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THIS IS ZION
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 21, 2025 – Our greatest joy as born-again believers is being able to spend all day every day with God. Jesus is with us, too, as he promised he would be, but as much as we love Jesus (and that we certainly do), God is our Daddy. He’s the one we love with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Even if the Commandment to love God didn’t exist, we’d still love him that way. It comes with being born-again. We don’t have to try to love God or work at loving God: We just do.
Our relationship with God is entirely different from our relationship with Jesus. And like for Jesus during his time on Earth, God is our main focus. It’s God we turn to for help and guidance, it’s God we run to for comfort if things aren’t going so well, and it’s God’s Commandments and directives we do our best to follow. God is our everything, and if we’re genuinely born-again, we don’t want to live even one second without him.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never loved anyone or anything the way I love God. It’s a totality of emotional investment that I didn’t think was possible. There’s no “I’ll give God this part of me, but I’m setting aside this part for someone or something else.” No. That’s not how it is with God. You give him everything not because he’s asking you to or expecting you to, but because you want to give him everything. You can’t imagine not giving God everything. That’s how it is for us born-again believers. That’s been my experience, anyway.
And so, we spend all day every day with God. No matter what we’re doing, God is always right there with us, offering a word of advice or encouragement, cautioning us if we wander off-course, or just making us laugh when he knows we could use a giggle. Not enough is said about God’s sense of humor, which, like everything else about him, is perfect. The context is always perfect, the timing is always perfect, and the delivery is consummate. No-one on Earth or in Heaven is funnier than God. Jesus comes a distant second (he has a very dry sense of humor that bounces well off God’s), but God still wins that contest, hands down. No-one beats God at anything, not even Jesus.
I’m not always aware of God’s presence, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t always here with me. I know he’s always here because he tells me he is and because Jesus during his ministry years said that he was never alone, that God was always with him. If God was always with Jesus, then God is always with us. That’s part of the deal of being born-again followers of Jesus. The relationship Jesus had with God during his time on Earth is the same relationship we have with him.
Ultimately, I love spending all day every day with God because he’s so much fun to be with. But he’s also loving and protective in a fatherly way. His presence is the sanctuary that David wrote about, the absolute and unconditional safe zone that no-one and nothing can violate. This is Zion, the prophesied Kingdom of God on Earth. It’s not a physical place: It’s a spiritual realm, a state of being that is entirely separate from our spiritual enemies. It’s bounded on all sides and above and below by God’s love for us and by our love for God. It’s a realm of pure unfeigned love, and no-one who doesn’t love God that way can enter in.
This is Zion. This is God’s presence with us through his Holy Spirit, and it’s the closest we’ll get to Heaven until we get Home.
THE TRANSITION
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 20, 2025 – Life after death is either a goal, a pipedream, a delusion, or a guarantee, depending on what you believe in. For me, life after death is a promise that I hope will be fulfilled as it was for Jesus and for others mentioned in scripture whose bodies changed from earthly to heavenly in a twinkling. This is the life after death I’m aiming for.
But getting to that heavenly body will require a radical transition. We won’t just wake up one day and find that our body is now perfect and immortal. No amount of diet, exercise, plastic surgery, or wishful thinking can make us perfect, let alone immortal: Only God can do that for us.
The transition from an imperfect mortal body to a perfect immortal one involves physical death. Just as we died spiritually to be reborn, gaining God’s Holy Spirit in the process, we’ll someday also die physically in order to gain physical immortality. And if the ecstasy of our spiritual rebirth is anything to go by, I expect the gaining of our heavenly body will be at least equally as ecstatic, if not more so. If this is the case (and I truly believe it is), it’s something to be desired; not feared, desired.
This transition is the resurrection. It’s what Jesus preached and what he underwent in the privacy of his tomb cave, after which he emerged unrecognizable both in form and voice, though his soul remained the same. It’s worth noting that being resurrected is not the same as being raised from the dead. Elijah raised a boy from the dead, as did Elisha. Jesus also raised several children from the dead and then famously raised his friend Lazarus. But these “raised” people retained the same earthly bodies (that is, imperfect and mortal) they had prior to their death, and so they weren’t resurrections. They were a return to life, much like people can be returned to life through medical interventions like defibrillators, heart massage, CPR, or adrenaline injections. In modern parlance, they’re NDEs (near-death experiences) rather than permanent deceases.
Resurrection requires the permanent decease of everything that is mortal. We’re not recycled back into a different body, like the deeply flawed reincarnation theory proposes; our body is transformed from mortal to immortal. When he appeared to his disciples after his resurrection, Jesus explained that he was not yet “ascended” but was in the process of being so. Still, in his newly immortalized body, he was able to appear and disappear at will and to have his wounds probed without feeling any pain. He then later literally rose up into the air in front of several witnesses, disappearing into the clouds. A mortal body cannot do these things.
Every one of us who makes it to Heaven will transition from an imperfect mortal body into a perfect immortal one. Our body will change at our resurrection the same way as our spirit changed at our rebirth, but our soul will stay the same because God made our soul to last forever. Did you know that your personality is seated in your soul? And just as your personality didn’t change at your rebirth, it also won’t change at your resurrection. The “you” you are now will continue for all eternity, shedding at physical death only those personality traits that don’t belong in Heaven. Hopefully, when our time comes, there won’t be that many traits to shed.
I don’t know about you, but I am so looking forward to the transition! I’m not going to do anything to hasten it (God doesn’t want us to do that), but I’m also not doing anything to delay it. I’m not interested in prolonging my days here on Earth; I’m grateful for whatever time God allots me, but I’m not going to beg for more time, like Hezekiah did. I want to be where Jesus is and to go through the transition that Jesus went through to get there. I want to be perfected and immortalized in the way that God promises us we will be and Jesus showed us we can be.
I want to be resurrected. I want to ascend.
I want to transition.
I want to go Home.
JESUS WAS BADASS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 18, 2025 – Jesus was a spiritual vigilante and a badass, and we’re only now starting to appreciate just how badass he was. He single-handedly took on the entire establishment of “God’s chosen” (who, by that point, had already lost their claim to the title) as well as their Roman overlords, and he came out victorious in the end without so much as plucking a hair from any of their heads. It was a total hands-off victory that relied entirely on the power of God’s Holy Spirit. Nothing before or since has come close to the level of Jesus’ victory, and he did so not by the use of arms and violence but by trusting fully in God and doing God’s will.
Jesus’ greatest badass achievement? Turning evil into good. We, his born-again followers, are called to do the same.
I don’t know about you, but the last thing I’d call myself is badass. A spiritual vigilante, yes, I’m a born (and born-again) vigilante, but I’m working on the badass part and still have a ways to go. By “badass”, I mean performing righteous acts entirely without fear and confident in the outcome. Being badass starts with having total faith and trust in God, but it also needs to be put through its paces. Jesus wasn’t a badass when he was a carpenter in Nazareth. You can’t be badass only on paper, even if that paper is scripture. You need to walk it out and work into it over time.
Moses was badass. David was badass. Elijah and Elisha were badass, too. Paul grew into his badassery (shaking the poisonous snake off his arm like a harmless bug showed that he achieved it), as did a whole litany of martyrs, beginning with Stephen.
If you, like me, have not yet ascended the badass dais, don’t worry about it. You’ll get there if you stay the course. You’re not born a badass; it comes with faith, time, and circumstance. All of Jesus’ loyal first-generation disciples eventually became badasses, including the women. If we have the requisite faith (and we should, if we’re genuinely born-again), we’re already latent badasses just waiting for the right occasion—the right trigger— to burst free.
Oh, glorious day when that happens!
Scripture tells of a time when God’s people will do “exploits” on the level of the holy angels. All of God’s holy angels are badass. I’ve met a few in person, and the one characteristic they shared was unearthly calmness and total unwavering confidence in the intended outcome. In our interactions, they calmly and matter-of-factly stated that something would occur even though people around me were telling me it was impossible. But the angels didn’t just tell me it would occur; they showed me what I had to do to make it happen. It was a telling before the showing, but it was more importantly prophecy in action or what could rightly be called applied prophecy. I had my part to play, my role to perform. If I hadn’t done what I was shown to do, there wouldn’t have been any miracles.
Jesus was king of applied prophecy during his ministry years. Over and over again, he did what he did not only because scripture dictated what the Messiah should do but because God and God’s holy angels directly told Jesus what to do. They told him, showed him, and then empowered him to walk it out. His entire ministry was based on that model. Jesus was an exemplary badass because his faith was so strong, as was his desire to do God’s will and God’s will only. This formed the basis for Jesus’ unparalled badassery, and his ministry was the trigger that unleashed it.
If you pray for nothing else today, my brothers and sisters, get down on your hands and knees—better still, get down on your face—and pray that you and all born-again believers become badass like Jesus.
Amen!
ENTERTAINING DEVILS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 17, 2025 – This is one of the more difficult articles I’ve had to write for this blog. It’s a touchy subject, but it needs to be aired. It concerns our interactions with people who are not born-again and have no interest in becoming born-again. In other words, it concerns nearly everyone we come into contact with every day and therefore it concerns our day-to-day lives. How we deal with these people can make or break us spiritually, so listen up.
As always, we need to look to Jesus first and foremost to see how he interacted with those around him. How did Jesus treat people who had no desire to know and love God? Did he force himself on them, following them around and pestering them with Bible quotes? Did he slip a Gospel teaching into his conversations with them without their knowing it? Or did he go all Bible-thumping fire and brimstone and warn them that they’d burn in hell unless they followed him? The answer is, of course, “no”, Jesus didn’t do any of those things. He didn’t even stop his followers from leaving him, if they wanted to leave. He didn’t chase after them and try to entice them back into the fold. He just let them go. Jesus’ focus, as should be ours, was to teach those who free-willingly came to him with the right motivation.
But what about people who try to attach themselves to us with the wrong motivation, who don’t know God and Jesus and have no desire to know them? If you’ve been born-again for any amount of time, you’ll likely have noticed that you’ve become a magnet for… certain people. They may be family members or perhaps they’re friends or acquaintances you knew prior to your rebirth, but what they all have in common is a desire to insert themselves into your life, even if you haven’t seen them or spoken to them in years. In most cases, these people are unaware that they’re being used spiritually to entice you into behaviors you left behind when you were born-again. But they’re persistent, these people, and they typically use as a hook your shared personal history with them.
Again, these are not people who are coming to you because they crave what you have spiritually; they’re coming to take away what you have spiritually—to find chinks in your spiritual armor to exploit—so you need to be very cautious around them.
Still, a few relationships are inviolable, regardless of whether these people are reborn or not. I’m referring here to your relationship with your mother and father. The Commandment says we’re to honor our parents, so we’re to honor them, no exceptions. We honor them by interacting with them respectfully and speaking kindly of them to others, even if they give Jack the Ripper a run for his money. This directive to honor our mother and father comes directly from God and therefore is inviolable. Break it at your extreme peril.
But beyond our mother and father, God gives us no directives other than to treat people as we would want to be treated. I like people to be polite to me, so I’m polite to them. I like people to be honest with me, so I’m honest with them. But I don’t necessarily need to be kind when kindness isn’t called for, though whatever I say or do, I say or do it with the aim of maintaining a clear conscience and right-standing before God. This may look like standoffish-ness or even outright rudeness, but we have no directive from God to cater to people’s whims and demands on our time. Just because someone reaches out to us doesn’t mean we have to respond, if we know their motivation for reaching out is not good, is not godly. And we can know their motivation is not godly because God gives us discernment to know.
Many people cried out to Jesus as he walked from village to village, but he only responded to and spent time with those who wanted what he was offering. He didn’t force the Gospel on people; he shared it with those who free-willingly came to him with godly intent. Every day, we interact with dozens if not hundreds of people, most if not all of whom want nothing to do with God and Jesus. They’re not coming to us to hear the Gospel. Some will even target us, intentionally or unintentionally trying to harm us spiritually. We’ll know who these people are when they come around; they’re not hard to discern. The bait and hooks are nearly always the same. If you spend even a small amount of time with them, they’ll give you a sense that you’re being dragged down because they are dragging you down. That’s their motivation, whether they know it or not. And that’s how you know you can’t be around them.
You have no directive from God to be around certain people just because they want to be around you. If they don’t want God and Jesus, they want your harm: There’s no other way to put it. Be polite, but steer clear of them. You don’t even have to tell them why you’re steering clear of them. They are a test and a temptation and a constant moral hazard.
As a born-again believer, you have no obligation to entertain devils.
So don’t.
MASS IMMIGRATION: GOD’S WILL OR AN EARNED EVIL?
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 13, 2025 – A general spiritual rule of thumb is that nearly everything the world promotes and values is contrary to the will of God. By “the world”, I’m referring here mainly to Western civilization, since the West more than any other part of the world has gone off the deep end lately and gotten itself into some major spiritual doo-doo, and that well earned. If something is contrary to the will of God but has been earned, God will permit it. He doesn’t will it, he permits it. This distinction is important.
For instance, God doesn’t will mass immigration into Western nations, but he does permit it as an earned negative reward. Not to permit it would be contrary to his justice. And so, taking their cue from their satanic overlords and with the encouragement of religious and cultural organizations of every stripe and creed, Western governments have rolled out the red carpet for “whosoever will”, regardless of merit. Formerly rigorous processes that lasted years have been thrown out in favor of instant permanent residency and full generous financial support upon arrival, with very few applicants being turned away. Of course, people are taking advantage of the largesse (who wouldn’t?), counting on overwhelmed and backlogged immigration systems to give them at least three to four years of relative luxury (compared to what they’re used to back home) before their case is reviewed and decided. And even when cases are rejected, the appeals process can take years, during which time the good times continue to roll for the applicants, who then become so deeply rooted and established in their adopted country that to uproot them would be (according to their taxpayer-funded lawyer) tantamount to a crime against humanity.
This is the state of mass immigration today in the West through all the various channels (refugee, asylum-seeker, international student, foreign worker, etc.), and if for all intents and purposes it appears to be a taxpayer-funded invasion, that’s because it is a taxpayer-funded invasion. And with God’s permission. Not God’s will, but his permission. The invasion of incompatible people into the West who hate the West and only want to take advantage of the West has been earned spiritually by the West (see Deuteronomy 28) and therefore will not only continue but worsen as the spiritual health of the West continues its precipitous decline.
All this madness has been lumped together by Western governments and religious leaders under the soft-sell heading of “immigration” and is being promoted as a “core Western value”, even as it all but destroys the host countries it afflicts. The Lord moves in mysterious ways, but the devil is upfront about his devilry for those who have eyes to see. The irony is that being permitted by God as an expression of his justice and being orchestrated by the devil under God’s strict authority, mass immigration must occur. It cannot not occur, not according to God’s justice. There is no way around mass immigration into the West, not with the current spiritual state of the West and its future projected trend.
The irony is also that to be against mass immigration as it’s playing out today in the West is to be against God’s justice. Does that mean we, as born-again believers, should promote and support mass immigration? As Paul would say: “God forbid!” Just because God permits something as a negative reward doesn’t mean we should embrace it or enable it in any way. To embrace or enable a negative reward is to work against God. Our job, as born-again believers, is to let God’s justice play out, not fight against it. We’re to endure negative rewards, not promote them – we’re to endure them, not hinder them: We’re to endure them, and by enduring them suffer patiently to the extent that we’ve earned them. That is God’s justice, and we’re all subject to God’s justice. No exceptions.
Accordingly, we should never morally, financially, or any other way support charities, including churches, that promote mass immigration. What God wills is not the same as what God permits, and God is permitting mass immigration into the West by incompatible peoples as a negative reward for a spiritual falling away from all that is good and holy. In other words, he’s giving people in the West the fruit of their choices – a nation without God, where people ruled over by demons rule over them. If we support and enable the fruit of sin, we’re supporting and enabling sin. Obviously, as born-again believers, we shouldn’t do that.
And yes, Joseph and Mary fled with Jesus to Egypt, but they were a case of an individual family fleeing imminent slaughter – genuine refugeeism – not mass opportunistic country-shopping. Jacob’s family was also accepted in Egypt under the auspices of both Joseph and the then pharaoh, but again, this was a case of an individual family facing a life-or-death circumstance (famine-induced starvation); it wasn’t mass immigration of aptly named “gimmegrants” country-hopping to find the most generous benefits for them and their extended families. Genuine refugees we should continue to welcome; if God has willed that they come, we need to welcome them. But mass immigration God has not willed.
Mass immigration is a God-sanctioned negative reward that we, as born-again believers, should endure but not support. As a negative reward, mass immigration will affect each of us personally to the extent that we’ve earned it. We need to accept it, not fight against it, as it is God’s justice manifesting in real time. We must never fight against God’s justice no matter how much of an injustice it superficially appears to be. We need to be spiritually aware of why things are the way they are so that we aren’t unknowingly drawn into rebelling against God’s justice and therefore rebelling against God.
Have the wisdom and patience of saints, not the knee-jerk elbows-up response of the world.
SOCIAL MEDIA, GOSSIP, AND BEARING FALSE WITNESS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 11, 2025 – The Ten Commandments are non-negotiable, which we, as born-again believers, well know. Every Commandment needs to be kept to the best of our ability, no excuses and no exceptions. The Commandments that garner the most attention (e.g., the ones about not killing and not committing adultery) tend to overshadow the less oft-cited Commandments and push them farther away from our spiritual awareness. But all the Commandments need to be kept, not just the “sexy” ones.
One of those less oft-cited Commandments is the one about not bearing false witness against your neighbor. In fact, it’s so overshadowed at times by the other Commandments that it’s even been misconstrued on occasion as “Thou shalt not lie”, which is not what the Commandment states. The Commandment is not about not lying: It’s about not bearing false witness, which, though it can share some characteristics with lying, is in a separate category by itself or it wouldn’t be a Commandment.
Bearing false witness against your neighbor can manifest in two different ways: 1) purposely twisting or omitting facts to cast guilt on an innocent person, either in a court of law or in the court of public opinion; or 2) openly speculating, again either in a court of law or in the court of public opinion, about the probable or possible guilt of someone, based solely on your opinion of the presented or presumed facts.
This article concerns the second violation of the Commandment, specifically, open speculation in the court of public opinion.
We all speculate. It’s not wrong to speculate. When we hear of a crime or a potential crime, we speculate as a way to make sense of the mystery that we’ve been presented with and don’t yet have a solution for, not being privy to all the facts of the case. Speculation in and of itself is not wrong. God gave us a mind and intends for us to use it. But speculation that involves the possible or probable guilt of someone we only suspect might be guilty should be kept between us and God. The instant we go beyond God and openly share our speculations on someone’s presumed guilt, we enter the realm of bearing false witness against a neighbor. We cross the line and we break the Commandment.
In the interests of full disclosure, I have crossed that line and nearly crossed that line on numerous occasions without realizing it. Case in point: Two children, age four and six, have gone missing from a rural community in Nova Scotia. This happened about a week ago, and speculation on social media has been rife with unsubstantiated claims about what could have happened to the little ones. Having lived for a time not far from where the children disappeared, I was immediately drawn to the case; and being a woman with latent but still intact maternal instincts, I also became emotionally involved with it. For every fact about the disappearance that trickled out through mainstream media, social media responded with a flood of what can only be described as salacious speculation. No-one who had access to the children before their disappearance was spared public pillorying. Given my emotional involvement, it was difficult for me not to get caught up in the rumors and innuendoes, and so I did get caught up in them, until God hauled me up short and showed me what I was setting myself up for.
I did not get involved in the public speculation about what happened to those children (who, at the time of publication, are still missing). When I say I didn’t get involved publicly, I mean I didn’t submit a comment on any of the social media forums or talk about the case with anyone. I kept my speculations to myself, but I was tempted on many an occasion to jump into the online discussions that form the widespread court of public opinion. I was tempted. I was very tempted. And I thank God I didn’t do it.
When we speculate between us and God, God will guide our speculations, if we ask him to guide us and if it’s to our benefit. God decides on both of those criteria. But when we breach the containment of our mind and shift to openly speculating in the court of public opinion, we run the risk of breaking the Commandment about bearing false witness against our neighbor. No, I don’t know the people involved in the case of the missing children in Nova Scotia, but they’re still my neighbors, according to Jesus’ definition. And no, the court of public opinion doesn’t take place in a designated court of law, but it still has the same spiritual impact. Even if you believe your speculations to be accurate and the person or people you’re speculating about to be guilty, you need to keep your speculations between you and God. You’ll be tempted not to, but you need to keep them between you and God. The minute you voice your opinion publicly (even just among friends and family), you cross the line and break the Commandment.
But what if your suspicions end up being correct? What if you’ve uncovered an angle that doesn’t appear to have been considered by law enforcement agents? What if your witness isn’t false? Are you still breaking the Commandment if you share what turns out to be true?
As long as the case being speculated upon is still in the realm of speculation (that is, hasn’t yet been solved beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law), you need to be very careful about what you share and how you share it. You can share your personal revelations without pointing fingers, but that’s a very tricky process that borders on breaking the Commandment. You can do it but be very careful. Unless you are an eyewitness and are 100% certain about what you saw, you are treading a very fine line that may wrongly implicate someone, which will then rebound to you spiritually and cause you enormous suffering.
There are no exceptions when it comes to keeping God’s Ten Commandments. The devil is always laying traps and offering temptations to get us to violate God’s rules, so we need not only to be aware of the Commandments at all times but to understand what each one looks like when it’s walked out in real life. If God hadn’t shown me, I would never have connected spit-balling someone’s possible guilt with violating the Commandment about bearing false witness. I would just have thought of it as discussing possibilities with people who are also discussing possibilities. But all words, whether spoken or written, have an impact on the hearers and readers, swaying them this way or that. You don’t want to be the one swaying someone to a conclusion that falsely accuses another of a crime, because you’ll be held responsible for that false accusation by God, which will have a far worse outcome for you, as a born-again believer, than if you’d committed the discussed crime yourself.
Be very careful of what you say and write. It’s better to keep things between you and God than to climb onboard the gossip train of social media and fall into the devil’s trap of bearing false witness.
HABEMUS PAPAM: POPE PETER THE ROMAN
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 8, 2025 – So, we have our Pope Peter the Roman after all, hidden (as they say) in plain sight.
“Prevost” is an anagram of “Petros V”, and “petros” is the Greek form of “Peter”.
Definition auto-compiled from two websites (one, two):
Petros is a name of Greek origin that means “rock”. It is an alternate form of Peter. The name derives from Latin “petra” (Petrus), from the Ancient Greek “petra” / “Petros”, from the Aramaic word “kephas”, which in turn derives from the Syriac “kefa”, all words meaning “stone, rock”.
“Kephas”, of course, is what Jesus surnamed his disciple Simon, the one we know as Peter and allegedly the first pope.
Pope Petros, who is of Italian heritage, will now sit in Rome, satisfying the prophecy for “Peter the Roman” in every conceivable way.
In case you’re new to this game, here is the last verse of Malachy’s prophecy, translated into English:
“In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit Peter the Roman, who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations, and when these things are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people. The End.”
So again, there we have it. They done did it. They followed the script to the letter, and now, I guess, we’re doomed.
Pope Petros is 69. I give him 20-25 years at most, which gives the rest of us about 20-25 years before the “S” really Hits The Fan.
Remember – this is a script they’re following. It’s not a prophecy; it’s a script.
Malachy might have intended it as a prophecy, but they’re following it as a script.
As my grandmother would say (if she spoke Latin): Deus adiuvet nos omnes.
THIS IS THE STONE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 7, 2025 – For whatever time we have left here, we’re tasked with doing what’s right in the eyes of the Lord. That’s our job description – “Do God’s Will” – which encompasses all the other non-negotiables, like the Commandments and loving our enemies.
But doing what’s right in the eyes of the Lord is guaranteed going to put us at odds with those who don’t do what’s right, and those who don’t do what’s right are guaranteed going to be in positions of authority over us, pressuring us by various means to abide by their commands, not God’s.
We’re well acquainted with this pressure as born-again believers. It’s our everyday lived reality. What can only be described as Satan’s commandments have been enshrined in constitutions and laws, embedded in educational systems, promoted by all forms of media, and established as societal norms. Standing up for God now means standing against the whole of society, which can be daunting for some (it’s meant to be; it’s a test) but should never be for us. We are like David standing before Goliath armed with nothing but faith and trust and a sling and a few stones. But faith and trust in God won’t work without the sling and stones, any more than the sling and stones will work without faith and trust in God.
Being in the realm of time and space, we must put our belief (faith and trust) into action (sling and stones) or it has no value. It’s all well and good to declare that you have faith and trust in God even as you hang up your sling and mount your stones in a display case, saying “I’ve done what I’ve had to do; now it’s time to enjoy the fruits of my labor”. There will never be a time when we’ll be able to hang up our sling and mothball our stones, not while we’re here on Earth; we can put them down for a breather, yes, after each victory or loss, but we’ll always have to keep them in readiness for the next battle, which will likely come tomorrow or even later today.
For each of us, our sling is different; our stones are different. We fight the same battles using diverse tools, as God gives us the ability and guidance. My sling doesn’t look like yours, my stones don’t look like yours, but our faith and trust in God unfolds like fractals from the same source. There is only one God and therefore only one kind of faith and only one kind of trust because it comes from the same Spirit. Our faith and trust in God may differ in measure and degree, but in every other way they’re the same. They’re what bind us to each other spiritually and identify us as children of God and citizens of God’s Kingdom on Earth.
To the followers of Satan’s commands, our sling and stones are unsettling reminders of what they’ve rejected and what awaits them after death. Their ridicule of us and of what’s right in God’s eyes is a fear response. It’s delivered via arrogance and pride and dismissiveness and threats, but underneath is only fear. Terrified of God’s Judgement, they deny the existence of both God and his Judgement and declare there is nothing to fear but fear itself. They make themselves the law and their will the constitution and their desires the norm, but none of these things come from them: they all come from Satan.
This is the stone I shoot today. May it find its mark in the designated forehead. We are to fear, yes, but God and God only. Satan we’re only to pity.
“Forgive them, Father. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
PICKING FROM A PECK OF PAPAL PETERS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 4, 2025 – Pardon me if I’m not supposed to notice, but aren’t there an awful lot of papabile Peters in the 2025 conclave? I’m sure it doesn’t have anything to do with Malachy’s prophecy of “Peter the Roman” being the 112th (*see note below) and final pope, and it’s likely all just a coincidence. Nothing to see here, folks; move along. But still, I can’t help but notice all the Peters surging to the forefront of the betting odds… and what are the odds of THAT?
I wrote two and a half months ago, when Bergoglio was still warming Peter’s seat (or better said, lukewarming it), that the next pope will likely be a Peter. It could be someone who was christened Peter at birth, or it could be someone who takes the name of Peter after being crowned pope (I say “crowned”, but they don’t actually do that anymore to Caesars, I mean popes, at least not publicly). No pope has yet to take the name of Peter, allegedly out of deference to the original Peter. If someone who wasn’t christened Peter at birth becomes the next pope and takes the name of Peter, well, it might not yet be time to head for the hills, but you could consider sleeping with your running shoes on.
Here, in ranked order, is the latest list of the men most likely to be crowned pope in the 2025 conclave, according to a global betting site. Note that “Peter” can be spelled differently, depending on the language.
- Pier Parolin
- Luis Antonio Tagle
- Mateo Zuppi
- Peter Turkson
- Robert Sarah
- Pierbattista Pizzaballa
- Peter Erdo
Of these top seven contenders, four are Peters. I would wager that this many Peters on the papal short-list has never happened before.
What are we to make of it? Just a “coincidence”? Or is the Peter the Roman prophecy being force-fed into the pope-picking process because the scripted end is upon us?
Me, I’m rolling for Peter Pizzaballa becoming the next Big Cheese, solely because his name makes me hungry for pizza. That, and because Pizzaballa is currently the head honcho (Head Cheese? lol groan) of the Catholics in the very place where scripture tells us Peter actually was the head honcho for a time – Jerusalem. So, if the next pope is an Italian named Peter who already sits in the historically and scripturally designated seat of Peter in Jerusalem, then I’d say all the boxes (pizza boxes?) are checked for Malachy’s “Peter the Roman” prophecy coming to life. And it would be just the icing on the cake (or dare I suggest, extra cheese on the pie?) if all this happened now, at the 2025 conclave, given that humanity has recently been handed its eviction notice due to the allegedly impending polar shift that’s going to wipe most of us out in as little as 4 to 6 years.
The 2025 conclave starts in three days. Let’s see what happens.
In the meantime, for your viewing and listening pleasure, here’s a little ditty serenading pizza at a bakery in Peter Pizzaballa’s hometown of Bergamo, Italy. Enjoy!
ll fornaio pizza Bergamo Italy #shorts – YouTube
(* The next pope will be the112th from the time the prophecy was issued, if you count the Bergoglio papacy as invalid, as numerous priests have done and have been excommunicated for their efforts.)
WHO’S DIRECTING YOUR PLANS?
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, May 2, 2025 – We all have plans. Lots of them. From the time we wake up in the morning until the time we go to sleep at night, we’re making plans: Work plans. Meal plans. Shopping plans. Travel plans. Sometimes we even make plans to make time to make plans.
And yet, with all our planning, who’s directing us? Are we inspired by God’s Spirit or by our own will and impulse? Do we do what we do because we think we should do it (because someone has told us we should do it)? Or do we do what we do because God has advised us, one on one, to do it?
Who exactly is directing our plans?
The day I was born-again, I started reading the Bible. Better said, I started eating and drinking and absorbing God’s Word. I was spiritually ravenous. Like a newborn at the teat, I sucked and slurped and couldn’t get enough. And yet, there were some parts of God’s Word that were hard to swallow at the time. They stuck with me because they seemed to stick out. And every time I would read through the Bible, I would trip over them.
One of those parts is in James’ letter:
“Go to now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:
Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.
For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.
But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.
Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” (James: 4:13-17)
It seemed to me at the time that James was being a stickler. What did it matter if we prefaced our plans with “If the Lord will”? Surely God would support all our efforts to do good in his name and that of his precious son? Surely nothing that we did in his or Jesus’ name would go to waste? Surely everything we did with our heart in the right place would be duly noted and weighed in our favor? Surely it couldn’t be considered “evil” or “sin” if we did what we did with good intentions?
You would think. At least that’s what the world tells us: “His heart was in the right place”, “he had good intentions”, “he meant right”. I mean, wasn’t it James himself who told Jesus to get out there and do things to prove to the world that he was the Messiah (only to be knocked back by Jesus with that very same advice James would later give to us in his letter)? The world’s way of doing things is to do something because it seems like it should be done, or to jump in head-first and worry about the details later. Duty and compulsion. That’s the world’s way.
But is it God’s way?
Scripture very plainly says we’re to be patient and wait for God’s directive and timing. We’re always to be patient and wait for God’s directive and timing. We can’t assume tomorrow, let alone next year: We can’t even assume the rest of today. We always need to be patient and wait for God’s directive and timing.
Years ago, I tried to start a Bible study. I did everything I thought I needed to do to prepare for it, but no-one showed up. Day after day I waited in the appointed meeting room at the appointed time, but no-one showed up. Even the people who’d contacted me to tell me they were coming were no-shows. Eventually I gave up and realized that God didn’t want me to do the Bible study, at least not at that time. It was a very humbling experience for me, but also a profound teaching moment.
If God isn’t in it, it has no value. If God isn’t personally directing your steps, you’re better off standing still and remaining silent. How many of us make wild and empty gestures thinking we’re doing the right thing – “the Christian thing” – but how many of us will instead end up like King Saul, who also thought he was doing the right thing by sparing the choicest livestock for later sacrifice, even though God had specifically told him to kill everyone and everything and take nothing with him?
Make sure your offers of sacrifice are God-directed and not self-directed. There is no such thing as “a Christian thing to do”: There is only what God wills and what he doesn’t will. All our plans, whether directly in service to God or in our more mundane daily rounds, need to be inspired and directed by God. If they’re not, they’re not worth doing, and they might (like Saul) even get us condemned.
James was absolutely right in saying that we need to defer to God in making our plans. He wasn’t being a stickler; he was stating the scripture-based obvious. Some of us just take a little longer than others to get it.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 