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ZEAL FOR MY HOUSE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 6, 2025 – There are very few things that get my goad more than the lie about a “millennial kingdom”, where Jesus will descend to Earth in bodily form and rule from the temple in Jerusalem for a thousand years. The absolute and utter hogwash of this “prophecy” should anger anyone who’s born-again and living in the prophesied Kingdom because it flies in the face of everything we know to be true about God’s Kingdom on Earth. And we know it to be true because we’re living in that Kingdom. It’s our everyday reality.
According to scripture, Jesus’ main teaching topic was showing people how to live in the Kingdom of God on Earth. Why would Jesus have wasted these people’s time teaching them how to live in the Kingdom if that Kingdom wasn’t to come for thousands of years? When Jesus said: “If I by the finger of God cast out demons, then the Kingdom has come upon you”, was he lying? Did he not cast out demons by the finger of God, and even if he did, was the Kingdom not then upon them?
Of course, we know that Jesus wasn’t lying either about casting out demons by the power of God’s Holy Spirit or about the establishment of the Kingdom already during his time on Earth. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, he rode in as a king, as prophesied in scripture. He was crucified under the marker “King of the Jews”. He now sits at the right hand of God and has been there since his ascension nearly 2000 years ago. He is King of kings and Lord of lords, and rules over God’s Kingdom on Earth. He has full authority over Satan and over all the fallen spirits, and by proxy, so do we, if we’re genuinely born-again.
Jesus said: “In the world, you’ll have problems, but don’t worry about it: I’ve overcome the world”, and also: “My Kingdom is not of this world”. This is the Kingdom where we, as born-again believers, live and move spiritually, have our being, and are protected and guided by God and Jesus, as Jesus promised we would be. There’ll be no other kingdom (though people are waiting in vain for one), just as there’ll be no other messiah (though people are waiting in vain for one). The here-and-now spiritual realm of the Kingdom of God is the one and only prophesied Zion, just as the here-and-now Jesus is the one and only prophesied Messiah. If you’re genuinely born again, you know this to be true. If you’re not born again, you’re likely falling for lies.
And who’s behind those lies? Who wants people to believe that a physical kingdom will be set up and ruled over by a benevolent but nonetheless iron-fisted ruler in the not-too-distant but still hazy future? None other than the Father of Lies himself, who easily deceives people who are not born-again and so gloss over scripture in favor of having their ears tickled. God permits Satan and his minions to disseminate these lies as a test to those who say they believe but don’t. The so-called “millennial kingdom” is among the chiefest of those lies and one, frankly, that makes my blood boil whenever I hear it being repeated. It’s right up there with the “Jesus is coming back soon!” mantra and the “once saved, always saved” lie, making a mockery of everything Jesus taught us and everything we know to be true.
I haven’t yet progressed to the point of overturning tables and whipping random bystanders as an expression of my anger over false prophets and their lies, but that might not be far off. In the meantime, I calm myself with the reminder that God permits the lies for a purpose, though he has no problem with my being angry with them. In fact, he encourages our righteous anger: It helps fuel our zeal.
ON BETRAYAL
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 6, 2025 – One of God’s chief promises is that he will never betray us. I think this promise doesn’t get the star treatment it deserves because most people haven’t lived long enough or suffered enough betrayals to understand its true value. During his time on Earth, Jesus never entirely confided in anyone except God, never put himself in a position of emotional vulnerability with anyone except God because, as scripture tells us, he knew people’s hearts. And knowing people’s hearts, Jesus knew that people were just a hair’s breadth away from betraying him at any given moment.
And he wasn’t wrong about that, considering that even his most loyal disciples ran from him at his arrest and then later denied knowing him. But knowing people’s high probability of betraying you gives you the advantage of not being surprised or even let down when they proceed to do so. We see this in how Jesus responded to his disciples’ betrayal. We need to deal with people who betray us in the same way Jesus dealt with them, all while learning from their betrayal that we’re to trust no-one but God.
I have lived long enough and suffered enough betrayals that I now, like Jesus, only put my trust in God. But it was a hard journey to get there. Unless we live in complete isolation, we interact daily with people, most or likely all of whom are not born again and therefore don’t consider themselves answerable to God. Not considering themselves answerable to God, they’re capable of virtually anything they believe they can get away with, and I’ve personally experienced some real doozies (and done a few myself, before I was reborn). But in every case where I was betrayed after my rebirth, I really didn’t have anyone but myself to blame for trusting people I knew in my heart I shouldn’t trust, not because they purposely choose evil, but because they’re guided by evil without knowing it.
It’s not virtuous to be unwise, and to trust people who are not born-again is unwise. That’s not to say that people can’t be trusted to a certain extent; you have to trust them with mundane everyday tasks or you’d have to withdraw entirely from society and live like John the Baptist before he started his ministry. Even Jesus didn’t do that and prayed that we’d be protected from the world, not taken out of it. He didn’t want us to isolate ourselves from the world, just to be wary of it and be protected from it. In other words, he prayed that we’d interact with the world on the same terms as he interacted with it during his ministry years.
God’s emphasis on his promise not to betray us highlights the importance God places on loyalty. If God values loyalty to such a great extent, so should we. That means we should not only expect it (though again, not from people), we should give it first and foremost to God, but also to people who are likely to turn around and betray us.
We are to expect betrayal from people and so not be surprised when they fulfill our expectations. In not being surprised, we should also not be angry or vengeful about it. Jesus wasn’t. Instead, knowing people’s hearts, Jesus chose not to make himself vulnerable in any way to people so that their inevitable betrayals would not hurt him.
Does this mean we should emotionally harden ourselves as a form of protection? God forbid. We were given a heart of flesh for our heart of stone at our rebirth, and we dare not go back on that trade. We should never emotionally harden ourselves but instead live with the understanding that we will, at some point, be betrayed even by those closest to us, but we will never be betrayed by God. Having this understanding, we allow ourselves to be ourselves only with God, and to give our confidences only to God, and to trust only God. This we can choose to do (it’s a choice), and if we choose not to do it, we have no-one to blame but ourselves when we suffer the consequences of human betrayal.
I love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and when I’m hurting in any way, I run to him for relief. Among God’s many wonderful characteristics is his utter candor, and so when I run to him with my hurts, he generously lets me know how they came to pass. He does this not while standing at a distance and pointing a finger at me but while I’m sitting on his lap and he’s soothing me. And in every instance, I learn (thanks to God’s candor) that I brought the pain on myself one way or another, usually by trusting the wrong person.
I thank God for this lesson, and his candor, and his soothing.
God’s promise not to betray us is an implicit invitation for us not to betray him. It’s also an implicit invitation to live like Jesus did during his ministry years, not hardening our heart to others but choosing very carefully what to confide and what to hide. God’s promise not to betray us likewise implies that everyone else will sooner or later betray us, a sad fact of this world that is backed up by scripture. Knowing this, we should expect betrayal and not be surprised or outraged by it. Rather, like Jesus, we should do all we can to avoid opening ourselves to betrayal, but if we still end up suffering it, we should take our hurt to God. He will soothe us, all while dealing with our betrayers in his time and in his way.
We can trust God implicitly to do that because he promises us he will, and he would never betray a promise to us.
ON SUFFERING FOR OTHERS’ SINS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 6, 2025 – One of the most grievous errors of Christianity is the mistaken belief that you can suffer for others’ sins, that you can take on the burden of their suffering and in that way exonerate them and pay their sin price before God. You cannot do that. Only Jesus could do that, and only for very specific sin. The sin price Jesus paid on the cross was Adam’s sin, which he could only do because he himself was sinless. No-one else could have paid Adam’s sin because no-one but Jesus was sinless.
In paying the sin price owed by Adam, Jesus negated the need for any further ritualistic sacrifice and opened the door for “whosoever will” to enter into right relationship with God again. That door was firmly shut until Jesus’ perfect sacrifice. It’s open now, but only to those God draws to him. Even with Jesus having paid the sin price, we’re still all born sinners. No-one is born in right relationship with God: you’re reborn into right relationship, just as no-one is born a child of God but reborn a child of God. These distinctions are critically important, as they form the basis of who and what we are as born-again believers.
The recent media spectacle of the conclave leading to the coronation of Peter the Roman (a.k.a. Pope Leo the 14th) threw a spotlight on the rank and file of the abomination known as the Catholic church. That organization is infamous for selling ways to reduce sin-related suffering for a certain price, the chief one of which is “indulgences”. Luther condemned the selling of indulgences and in fact pointed to indulgences as being his main motivator for breaking away from the papacy. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the “pay for pray” grifts, as indulgence-like mechanisms persist throughout all denominations even today, fooling people into parting with their money under various promotions such as “donations”, “tithing”, and “sowing”. But the idea underlying what amounts to spiritual extortion is the same as for indulgences: Give us your money, and we’ll make your life better.
As born-again believers, we know that the only way we can make our lives better is through genuine repentance, followed by humbly suffering whatever God deems we need to suffer. There’s no shortcut through this process, no matter how much people want to avoid the suffering part. The good news is that after we repent and are back in right relationship with God, whatever we need to suffer – our own personal sin price – is mitigated by our love for God and his love for us. I’m not saying suffering can be made pleasurable; I would never say that. I’m just saying earned suffering doesn’t feel as bad when you’re in right relationship with God. Scripture says that God will wipe away all our tears, and so he does. No-one can kiss away the pain of a spiritual boo-boo quite like our heavenly Father.
As much as we might want to, we cannot suffer for others as a way to pay their sin price before God any more than we can pay a certain amount of money to make our suffering go away. We all need to make our own peace with God and to do so in our own time and our own way. It cannot be done on by others on our behalf. Jesus paid the sin price owed by Adam and was able to do it 1) because he was born sin-free and 2) lived his life here on Earth sin-free and 3) was tapped by God to do it and agreed to do it. Jesus became the perfect sacrifice that ended the need for any further temple sacrifices.
We, on the other hand, were born in sin and continued to sin up until our rebirth, and then on occasion we sinned again, though not grievously if we’re still born-again, not to the loss of our grace given to us by God at our rebirth. Still, getting into right relationship with God was a process we had to go through; it wasn’t a birthright, just as staying in right relationship with God is an ongoing process, not a “one and done” deal, as false prophets would have us believe.
We cannot suffer for others’ sins because we’re not Jesus, meaning that we weren’t born sinless and haven’t lived sinlessly and aren’t tapped by God to suffer for others. As born-again believers in right-standing with God, we can pray for others, we can help others, we can teach others, and we can preach to others, but we cannot suffer on their behalf: We cannot pray away or pay away their sin. They need to suffer on their own and to the full measure allotted by God. This is a spiritual principle that we need to take to heart lest we, too, be fooled by grifters or by our own spiritual arrogance.
ON SUFFERING TESTS AND DUE REWARDS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 6, 2025 – People don’t suffer injustices: They suffer tests of spiritual character and due rewards. If you fight back against either, you won’t advance spiritually. Even Jesus’ crucifixion wasn’t unjust, as we know from scripture that Jesus agreed to suffer (test of spiritual character) for Adam’s sin (due reward).
Although the concept of willingly suffering tests of spiritual character and due rewards is alien to unbelievers (who run to a doctor for every ache and pain and to a lawyer for every perceived slight), it shouldn’t be alien to us. By “willingly suffer”, I don’t mean we should go out of our way to volunteer to suffer. Jesus didn’t go out of his way to volunteer to suffer. He didn’t petition God to suffer; he agreed to the messiahship that God offered him, part of the terms of which was to suffer crucifixion. Remember how Jesus, in the garden of Gethsemane, tried to last-minute negotiate a way around those terms? God held his ground. Sometimes you just have to go through what you have to go through, as the agreed-upon terms are writ in stone and therefore inviolable.
In those cases, you don’t have to embrace the terms, you don’t even have to like the terms – you just have to accept them and go through whatever you have to go through. But ironically, when you do make that decision to agree to God’s terms (a decision so profound it moves mountains in the spiritual realm), that’s when the real power starts flowing through you. We see this in Jesus, in everything he says and does after he exits the garden of Gethsemane up to and including his time on the cross. We see this in Paul, when he agrees to suffer whatever he has to suffer as an apostle of Jesus and of the Gospel. And I saw this firsthand in me, when I agreed to choose to forgive someone I thought was unforgiveable and was instantly reborn from atheist to full-on believer. In that unmeasurable span between choosing to forgive and being reborn, God showed me that the pain I’d felt (or what I thought was injustice) was the pain I’d earned (through what I’d done to others). And then he filled me with his Holy Spirit.
For us, as born-again believers, there should be no question that we agree to suffer whatever we’ve earned or whatever God imposes on us as a test of our spiritual character. How else is God going to know (hard proof) that we choose him over Satan? It’s all well and good to say “Yes, I love and believe in God” and “Yes, I love and believe in Jesus”, but this kind of talk is as cheap as any other in an age when even solemn vows uttered at an altar are broken with a shrug. So how else is God to know that we choose him over Satan unless we’re tested and again tested and then tested again and again and again and again… until he’s satisfied that he and he alone has our whole heart and soul and mind and strength? Because if we don’t give God everything we have and everything we are, that portion we’re holding back (however small) goes to Satan, and that portion that we’ve forfeited to Satan (however small) will still be enough to lose us our spot in Heaven.
If we’re genuinely born again, we’ve been penciled in for a place in Heaven. Jesus said to his disciples: “Don’t rejoice that you have power over the demons; rejoice that your names are written in Heaven.” The highest privilege that can be granted a human soul is to be recorded by name in the Book of Life, but that privilege can be revoked (hence the penciling), which means we would lose our spot in Heaven. If it happened to angels, it can happen to us; if it happened to whole nations, it can happen to us. So we should never gloat over our privilege or take it for granted but be humbly ever-aware of it so that we do whatever it takes to maintain our heavenly reservation in good standing.
And if what it takes is to suffer our due rewards or tests of our spiritual character, those things are as nothing when compared to what awaits us when we get Home.
WE ARE NOT SINNERS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 29, 2025 – Just a quick reminder that you cannot be born-again and at the same time be a sinner. To be born-again means to be washed clean of your sins. You can’t be washed clean of your sins and at the same time live in a state of sin, which is what it means to be a sinner. You cannot obstinately, purposely, willfully, unrepentantly, perpetually, and with full and conscious intent choose to live in a state of sin and at the same time have God’s Holy Spirit in you. That would be a spiritual impossibility.
To be born-again means to be washed clean of your sins and to have God’s Holy Spirit in you. When this happens, when God’s Spirit is in you and all around you, you’re no longer a sinner—you can’t be, because sin and God’s Holy Spirit cannot occupy the same spiritual real estate. You’ll still have the capacity to sin while you’re on Earth in a human body, but having the capacity to sin doesn’t make you a sinner: It makes you human.
If people tell you (or worse, insist) that you’re a sinner (which I’ve heard from many a preacher), tell them they’re wrong. Tell them you’re born-again and in right-standing with God. Tell them you cannot be genuinely born-again and at the same time be a sinner. You can be tested and fail (we’ve all, except for Jesus, failed some tests), you can be tempted and fail (we’ve all, except for Jesus, failed some temptations), but these are short-term failures that you put behind you once you repent.
And if you’re genuinely born-again, you don’t delay repenting once God has brought your failure to your attention. You don’t hide from repenting: you crave it. You don’t resent that you have to repent: you embrace it with all your heart and soul. Repenting brings you back into right relationship with God, which is the only place you want to be as a born-again believer. For us, right relationship with God is our spiritual Home.
We born-again believers are not sinners. We do not identify as sinners, and we are not defined by sin. Again, just having the capacity to sin by virtue of still having free will doesn’t mean we’re sinners: It means we’re human.
ON FAITHFORCING
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 29, 2025 – Faithforcing is not in the lexicon, but it should be. We can loosely define “faithforcing” as pushing beliefs on someone who is reluctant or outright adverse to receiving them. Sadly, faithforcing has become the norm in the worldly church. Catholics and evangelicals are the worst offenders, but no denomination is guiltless. When Jesus told us to go out into the world and preach the Good News, he didn’t stipulate faithforcing: he didn’t model Bible-thumping; he didn’t model randomly shouting “God loves you!” in a public square; and he didn’t mandate professing your belief on pain of exile, torture, excommunication, or death.
I remember, as an atheist, recoiling when I witnessed faithforcing, and it still makes me uncomfortable now as a believer. It reminds me of people with certain conditions who blurt out inappropriate words when least expected. The blurting and the inappropriateness of the words make people uncomfortable because it’s all so jarringly out of place. The same can be said of faithforcing. No-one ever genuinely comes to God or genuinely accepts Jesus as their Messiah under pressure of faithforcing.
As scripture attests, Jesus’ family didn’t believe in him until after his resurrection, and yet Jesus never once subjected them to faithforcing. In one instance, faced with his brother James’s mockery and goading, Jesus calmly stated who he was and why he did what he did, but he didn’t try to coerce James into believing in him. He didn’t force James’s back to the wall and say: “Believe in me or die!” (even though those are, in fact, the only two options: belief in Jesus or death). He simply stated the truth in response to James’s provocations but otherwise let his brother be.
If Jesus didn’t resort to faithforcing even his own flesh and blood, why should we do it to ours or to anyone? Forcing, goading, or coercing people into reluctantly or even falsely stating they believe—and rewarding them for their alleged belief—is contrary to Jesus’ example of how to preach the Word. Faithforcing is a lot like people who impose their help on others who haven’t asked for help. This happens to me a lot as a woman, with most of the unrequested help coming from male strangers. I’ve lost count of the number of times men have grabbed my luggage out of my hands or rushed up behind me to “unburden” me of my grocery bags when I haven’t asked or signalled or indicated in any way that I wanted their help. It’s jarring when it happens, and my first thought is never “How kind of this stranger to help me when I haven’t asked him!” but rather: “Oh, sh#@! – I’m being mugged!”
If you’re genuinely born-again, your relationship with God and Jesus is the best part of your life. It’s the central core of who and what you are, and without it, you would be lost in every conceivable way. And because your relationship with God and Jesus is so central to who you are and therefore so precious to you, you naturally want to share it with others so that maybe they’ll want to have what you have. But it’s not as simple as simply wanting to share the Good News, any more than it’s as simple as rushing up behind someone to force what you think is a good deed on them.
When we share our faith with others, we should—like everything we do—be guided by God. In the Gospels, we see how Jesus taught only those who came to him to learn and preached only to those who wanted to hear. He never once engaged in faithforcing. When people are ready to receive what God has to offer, they will on their own accord turn to him and be open to hearing what he has to say. Until that shift happens in a soul, you preach to that soul in vain.
As I mentioned at the outset, faithforcing doesn’t exist in the lexicon, but it should be there, if only as a caution of what not to do. Fueled by pride and motivated by money, faithforcing has not won even one soul for God, though it has filled seats and coffers in churches. Our model of how to share God’s Word is Jesus, and there is no mention anywhere in scripture of Jesus faithforcing anyone or teaching his followers to faithforce.
I came to God not because someone preached to me or faithforced me, but because I finally realized I needed help, and when I cried out for it, God heard me. He didn’t ambush me and force his help on me; he waited respectfully and patiently—and expectantly—until I asked for help.
We’re to do the same for others.
WORK
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 29, 2025 – As born-again believers, we do two types of work while still in a human body: Work for God, and work for the world. It may appear that these two types of work intersect and overlap on occasion, but that’s an illusion. Working for God is something entirely separate from working for the world.
WORKING FOR GOD
First and foremost, work for God is God-inspired, God-enabled, and God-fueled. It doesn’t originate in us; it uses us. We allow God to use us through our prayers. When we pray to God to do his will, he takes us at our word and works through us when and where it’s expedient for him to do so. For this kind of work, we don’t have to do a thing except give God the green light to use us for his purposes.
Teaching and preaching the Word—when inspired, enabled, and fueled by God—is an obvious example of being on God’s work crew. So is healing through prayer. So is dropping a word in someone’s ear at the right time. Never underestimate the power of a word dropped at the right moment in the right ear. Whole mountains have been moved that way. But we’re not the ones moving the mountains. God’s moving them, through us.
A hallmark of working for God is that the work doesn’t feel like work. During his ministry years, Jesus was famous for laboring nearly 24/7 in God’s fields, and he could do so because the preaching, teaching, and healing didn’t feel like work to him. He constantly reiterated that he was doing the work that God sent him to do. When you do the work that God sends you to do, you have supernatural endurance because you’re being supernaturally inspired, enabled, and fueled. You’re not pushing back against it or dreading it or rushing through it to get it done; you’re letting it flow through you.
It’s a beautiful thing, working for God. You lose track of time; you forget about eating, you forget about sleeping – you forget about everything except the work in front of you. Think of Moses on Mount Sinai getting the Law. I’m guessing those 40 days and nights he spent there with God felt like only a few minutes. That’s how it is when you work for God.
WORKING FOR THE WORLD
Working for the world, on the other hand, is something entirely different. It’s laborious; it’s tedious; it’s draining; and you do it just to get it over with. You’re constantly watching the clock, willing the time to pass faster. Working for the world is what we do for a living until God arranges for our daily bread to be provided some other way. Note that working for the world also includes things like housework and grocery shopping. None of these things are required in Heaven. They are worldly cares, not godly ones. Still, while we’re here on Earth, they need to be done.
We dare not shirk our worldly work any more than we’d shirk our work for God. We don’t stop doing our laundry or mopping our floors just because we’re born-again. But we do stop our worldly work on the Sabbath. We dare not not stop our worldly work on the Sabbath.
PAY
Because working for the world is so tedious and draining, we get paid to do it. We get paid to work for God, too, but in a different way. You work for the world, you get the world’s pay, which is money or money-equivalents like worldly privileges and benefits. You work for God, you get God’s pay, which is joy in the constant presence of God and Jesus through God’s Holy Spirit, revelations when you least expect them, and having your needs provided for without your having to do worldly labor for it.
By “having your needs provided for”, I’m not talking about putting a discreet “Donations” or “Support My Ministry” button on your monetized website and hoping for the best. And I’m definitely not talking about getting a salary for preaching (that’s worldly pay; and if you’re born again and taking a salary for preaching, shame on you). I’m talking about God providing supernaturally what you need as you need it, not because you look for it or request it: It just happens by the grace of God.
If it’s happened to you, you’ll know what I’m talking about. If it hasn’t yet happened, hang in there. For some it takes longer than others. It’s one of your tests. Look at how long Jesus worked for God (he was doing it already at age 12!) before his “God pay” fully kicked in at around age 30. Until it did, he labored as a carpenter for his daily needs.
We look to Jesus as our model, not to televangelists or YouTube prophets. If you’re stumping for donations or accepting a salary for preaching and teaching the Word, whatever you’re doing for that money is not work for God. Work for God is paid for by the joy of his presence, the Truth of his revelations, and your daily bread fresh-baked and dropped at your doorstep before you even wake up in the morning.
TL;DR
Though we’re obligated to do worldly work to some degree for the rest of our days on Earth, the highest of all privileges is to work for God and to be paid by God in his way and his time.
FROM GOD OR FROM THE DEVIL? A PRIMER ON PROPHECY
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 21, 2025 – I wrote recently about the Malachy prophecy of the popes, which I do not believe is from God. However, just because it’s not from God doesn’t mean that some organizations aren’t following it like a script even while publicly denying they’re doing so. Furthermore, just because a prophecy isn’t from God doesn’t mean it won’t happen. It might happen, though it typically doesn’t occur as anticipated and usually unfolds as a deception.
God’s prophecies are foretold well in advance and emblazoned across the heavens for all to see, whereas the devil’s are sequestered in underground caverns and revealed only to a select few. Jesus was famous for fulfilling the requirements of prophecy to a “t”, openly stating (in case anyone had any doubt about what he was doing) that he did what he did in fulfillment of prophecy. He rode into Jerusalem on a colt because scripture foretold that the Messiah would do that. He allowed himself to be anointed with oil by one of the Marys because scripture said the Messiah would be anointed in that way. He even allowed himself to be nailed to a cross because prophecy dictated that the Messiah must be crucified. Jesus did whatever God advised him to do, and God used scripture as a blueprint for his directives to Jesus as well as to everyone else.
But how can we tell if a prophecy is from God or from the devil? Being born-again, we have discernment to varying degrees, depending on the measure of God’s Spirit in each of us. Still, the devil and those who serve him can be tricky, and God permits them to try to trick us, either as a test or as a teachable moment when we fail.
There are a few key characteristics to look for when determining the source of a prophecy. One of the main ones is the timing of a prophecy’s fulfillment. God created time and controls time, just like he controls everything else. He also controls our perception of time and its passage. So, prophecies that have a clear time delineation (like the 42-month reign of the beast mentioned in the book of Revelation, or Satan being bound for 1000 years) cannot and should not be taken at face value, any more than the “half an hour” of “silence in Heaven” that precedes the blowing of the first trumpet should be considered as literally a half-hour. These are perception times only, or time taken in the context of longer or shorter passages of time. Their actual duration will only be known when the prophecies occur. Paul says that a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day when it comes to God and his timing. We cannot literally believe that all time and space were created in six Earth days, or perhaps it was six Mars days, or Jupiter days, or Saturn days?…
Why doesn’t God give us precise times for his prophecies? Does he not know when they’ll occur? Of course he knows; God knows everything. But God also needs to get all his ducks in a row, which requires our patience. He also wants to see our authentic response to situations, and for this he needs the element of surprise. How else can he tell whether we genuinely want what he’s offering or are just saying we want it? Even Jesus didn’t know exactly when his ministry would start, and after it started, he didn’t know exactly when his “hour” (his death) would come; he was only informed a few weeks beforehand, during the transfiguration. He then informed his disciples, though they appeared to dismiss the revelation, not really understanding at the time what Jesus was telling them. God clouded their understanding for a reason, just as he clouds ours on occasion.
Thwarting the devil’s plans is yet another major reason why God keeps the timing of prophecy fulfillment hidden. Imagine if the devil knew in advance the exact hour and day of the start of the Final Judgement. He would use that time to prepare and orchestrate Armageddon-like world-wide disasters (we have the technology to do that now) to trick people into running to him for help. Desperate to survive, they’d be willing to give him anything in exchange for safety, even their souls.
Keeping the precise timing hidden is a hallmark of God’s prophecies, for the reasons listed above as well as others. Conversely, prophecies that come from the devil are generally time-stamped and location-specific because that’s what people want in a prophecy. The devil thrives on giving people what they want, especially when it’s against their best interests. People generally want to feel in control of their lives as much as possible; knowing that an event will occur at a certain time and place gives them the feeling that they’re in control, if only to prepare appropriately for whatever’s coming. The devil exploits this weakness in humans, plying them with false prophecy after false prophecy, with an occasional semi-hit to keep them coming back for more.
The devil’s prophecies are also almost exclusively negative, drawing on the call to darkness lurking within most people’s souls. Just as light attracts light, dark attracts dark, and the darker the revelation, the more people are drawn to it. This is why the dark sections of the book of Revelation are so popular and the “light” sections less well known. Some people read the New Testament not for the Gospel message but for the end-times prophecies on mass destruction. That’s not to say that the book of Revelation comes from the devil; I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying that the darker passages garner the most attention, whereas the passages about visions of Heaven are mostly overlooked.
Along with being time- and location-specific and characteristically dark, prophecies that come from the devil have an “off” smell to us born-again believers. People who are not born-again are nose-blind to the “off” smell of the devil’s lies, the way that most voters are nose-blind to the “off” smell of politicians’ promises during an election campaign. To be honest, the smell isn’t something you can logically describe; you just know it when you smell it. Call it discernment; call it intuition; call it a gut feeling – whatever you want to call it, it’s real and it’s accurate.
Keep in mind that the devil’s prophecies can also come to pass; just because prophecies originate from the devil doesn’t mean they won’t happen, though if they do, they tend to happen not quite as anticipated. The prophesied golden age manifests as rule by an iron fist. The proffered fame and fortune manifest as a life of drug-addled wealth-fueled degeneracy surrounded by other drug-addled wealth-fueled degenerates. The promise of immortality manifests as eternity in the lake of fire. So you can’t say the devil didn’t keep his promises; you just didn’t read the fine print and so filled in the blanks with your own hopeful assumptions.
TL; DR: Prophecies form the basis of our hopes and fears for the future. If they’re from God, it’s a slam-dunk that they’re going to happen; we just don’t know exactly when. Prophecies from the devil, on the other hand, are typically time-stamped, feeding our need to know and to be in control of our lives. However, the devil’s prophecies rarely occur, and if they do, they’re never quite as expected in a negative way. To paraphrase Jesus, you can’t get fruit from a thistle. If you want to know what the future holds, stick with God’s promises and God’s promises only.
ABOMINATIONS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 18, 2025 – I’ve had the unsought advantage over the years of getting to know psychopaths up close and personal, sometimes in deeply intimate relationships. By advantage, I mean I’ve learned how to stay outside their sphere of control; by intimate, I mean physical intimacy, because no-one can get emotionally close to a psychopath. That door is welded shut.
Living and moving in close proximity to psychopaths at various times (including now), I learned from them how not to be. Psychopaths are very useful for modeling bad behavior. It’s almost textbook paint-by-number bad in some cases, but it’s still informative from an observational point of view. I had to learn the hard way to step back and observe these people from an emotional if not a physical distance and to train myself not to let my feelings (other than my gut feeling) get involved. You learn the hard way not to get emotionally entangled with psychopaths, though I’m not sure it’s a lesson you ever fully learn.
Still, the hard way is the only way anyone ever learns how to deal with psychopaths. That’s because we keep trying to attribute to them the same “essential humanity” that we attribute to non-psychopaths. This failing is on us; we can’t blame them for being what they are. And frankly, I have yet to meet a psychopath who hasn’t more or less instantly self-identified as a psychopath to anyone with eyes to see. Now that I know what to look for, I can spot them as easily as a shiny nickel in the middle of the road. They’re like a fox in the henhouse or a wolf in the sheep pen. The trick is to be the henhouse (not the hen) and the fence (not the sheep). We’re to observe from a safe distance, not intervene or engage. Beyond the perfunctory, it’s never advisable to engage with psychopaths.
Which brings me to today’s topic – psychopathic nations. Whole nations can be psychopathic, not just individuals. That’s not to say that all the people in those nations are psychopaths; I’m not saying that at all. But a nation can still be psychopathic without all its people being so. To be considered psychopathic, a nation just needs to display certain key psychopathic traits, such as being perpetually self-absorbed, lacking in empathy, lacking in self-awareness, manipulative, a cunning and unapologetic liar, coldly calculating, an unabashed user and abuser of others, seeing others as less than human and therefore unworthy of humane treatment, adept at playing one party against another, perpetually protesting its innocence, perpetually proclaiming its victimhood, and perpetually justifying its exceptionalism by explaining why it should get away with doing things that other nations should not get away with doing. A psychopathic nation also appears to take pleasure in inflicting pain on its victims, all while either ignoring or downplaying the pain, or claiming it’s deserved.
How can a psychopathic nation be dealt with in a global community? Should it be isolated and contained by laws, such as those passed by the UN? That’s already been tried, but it hasn’t worked because our current psychopathic regimes have dismissed the laws as not applying to them. Should psychopathic nations be punished militarily? That’s also been tried but has so far failed because other nations get tricked, guilted, or bullied into bolstering the psychopaths’ defenses. Perhaps these nations should just simply be ignored? If you’ve ever dealt with psychopaths one-on-one, you’ll know that ignoring them rarely works. Psychopaths crave attention not as an ego-stroker but as a control mechanism. If they have your attention, they’re controlling you, so if you’re ignoring them, they’ll do whatever it takes to regain your attention, and no method is off the table. Even if they have to kill you to get you to look their way just one more time, they’ll kill you. Psychopathic nations are the same.
Which explains why these countries are always doing things to get attention. Attention-getting is their calling card on the world stage. So, for instance, they’ll unexpectedly attack another nation while it’s engaged in peace talks, catching it off-guard. This is not a new tactic but certainly a dirty one and again reveals the attacking nation’s underlying psychopathy. And since a psychopath doesn’t want to be admired or even liked, just in control, a psychopathic nation is not in the least fazed by the world’s nearly unanimous condemnation of its dirty tricks. It will instead frame the condemnation as persecution. Weeping crocodile tears, it will state that it has a right to defend itself from potential future aggressions. It will offer no apologies, because a psychopath never feels the need to apologize. Beyond self-pity, self-aggrandizement, and nearly boundless lust, a psychopath never really feels anything.
Yet for all their horror show of characteristics, psychopathic nations should not be despised. They represent both a collective reward for our bad behavior and a temptation that we dare not become. In this regard, psychopathic nations are a cautionary tale of what not to be, how not to act, and who not to serve. Because it’s as glaringly obvious as that shiny new nickel lying in the middle of the road that psychopathic nations don’t serve God. I don’t know who or what they serve, but it’s not my Father in Heaven; it’s not Jesus’ Father. Our Father is not being served by psychopaths. Something or someone is being served, but it’s not God.
How, then, are we to deal with not-God-serving psychopathic nations? Do we ignore them? At our peril; the more you ignore psychopaths, the more and worse they’ll do to get your attention. Do we cautiously and supportively interact with them, fingers crossed and hoping for the best? Again, we’d do so at our peril; psychopaths cannot be trusted and will only interact with us to find out our weaknesses, which they’ll later use against us. Or do we simply run and hide? You can’t hide from relentless control-seeking enemies, other than when your flight is directed by God and under God’s protection, keeping in mind that psychopathic nations, like psychopaths, can only inflict as much pain and destruction as has been earned, either as a negative reward or as a tightly controlled test sanctioned by God. It’s also worth noting that as time goes by, more and more nations will turn psychopathic.
So, what can we do? Or, better said, what should we do? As with individuals, nations with psychopathy should not be interacted with other than for the merest of perfunctory gestures. We should instead stand at a safe distance and observe them. We should be the henhouse, not the hens; the fence, not the sheep. We should not get involved; we should quiet our emotions. Like a sniper lying stock-still far above his target, we should keep psychopathic nations in our crosshairs but never pull the trigger. It’s not our job to pull the trigger. God has not given us that job.
It’s our job to do God’s will, and Jesus very clearly told us: “Watch”.
So we’re to serve God and watch, but otherwise let the abominations be.
24/7
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 17, 2025 – What you do when no-one is around to see or hear you is the measure of where you are in your spiritual development. Those in the worldly church would claim that we’re already saved and that Jesus knows we’re sinners and shed his blood to cover our sins, so we’re good to go and no use fretting over every little slip-up. But we know this isn’t true, and that our every thought, word, and deed can and will be used against us, if not in the here and now, then in the Final Court of Law. So we’re careful, oh so careful, of what we think, say, and do. We’re careful because we know that everything is being monitored and recorded, always by God but also a good chunk of the time by enemy forces. There’s nowhere we can go to get away from this reality.
We born-again believers are in Church 24/7, whether awake or asleep, which means that we’re in prayer with God 24/7. Your eyes on these words is a prayer to God. And when you finish reading these words and go elsewhere online, that will be a prayer, too. Everywhere you go online is a prayer, just as everywhere you willingly take your body is a prayer and every word you allow out of your mouth is a prayer and every thought you consciously generate and/or entertain is a prayer. All your free-will everything is a prayer to God. This spiritual fact needs to be taken onboard by every born-again believer: Your entire sleeping and waking reality is a prayer.
This is where knowing and loving God as your heavenly Father comes in handy, because who wouldn’t want a trusted father-figure always within whisper reach? It doesn’t faze me at all that God knows everything about me in real time and that it’s all being recorded for posterity. It doesn’t faze me at all that I can’t turn off God’s access to me even if I wanted to. This state of being doesn’t faze me, it comforts me, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Satan’s access to me, on the other hand, is not comforting. The surveillance state that’s covertly being built and insinuated into our every word and movement should never be perceived as a comfort, because unlike God’s 24/7 surveillance, Satan’s surveillance is being done solely to be used against us. We’re told the collection of our data is for marketing purposes or to create a better user experience, but the fact is our technological trail is a dossier being compiled on each of us, though we’ve committed no crime. Simply by agreeing to use high-tech tools, we allow ourselves to be fingerprinted, voice-printed, image-printed, gait-printed, and even scent-printed. We permit our every email to be scoured, our every image to be captured, and our every document to be seized – but for what? Evidence? And if evidence, towards what?
By clicking or tapping “Agree” in the various terms of service agreements we come across online, we’ve already put ourselves on trial and are willingly compiling evidence against ourselves. Everything but our thoughts is known and recorded (that you’re reading this is known and recording by Satan) and thrown onto the sacrificial fire of AI training modules. Everything but our thoughts is known and recorded, but they’re coming for those, too. It’s just a matter of time before the majority (nearly every human) will willingly agree to a brain implant that will allow access to their thoughts not as they emerge filtered through their lips or fingertips but as they pour raw from the source. You do not want to agree to take this implant, because if you do, you’ll be lost to God. There’s no other way to put it but that you’ll be lost, and that forever. No exceptions and no redo: the ultimate “one and done”.
I’m glad that God knows everything about me in real time and is with me 24/7. I’m glad he knows my thoughts and I welcome him into my mind as I welcome him into every other part of me. I hide nothing from him. But Satan and his surveillance state I do not welcome. I allow their intrusions this far and no further, only what is necessary. God will let me know what is necessary and caution me against the rest, as he’ll do for you, if you’re born-again.
The access we permit our enemy (and the surveillance state is unquestioningly our enemy) is on us, so we need to be careful. We’re careful with God, anyway, so we know what it means to be careful, though with God it’s for learning purposes, for guidance, and always towards our spiritual improvement. With Satan’s surveillance, we need to be careful in a different way because that form of near 24/7 data capture only wants our harm. Its sole purpose is our harm.
We need to understand this and proceed accordingly.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 