake of cruelty. No. I mean that we should speak God’s truth uncompromisingly, as all God’s prophets have done throughout the ages, and that we should speak God’s truth regardless of the cost. It’s the high price of discipleship that lost Jesus most of his early followers and it’s still losing him followers today. Who wants to live poor, outcast, mocked, despised, and out of synch with the world?
I do, if that’s what it takes to stay loyal to God.
I’m happy for them to say at my passing: “I never liked her. I’m glad she’s gone”, if before their own passing they say: “She was right.”
ON PROVOCATIONS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 30, 2025 – We’re not to respond to provocations like the world responds, we’re to respond like Jesus.
Again – we’re not to respond to provocations like the world responds, we’re to respond like Jesus.
Provocations are tests. When someone offends us, we’re being tested on our response. We shouldn’t respond with anger or with threats of retribution, because “vengeance is mine, saith the Lord; I will repay.” If we respond with anger or with threats of retribution, we’ll fail the test. If we fail the test, we’ll have to keep taking it until we get it right.
Our job is not to do God’s job. God has a job to do when people offend his children, and that job is vengeance, God-style. God is very good at his job (in fact, he’s perfect at it), so we don’t need to do his job for him. If we try to help, we’ll just get in the way and make things worse for ourselves.
Vengeance is not our job as children of God. What is our job is what Jesus taught us to do when people offend us – we’re to pray for them (as God gives us guidance) and bless them (as God gives us guidance). Nowhere does Jesus say that we’re to give an eye for an eye or sue the offenders in a court of law. That’s the world’s way, not our way.
How we respond to offences distinguishes us from the world. We can’t respond to offences like the world responds and then call ourselves followers of Jesus. If we respond to offences like the world responds, nothing distinguishes us from unbelievers, not in the spiritual realm, anyway, which is the only realm that matters. We can preach the Gospel until the cows come home, sing sweet sweet melodies to Jesus, and give everything we have to the poor, but if we respond to provocations like the world responds, we fail our test and drop in spiritual rank.
This is not what we want as followers of Jesus.
Provocations are not few and far between; they’re not once-in-a-lifetime or rare events: They’re daily occurrences, sometimes even hourly or minute by minute. At times, one provocation is barely finished before the next comes hard on its heels, giving you no time to regroup or catch your spiritual breath. The closer you grow to God—the closer you follow Jesus—the more and harder the tests, and the faster they come.
We will continue to be tested for the rest of our time here on Earth. We’re to respond to provocations like Jesus showed us, not like the world shows us. That means no lawsuits, no tit-for-tat, no bearing our grievance like a trophy, and no vows of revenge. Given that our every word, thought, and deed is being meticulously recorded in the spiritual realm, we must respond like Jesus responded, like he taught us to respond. For us, with our sights on Heaven, there can be no other way.
SANCTUARY: PRELUDE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 25, 2025 – I know that you come here and that you take great pains to hide that you come here. I know you’ve told no-one that you come here because there’s really no-one to tell, is there? Not in your world, where every deed is weighed and measured and every word examined for inklings of betrayal. That’s how starts, the betrayal – by inklings, by niggling doubts that everything might not be quite as rosy as you were assured it would be.
And that’s why you’re here. Your nigglings and inklings brought you here, and you’re right to be here. You’re right to have doubts. A sane mind reflexively responds to lies with doubt. Whatever they told you when you signed on all those years ago – whatever they told you about what happens afterwards – was a lie. You’re not exempt. The ‘chosen’ are not exempt. You can’t barter good deeds for the privileges you’re afforded. You can’t nullify the consequences of what they ordered you to do. When all is said and done, we’re all held to the same measure, which is the reason why I’m talking to you here today.
We’re all held to the same measure – no exemptions – and sooner or later that measure is taken. With you, it might be taken later, but it will be taken. That’s a guarantee. And everything you did, assured that you’d mitigated the consequences through the rituals and the offerings and the works of charity – everything you did will come crashing down on you like the proverbial cornerstone. You cannot escape consequences.
As you know only too well, they monitor everything, listening for a stray word here and there, for a sign that things might not be with you as they should. And if they find a sign, they’ll test your loyalty, adding burden to burden. Only your thoughts are safe from them. Only your thoughts remain your own, and your thoughts are the only place you can openly doubt them. God gave you this sanctuary of your thoughts so that you’d have somewhere to go to make sense of it all. He knew that they’d come for you all those years ago, and why they’d come, and what they’d offer, and he also knew why you’d agree to their terms, just as he knew that one day you’d start to have doubts about your agreement.
Imagine if you didn’t have the safe space of your thoughts! Imagine if you had no place to hear yourself think! But God loves you so much that he gave you this sanctuary, this place where you’re free to think whatever you want, where you’re free to be you. They cannot follow you into your sanctuary. They cannot hear your thoughts.
We can meet there, if you like, in your thoughts. When you mull over these words, that’s how we meet.
Your thoughts are safe with me.
ME, CHARLTON HESTON, AND AI
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 17, 2025 – When I was eight years old, my grandmother took my sister and I to the movies one hot summer afternoon. We’d planned on seeing the latest Disney flick, but when we got to the theater, we found out that it was no longer playing. The sweltering hour-long bus ride from the suburbs had put my grandmother in no mood for an immediate return trip, and lured by the coolness wafting from the ticket booth window, she decided that what was on the screen didn’t matter: She needed to be in that air-conditioned theater. And so, she purchased one adult and two child tickets for whatever was playing that day, and what was playing that day was The Omega Man.
The Omega Man is a post-apocalyptic horror film starring Charlton Heston. Because it was made for adults, most of the movie was pretty much lost on me, though some scenes stay with me to this day. Granted, what frightened me as a child no longer frightens me as an adult, but what caught my interest then still draws me now, and what caught my interest was the solo life of the main character.
Far from being horrified by his aloneness, I was fascinated by it. I wanted to live alone in a big house like him and speed through deserted streets in a cool car like him. I wanted to shop in deserted stores like him and wander through deserted buildings like him. I’m not sure this was the response that the screenwriters had hoped to elicit from the audience, but it’s what they got from me. That’s what I took from the movie as a kid, that, and the certain knowledge that if your afro suddenly turns white, you’re doomed.
I’ve since rewatched The Omega Man, this time as an adult. I’ve also watched The Last Man on Earth, starring Vincent Price, and I Am Legend, starring Will Smith. All these movies are based on the same novel, and all feature a strong but reluctantly solo male character whose downfall starts when he allows a female into his safe space (plot sound familiar? lol ;D). To me, all the movies kind of fizzle out as soon as the female arrives and the focus shifts from the male’s ingenious survival techniques to the male throwing all caution to the wind for the sake of “gettin’ some”.
The allure of living alone in a deserted city remains as strong for me today as it did years ago. At the start of the so-called pandemic in early 2020, I was the one wandering the deserted streets at all hours and riding around in empty buses. I was the one who didn’t want the lockdowns to end if it meant people continued to cower in their houses and work and study from home. I was the one who wanted the whole store to myself—the whole city to myself—and for a few fleeting moments it seemed like I did.
I mention the Omega movies because I had a curious daydream today that may or may not have been inspired by them. In my daydream, I was the only person living in my part of the city. The reason I was the only one living there is because I was the only one who was born-again. Everyone else had left or died or had otherwise been removed. But far from feeling lonely, I reveled in my aloneness: I’d waited a long time to have this place to myself.
I was aware that there were other born-again believers in other parts of the city. We’d spy each other in the distance on occasion and wave in greeting, but we felt no pressing need to meet up. We were happy to be in our own and God’s company. It was enough for us to know that there were other born-again believers out there as far-flung neighbors and that we could meet up at any time if we wanted to. We also knew that we had nothing to fear from each other because we were God-approved and God-affirmed. We wouldn’t be there if we weren’t.
And so, in my daydream, I lived a life of ease and comfort, never locking my doors, never wary of going out after dark, never worrying about anyone stealing my bike or any of my possessions. I went to stores that stocked all my favorite things, and I never had to pay for them. All the services required for modern life, like clean running water and electricity, continued as before, only better. I lacked for nothing, and everything ran smoothly and seamlessly. But how was this possible with only a handful of people living in the city?
Enter AI. An army of bots had been programmed to provide for my and my neighbours’ every need. From the planting of seeds to the harvesting, processing, delivery, and even display of the final products, everything was done by robots that were directed and monitored by AI. Self-driving buses carted me around on my daily adventures unless I wanted to drive one of the countless abandoned cool cars at my disposal. Self-driving garbage trucks picked up my garbage at my command. If I fancied a pizza, bots would prepare it for me and deliver it piping hot, all within a half hour (and still free!).
As I delved deeper and deeper into my daydream, it occurred to me that what I was seeing was a high-tech version of Heaven that was super-imposed on my current surroundings. It was an idealized here and now that had some elements of the post-apocalyptic movies I’d seen, but with all the negative aspects removed. Instead of mutants and zombies, born-again believers were my neighbors. Instead of overgrown streets and crumbling buildings, tidiness and order ruled the day. Instead of having to forage for leftovers in dead people’s fridges, I was offered fresh produce in pristine stores.
But then I thought: What’s the point of having Heaven on Earth if I can have Heaven in Heaven? I might finally have good neighbors if they’re all born-again, but bugs and dogs can bite me here, and I still generate waste and need a bath. For all its wonders and conveniences, the AI-enabled city I’d envisioned falls far short of the supernatural perfection that awaits us in Heaven. Earth can never be Heaven, no matter how high the tech, and trying to make it so is a waste of time.
Better to daydream about (and wait for) the Real Thing… and maybe be a little pickier about the movies I watch next time!
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 