Home » Posts tagged 'God’s Holy Spirit' (Page 12)
Tag Archives: God’s Holy Spirit
A VERY PUBLIC PRIVATE MESSAGE TO ONE WHO KNEW ME AS AN ATHEIST
CAUSAPSCAL, Quebec, September 13, 2023 – I know you drop by here occasionally to see what I’m up to, what I’ve made of myself, how I’ve changed or haven’t changed over the years. I know you’re partly curious and partly repulsed at what I’ve become, and you try to explain it by convincing yourself that I’ve gone a bit crazy, though I seem harmless enough.
And (strangely) happy enough.
Still, a religious nut is a religious nut, to be avoided at all costs.
I take your silence in stride and I don’t hold it against you. I would be far less charitable if the situation were reversed and you were writing these words and I were reading them. I would be downright and unapologetically nasty. I’m sure you remember how I used to bash religious nuts like me, though maybe you don’t remember because I didn’t really give them the time of day. To me, religious nuts weren’t worth thinking about let alone talking about. I dismissed them out of hand. They weren’t even worth a jeer.
And yet here I am today. I’ve become the thing I despised the most, and it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me and continues to be the best thing that ever happened to me, 24 years later.
Twenty-four years is a long time to be functionally crazy, or rather crazy and still a functional member of society. You would think that if I were actually crazy, I wouldn’t have been able to be a functional member of society for so long. I still run my own business, still look after my own household, still travel more or less perpetually, dealing with all the issues that come with constant travel, and through it all I remain a believer with two feet firmly on the ground.
That’s the part of me you don’t recall ever seeing – a calm Charlotte, an unflappable Charlotte, a Charlotte in control. I always seemed to be in crisis mode as an atheist. Something was always crashing down around me, and I was responding with my usual histrionics. It was non-stop high drama, but not the good kind. Not the inspirational kind. It was the dark kind. The constant thoughts of suicide kind. The acting out in violence kind. The losing it kind.
In hindsight, I know exactly what was wrong with me, though at the time I couldn’t articulate it. I couldn’t articulate it because I was an atheist who scoffed at all things God. And so I blindly raged, and you got caught in my crossfire.
I apologize for that.
We all do stupid things when we’re young, but when we get older and keep on doing them, that indicates a much deeper problem. You can’t blame youthful folly when you’re no longer a youth. But I mostly got away with being crazy as an atheist because nearly everyone around me was likewise crazy (I’m not including you in that; I’m just saying), and so we didn’t see our craziness as craziness but as life as an adult. We attributed our depression and confusion and constant upheavals to being adults, just as we attributed our alcohol dependence to being adults. We were adults with adult problems who dealt with them the way adults do: by drinking. We drank every day and didn’t think anything of it. It was normal for us. We were adults, and adults drank their problems away.
That’s another thing you wouldn’t remember about me – a sober Charlotte. You wouldn’t remember because the Charlotte you knew was perpetually inebriated. I didn’t stop drinking because I “got religion”; I stopped drinking because alcohol wasn’t doing anything for me anymore. It wasn’t making me feel good and it wasn’t relaxing me, it was just giving me a headache and making me feel numb. So I stopped drinking and I haven’t had a drink in years.
I stopped smoking, too, in case you’re wondering, though if you recall, I never really smoked, just puffed. I stopped puffing cigarettes from one day to the next, so I guess I wasn’t really addicted to them.
I’m thinking that all these changes, all these True Confessions, are making me look pretty boring in your eyes – I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I read the Bible, I’m a religious nut. And yet in these words – in the very fact that I’m writing them to you in this very public way – you still see the Charlotte you once knew. That’s because I am the same Charlotte you once knew. My personality hasn’t changed. Everything that irked you about me is still there. I still laugh too loud and usually at inappropriate moments. I’m still argumentative. I’m still always right. I’m still at times fiercely private and at other times wildly exhibitionist. I’m still unpredictable and do my own thing. I’m still hard to control.
Yet amidst all those personality quirks, a few more have been added that that weren’t there when you knew me. Think of me as “Charlotte Plus” (or Charlotte+). For instance, there’s the conciliatory Charlotte, the one who chooses to forgive rather than to hold a grudge. Imagine not holding anything against anyone! Well, you don’t have to imagine it, because I’m living it. It’s my lived reality now, and it’s very freeing and calming. There’s also the live-and-let-live Charlotte who’s not neck-deep in everyone’s business like she used to be. My new mantra is “it’s not my business”, and I leave it alone. Like not holding a grudge against anyone, not getting into other people’s business is also very freeing and calming. It’s not that I’ve stopped caring about things or people, but that I’ve recognized that I don’t have the inalienable right to know everything about everyone all the time, or to dictate my terms and opinions to everyone (unless, of course, they ask or are voluntarily reading my blog). As much as I’m always right (and I still am! lol), I don’t push my rightness uninvited on everyone like I used to. It’s not my business to interfere and dictate. I let it be.
Some other character plusses have also been added to the Charlotte you used to know, but those are the main ones. I don’t think they make me crazy, but you may beg to differ and that’s your prerogative (see? conciliatory! :D). Part of you came here out of curiosity, maybe wanting to confirm what you suspected (terminal religious nut disease; presumably incurable), while part of you doesn’t really know why you’re here or even why you’ve read this far.
But I’m glad you came and I’m glad you’re still reading.
In any case, I don’t care if people think I’m crazy. They can think whatever they want, and they’re welcome to think it. We all have a right to hold and express our own opinion (there’s that newfangled conciliatory Charlotte again!), however arse-backwards it may be (and there’s the old Charlotte!). I used to hold the opinion that God didn’t exist and that anyone who believed in him was an idiot, and so I lived my life accordingly, and you know firsthand what a disaster that was. Now I believe that God exists and I live my life accordingly, and it’s a pretty good life. In fact, it’s awesome in the truest sense of the word. I’m not rich, but I always have enough. I never really know what I’ll be doing tomorrow or where I’ll lay my head at night, but I take each day in stride and look forward to the next. I say my prayers at bedtime and fall asleep happy and content. And I attribute all of these improvements (and you have to admit, they are improvements) to being born again.
I wrote an article a while back about how my personality didn’t change when I was born again. The core of who I was remained the same; what changed were my values, and they changed 180 degrees in an instant. That’s called a miracle. It can’t be explained by science. Maybe science would theorize that I went crazy, but the past 24 years of my being a functioning member of society would essentially prove that theory wrong.
I’m going to leave you with that. Again, I’m glad you dropped by. If you want to drop me a line, please do. If you don’t want to, that’s OK, too.
I wasn’t going to tell you, but you’re in my prayers, whether you want to be there or not.
NO, JESUS LIKELY ISN’T COMING BACK ANY TIME SOON. HERE’S WHY.
CHARLO, New Brunswick, September 10, 2023 – A good percentage of professing Christians, particularly American evangelicals, have jumped on the “Jesus is coming back soon!” bandwagon. They declare themselves “rapture-ready” and eager to join Jesus in the clouds as soon as he makes his appearance.
The only problem is that Jesus is likely not coming back any time soon. And for good reason. Christianity still makes up the lion’s share of believers in America (close to 65% of the population). The percentage of believers is mostly lower in other parts of former Christendom, but still hovers just above or below the 50% mark. While these percentages are low compared to 100 years ago, when nearly 100% of people in Christian nations claimed to be Christian, they still represent nearly one-third of the world’s population.
That’s good right?
I think it’s good.
But the people longing for Jesus to come back soon might not agree with me. Because, you see, as long as nearly one-third of the people on Earth claim to be Christian, Jesus likely won’t come back.
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus says: When the son of man returns, will he find faith on Earth? This is a rhetorical question that implies Jesus won’t find any faith (or not much faith) when he comes back in his glorified flesh. But surely among the more than 2 billion souls in the world today who count themselves Christian, there must be some who actually have what Jesus calls “faith”. I mean, even if only 1 per cent of the 2 billion has the kind of faith that gets Jesus’ seal of approval, that would still be 20 million souls. Ten per cent would be 200 million. Would Jesus dismiss 20-200 million souls as negligible? That’s a rhetorical question, too, and the answer is also clearly “no”.
So here’s the conundrum: People want Jesus to come back soon, but in order for him to come back, the scripture about the radical lack of faith needs to be fulfilled. Remember that Paul also talked about a “falling away” that would happen before believers would be “caught up in the cloud” with Jesus. If the generational trend of ~10% fewer believers with each successive generation continues, it will be at least another 100 years before the Christian percentage of even America’s population reaches what could reasonably be called critical or negligible numbers. Meanwhile, Christianity is actually expanding elsewhere in the world and is the Number One religion that people of other belief systems convert to, if and when they do convert.
Mind you, a lot of things can happen to reduce the number of believers faster than the current trend indicates. War, famine, disease, natural disasters, etc., could put an unanticipated dent in the Christian population. So could outlawing Christianity, which is not as farfetched as it sounds. Several countries in the world today forbid Christian evangelizing or church attendance, and murmurings about the Bible being “hate speech” are growing louder and louder in parts of former Christendom, perhaps leading to a point where the Bible is outlawed altogether in those areas. Not to mention that artificial intelligence has proposed rewriting the Bible to be more “inclusive” (I’m guessing the rewriting has already been done) and China has produced a version of scripture that’s been sanitized for communist sensibilities. None of this bodes well for the long-term outlook on faith as modeled by Jesus, even if in the short-term there is a slight bump in numbers before the long, inevitable, and prophesied decline.
But such a decline is still decades away if we go by the percentages and numbers and trends as they present themselves today. Again, there could be “rapid intensification” (to borrow a meteorological term) of the decline in Christianity or there could be a slowing down of the decline. Lots of factors in play here. What is known, however, is that scripture cannot be undone, and that Jesus prophesied a near total absence of faith and Paul a radical reduction in faith as an unmistakable sign that would occur prior to Jesus’ return. With our 2-billion-plus self-professed Christians, we are obviously nowhere near that state of being, and I say THANK GOD FOR THAT, as a world bereft of believers will be so spiritually toxic, it will literally unleash Hell on Earth. Things might seem bad now in comparison to what they were a few decades ago, but they’re nowhere near as bad as Noah’s day or Lot’s day. They’re not yet Hell on Earth. Not yet, anyway.
So the Good News is that there’s still time for people to hear God’s Word and convert, and still time for those who have strayed off the path to get back on it. The bad news, for some, is that Jesus is very likely not coming back any time soon. Certainly, we need to remember that we can’t know the exact time when he’ll come back and that he told us outright he’d come when we least expect him, so anything’s possible in that regard. However, he also told us to watch for certain signs, one of the chief ones being a catastrophic decline in faith to the point of seeming non-existence. We are not there yet. We will get there some day (although I promise you, none of us will want to be on Earth when that happens, things will be so bad for believers), but we’re not there yet.
Thank God, we’re not there yet.
TALKING TO DEAD PEOPLE
CHARLO, New Brunswick, September 5, 2023 – Do not talk to dead people: God forbids it in the Old Testament. If you have something to say to a loved one who’s passed on, take it to God and Jesus. When you’re at the grave of a loved one, tell God and Jesus whatever it is you want to tell your loved one. But do not talk directly to the deceased. That’s how you open doors to malevolent spirits, no matter how well-intentioned you are or how protected you think you are by God’s Holy Spirit.
Graveyards have earned a reputation over the centuries for being places haunted by evil entities. This is a well-deserved reputation, as evil entities are in fact being unwittingly summoned when people go to graveyards to talk to their deceased loved ones. There are no haunted places, only haunted people. Do not become a target of evil spirits by summoning them when you talk to dead people. Direct your communications only to God and Jesus.
Demons are always hanging around, waiting for you to slip up. If you try to communicate with someone who’s passed on, it becomes a major opportunity for the demons to pretend they’re the person you’re trying to reach. DO NOT TALK TO DEAD PEOPLE, including “saints”. Do not pray to “saints” and do not pray to angels (even the holy ones). Your prayers should only be directed to God and Jesus. DO NOT TALK TO DEMONS OR OTHER FALLEN SPIRITS, other than, during an exorcism, to ask their name and then tell them to leave. The only communications you should be making in prayer are to God and Jesus, no-one else.
Please remember that.
TALKING TO COUNSELLORS
As born-again believers, we know that God and Jesus are with us 24/7, thanks to the intervention of God’s Holy Spirit. No-one on Earth is better at listening or giving advice and guidance than God and Jesus. If you’re a born-again believer, there is no reason whatsoever for you to go to a guidance counsellor or a marriage counsellor or a financial counsellor or any other kind of counsellor. None. No reason. It’s an insult to God and Jesus when you by-pass them and go to a worldly counsellor.
How can a person help you more than God and Jesus can help you? Whatever problem you have, whatever advice you need, there’s no-one better to ask than God and Jesus. No-one can give you a sense of relief and peace like God and Jesus can. And best of all, their advice and counselling are FREE. They never charge a cent. And you never have to make an appointment – they’re available whenever you need them.
Let unbelievers go to worldly counsellors (God made worldly counsellors for the sake of unbelievers), but born-again believers have no cause to use their services. Any problem you have, take it to God and Jesus. Whatever your issue, take it to God and Jesus. They’re always waiting and willing and happy to hear from you.
TALKING TO FRIENDS AND FAMILY
It’s tempting for us to unburden ourselves to family and friends, including our Christian family. But we need to be very, very careful about who we choose to unburden to and very, very selective about what we choose to reveal. Scripture tells us that even our closest friends and family members, including spouses, could end up being our worst enemies, and not necessarily from anything they do intentionally. What they mean for our good may be contrary to what God wants for us. Think of Jesus’ mother coming to take him home when he was healing people in Capernaum. Mary thought she was doing the right thing – the motherly thing – by protecting Jesus, but she was in fact doing the opposite by trying to stop Jesus’ ministry.
We can never fully trust anyone in a mortal body, even those who claim to be born-again, as their inspiration may not always come from God and their intentions, despite their smooth words, may not always be noble. Scripture tells us that Jesus never unburdened himself to any of his disciples. If he had a problem, he took it to God. If he had a concern, he took it to God. If he had a suspicion, he took it to God. He played his spiritual cards very close to his chest when it came to his disciples and everyone else except for his Heavenly Father. Revelations from God Jesus only revealed when God gave him the go-ahead to do so.
As born-again believers, we’re surrounded by enemies 24/7 – spiritual ones as well as flesh-covered ones. Even those who claim to have our best interests at heart and to be on our side should be held at arm’s length and never fully confided in, never fully trusted. God we can trust, Jesus we can trust, but everyone else, no. Not being perfected, everyone else is fully capable of betrayal, everyone else is still able to choose against God, everyone else is still able to fall and take us down with them.
I want this thought to disturb you. I want the thought that you can only trust God and Jesus to so deeply disturb you that it takes root in your heart and you mull it over until it becomes part of you, until it becomes your default position. I want you to hold this disturbing thought up against scripture to see if you find support for it there. ****SPOILER ALERT**** You will find support. All throughout scripture, you’ll find warnings not to trust people. Some of the warnings will be overt and some will be revealed in sordid tales with sordid outcomes detailing the fatal consequences of unwisely trusting people. You must learn not to trust people. As a born-again believer, not trusting people must be your default.
Jesus sacrificed himself so that we could have a close relationship with him and with God through God’s Holy Spirit. There’s no-one else we truly need to lean on during the rest of our time on Earth, and no-one else we should trust.
BUDDY WITH THE CROSS ON WHEELS
CHARLO, New Brunswick, September 5, 2023 – So there’s this guy who’s been dragging around a 55-lb wooden cross on wheels for the past several decades. He’s travelled all over the world with his crosses (he’s onto his third) and claims to have influenced countless people to turn back to God. Hmmm, I thought. Shades of Isaiah walking barefoot and naked for three years or John the Baptist wandering in the wilderness. Could we have a real live witness on our hands?
So I took the bait and clicked on his website. After a quick scan of the main page, what to my wondering eyes should appear but an ad for a self-published book about what the Holy Spirit had taught this holy-roller during his travels. The book also offers tips on how to evangelize. All I had to do was cough up $20 CAD and I could save myself the trouble of buying 40 years worth of running shoes, not to mention 40 years worth of aching muscles and hand blisters – the cross doesn’t carry itself, ya know!
Dang! Warm and fuzzy false prophet nearly fooled me again.
I am not against Christians making money. Jesus told us we should pray to God to give us our daily bread, which means praying for the means to pay for it. Paul made and repaired tents for his daily bread and encouraged us to work for enough $$$ to earn ours. I’m not against Christians earning money. In the world we need money, not much, but at least some.
What I’m against is Christians monetizing God’s Holy Spirit. That’s what I’m against, because Jesus taught us: “Freely ye receive; freely ye give”. Buddy with the cross on wheels should not be selling a book about what God taught him during his travels and he definitely shouldn’t be charging people for “tips” on how to preach the Word. If he wants to sell a book, he could sell one about the best kind of shoes to wear when dragging a cross across continents; he could sell a book about the different kinds of people he’s encountered or the places he’s stayed or the experiences he’s had along the way. Heck, he could even sell t-shirts or travel mugs or a miniature action figure of himself carrying a cross on wheels – anything but put a price tag on revelations from God.
Revelations from God should NEVER be monetized.
If he were genuinely sent by God, he’d know this. He wouldn’t have to be told.
I despise people selling what Jesus says should be shared for free. I despise it the way Jesus despised the moneychangers setting up shop in the temple. The Number One trait of a false prophet is asking for donations or charging money for what should be free. Every false prophet does it. Jesus says you cannot serve God and mammon. By asking for money for what should be freely shared, false prophets out themselves by clearly showing who they serve.
If Paul could take time from his preaching duties to make tents, we can likewise find a few hours here and there to carry out some menial chore that will earn us what we need to keep body and soul together while we devote the rest of our time to God’s work. Jesus never begged or solicited donations and neither should we. Anyone who asks for money in God’s name is a false prophet.
Zero exceptions.
At the same time, those who are genuinely sent by God should without hesitation and with gratitude accept any monetary gift offered them free-willingly, knowing that such gifts come from God and will bless the giver more than the receiver. We should never get in the way of people’s blessings by refusing to accept gifts given to us free-willingly. Refusing monetary gifts offered to us free-willingly is a sign of pride. Never refuse such gifts.
But never solicit such gifts, either. Never make people feel obligated to pay for God’s Word in any way, not even during a church service. Mainstream religion is the worst of the worst of the false prophets. Were those organizations genuinely sent by God, they wouldn’t need to ritualistically apportion part of the service to “giving” and “offerings”, because God would prompt people to give without being asked.
I hate the world. I hate how it operates, and I hate how religion monetizes God and Jesus. The only thing of value on this Earth, besides souls, is the revelation of God’s Truth. For it to be reduced to $20 CAD is to me loathsome, no matter how warm and fuzzy the story of the person who’s charging it.
So I was wrong about the cross-on-wheels guy being like a modern day Isaiah or John the Baptist, but I wasn’t wrong about someone like the cross-on-wheels guy being in the Bible. He’s in there, all right. He’s one of the many false prophets.
RAPTURE DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES
CHARLO, New Brunswick, August 24, 2023 – Imagine, for a second, being rejected by God.
For a born-again believer, this is not something we would consider imagining. We know our God and are strong in our faith.
But for those who are not genuinely born-again and who rely on people around them to prop them up and tell them what to believe, being rejected by God is a fear perpetually lurking in the back of their mind, a fear perpetually stoked by those spoon-feeding them their beliefs.
Now let’s take these same people who are weak in faith and present them with a strong delusion, something like a mass abduction or sudden unexplained disappearance of thousands of Christians. Make the disappearance headline news for weeks across all media so that it’s all everyone is talking about everywhere. Call it something like “the rapture”.
Then imagine the turmoil in the souls of the weak in faith who’ve been left behind. Imagine how they feel, believing they’ve been publicly rejected by God. Imagine the stages of grief they go through. Imagine that most of them stop at anger.
Imagine all those who don’t know why they’ve been left behind stewing in their anger and disbelief. Imagine them turning their anger on God. Imagine, as a result of their anger, millions upon millions of Christians falling away from God in response to his seeming rejection of them. Imagine the degree and extent of such a monumental outcry of outrage, followed by a monumental falling away happening all over the world all at once.
Imagine the falling away!
Now imagine the devil’s glee.
*******
I had a dream a few weeks ago about a false rapture. Instead of people rising to meet Jesus in the clouds, as foretold by Paul, people were abducted by very real flesh-and-blood abductors and spirited away to bunkers. Then there were those who were “in on it” – high-profile Christians who’d preached on the rapture and who’d agreed to disappear for a while. The ones spirited away to bunkers included people like us – spirit-filled, born-again believers who would likely be troublemakers in the beast system and would see through the false rapture. They held us for a while in the bunkers, where they tortured us to try to get us to turn from God, and then they killed us.
Those who were “in on it” and who’d agreed to disappear for a while, later reappeared after the beast system (the false kingdom) was up and running. They returned with great fanfare to take their place alongside the anti-Christ, ruling with him. But not all of them who were “in on it” were allowed to live. Many of the lower-level rapture fraudsters were killed along with the people in the bunker. Something about tying up loose ends….
*******
After the dream, I spent a few days watching videos and reading testimonies of people who claim to have had rapture dreams and/or visions. I found that the dreams and visions generally fall into two categories: scenes of being part of the rapture and scenes of being left behind. Many of those who’d seen themselves being left behind recounted their vision or dream in tears. Underneath the tears, their anger and disbelief were palpable as they tried to reason with themselves why they were left behind.
It’s heartbreaking to see how many people have been caught up in the lie of the false rapture under the slogan “Jesus is coming back soon!” If the devil wanted to manufacture a world-wide simultaneous falling away from faith, he could do no better than to get people to believe they’ve been rejected by God without cause, while others they consider “less worthy” than them are taken to Heaven.
I believe that Jesus will return some day in glory with his holy angels to take home his faithful, but that this will happen at the very end of time, just before the Judgement. This is what God teaches me in scripture. I do not believe in either a pre-tribulation or a mid-tribulation rapture. I do believe that such alleged raptures are doctrines of devils that have been created to be used as I outlined above – as a snare for those who are weak in faith. It will be a false rapture, but many will fall for it and many more will fall because of it.
This strong delusion, I believe, will trigger the great falling away foretold by Paul that must happen before the “son of perdition” rises to power.
The only way to avoid this snare and not be caught up in the devil’s lies is to stand strong in the faith of Jesus Christ, not in the faith of YouTube prophets and televangelists.
WILDFIRE
CHARLO, New Brunswick, August 20, 2023 – It’s funny, the things we think we’ll need if we have to leave the house in an emergency – photos, passports, ID. Maybe a few mementoes. Cash. Bank cards. A bottle of water. Meds. In a mad dash we might forget something important, so the government encourages us to pack a “go-bag” in advance and leave it by the door.
Yet all those must-haves that top our emergency prep list have no place in Heaven. We don’t need any of those things there. There’s no such thing as a heavenly go-bag. We come into this world bearing only our sin and we leave bearing only the record of our choices. No photos, passports, bank cards or meds required.
Wildfires seem to be all around us everywhere this summer. Even if we don’t see the flames, we smell the smoke. When a wildfire roared through a densely forested subdivision in my hometown of Halifax a few months ago, devouring everything in its path, I started packing a go-bag even though I don’t live anywhere near Halifax anymore. I just thought it would be a good idea to put a few things into a bag and put the bag where I could grab it fast if I needed to leave the house fast. I kept the bag in my closet for a few weeks, putting more things into it every now and then and also occasionally taking things out.
Then I remembered Jesus telling us that when we get the signal to leave, we won’t have time to go back even to grab a coat. He also told us that God will provide for all our needs if we put his Kingdom and his righteousness first. My go-bag seemed to be in direct violation of Jesus’ directives, so I unpacked it and decided to go go-bag-free for the rest of my time on Earth, just like I decided a few months ago to go preps-free.
It’s funny how the core things we need to survive within society (money and ID) have no use in Paradise. It’s also funny that the beast regime that’s being set up in preparation for the anti-Christ ruler is aiming to implement a system that appears to function without money or ID. All your data (financial, healthcare, driver’s license, etc.) will either be implanted directly into your body or will work in tandem with your unique bio-signatures, like your irises and fingerprints, through an AI component. This is the infamous mark of the beast foretold in the book of Revelation. Once the beast system is up and running, those who sign onto it will no longer need to carry any money or ID with them. The aim, I’m guessing, is to make it seem as if we don’t need those things anymore, just like in Heaven.
But the world is clumsy at mimicking God’s heavenly realm and supernatural abilities. Look at how badly modern medicine allegedly cures the blind and the lame or how demonic presences (relabeled as mental illnesses) are dealt with or rather not dealt with, just muzzled with drugs or electroshocked into uneasy silence. Satan may be a lot of things, but he’s not God. And the beast system, however glitzy the pre-sales propaganda, will be a far cry from Heaven. Not to mention that all those souls who do sign onto it will be locked out of Heaven and separated from God forever.
Doesn’t sound like much of a deal to me.
I’m happy to bypass “heaven on Earth” and wait for the real thing.
____
Amazon’s Whole Foods just came out with “palm pay” as a way to pay for items in their stores. Once you sign up for the program and submit your biometric data (in this case, your palm print) along with your credit or debit card information, you no longer have to whip out a card or fumble for cash to pay at the check-out counter. You just wave your way through. Congratulations! You’ve saved 6.66 seconds on that transaction!
The similarity between palm pay and the mark of the beast has not gone unnoticed by many Christian commentators, but palm pay is obviously not the MOTB. Palm pay will, however, get people used to paying just by waving their hand past a sensor. It’s a training of sorts, so that when the actual mark comes, it won’t be such a shock to the system: it will seem like a natural extension of something already in place and generally accepted by the public. This is how the devil has been accomplishing his most noteworthy achievements of late. For instance, he’s been turning whole regions into modern-day Sodoms not by sudden grand and jolting gestures, but by surreptitious changes to laws and customs over a period of time across several countries. In this way, what was once unthinkable becomes the norm because what was once unthinkable is now deeply entrenched seemingly everywhere.
Needless to say, I’ll never submit my biometric data to Amazon, so I guess I’ll be permanently locked out of the palm pay system. Someone asked me yesterday whether I’m making plans for when cash is outlawed, and my response was nope, no plans. Like shunning go-bags and preps, I’m going to rely on God to help me through the situation, should it arise during my lifetime. I don’t think you can plan for being an outlaw; you just become an outlaw when circumstances dictate. It’s thrust on you, like baptism by fire. No preplanning or prep-work required.
Living in the Kingdom is a day-by-day proposition whose circumstances change by the second. God doesn’t change, but circumstances do, which means we need not only to be flexible, adaptable, mobile, and spiritually “clean”, with our lamp oil constantly topped up, but we also need to be entirely dependent on God for direction and instruction. We can’t put down roots other than in the Kingdom. We can’t have obligations to people. We need to live like Jesus and his first followers, who had only temporary homes and traveled fast and light.
_____
Over 150 homes were burned to the ground in the Halifax wildfire. Among those homes that were obliterated, I’m wondering how many were stocked with preps, all lost. The fire sprang up so suddenly and moved so quickly in the high winds and abnormally dry conditions, many of the people living in those homes didn’t even have time to jump into their cars but had to flee on foot. Others weren’t at home when the fires started mid-morning on a Sunday. These people lost everything but the clothes on their back.
Scripture gives us a general idea of what’s coming, but it doesn’t tell us exactly when. Jesus tells us to watch and be ready to leave at a moment’s notice with just the clothes on our back. We’re to travel light through this world; if and when we do make it to Heaven, we’ll have a permanent home there, but we’re to expect nothing to be permanent here.
As we move closer and closer to the time of the MOTB, circumstances will only get worse for those who reject the beast system. These circumstances cannot be fought against but only worked around and then endured, the way Jesus endured being an outlaw for a few years until finally being arrested and executed. This is our lot as Jesus’ followers; as it was with Jesus, so will it be with us.
We can pray to be taken Home before the worst arrives – for a supernatural emergency exit – but we cannot demand to be taken Home and we cannot guarantee that we’ll escape what’s coming.
Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
WHY WORSHIP GOD?
CHARLO, New Brunswick, August 18, 2023 – One of the many barbs commonly thrown at Christians is that God must be some kind of a self-centered egomaniac if he needs people to worship him.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Yes, God invites us to worship him, but it’s for our sake, not for his.
Allow me to explain.
God gives every human an inbuilt desire to worship. He doesn’t stipulate, in giving us that desire, that we have to worship him. He just gives us the desire and invites us to worship him but leaves the choice of who or what we worship to us.
In worshiping, we bow down to the object of our worship. We may not actually physically bow down, but we bow down in every other way. We elevate our object of worship. We focus on our object of worship. We want to know everything about our object of worship. We spend most of our time thinking about our object of worship. We long to be near our object of worship. We reflect and mirror our object of worship. Our worship makes us subject to the whims and wiles of the worshiped, but we accept these without grumbling. We humble ourselves and would do anything to gain or to please the object of our worship.
Again, we humble ourselves. We humble ourselves in bowing down to our object of worship.
Humility is a good thing. Perceiving someone or something as being quintessentially better and greater than us is good for our soul. It gives us a place of rest. It builds trust in something or someone other than ourselves. It promotes and enables dependence.
In understanding what worship is, it’s crucial to understand that God doesn’t need our worship. He is perfect within himself and would not diminish one iota if no-one worshiped him. He would still be the same: God would still be God. Even unworshipped, he would still be God Almighty, the All-Knowing, the All-Powerful, the All-Merciful, and the All-Good.
He would still be God the All-Good.
Jesus tells us that only God is good. David in one of his Holy Spirit-inspired psalms tells us that all good things come from God – not just some good things or most good things, but all good things. Every good thing in our life comes from God.
So when we take the desire to worship that God’s given us and invest it in him, we humble ourselves before the All-Good, we focus on the All-Good, we aim to please the All-Good. This is why God gave us the desire to worship and then advised and guided us to invest that desire in him – so that we would fix our focus on that which is good, not on that which is not good. We would strive to please that which is good and to embrace that which is good and to mirror that which is good. And in so doing, we would reflect and mirror to others that which is good, keeping us firmly on the straitened and narrow path that leads to Home.
Most people, unfortunately, have chosen to invest their worship desires elsewhere than in God, worshiping money, investments, power, status, fame, career, movie stars, sports icons, YouTube influencers, spouses, children, grandchildren, hobbies, trends, politics, obsessions, demons, Satan, even (sadly) themselves. In other words, they turn away from God; they turn every which way but to God. God permits them to do this because he honors their free will. He gave them their free will and lets them use it however they choose. If they don’t want to worship God, he won’t force them to. But he’ll keep extending the invitation to worship him as long as there’s still time.
Those of us who’ve chosen to worship God know intimately that God is the farthest thing from a self-centered egomaniac. Everything he does, he does for us, not for himself. Our worship of God doesn’t benefit God in any way; he remains exactly as he is even if no-one worships him: worshiping God only benefits us and those around us.
Again – our worship of God only benefits us and those around us.
And that, my friends, is why we worship God.
CANADA’S CHASTISEMENT AND CALL TO RIGHTEOUSNESS
CHARLO, New Brunswick, August 11, 2023 – They wanted a godless nation, and now they’re getting one.
Canadians, I mean.
The majority of Canadians have kicked God to the curb, and God doesn’t stay where he’s not wanted.
But in his place, demons are pouring in, wreaking havoc wherever they roam.
And yet these same Canadians who kicked God to the curb and are now plagued by demons can’t figure out why their country and their lives have gone downhill so fast.
If you tell them it’s because of earned rewards for sin (which I tell them all the time), they laugh. They instead point to “climate change” causing the floods and fires and droughts and heat waves. They point to the surge in immigrants and refugees causing a host of worsening issues, from lack of affordable housing to problems getting a family doctor or even a seat on public transit. They claim that the recent uptick in urban violence is because of untreated mental illness and a lax justice system. When I tell them the worsening weather and surge in immigration and increasing violence is their reward for sin, they laugh at me again. They think if they can outlaw gas-powered vehicles, scale back the number of people pouring into the country, and hire more doctors and law enforcers, their problems will be solved.
But trying to stop the rewards of sin by looking the other way is like trying to heal a fatal disease by numbing its symptoms. The disease persists and worsens. As long as Canadians refuse to acknowledge and repent of their sin, the rewards of sin will continue.
When a nation is under chastisement, living conditions quickly and noticeably deteriorate. The currency devalues and the cost of food and housing doubles or triples while wages stay the same or even go down. Homelessness, drug abuse, disease, illness, and suicide increase exponentially. The air becomes unbreathable from wildfire smoke. Whole regions are flooded with “biblical” freak storms. Crops fail. Infrastructure fails. Marriages fail. Insect populations displaced by the fires move into populated areas they hadn’t been before. The populace suffers in every conceivable aspect of their lives – both public and private – with no relief in sight.
Scripture says that God chastises those whom he loves, to bring them to their spiritual senses. He does this by letting them feel the consequences of their actions. Scripture also warns that the reward of sin is death. When a population is under chastisement, the conditions they experience are a precursor to what is to come if they continue to refuse to turn back to God and double-down on their sin. ‘Once in a century’ floods, wildfires, drought, and crop failures become the norm rather than the exception. The flood of immigrants and refugees becomes an unstoppable deluge. Suffering increases exponentially, the way that cancer metastasizes and proliferates in a body, pressing on nerves.
The only way out of this dreadful situation is full national repentance, but we know that’s highly unlikely in a country that’s officially declared itself “secular” and “religiously pluralistic”. So it’s up to Canadian Christians to go all-in for God, to put God front and centre in their lives, like Jesus did. If enough Christians living in Canada did this, God would lessen the severity of the chastisement.
The decision to go “all-in” for God has to be made on an individual basis. We know that Abraham bargained with God to stop the destruction of Sodom if there were only 10 righteous souls in the city. I’m not sure how many righteous souls God would require in Canada to lessen the chastisement, but I’m guessing it would be in the hundreds.
Hundreds doesn’t sound like many in a population of 40 million, but keep in mind that Sodom couldn’t even cough up 10 righteous souls in their hour of direst need. God only knows how many Canada would be able to produce, given the fallen state of its denominational churches and the tolerance for sin that characterizes most Canadian Christians these days. God also only knows how much more time we have before chastisement turns into judgement.
Regardless, Canadian Christians need to put their shoulder to the wheel not just for the sake of their failing nation but for the sinners struggling in it. Our job isn’t just to live righteously before God, but to call sin sin and to show sinners the way out of sin.
Sadly, what’s happening to Canada is also happening to other former Christian nations. Even the United States, with is gargantuan Christian majority, is not escaping God’s chastisement. Not surprisingly, those states with the lowest percentage of declared Christians are suffering the most.
God’s chastisement is real, just as its mitigation through righteousness is real. We can’t stop people from sinning (even God can’t do that), but we can stop ourselves from sinning and we can show sinners the righteous way to live by living righteously – that is, by living openly more righteously than we’ve ever lived before. This is within our range of ability. This we can do with God’s help.
We can go all-in for God, like Jesus did.
Because going all-in for God is not an exception to the rule; it’s our calling.
PRAY! UNLEASHING THE MOST POWERFUL FORCE IN THE UNIVERSE
CHARLO, New Brunswick, August 8, 2023 – The devil works hard to stop us from praying because he well knows the power of prayer.
When we pray, we connect directly with God and give him permission to intervene, which our free will dictates we need to do. We expressly need to give God permission or he will not intervene.
The devil tries to mess with this process so that we don’t go to God for help. He tells us that prayer is useless or that we need to pray what Jesus calls “vain repetitions” (e.g., Haily Mary, Our Father, etc.). But reciting pre-set verses is not prayer. Prayer is simply talking to God from our heart. No recitation is needed.
Prayer is so important that Paul says we need to do it without ceasing. That means we need to keep our personal prayer line to God always open and functioning. Our thoughts should never be far from God. We should defer to him and ask his advice in everything we do. Jesus did, which is why God stated he was “well pleased” with him. If you want God to be pleased with you, too, follow his advice in everything you do, even and especially when God’s advice clashes with that of the world.
I find it very sad when people say they don’t have time to pray. If you love God, you make time to pray. In fact, you pray all day; you’re always in God’s presence. Having your mind on God and the things of God is prayer. You don’t necessarily have to say anything, even in your heart. You just have to know that you’re with God and he’s with you. That’s praying, too.
I have found that the strongest and most effectual prayers come with the least number of words or even no words at all. Paul calls this groaning deep within your spirit. When you entirely throw yourself at God’s mercy or petition his help with complete submission to his will, that’s when God can work the most powerfully through you. I have also found that there are times when I need to get down on my face, not just on my knees – I need to get down on my face, fully prostrate before God. Like Job, we need to be reminded every now and then of our pathetic worminess and God’s utter magnificence. Even though he comes to us as a loving Father, he is the King of kings, Lord of lords, and God of gods. He is the ultimate and perfection of all things good and holy, and nothing happens anywhere without his knowledge and permission. We need to be reminded of this every now and then, so that we know our place in the grand scheme of things, so that we remain humble. God cannot (will not) work through pride.
Yes, the devil well knows the power of prayer. Stopping people from praying or from even wanting to pray is a big part of Satan’s ministry, and he’s been quite successful at it. He’s gotten whole denominations to recite vain repetitions to angels and dead people and to call those repetitions “prayer”, even though scripture warns us not to pray to angels or dead people and Jesus dismisses vain repetitions as useless. The more the devil can dissuade us from praying or get us to pray in ways that are ineffectual or downright blasphemous, the farther away we are from God. Prayer is how we maintain and grow our relationship with our Father. Without genuine prayer, there can be no relationship.
We need to pray all day, every day, like Paul taught us. Jesus was always connected to God through constant prayer, which is how he was able to perform so many miracles. In one of the few instances when he prayed publicly, Jesus said to God that he knows he always hears him and that he was only praying aloud for the benefit of the people around him.
We should also want God always to hear us, like he heard Jesus. He will if we make time to spend time with him every day and do what he advises. Prayer is just talking to God, out loud or silently, and consciously being in his presence. Note that talking also means listening.
The more time you spend with God in prayer, the closer you grow to God and the more you trust and lean on him. The more you trust and lean on him, the greater your faith. The greater your faith, the more God’s Spirit can work through you to move all kinds of mountains. This is the power the devil is trying to prevent you from having by stopping you from praying.
Never let anyone stop you from praying.
“MANY WILL COME IN MY NAME”: DISCERNING FALSE PREACHERS
CHARLO, New Brunswick, August 7, 2023 – Jesus wasn’t very good-looking during his time on Earth. Neither was Paul or Peter or any of Jesus’ early followers. Some of the women were attractive, but they weren’t preachers. Preaching the Word was an exclusively male domain for nearly 2000 years. Women taught children and each other about the Kingdom, but public preaching was done by men, homely men, men without much (or any) charisma or physical appeal. Paul specifically mentioned that those in the Church were generally unaccomplished, came from humble backgrounds, and weren’t much to look at. He also mentioned that he was a poor public speaker. Moses admitted the same about himself.
The power of these humble homely men and what drew people to them was God’s Spirit speaking through them. It was God’s Spirit that gave their words authority. Truth is a magnet to those who love Truth.
I mention this because we’re in an age of great deception. God is permitting legions of false preachers to be unleashed, and they’re coming at us slick of word and smooth of face. It’s hard not be mesmerized by them. It’s hard not to fall under their spell, and a spell it is, have no doubt about that. These are deep state-trained, demonically inspired, designer drug-fueled preachers whose job it is to overwhelm us with their charisma and lead us into error.
Their ultimate goal is to turn us away from God.
Here’s how you’ll know them:
First and foremost, they’ll ask for money to preach. Not just an honorarium, a set fee. They’ll also ask for money for their ministry, books, videos, seminars, workshops, private counselling, projects, etc. They’ll be selling the Word not just figuratively but literally. The “DONATE” button will be prominent on their website.
Second, somewhere on their website you’ll see a triangle or pyramid symbol, either upright or inverted, either outright or stylized. Or you’ll see an outright or stylized symbol of a compass (an architect’s tool, not a way finder tool). Or you’ll see an outright or stylized eye. There are other symbols, but these are the main ones. They’re symbols of various deep state factions that signal who owns these preachers.
Third, they’ll be married with kids. It won’t just be one kid; they’ll have at least two. If male, they’ll have a devoted photogenic wife, if female, they’ll have a devoted photogenic husband, along with multiple children. None of these false preachers will be childless and unmarried (or separated from their spouse and children in the service of God), like Jesus and his early followers were.
Fourth, they’ll hit you over the head with scripture. They go for the wow factor when they preach, and part of that is throwing chapter and verse at you so fast your head spins. The intent is to amaze and impress you with the breadth of their knowledge, but the real impact is your confusion.
Fifth, they’ll push a “Jesus is coming back soon” and/or some form of rapture event. They’ll focus on end times and the apocalypse, and their sermons will be mostly fear-based. They’ll rarely, if ever, mention the Ten Commandments or the importance of keeping them, and they’ll never mention false prophets or false preachers. Some of them also still preach prosperity by stressing the “biblical principle” to tithe and “sow”.
Sixth, they’ll come across as physically attractive. Whether male or female, they’ll dye their hair to try to appear younger. They’ll dress in expensive clothes and accessorize with expensive jewelry and watches. Both males and females will have had cosmetic surgery or Botox injections and they’ll wear obvious make-up, which the males will dismiss as “stage make-up” (but they actually wear it to improve their appearance). Their appearance will be very, very important to their ministry. They’ll have gleaming teeth, most of which are capped, implanted, or otherwise false, and they’ll have an overly broad smile and piercing gaze that’s meant to disarm you. It’s worth noting that psychopaths have the same piercing gaze.
Seventh, they’ll refer to Jesus as “Christ”, not Jesus. They’ll occasionally say “Jesus”, but mostly they’ll say “Christ”. Certainly, Jesus is the Christ, but there’s power in the name of Jesus, not Christ.
Eighth, they’ll seem to have boundless energy. They never seem to get tired, regardless of their age or how busy their schedules are. That’s because they’re on a regime of designer drugs or other concoction I’d rather not know about. They’re also at times possessed when they preach. Their physical energy when they’re in public is greatly augmented. They radiate energy. That’s a big part of their appeal.
Churning our false preachers is a specialized industry within the deep state, which is Satan’s global government. As Jesus warned us, “many will come in my name… and deceive many”. Social media is enabling false preachers to have a wider reach than ever before, and they’re taking full advantage of it.
If you’ve been caught in the net of a slick-talking false preacher for a time, don’t be ashamed. We all have. It’s part of our learning process. What we take away from the experience is how to discern false preachers so that we’ll never get caught by them again.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 