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BEAUTIFUL THING
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 16, 2023 – To love God is to serve him, is to have faith in him and to worship him, and all these things have the same wellspring, which is full submission to God. Loving God, serving him, having faith in him, and worshiping him are all expressions of submission. You cannot love God without submitting to him, any more than you can serve him or have faith in him or worship him without submitting to him.
Without full submission to God – as Jesus showed us and taught us – you cannot know God.
But what does it mean to submit to God?
Your one and only possession on Earth is your will. God gave it to you freely and intended for you to use it freely, which is why it’s called free will. Your free will is what enables you to make decisions, to choose, to accept or to reject. Your free will is centered in your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
When you submit to God, you choose God, which is to say you choose his Way and his choices, like Jesus did. The first Commandment, which Jesus taught us is the greatest of all Commandments, is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. In other words, the first Commandment is to submit to God everything we are and everything we can call our own. Our free will is all we can really call our own, and it gains expression through our choices that are driven by our heart, soul, mind, and strength. So when we submit to God, we give back to him our sole prized possession – our free will. We give it back to him as he gave it to us – freely, and with no strings attached.
It’s a beautiful thing to submit to God, to freely and lovingly give back to him what he so freely and lovingly gave to us. This is submission to God. When you do it, when you free-willingly submit to God, your will and God’s become one. God can then work through you for your good and for the good of all those around you.
Like I said, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s a beautiful thing to give to God the one thing that’s truly yours, and to say to him “Please take it”, and “Thank you”.
When you do that, when you give to God the one and only thing you truly own, you become like Abraham and like Moses and like Joshua and like Caleb, and like Samuel and like David and like John the Baptist, and like Jesus. You become like all those who, since the sacrifice of Jesus, have submitted to God in Jesus’ name.
In free-willingly giving your free will back to God – in free-willingly and fully submitting to God – you join the powerful and growing cloud of witnesses that Paul spoke of. You become part of God’s family and are afforded all the privileges of being in God’s family, as his child.
Other than to be God himself, there is no greater position on Earth or in Heaven than to be a child of God.
It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.
HOW TO GET HAPPY
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, May 14, 2023 – We own nothing but our free will.
Our body isn’t ours. Our soul isn’t ours. None of our material belongings are ours.
Everything belongs to God EXCEPT our free will. He’s made our will entirely ours.
It’s our one and only possession.
When the truth of that statement sinks in, when you understand that the device that you’re reading this blog on doesn’t belong to you (even if you bought it), life is simplified. Whether you have this or that thing doesn’t really matter because even if you do have this or that thing in your possession, it doesn’t belong to you. It’s on loan from God.
God owns all of creation. He made it, he owns it, and he decides who gets to use it. That seat your sitting on? God’s. That bed you slept in last night? God’s. The food you ate yesterday? God’s. All God’s. God owns everything and everyone, except for their free will.
I’m grateful to God for what he lends to me for my use during my time on Earth. It’s important that we be grateful for what God gives us rather than to complain about what we don’t have or to whine for something better. I used to complain and whine. It was almost my default. I’d look around me and be dissatisfied because I would look through the eyes of dissatisfaction rather than through the eyes of gratitude. God can’t work through dissatisfaction. God can’t work through complaints and whining. He works through gratitude. I had to learn that the hard way, but it was a lesson well worth learning, and I thank God for that.
So now I’m grateful by default. That’s how I get happy. No matter what my circumstances, I thank God. That simple gesture of thanking God brings me such profound joy that I can’t stop thanking God – I thank him for my circumstances, whether good or bad, and when he floods me with joy for my gratitude, I thank him for the joy, which then further increases my joy. The more grateful we are, the more God’s Spirit flows through us, and the more joy we feel.
Our feeling of joy is the presence of God’s Spirit.
So take a moment to look around you right now. Look at what you have and look at what other people have and realize that everything, whether yours or theirs, belongs to God. Why waste your time and energy trying to accumulate more of what ultimately belongs to God? Better to be grateful for what God’s blessed you with and be satisfied with that.
Better to spend your time and energy storing up treasures in Heaven. Because even though our one and only possession here on Earth is our free will, in Heaven we’ll have as many treasures as we want, and for all eternity.
Better to work toward that.
WHAT RIGHT DO YOU HAVE?
NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario, October 17, 2022 – Most people in the Western world love to babble on about their rights. In the Eastern world, people are more cautious about what they consider is owed them merely by virtue of existing, yet even they are still inclined to believe in that hazy little thing called “human rights”.
But we in God’s Kingdom know that humans have no rights beyond the one guaranteed to us by God – the right to choose, which is based on our God-given free will. Every other right comes from some level of governing authority and so is worldly (that is, administered by the devil and his representatives) and can be cancelled at any time.
What most people call or consider “inalienable rights” are actually privileges granted them under certain circumstances. For instance, the American Constitution would be worth next to nothing if there were a Chinese or Russian take-over of the United States. That’s because the American Constitution is only valid while Americans are under the authority of their own government. If that government is taken over by a foreign entity, the Constitution becomes obsolete, regardless of the “inalienability” of the rights contained within it.
It should spin your head around like Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist knowing that what we call “rights” are actually privileges granted us by the devil. In Canada, it’s not so much a head-scratcher that our state-sanctioned rights are sourced in evil, considering they involve, for instance, the right to abortion, the right to euthanasia, a man’s right to be called a woman and a woman’s right to be called a man, freedom FROM religion, etc. God’s fingerprints are definitely not on those so-called rights. Even the rights to freedom of speech and a free press, if you dig a little deeper, are clearly not sourced in God, as they give a Satanist the same right to a pulpit as a born-again believer.
Most countries list, in the form of a Constitution, the rights they extend to their citizens. Yet God has limited his list to just 10, and nearly all of them are warnings not to do something rather than license just to do it. Isn’t it interesting that there is no list of human rights coming from God, who loves us more than anyone else can possibly love us and who wants only the best for us? Isn’t it interesting that God considered it more important and more to our benefit to curtail our license rather than to expand it? Isn’t it interesting that God deemed we would be better off with a list stating what NOT to do rather than a list of what to do?
The social contract took a beating over the past few years. Loosely stated, the contract is an informal agreement whereby we, as individuals living within a society, agree to abide by certain laws and social constraints in return for protection from and access to that society. I’ve written here and here and here and here (and elsewhere) about how that contract was all but nullified not only by mandates, but by the vicious zealousness of individuals who took it on themselves to police them. For me, as someone who could not wear a mask and would not get injected, everyday life became a dystopia of socially imposed “thou shalt nots” barring me even from public transit and grocery stores. Unable to get around or to shop in person for my daily needs, and suffering increasingly violent and bizarre attacks for the social sin of baring my face in public, I withdrew to the country and lived in isolation for a year, relying on deliveries until the mandates were dropped.
I read yesterday that the mandates may be coming back to Ontario, where I’m currently holed up, so I’m already making plans to move on. Even the threat of having to relive the social conditions of the past few years is enough to make me want to flee to Egypt under cover of night with just the clothes on my back.
Beyond our right to choose, we have no God-given rights. We have rights granted to us by various levels of government and supra-government organizations like the United Nations, but our God-given right is limited to our inviolable right to exercise our free will, which no-one on Earth can take away from us. If God thought that giving us free will was sufficient as our one and only inviolable right, we also should consider it sufficient.
As for laws and mandates that infringe on our freedom of movement, freedom of expression, etc., there are always ways around those. Sometimes they can be sidestepped and generally ignored, while other times the only way around them is to leave the jurisdiction where they are imposed. But you never have to give into them and you should never fight them, no matter how egregious they may be. If they have been imposed, God has has given them the nod, so if you fight against them, you’re fighting against God. Don’t do that.
At the same time, you never have to do something that you don’t agree with and that you believe violates your right to choose in accordance with your conscience. Yes, there may be worldly consequences for choosing against the prevailing laws and norms, but I’d rather accept those consequences and let God help me deal with them (which he will gladly do) than to violate my conscience before God or break his Commandments.
There is never an excuse for doing something you know is wrong and every reason to do what you know is right. Your free will – your one and only God-given right – is inviolable. You absolutely (in the truest sense of the word) can do what you like. But in so doing, choose wisely, as you’re answerable to God, not to the devil and his representatives on Earth, not to your family and friends, not to your enemies, and not to anyone else.
You are answerable only to God.
YOUR GOD-GIVEN RIGHT TO SAY NO
I hear a lot of people these days claiming that they didn’t have a choice. They did what they did because they “didn’t have a choice”. They did it to keep their job or to travel or because everyday life would be too difficult if they didn’t do it. The fact that they always had the option to make the opposite choice never seems to occur to them. It’s as if they’ve lost their understanding that they have God-given free will, and that their free will is inviolable.
No-one can force you to do something against your free will, and no-one can take your free will away from you during your time on Earth, not even God himself. In fact, your free will is you: it bears the record of everything you’ve done while you’re here, and in large part determines the course of your life now and your eternal reward later.
Your free will is you, and there is never a circumstance during your time on Earth when you can’t exercise it. So if you say “I didn’t have a choice”, what you really mean is that you used your free will to choose something you didn’t fully agree with. But you did have a choice. While you’re here on Earth, you’ll always have a choice.
When I was an atheist, I made a lot of bad choices. I then lived the consequences of those choices, so I had a pretty crappy life. Like many people today, I also claimed “I didn’t have a choice” as a justification for choosing what I knew in my gut was wrong, but which I thought was the best way forward at the time.
For those of you thinking that you don’t have a choice, I’m here to remind you that you do. If you feel you don’t have a choice, it’s either because someone’s lied to you by telling you don’t, or because you’re thinking short-term.
You always have a choice. Your free will is God-given, inviolable, and quality-controlled at the gut level.
Use it wisely.
THE GOD-GIVEN INVIOLABLE RIGHT TO CHOOSE THE WRONG
There’s a general expectation of Christians that they should do everything they can to help people. Much of this expectation comes from Christians themselves and takes the form of charity work, volunteerism, and counseling.
But is this scriptural?
God didn’t stop Adam and Eve from falling prey to the serpent in the garden. He warned them not to eat from the tree of good and evil, and promised them that if they did, they would die, but otherwise he let them be. He respected their free-will right to choose, even if they chose self-condemnation.
Jesus also didn’t interfere with people’s free will choices. Most famously, he permitted Judas Iscariot to make the choice to betray him, a choice that would end in Judas’s eternal damnation. Jesus didn’t try to stop him; he let Judas make his own choice and suffer the consequences of it.
Unfortunately, many Christians don’t follow Biblical precedent when it comes to respecting other people’s free will. Instead, they try to force people to choose what they want them to choose. I am as guilty of this as anyone else, wanting people to choose God because I know from personal experience the rewards that come from choosing God. But even God doesn’t force people to choose him. He gives us free will, tells us right and wrong – even writes it on our hearts – lets us know the rewards for choosing right or wrong, and then lets us be. He lets us make our own choices, even if those choices lead to our death.
We need to back away from forcing people to do what we believe is in their best interest. We need to respect EVERYONE’S God-given right to free will choice, no matter how difficult it may be. Wanting to protect people from themselves is not a godly impulse, even though it’s been dressed up as such. It’s not virtuous; it’s controlling, and bordering on tyrannical.
Parents, obviously, need to guide their children until the children are old enough to know right from wrong and make their own choices. The parents can then continue to remind the children of the rewards of right and wrong choices, but at some point, even parents have to back away and let their children mess up, if that’s what they choose.
This is not an easy lesson. If God didn’t stop Adam and Eve from choosing death, and Jesus didn’t stop Judas Iscariot from the same, then who are we to force our opinions on those who not only don’t share them, but also don’t want to hear about them?
Our individual free will is the only thing we own free and clear. Everything else is on loan from God. Each of us will stand alone before God on Judgement Day and will have to account for what we did with our free will (in much the same way as the people in the parable who were given talents had to account for how many more they made from the original one), and that account will form the basis of our judgement. We dare not interfere with other people’s free will, any more than they dare interfere with ours. If God doesn’t interfere with people’s free will and Jesus doesn’t either, then neither should we. Our concern, each of us, should be for our own free will only. Let others, of their own volition, choose Heaven or the lake of fire; warn them, remind them, but don’t force their hand, even if you believe you’re “saving” them from themselves.
As God has told us many times in scripture, starting with Adam and Eve:
“I set before you life and death: Choose life.”
SYNAGOGUE OF SATAN 2.0
Back when Jesus was doing his ministry work nearly 2000 years ago, there were many of his people who knew how corrupt the religious powers-that-be were. They were not stupid, these people. They were, however, unprincipled, in the sense that they would go along with the ptb’s edicts in order to get what the ptb were offering them. Or better said, they went along with the edicts in order to avoid what the ptb could do to them if they didn’t go along with them.
In other words, they went along to get along.
Scripture mentions these people as being afraid to openly acknowledge or follow Jesus because they knew if they did, they’d be kicked out of the synagogue. Being kicked out of the synagogue was essentially being kicked out of society. You became a social outcast, and you could no longer work or shop or even openly show your face.
(Sound familiar?)
Not much has changed in the nearly 2000 years since Jesus walked the earth. Today, many people who can see through the obvious lies being blasted at them by politicians, “experts” and the media, have chosen to suspend their disbelief in the same way that people who secretly knew Jesus was speaking God’s Truth chose instead to remain in the synagogue, to remain in good standing with the ptb, and so to be able to continue to access all facets of society.
I was appalled at how many alleged Christians have chosen this course, this unprincipled course of knowing something is suspect but going along with it anyway because going along with it is easier than questioning or defying it. I talked to God about this, and he showed me something that I hadn’t considered: that most people are cowards. I don’t say that in a mean-spirited way, but as a Truth from God. They’re cowards in the sense that they’re constantly afraid. They don’t know God (although many of them call themselves Christians), and not knowing God, they don’t have access to his strength. They’re relying on their own strength, which is poor at best, and so feel they have to lean on each other and on society in general if they’re to get through whatever hardship they’re encountering. Otherwise, they’re too afraid to go on.
Like lies, fear that makes you do something that you know is wrong comes from the devil. God can also strike fear in your heart, but the fear that God strikes in you is holy fear of not doing what’s right. It’s the exact opposite of the unholy pall of fear that now hangs over the world and that has its source in evil.
Just as the people in Jesus’ day were being sifted to see whether they wanted what God was offering or what the world was offering (that is, whether the fear in them was a fear of God or a fear of the devil, and whether that fear made them worship God or the devil), the same sifting is going on now. The obvious lies, half-truths and contradictions constantly being spun and presented as “science” are so blatantly suspect that no-one in their right mind can actually believe them. Even so, the majority has agreed to believe, if in exchange for their consent they can continue to remain in the synagogue.
Jesus was an outsider, even though he was the son of God and the Messiah. The ptb and society treated him as an outsider, and then they hounded him as an outcast and criminal, and then they killed him. Most of his early followers suffered the same treatment.
God has given us all free will, so we all have the ability to choose. We may not like the consequences that some choices bring, but that doesn’t negate the fact that we have free will. We have the option of being like the cowards who choose to remain in the synagogue of Satan (that is, to choose lies), or we have the option to follow Jesus (that is, to choose Truth).
What you choose to do with your free will is up to you, but I would heartily recommend choosing Truth. For me, there is no other option.
HOPE AND CHANGE, GOD-STYLE
God changes his mind. He never changes, mind you (he’s the same yesterday, today, tomorrow and forever), but he does change his mind. There are numerous instances in the Bible when he was about to render his judgement and then, through a last minute appeal, stayed his hand.
HEAVEN OR HELL
Our goal is to make it to Heaven, and our way to get there is to become as much like Jesus as possible. Jesus was fully human but also fully filled with God’s spirit. Jesus was not God, but God worked powerfully through him. This was possible because Jesus freely and willingly gave his free will over to God in everything he did. Everything. Not just some things – everything. That’s what we need to do to be like Jesus, and that’s what we must do to make it to Heaven.
In contrast, the “man of perdition” that Paul mentioned, who is the same one that Daniel described and that John wrote about in Revelation, will do the opposite of what Jesus did. That’s because instead of being filled with God’s spirit, he’ll be filled with Satan’s. In other words, a human will provide the body for the disembodied “Father of Lies” himself.
I was an atheist for the first 36 years of my life. During that time, various demon spirits moved in and out of me, most of them evil. I didn’t consciously invite them in; they just showed up as a consequence of my misguided thoughts and actions. I drew them to me, but unconsciously. Now, as a born-again follower of Jesus, evil spirits are still around me, but there’s no longer any room for them in me because God’s spirit has taken up residence. No human can have both God’s spirit and evil spirits at the same time. It’s either one or the other.
As Paul pointed out, everyone who doesn’t acknowledge that Jesus is Lord is antichrist (literally, “opposed to Jesus the Christ”), which means that most of the world’s population is antichrist. The man of perdition is also antichrist, but he’s not just your regular run-of-the-mill antichrist. He’s so antichrist that he’s considered The Antichrist. This is a man who has consciously chosen to host Satan’s spirit and to consciously work in opposition to Jesus (and therefore to God), so we’re talking one messed-up dude here. You don’t become The Antichrist by mistake: you become The Antichrist on purpose.
I mention this because the spiritual landscape is swiftly changing. The people of the world are being repositioned and softened up to accept a “global” leader who will be the man of perdition. God warned us about him through Jesus, Paul, Daniel, John and others, so he’s definitely coming. As born-agains, we’ll know him when we see him, and our job at that time will be to warn others about him, and to keep showing people the only way home to God.
Here’s what we should expect of The Antichrist. He’ll be very rich and well-positioned politically and religiously. He’ll perform “miracles” and will know everything about everyone. He’ll also be extremely handsome and charismatic; most of the world will be spell-bound by him and will without hesitation die or kill for him. His hold over people will be supernatural and powerful, and no-one will be able to escape his lure unless they’re born-again. Yet, sadly, even some born-agains will fall for him.
I’ve been under the thrall of demons, so I know how powerful their hold can be. I would still be under their control were it not for God rescuing me, but only after I cried out to him. God has given us all free will and he’ll never ask for it back. He respects our right to choose and won’t force his will on us, even if it means we choose our way to Hell. But the instant we break and cry out for help, God is there.
In contrast to what the world considers to be freedom (i.e., doing whatever you want to, whenever you want to do it), true freedom is putting your free will 100% into God’s hands and asking for his help and guidance in everything you do. As born-agains, we know this is true, because we live that reality every day. We know what it is to live without God’s help, and we know what it is to live with it, and there’s no comparison between the two. I’d rather live just one more day with my will completely in God’s hands than to live forever without his help.
The Antichrist has chosen the latter path, and that’s a horrible place to be. Even the pleasures of near-absolute power will in no way make up for what happens after that cold heart stops beating, and stop beating it will. Scripture tells us that The Antichrist’s days are numbered, and that Hell is his final reward.
Hell is the final reward of all antichrists.
We need to be reminded of that every so often.
__________
Heaven is our goal. Following Jesus as a born-again is the only way to get there. The Antichrist will try to persuade us otherwise, either through temptation or brute force. He knows all of our weaknesses, and he’ll try to exploit them. He’ll try to convince us that God’s Way is not only narrow but narrow-minded. He’ll brand us bigots. He’ll outlaw God’s Word. He’ll torture and kill those who won’t comply with his dictates. He’ll even torture and kill our family and friends. He’ll promote alternative belief systems that have elements of God’s Way but ultimately are antichrist.
Don’t fall for his lies. Don’t be deceived. Don’t be afraid.
Stay your course and endure to the end, no matter what that entails.
Jesus is Lord and God is our Father. We don’t bow down to anyone else.
Remember that when your time comes.
HEAVEN SEVEN
As born-agains, the spiritual tools we value the most, use the most, and need the most have no place in Heaven.
Imagine that!
The Ten Commandments are obsolete.
The directives God gave us through Jesus don’t apply.
We don’t have to pray.
And there aren’t even any Bibles (King James or otherwise).
Imagine that!
Faith, hope and charity have value only in this life.
We don’t need faith in Heaven because, as Paul told us, we’ll see and know God fully as he is.
We won’t need hope, either, because we’ll have everything we want and there won’t be any adversities to overcome.
And we won’t need charity, the self-less love that’s expressed by obedience to God’s will. There won’t be any need for charity in Heaven because we’ll all have the mind of God, so we’ll all be doing God’s will automatically.
As for praying, we won’t need to do that any more because we won’t have to talk to God and Jesus in faith, trusting they hear us; we’ll be able to talk to them face-to-face.
So you see, there’s no ‘faith, hope and charity’ or praying in Heaven because there’s no need for them.
And there’s no free will, either (to which I say: THANK GOD FOR THAT!).
I’m glad God gave me free will, but I’ll be even gladder to kiss that double-edged mother good-bye.
It’s caused me a lot of problems.
Bye-bye, free will!
Bye-bye, Bible!
Bye-bye, faith hope and charity!
Bye-bye, loving your enemies!
Bye-bye to everything but God’s will and God’s goodness, because that’s all we’ll need when we arrive in Heaven. God will provide us with everything else, just like he provides for us on Earth.
And the last thing we’ll say good-bye to is good-bye itself, because there are never any partings in Heaven. Everything and everyone are there to stay.
HEAVEN TWO
We know that God’s justice is perfect, so we know that our situation in life is what we’ve earned from our choices. The same principle that governs the spiritual realm also governs the physical realm.
You only get back what you put out.
You only get what you’ve earned.
A man with some degree of wisdom once said: We live in the best of all possible worlds.
That’s another way of saying God’s justice is perfect.
If we live in the best of all possible worlds because God’s justice is perfect, then the world as we experience it is what we’ve earned.
Collectively, we’ve earned the wars, the famines, the pestilences, the rapes, the murders, the wealth, the poverty, and everything else that happens on Earth.
Individually, we’ve earned the debts, the jobs, the relationship hassles, the gifts, the tears, the losses, and even the illnesses.
If you believe that God’s justice is perfect, then you have to accept what is written above.
Many people have difficulty accepting that things are the way they are because of God’s perfect justice. They would rather blame others (including God) for their problems than to point a finger at themselves. This deflection of blame is the number one reason keeping people from turning back to God.
Adam blamed Eve, Eve blamed the serpent, and yet both Adam and Eve were guilty by reason of their own free will choice.
God didn’t banish them from Paradise; they banished themselves.
What choices have you made that brought you to where you are now? What personal outcomes have you blamed on other people or on political systems or corporations?
Who or what are you blaming now?
God’s justice is perfect. We can only get back what we put out.
You can stop the pain, if you want to, by stopping the blame. You can stand before God and say: I’m only getting what I deserve, both good and bad.
And while you’re standing there, you can also thank God for always making the best of every situation. God loves us all the same, so he always mitigates our punishments, just as he always boosts our rewards.
That’s the God we serve. That’s our Dad. That’s his perfect justice.
We live in the best of all possible worlds.
We only get back what we put out.
If you want a good life, make good choices.
Amen.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 