A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER

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EVERYTHING

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 10, 2025 – Every problem in the world today could be solved by turning back to God and following Jesus.

There isn’t one problem that can’t be solved this way.

In turning back to God and following Jesus, you’d realize that what you thought were your problems are actually not your problems, and you’d let them go. The rest of whatever issues are plaguing you, you’d deal with through God’s guidance, in his way and in his time, following the example of Jesus.

Every problem can be solved by turning back to God and following Jesus.

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It could have been so simple. God means for it to be simple for us. He means for it to be so simple that even a child can understand.

It could have been so simple if we’d just turned back to him, like he invited us to do, all those years ago. It would have been so simple if we’d just turned back to him like he invited us to do, and then like he urged us to do, and then like he warned us to do.

And now, here we are, well past the warning phase. It’s become a Command now, to turn back to God; it’s do or die.

And it could have been so easy.

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I see this countless times, in deals that are offered to me or to someone else. You never get a better deal than the one that’s first offered you, because the one that’s first offered is made from a position of wanting. The people making the offer want you to want what they’re offering. And so they buff it and shine it up and lay it down tenderly at your feet, thinking of you as much as themselves, of what you want as much as what they want. They lavish their love on you and offer their best. The first offer is always the best, from a spiritual standpoint.

But if you decline that first offer, it’s all downhill from there. It might seem to you that you’ll get a better deal if you haggle, if you hold out until you’ve worn them down a bit, and then a bit more. But the deal doesn’t get better. It might seem to you that it gets better, but it doesn’t. The terms may seemingly shift in your favor, but the deal starts to rot from the inside. It changes into something that’s not quite as good, that rankles and sours and turns bitter whatever initial love and goodwill there could have been between you and the one making the offer. There is a palpable cooling of affections. One way or another, you lose if you don’t take that first offer, because the first one is always the best.

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I hadn’t realized that in loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, as Jesus taught us was the first and greatest Commandment – I had not realized that to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength means to love him like that, too. Every love song ever written we’re to sing to God, and to God only. We’re to give him everything that he’s given us to give.

Everything, like Jesus did.

HERE AND GONE: THE RAPTURE ABDUCTION

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 8, 2025 – The powers-that-be have a plan. When their time comes (that is, when Satan’s time comes), they’re going to get rid of us, with God’s permission. To back their plan, they’ve twisted scripture until it states that the golden age of Jesus’ Kingdom will come only after true believers have been raptured and everyone else has gone through a tribulation. First comes the rapture, then comes the tribulation, and then comes Jesus’ 1000-year Kingdom, along with the return to Earth of all the previously raptured saints.

Sounds great, right? Really something to look forward to!

The only problem is that it’s junk theology. Scripture doesn’t back it up (except the part about God permitting us to be killed). In the “millennial reign” mentioned in the book of Revelation, the martyred believers reign with Jesus for “a thousand years” (i.e., a very long but indeterminate time stipulated by God). These saints died and went to Heaven, where their bodies have been glorified. Glorified bodies aren’t suited for long-term visitations on Earth, which is why angels don’t appear in their glorified form very often or for more than a few minutes at a time. Instead, most angels appear in an earthly-heavenly hybrid body, like Jesus during his 40 days of post-resurrection appearances. But hybrid bodies aren’t built for long-term earthly use either, so how are Jesus and his saints going to reign on Earth in physical form for a thousand years?

I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating because the PTB have been going into overdrive lately beating their rapture drum (see the video here or below for an example). They’re hammering the rapture into people – even unbelievers – by simplifying and codifying its occurrence, so that when the mass abductions take place, most people will default to “rapture” and accept the disappearances without question or be threatened into silence.

I have zero doubt that there’ll be mass abductions. How else are they going to get rid of us when their time comes? Still, the truth of the matter is that Jesus has been reigning on Earth for almost 2000 years already. Jesus is King here and now, and his glorified saints rule with him in his spiritual Kingdom, while we, his Earth-bound saints, are its cherished and protected citizens. This is the prophesied Zion written about in the OT, taught by Jesus in the NT, and presented as the millennial reign in the book of Revelation. There will be no other Kingdom on Earth and no other Zion, golden or otherwise. This is it.

There will also be no rapture as framed by the PTB, though there will be individual ascensions, like Jesus mentions (“one shall be taken, and the other left”) and as exemplified by Jesus, Elijah, and Enoch. So no, there won’t be a mass rapture before the tribulation, but there will be mass abductions of born-again believers. That is the PTB’s diabolical plan.

But I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it, because if I’m still here when it all goes down (or allegedly up), I probably won’t be around to tell you “I told you so”, because I’ll be gone.

And so will you.

“SMASH THEM DOWN!”

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 5, 2025 – At the very center of St. Peter’s Square, in the corner of Vatican City that interfaces with the world, stands a 4,500-year-old obelisk. The pillar was stolen from Heliopolis, an ancient Egyptian city whose principal deity was the sun god Ra, the “king of the gods”. But as we well know, all “gods” are demons. So why has a demon idol been erected in the front yard of the home of the alleged vicar of Christ?

Good question.

And this isn’t the only demon pillar in Rome under the auspice of the Vatican. There are 13 in total scattered throughout the city, all designated as Catholic “pilgrimage sites”.

God, in scripture, commanded his people to smash down and destroy every demon pillar they came across in the promised land. Roman Catholics are either exempt from this command or not God’s people. It was the Roman caesars who first relocated these idols from Egypt to Rome at great cost and effort, but it’s been the papacy that’s maintained them over the centuries. Interestingly, all worldly centers of power, such as Washington, London, and Paris, have their own prominently displayed obelisks, which they either pillaged from Egypt or built as replicas. When Jesus said that the world is under Satan, he wasn’t kidding. The demon pillars are proof.

But the obelisk in St. Peter’s Square is particularly perturbing. Surely at least one person at the Vatican has access to a Bible and has read the Old Testament? Because the very first time I read the OT as a born-again believer I came across the verses about the pillars and immediately thought of the obelisk at the Vatican. I thought: How can this be?

I’ve since come to understand that the Vatican, and in fact Roman Catholicism in its entirety, is an homage to Satan, full of ostentatious wealth and pomp and idols and rituals that have nothing to do with Jesus, let alone God. This abomination of a religion is only permitted to exist because God has put the world under the authority of Satan, including this branch of the worldly church, and so the papacy is not actually under God’s protection but under Satan’s. It will remain under his protection until it no longer serves the devil’s purpose.

I say without reservation that there are profoundly unholy people occupying the highest offices of the Vatican. How can these be God’s people? They serve Satan and do so openly, as anyone with eyes to see can see. It’s worth noting that Vatican City was built on the site of Nero’s Circus, where countless Christians in the early Church were murdered for sport and entertainment. The same demon pillar that held a position of prominence at Nero’s Circus holds a position of prominence on the Square. The blood of the martyrs is mixed into the very soil of the place. Peter and Paul were also murdered there. I would not be surprised if martyring of genuine Christians continues at the Vatican to this day.

I despise the papacy and everything it stands for, even as I acknowledge why it exists. Still, having been born Roman Catholic, I pray to God to be excommunicated from that abomination before he takes me Home.

ON MISINTERPRETED SCRIPTURE

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 4, 2025 – Deuteronomy 28 provides a run-down of the blessings and curses that come from obeying God. This chapter was directed at the children of Israel, to guide them as they settled the promised land; by extension, the blessings and curses are also meant to guide us born-again believers as we settle the spiritual promised land of God’s Kingdom on Earth.

In two seminal Gospel passages, Jesus took those blessings and curses and applied them directly to us. Unfortunately, these passages are also among the most misinterpreted in all of scripture.

The first passage describes Jesus using a little child as a metaphor to explain how to live in the Kingdom. He calls the child to him and then sets him up and apart “in the midst” of the crowd while giving his teaching. The child is the focus of the lesson. Jesus explains that after being converted, his followers are to “humble” themselves like a child, to be thoroughly obedient and compliant to their heavenly Father as a child is to his earthly father. Jesus then warns what will happen to anyone who harms these little children, saying that it would be better for the offenders if they hadn’t been born at all.

The common interpretation of this passage is that Jesus was referring to all children (i.e., humans under a certain age), and that we’re to treat all children with a certain deference, as they hold a special place in God’s Kingdom, but this was not Jesus’ intention. Jesus used the child as a metaphor for God’s children (i.e., born-again believers), and the lesson is meant as a guidance for God’s children as well as a warning to anyone who purposely harms them. That Jesus was using the little child as a metaphor rather than as a direct reference is clear when he states “except ye be converted and become as little children”. He is describing here adults being converted and then humbling themselves like a child in relation to God. He was not teaching how to deal with young humans in general.

The second passage has been similarly misinterpreted and misapplied. In it, Jesus refers to God’s children as his “brethren” and describes the blessings that come from helping them and the curses that result from refusing to help them. This is the parable of the sheep and goats: the sheep are rewarded with Paradise, while the goats end up in “everlasting fire”. And who are Jesus’ brethren? Those who do God’s will, as Jesus explained in another passage.

Unfortunately, the “brethren” part has been overlooked in most interpretations of these verses, making “those in need” apply to everyone in need, especially the poor. This was not Jesus’ intention. Jesus mentions elsewhere that we can help the poor whenever we want, as there’ll never be a shortage of them, but we won’t always have him to help. In saying this, he prioritizes helping him (and by extension helping his brethren) over helping everyone else.

Enormous blessings flow to those who are obedient to God and help his children, while horrendous curses result from disobeying God and refusing to help his children (or purposely offending them). Deuteronomy 28 and the “little child” and “sheep and goats” passages make this crystal clear.

ON OLD ACQUAINTANCES, SOFT HEARTS, AND GRUDGES

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 1, 2025 – The older we grow, the softer our hearts should grow. That doesn’t mean we turn into a pushover or a soft touch. No, because even as our hearts grow softer, our resolve to do God’s will grows stronger. The two – soft heart and firm resolve – are intertwined and interdependent. This doesn’t make for a pushover, having a soft heart and a firm resolve; this makes for a person firmly rooted in God but holding no grudges.

It’s critically important that you live your life firmly rooted in God and grudge-free because grudges will keep you out of Heaven and distance you from God. If you’re distanced from God, he’s not hearing your prayers, you’re not hearing from him, and the only way you can proceed along that dreary path is downward. You don’t want to go downward; you want to go upward. Upward is the only way to stay in God’s heart and the only way Home.

I ran into someone yesterday I hadn’t seen in years. We have some history between us, though not personally. It’s more an arms-length, third-party history, affecting people we know mutually. But that history is decades old. Still, and not having seen me for years, this person studiously stonewalled me, purposely looking the other way as I passed by.

My heart must be softer than I realize, because even as it was happening, I didn’t feel anything but sadness for that person. How can you not pity someone who’s still holding a grudge decades after the fact? Paul says we should be on good terms with everyone as much as possible and Jesus warns us that God won’t hear our prayers if we have a hardened heart.

As we know, everything happens for a reason. More specifically, nothing happens that doesn’t affect our spiritual well-being, whether for good or bad. So I asked God why he brought this person into my life yesterday. Was it to test the hardness of my heart? Was it to test my resolve? What he told me surprised me: He said that he hadn’t brought that person into my life yesterday, he’d brought me into that person’s life. It was for that person’s sake that we had our unexpected meeting after all those years, as that person’s days are numbered.

A grudge is horrendous chronic spiritual pain that burdens the person holding it, not the person it’s held against. My encounter with the grudge-holder yesterday made me grateful to God for teaching me not to hold grudges. You learn at some point in your life to hold grudges, and then you have to unlearn holding them. You have to unlearn holding grudges, and the best way to do that is simply to make the choice to forgive, and stick with it.

A few hours after that encounter, I passed by another old acquaintance I’d had some words with years ago and hadn’t seen for a while. He, too, used to stonewall me, but yesterday he nodded and smiled in response to my nod and smile. That’s all Paul meant when he said we should be on good terms as much as possible with everyone. Just a nod and a smile, keeping the heart soft and grudge-free.

LIVE LIKE JESUS

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 28, 2025 – The lies of the devil are embedded in Christianity and have been since just after the beginning (Jesus warned us about that), but no lie is more perfidious than the one that states that Jesus did everything for us and all we have to do at the Judgement is claim we’re with Jesus and we’ll gain entrance to Heaven.

If we live the life of the world, slacking and going easy on ourselves, Heaven is not where we’ll end up. I know this because Jesus states it plainly in the Gospels. He said the Way is narrow and few find it. He said we need to pick up our cross daily and carry it. He said that our every word, deed, and thought will be thoroughly examined at the Judgement, and that we’ll be held accountable for them all. He said that those closest to us will be our worst enemies and, knowing that, we should proceed accordingly. He said we should live as if we were actual eunuchs. He said that the sheep go to Heaven, but the goats don’t, and what separates the sheep from the goats is their response to people in need. In other words, did they help the people God put in their path to help, or did they refuse to help them? The sheep actively helped the people God directed them to help, and this was counted towards them as righteousness.

If all we have to do is claim we’re with Jesus but otherwise live however we want while using as an excuse “we’re all sinners!”, then what about the five virgins who didn’t have enough oil in their lamps? Why couldn’t they just borrow some oil from the five virgins who did? Or why couldn’t they just have said to the bridegroom when he arrived: “It’s OK that I don’t have enough oil because I’m with you”? Or what about the guy who was kicked out of the wedding feast because he didn’t have a wedding robe on? Why couldn’t he have just claimed to be with Jesus?

In his teachings, Jesus insists that we must keep the Commandments, all ten of them. Being his follower doesn’t exempt us from that. Yes, Jesus permitted himself to be the perfect sacrifice for our sins up to the point when we say “Yes!” to God and are converted and become like little children for humility and obedience to God, but after our pivotal “Yes!”, after we’ve been purged of the  world’s spirits and filled with God’s Spirit and have entered into God’s Kingdom on Earth and reestablished (thanks to Jesus’ sacrifice) the relationship with God that we’d lost through Adam’s sin – from that point onward, everything we do and everything we say (and yes even everything we think) is on us. We’re responsible for choosing what is right in God’s eyes, and the best way to do so is following Jesus’ example.

It’s a lie to claim that because “we’re all sinners”, we can do nothing worthy and that Jesus did it all for us. Jesus sacrificed himself for us, yes, but first he taught us how to get home. We need to live as Jesus taught us, not as the devil says we can.

INTO THE BLESSINGS ZONE

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 26, 2025 – God blessed Nebuchadnezzar with a great empire not because he was a holy man or a child of Israel or a convert to Judaism, but because he gave the remnant (God’s children) shelter and allowed them to thrive under his reign. It didn’t matter that Nebuchadnezzar wasn’t a believer; he did God’s will, and so he was blessed.

It was God’s will that Judah and Jerusalem and all the cities and towns of Israel be overrun by the Babylonian and Chaldean armies and in most cases destroyed. God gave that responsibility into Nebuchadnezzar’s hands, knowing that the king of Babylon would carry out the destruction to the letter and without flinching. It was God’s will that the people formerly known as the children of Israel (but who had turned their backs on God and had become instead the synagogue of Satan) be punished, with the heathen Babylonian and Chaldean armies as their executioners.

Even today – especially today – those who do God’s will and look to the good of his born-again remnant are profoundly blessed by God, regardless of whether they themselves are believers.

THE LAST POPE? THE ANTI-POPE AND PETER THE ROMAN

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 24, 2025 – I am what you might call an equal opportunity heretic – I denounce all forms of denominational Christianity as false prophets, showing no partiality for one sect over another. Still, and as I explained earlier, God permits the worldly church to exist mainly to serve as a hedge between the world and his genuine Church (the one founded by Jesus and peopled by us born-again believers) and to provide a resource for his children living in the Kingdom. The worldly church also serves as an incubator for some of his children until they’re spiritually sturdy enough to walk on their own. But none of the denominations are meant to be our life-long identities or permanent places of worship. We’re to pass through and out of the worldly church and to use it for our practical purposes only, like Jesus did. The “her” referenced in: “Come out of her, my people!” is the worldly church.

I mention this today because the largest of the worldly church’s false prophet sects, Roman Catholicism, is currently making headlines for all kinds of reasons, most of them negative, as usual. Just in the past year alone, four priests have come forward denouncing Bergoglio (code name: Francis) as the anti-pope, arguing that Ratzinger (code name: Benedict) didn’t renounce his entire papacy in 2013, just those aspects that required physical rigor. Benedict lived another ten years essentially as a prisoner within the Vatican, dying of natural causes or otherwise on New Year’s Eve, 2022. For pointing out that Francis is a usurper, the four priests were “automatically excommunicated”, but that hasn’t stopped them from continuing their campaign against the alleged anti-pope.

Meanwhile, Francis is on a swift decline health-wise, and whether he shuffles off his mortal coil over the next few days or weeks, he’s currently in no shape physically to continue his papal duties and likely won’t ever be again. And here’s where it gets interesting in a woo-woo kind of way. Nearly a millennia ago, a guy named Malachy allegedly wrote down a list of future popes. A few hundred years after it was published, the list was denounced as a forgery. However, people still sneak a peak at it every now and then, trying to jam square pegs into round holes. Some of the popes seem to be precisely as Malachy described them, while others are way off.

In any case, the list ends after pope #112: Benedict was #111. So, if you consider Francis to be legit, he’s the last pope (#112) according to Malachy’s prophecy. But if you side with the four excommunicated priests, the next pope will be #112 and therefore (allegedly) the last.

But wait – there’s more! Malachy prophesied that the final pope would be “Peter the Roman”. If Francis kicks the bucket in the near future, an Italian (Roman) named Pietro (Peter) is the front-runner to replace him. Couldn’t be more on-the-nose, but I’m still guessing that Peter will probably get the crown. And once he does, could this mean the end of Roman Catholicism?

GOSPEL OR GOSSIP?

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 22, 2025 – The Bible is our constant companion, or so it should be for us born-again believers. We should always have a Bible at hand and should be reading it every day. When I say we should be reading it, what I actually mean is that we should be letting God read us the Bible every day, because without God reading it to us, we’re not getting the intended message.

Anyone can read the Bible. Even the most committed atheists can pick up a Bible and make some sense of it. But because they’re not reading it through the power of God’s Holy Spirit, they’re only getting words, not context, not a deeper meaning or personal relevance or revelation that can only come from God.

How the Bible came to be is an interesting story in itself and goes a long way to explain why we need God reading us the Bible rather than reading it on our own steam. Particularly fascinating is how the Gospel came to us. God, through his Spirit, inspired Jesus to orally teach certain principles and truths to his disciples and followers, who memorized the teachings, whether verbatim or not. Some time after hearing the teachings (months? years? decades?), a few of the disciples wrote them down to the best of their recollection. Note that most of the writings were in Greek, though Jesus had given his teachings in Aramaic. As time passed, the Greek was translated into Latin in most cases (though not all) and then, centuries later, into English and other languages. These versions were then revised and re-revised as the languages evolved. And with each translation and revision, changes in nuance and context were introduced.

So, you see how the communication of God’s Word from the source (God) to the intended audience (us) via the Gospel is not unlike the game of gossip we used to play as kids. In that game, we’d sit in circle and someone we’d designate as “it” would whisper something to the person next to him, who in turn would whisper it to the person next to him, and so on and so on around the circle until it arrived back at the person just before the “it” person, who would then say out loud what had been whispered in his ear. The difference between the original message (e.g., “I love you”) and the final reported message (e.g., “Elephant shoes”) was usually so extreme, it was hilarious, which is the reason why we played the game in the first place, even knowing that some of the kids along the gossip line purposely changed the words to make it funnier.

Now imagine the gossip game happening to the words in the Gospel, because it actually has happened pretty much that way. No, the Gospel is not gossip, but it’s been handed down to us just as precariously and as prone to “mishearing” as gossip, and in some cases has even purposely and maliciously been changed to make it “juicier”, like gossip

Which is precisely why we born-again believers need God reading us the Bible. Without God reading it to us, we’re only getting words, not his Word.

THE FREEDOM NOT TO LIKE

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 21, 2025 – One of the most annoying assumptions many non-Christians have about Christians is that they like everyone. And I mean everyone, including and especially the people who go out of their way to make themselves unlikeable. Christians, according to non-Christians, are supposed to like everyone in every situation at all times, with zero exceptions.

But what does Jesus say about that?

Jesus taught us that we’re to love our enemies and to treat others as we’d want to be treated, but he didn’t say anything about liking everyone. And why is that? Because you can’t mandate liking someone. You can’t force people to feel affection toward a certain person or group. You can mandate specific behaviors (like loving your enemies via prayers and blessings), but you can’t mandate feelings. And genuinely liking someone and wanting to spend time with that person is feelings-based behavior that can’t be forced or expected, even from born-again believers. God allows us to dislike people as an honest expression of our feelings toward them, but he still expects us to treat them as we would want to be treated, which essentially means don’t be mean-spirited. Don’t bully them. But don’t pretend to like them if you don’t. God hates hypocrisy.

The same assumption that non-Christians have about Christians liking everyone has also bled into the worldly church, where it’s assumed that because we’re in a church building attending a church event, we’re all one big happy family and the best of friends. Anyone who’s spent any time at all in a worldly church event knows this is woefully untrue. Despite most pastors’ ongoing efforts to make their flocks feel at ease and at home, some sheep will still rub you the wrong way (even physically; pervy old greeters posted at the church door, take note!). I have never more than fleetingly felt “at home” in a worldly church setting, though I don’t blame the pastors for that. It’s baked into the scenario that you’re not going to like everyone and not everyone is going to like you. Even in a church.

And that’s OK.

The Bible says so.

Jesus’ disciples were well-known for not always getting along with each other, especially the men with the women. Jesus had to step in to keep the peace between them on more than one occasion. And after Jesus’ ascension, the early Church members had numerous run-ins with each other, most famously Paul vs Barnabas and Paul vs “the saints in Jerusalem”. Paul didn’t have to like the people he disagreed with any more than they had to like him. Nowhere in the Bible does it say we have to like everyone without exception. We’re to bless and pray for those who purposely oppose us, but like them?

Naaah.

God gives us the freedom to like and dislike whoever we choose. He doesn’t mandate like.

In Heaven, though – Heaven is a whole different ball game. We’ll not only love everyone in Heaven, we’ll like them, too, and we won’t have to be mandated to do so. But that’s Heaven. Here on Earth, it’s more important to God that we do his will than that we pretend to like someone we don’t.