Home » Posts tagged 'OFF-GRID CHRISTIAN' (Page 8)
Tag Archives: OFF-GRID CHRISTIAN
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.
ESCAPING GOD’S HOLY CHASTISEMENT AND FINAL JUDGEMENT
CHARLO, New Brunswick, August 6, 2023 – When I was first born-again and started reading the Bible, I was shocked by how coolly the holy angels condoned God’s wholesale destruction of entire cities and nations. I remember thinking that the angels were cold-hearted and almost robotic in how they stated the suffering was deserved. I remember wondering where God’s mercy was in these cases.
But as I grew as God’s daughter, I came to understand the connection between sin and holy judgement, sin and holy chastisement, and holy chastisement and holy judgement. I came to understand that holy judgement is definitive and final, and that after it’s been decided there is no going back, whereas holy chastisement leaves room for repentance and renewal and only occurs after God’s repeated and increasingly urgent warnings have been ignored.
Holy chastisement is God’s last-ditch effort to get people to turn back to him. It may be delivered on an individual basis or spread across an entire region or nation, but it’s purpose is to stop sinners in their tracks so that they reevaluate their lives and turn back to God before it’s too late. When God is chastising individuals, they may experience extreme financial problems, relationship meltdowns, employment implosions, etc. Nothing will go well for them; they’ll feel that their lives are entirely out of control and there’s nowhere to turn for help. When God is chastising people collectively, he usually delivers it through natural disasters or plagues. But again, the impact of the event on each person within the collective is so extreme, they feel that everything is beyond their control and no-one can help.
Most of former Christendom is now under God’s holy chastisement. It’s mainly coming in the form of extreme weather events like floods and heatwaves that are being described as biblical in scope and intensity, but it also involves wars, wildfires, double-digit inflation, plunging standard of living, mass non-Christian immigration, insect invasions, widespread “turbo-charged” disease, family and societal breakdown, and rampant sexual deviancy. Climate change, of course, along with the usual suspects of racism and capitalism, have been fingered for blame for these events, but their real cause is widespread unrepented sin.
Some of us suspect that these plagues are contrived (manmade). But even if they are contrived, they’re still being permitted by God, which means they’re being allowed for a purpose. God needs people to feel the full consequences of their actions so that the shock of the pain will give them a chance to turn back to him before things get much, much worse. God is the only one who can help them once they’ve reached the chastisement stage. In other words, it’s either repent or suffer the inescapable and earned final consequences.
God’s holy judgement is the time of annihilation. When his holy chastisement is unsuccessful at getting either an individual or a collective to stop sinning, God has no choice but to render a final judgement of “guilty” against these people. His perfect justice demands that he do so. If God were not to condemn in these cases, he would be in violation of his own justice.
The full-scale destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (other than for Lot and his family) is probably the best-known instance of God’s condemnation of a collective, but the Flood was also a judgement against everyone except Noah and his family, as was the total annihilation of entire cities and towns by the armies of the children of Israel under the command of Moses and Joshua. God instructed his armies not only to burn these places to the ground, but to slaughter every man, woman, child, and animal in them, to spare none. Nothing was to be left but a smoldering heap. Their bloodlines were to be obliterated.
God renders a similar judgement of guilt on individuals, even among his own people. We see the same instruction to utterly destroy given to the angels in Ezekiel 9 and throughout the book of Revelation. In each case, God has warned his people of imminent destruction if they don’t turn back to him, but they double down on their sins, ignoring his warnings and cursing him for his holy chastisement. This leaves God no choice but to follow through with the intended annihilation of all unrepentant sinners.
Scripture says that God chastises those whom he loves. Chastisement leaves room and time for repentance, but there is an urgency about it that should never be dismissed. Even born-again believers can find themselves on the receiving end of God’s holy chastisement if they go astray. We should thank God when that happens to us – THANK God, not curse him, not grumble, and not blame the devil. We should thank God for his chastisement because it means he loves us and there’s still time to get right with him. We should thank God and do whatever he’s telling us to do or endure whatever he’s asking us to endure because ultimately, he has our best interests at heart – not his best interests, our best interests. God does everything he does for us.
As former Christian nations spiral ever downward in every conceivable way, we need to remind ourselves that we, as God’s children in right standing with our Father, don’t need to suffer the chastisements meant to bring sinners to repentance. God doesn’t want us to suffer those chastisements. He will always give us a way and means to avoid them and we should follow his guidance and avoid them. We don’t get spiritual brownie points for choosing to suffer what God doesn’t want us to suffer: We only get suffering that has no redeeming purpose. So if God tells you to leave a place because it’s under his chastisement, leave it. Again, you don’t gain any reward for choosing to suffer what you haven’t earned. The only one who gained a reward for suffering what he hadn’t earned was Jesus, and we’re not Jesus. If God advises us to leave, we need to leave.
God had Noah build the ark to escape the flood, and he sent angels to rescue Lot. God always looks after those who love him, even during times of chastisement and judgement. God knows his children and is known of them. He keeps us safe in his secret place, but it’s up to us to do what he says when he says to do it. We cannot defy God’s guidance and then expect to be rescued at the last minute. That may work once, when we do it out of ignorance, but it won’t work twice.
If you love God, stay in right-standing with him and do whatever he says, without complaining and without delay. That’s the only way you’ll escape his chastisement and final judgement.
THE ONLY WAY TO LEARN GOD’S WORD
CHARLO, New Brunswick, August 6, 2023 – In one of the gospels, there’s a wonderful tableau of Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, learning from him. She’s not poring over a scroll with furrowed brow or dutifully taking notes on papyrus – she’s simply and humbly sitting on the floor, totally enraptured by what Jesus is teaching her. Martha, as we’re told, is fussing and harumphing in the background trying to catch their attention. When she fails to do so, she curtly interrupts them to ask Jesus if he could please remind Mary that she needs help with the meal preparations. But to Martha’s surprise, Jesus defends Mary’s choice to sit at his feet and learn from him rather than to help Martha with the chores. He says: “Mary has chosen the better part, and it won’t be taken from her.”
The Bible is not meant to be studied. It is not meant to be a work project or a chore that we somehow have to get through. It’s not meant to be “interpreted” by our own or someone else’s woefully inadequate intellect. It’s not meant to be quoted chapter and verse. Like Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet, we’re to approach the Bible by humbly opening ourselves to God’s Word and letting God teach us. We’re to be guided by God’s Holy Spirit when we’re learning scripture; we’re not to be misguided by our own understanding
The terms “Bible scholar” and “Bible study” should not exist.
We’re to read the Bible, not study it; we’re to learn from God what scripture means, not lean on our own understanding or that of someone else, however “learned” they claim to be.
When we read his Word, God opens to us what he wants us to learn, which is what we need to learn at any given time. And because God and God only is teaching us and because there’s only one God, there can be only one meaning – God’s – for every point of scripture. There’s no room for private interpretation or consensus model learning when it comes to God’s Word. Any interpretation that deviate’s from God’s is false.
The last Bible study I attended was early on a Sunday morning in downtown Toronto a few years ago. There were only a few people in attendance that day, all of them (except for me) over the age of retirement. I could tell by the way they interacted that they’d known each other for a long time. I was the outsider, having just wandered in off the street.
It was very much a consensus-model type of Bible study. The attendees’ Bibles were well-worn, with the yellow-, pink-, and blue-highlighted pages fluttery with sticky notes. They looked like recipe indexes rather than Holy Scripture. I hadn’t brought my Bible with me because I didn’t know I was going to be at a Bible study that morning. I’d just gone for a walk and happened upon the sign that read “Bible Study Sunday 9 – 10 am”, and in I went. Truth be told, I was looking for a public washroom, and I figured the church door would be open if there was a Bible study going on. And so it was. Mission accomplished. It was only after my very pressing mission was accomplished that I decided to stay for the Bible study.
Consensus model anything has never been my cup of tea. I don’t like it and I don’t agree with it, but I find it particularly annoying when it comes to learning God’s Word. Consensus model means no-one really knows what they’re talking about with regard to the topic at hand, but if enough people throw their ideas into the ring, something useful may emerge. Consensus model can also mean that the person who has the right idea is talked over and ignored by those who don’t have a clue, and that the ideas of the clueless reign by virtue of numbers rather than merit. The consensus model approach is essentially restrained bullying by the majority.
So I sat and listened while they presented their prepared speeches on what they thought John 12:1-11 meant, making reference throughout their presentations to other verses in the Bible and to the interpretations of various theologians. I felt like I was at a university seminar. They each thought the chapter meant something slightly different, but instead of challenging each other on how they could believe the same scripture could mean something different, they just nodded politely and smiled. It was a tight little smile they smiled, the type you give when you don’t really feel like smiling but social decorum calls for it.
As some of you may realize by now, I’m not big on decorum. I totally disagreed with all of their interpretations and told them so. I could see the shock on their faces and the silent harumphing in their eyes indicating they considered me out of line. Maybe I was out of line, according to the rules of their Bible Study game, but I can’t sit and let people get away with misreading God’s meaning and not speak up about it.
As I mentioned, there can be only one meaning for any given word or line or verse or chapter or book in the Bible because there’s only one God, and God is the one who assigns meaning to his Word. If your interpretation doesn’t align with God’s, then you’re wrong. There’s no other way to put it except that you’re wrong. God is right, and you’re wrong.
I ended up leaving early because I frankly couldn’t handle the fussiness of the attendees. I’d come into the study like Mary, hoping to sit at Jesus’ feet and learn, but instead I’d wandered into a room full of Marthas all eager to outfuss each other with their array of sticky notes and quotes from theologians. There was no love for learning there, just a desire to one-up each other with evidence of how much time and effort they’d invested in their interpretation. I felt sad and frustrated when I left, but I reminded myself it was my own fault and I should have known better. Churches these days are the last place you’ll find a Christian.
I remembered the ill-fated Bible study early this morning when I was reading the Bible. I’m not sure why it came back to me today, other than “how people learn” has been on my mind over the past few days after reading hundreds of comments by alleged Christians supporting and promoting the movie starring a demon. The people claimed they’d learned a lot about demons from the movie and they considered this learning source a good thing. I heartily disagree. There is only one way to learn God’s Word, and that’s to read God’s Word, not study it. Read it, and let God teach it to you, like Jesus taught Mary. You don’t go to other people and ask them to interpret God’s Word for you. You certainly don’t go to a fictional representation of a demon to learn God’s Word. You sit like Mary and let God teach you.
_____
My prayer for you is this: I hope that if you’re in a Bible study, you’ll stop going to it. I hope that if you’re hosting a Bible study, you’ll stop doing it. I hope that instead of “studying” the Bible, you’ll humbly sit down with God and the Bible and let him teach you his Word. I hope you don’t mar your Bible with highlighting or sticky notes. I hope you realize that God and God only has the final say on what the Bible means and that God and God only is the only one you should be going to if you want to learn his Word.
I hope that you receive this reminder today in the spirit it was intended – to guide rather than to admonish, to encourage rather than to discourage.
And here’s my blessing for you: May all your Bible-reading sessions be like Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus, oblivious to everything but learning God’s Word.
Amen.
HOOK
CHARLO, New Brunswick, August 6, 2023 – God uses all manner of things to hook us; he baits the hook, we bite the bait, and he reels us in.
We have our own hooks, too. God made me a woman. He made me a woman for a reason, for his reason.
Jesus showed his love for women during his time on Earth. We don’t have go over again how he chose a woman (Mary Magdalene) to reveal his resurrection to. We don’t have to go over it again, but we will, because it’s important.
As a woman speaking up in God’s Church, I have experienced that the very fact of my being a woman is all it takes for some people to shut down and disregard me. I’ve even on occasion had people tell me to shut up, to not presume to be able to teach men, to know my place.
Oh, I know my place all right – it’s right here following behind Jesus, following his lead, just like everyone else who’s born-again, whether male or female.
In God’s Church, there is no male or female. We’re just his children. That’s our pedigree: children of God. In time and space, there’s male and female, Greek and Roman, rich and poor, Black and White, old and young. But in God’s Kingdom and in God’s economy none of those characteristics exist: We’re all the same.
It’s important to remember that Jesus chose a woman to reveal his resurrection to because the fact is that he did choose a woman. It’s also important to remember that whatever Jesus did, he did for a reason, he did because God guided him to do it. God guided Jesus to do everything he did. Now, I don’t think that Jesus chose a woman to reveal his resurrection to because he wanted to elevate women above men, as some people think – no, I don’t believe that at all. I think he chose a woman to reveal his resurrection to in order to elevate her to the stature of a man, which was unheard of in those days. He wanted to make the witness of a woman as credible and valued as that of a man.
He was also using her to test the disciples. She was the hook, and her sex was the bait.
Jesus had made a point of defending and elevating women throughout his ministry years. Where in some cases even his disciples wanted to condemn, Jesus defended. It was in fact Jesus’ defence of Mary’s anointing him with oil of nard that was the straw that broke Judas Iscariot and led directly to his betrayal of Jesus. This is how deeply entrenched the devaluation of women was, even within the disciples’ ranks. Jesus elevated Mary to the stature of a prophet, and this was too much for some of the men present. For some today, it still is
A hook is something that lures and entices. It’s meant to be bitten; you’re meant to be caught on it. It’s baited in God’s case with holy bait. If God is baiting you, whatever he’s baiting you with is holy, whatever he’s luring you with is holy, whatever he’s enticing you with is holy. His Bible is holy bait. Jesus is holy bait. All of God’s prophets are holy bait, all on their own unique hooks so that they not only lure but catch. The bait lures, the hook catches.
I am a woman. To anyone within the Kingdom, the fact of my being a woman shouldn’t matter, any more than my color or my wealth or my age or my nationality. All that should matter to someone in the Kingdom is that I’m a child of God and a follower of Jesus. That is my pedigree. Nothing else matters.
To the world, God uses the fact of my womanhood as bait.
I am the holy bait luring the unholy to God.
NEFARIOUS: PREACHING DOCTRINES OF DEVILS
CHARLO, New Brunswick, August 6, 2023 – Full disclosure here: I did not see the movie. I didn’t even make it all the way through the trailer. But I did skip through a few interviews given by the directors and read enough comments and reviews to get a good whiff of what the film was about. Let me put it another way – if I’m walking down the road and see a steaming pile of brown goop a few yards ahead, I don’t need to march right up to it and stick my face into it to know it’s poop. I can tell from a safe distance that it is what it is and detour around it. In the same way, I don’t need to watch even one minute of a movie headlined by a demon, starring a demon, to know it’s the spiritual equivalent of a steaming pile and therefore needs to be avoided. To do otherwise – to purposely kneel down and study it – would be the same as putting Jesus back up on the cross.
“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.”
The last time I checked, Christians are to be taught by God and his Word, not by demons (even fictional ones). We betray God and Jesus when we turn our back to them and go to the devil for knowledge.
I am appalled by the sheer volume of Christians who are not only cheering this film on, but are urging their family, friends, and strangers to go see it. Some even claim it should be mandatory viewing in seminaries and Bible schools.
I can only think that these people have been bewitched, somewhat along the lines of the “O foolish Galatians” that Paul chewed out for falling such easy prey to liars.
Because have no doubt – the devil and his demons (even and especially the fictional ones) are liars. That’s all they are. They mix in enough facts to gain your trust, but their arguments are based on lies and delivered through seduction and deception.
Seduction and deception.
Sound familiar?
O foolish Christians! You are Eve all over again. You have a Bible to learn God’s Truth from – you have a direct line to God in prayer, courtesy of Jesus – but you look instead to a fictional “dark gospel” dictated by a fictional emissary of hell. And it’s not enough that you yourself fall under the spell – you have to drag others down with you. You gush over the demon. You are in awe of the demon. You secretly admire the demon’s intellect. “Such a wise demon!”, you say to yourself. “If only everyone could learn from this demon!” And then you go and do the devil’s bidding and promote the film – even to children – as a Christian film, and you do it for free.
Hear that noise? That horrible sound? It’s the devil and his demons laughing at you.
Abominations come in all shapes and sizes. This film is an abomination. And like all abominations, it has no place in the heart, mind, home, or playlist of a follower of Jesus.
We are not to talk to demons. We are not to be curious about demons. We are not to “study” demons or take a course on them. We are to do as Jesus did when it comes to demons, which means we are to have no conversation with them at all other than to ask their name and then to state their name when we cast them out. That is the only interaction we’re to have with demons.
If you’ve been bewitched and beguiled by the movie, get down on your face and repent. Get down on your face right now and repent. You are loved by God and hated by the devil, and yet you’ve become a cheerleader for Satan. Give your head a shake, O foolish Christian! Open your eyes, O foolish Christian!
Get down on your face and repent, O foolish Christian, before it’s too late!
UNTITLED
CHARLO, New Brunswick, July 30, 2023 – We have so little time, and we use what little time we do have fussin’ and fightin’, which is just what the devil wants us to do. He sets up the conflicts – the traps – and then sits back and waits for us to walk into them….
And we nearly always do.
Meanwhile, God is over there waving at us, trying to get our attention and hold it long enough for us to make some kind of a commitment to him, any kind of a commitment, and follow through.
But I gotta be honest – it’s mostly a losing battle for him. He’s left with only a remnant, though it could have been worse, I guess, if Moses hadn’t intervened, if Joshua hadn’t intervened, if Joseph hadn’t intervened, if Elijah and Samuel and David and Jeremiah – if all those righteous men all down through the ages hadn’t intervened on our behalf, culminating in Jesus.
But ever since Jesus it’s just been us, a rag-tag group of mostly unknown followers that Paul rightly described as not very impressive, not much to look at. But God got our attention. We saw him waving and waving and waving and we finally waved back, moving closer to see what all the fuss was about.
So he got our attention and now he’s holding it. We’re the followers now. We’re the interveners. We’re up there with Moses and David and all the rest. We’re part of that team. Jesus called his Cousin John “Elijah” and knew how bizarre and downright dubious that sounded to his disciples. They were expecting something different, some grand gesture or sign that would confer a holy haze around the expected anointed, but it was only Cousin John, slightly oddball Cousin John who’d lived out in the desert most of his life and had now gotten himself landed in jail for speaking his piece.
Jesus himself was decidedly underwhelming, considering what people had in mind when they thought of Moses’ prophesied “Prophet”. They’d pictured David come back to life in a body the size of Goliath’s with the wealth of Solomon and the supernatural reach of a dozen Elijahs. They’d pictured something, well, anything other than this low-keyed soft-spoken son of a carpenter from Nazareth. And yet there Jesus was, the prophesied messiah, just as there John was, the prophesied Elijah, just as here we are now, the prophesied remnant, the saints of the Kingdom of Zion.
The more times you say it, the more real it becomes. When Jesus rose from the dead and appeared in a body that was on its way to becoming glorified, the disciples could finally see that what they’d suspected was real all along. Paul says we see God through a glass darkly, but if we make it Home, we’ll see him face to face; and that we know now only in part, but if we make it Home, we’ll know in full. Yet even here now we’re given flashes of facetime with God and flashes of full knowledge of him, courtesy of his Holy Spirit. So we know what we see is real and is becoming more real by the minute.
They never accepted Jesus because they were expecting something more, something maybe like what the devil was trying to entice Jesus with when he tempted him in the wilderness. They were looking for the devil’s grandiose notion of what a messiah should look like and so completely rejected the actual flesh and blood Messiah standing in front of them. People are still rejecting and dismissing God’s handiwork as inconsequential and not the real deal. The problem isn’t that God isn’t performing miracles like he used to; the problem is that people aren’t recognizing the miracles when they see them.
I’m a miracle, for instance. Everyone born of the Spirit is a walking, talking manifestation of God intervening in time and space. That’s a miracle. If I weren’t a miracle, these words wouldn’t be coming out of my fingertips and I wouldn’t be loving my enemies and praying for those who hate me. I can guarantee you that loving my enemies is the last thing I’d be doing if God weren’t working a miracle through me. You can’t love your enemies unless God’s working through you. Humans don’t love their enemies on their own steam.
Jesus says the Kingdom is within us. People are expecting some grand revelation on the scale of Ezekiel’s vision of God’s throne, but the Kingdom is within us. It will never be set up on Earth. That’s a job for the anti-Christ, who’ll be only too happy to answer to the name of Messiah and King and even God, when his time comes. The same kind of people who rejected Jesus for being too… well… carpenterish are now rejecting the Kingdom for being too invisible. They’re waiting for something more tangible, something they can stick their fingers into and bow down to. They wouldn’t be caught dead bowing down to a carpenter.
So here’s how I see it: it’s either that John was just Jesus’ crazy cousin, Jesus was just a poor carpenter from Nazareth, and I’m just a nobody from nowhere, or it’s that John was the prophesied Elijah, Jesus is the prophesied Messiah, and I’m part of the prophesied remnant, a saint living in God’s Kingdom.
It’s all how you look at it. God wants us to look at him, to fix our gaze on him so that we can see through his eyes. The devil wants to distract us, divert us, mislead and misinform us. He wants to blind us with false expectations, like he blinded nearly all of God’s people all those years ago.
Ultimately it’s up to you where you look. You can look at God or you can look the other way.
But I recommend you look at God and hold your gaze steady there.
ARE WE PRAYING THE WRONG WAY?
CHARLO, New Brunswick, July 28, 2023 – Jesus tells us: “Ye have not because ye ask not”. It’s his polite way of saying that we’re praying for the wrong things or not praying when we should be or perhaps not even praying at all.
And yet, my oh my, how some Christians love to pray! They’re like the Pharisees standing at the front of the temple or on the street corners, making sure that everyone sees and hears their holiness. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with prayer – it’s the most powerful force in the universe and our direct line to God and Jesus. But many Christians, for all their prayers, might just as well not be praying because they pray the wrong way.
That is to say, they’re praying for the wrong things.
For instance, instead of praying for God to give them the strength to endure whatever God permits them to endure, they pray to find a way to avoid their tests and punishments. What they’re essentially doing is praying to God to counteract his own justice.
Now, that’s a strange thing for Christians to do – to pray against God’s perfect justice! I’m not sure why people do that, other than they don’t know that they’re doing it or they see others praying that way and simply follow their lead. Certainly, like Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, we can ask God if there’s some wriggle room in his Grand Scheme Of Things that would allow us not to suffer so much, but we also need to end our prayers with “not what I want, but what you want”, as Jesus famously did. Ultimately, we need to fully align our prayers with God’s will, so that instead of trying to avoid taking our knocks (whether as punishment or as tests), we head into battle fully armed with God’s Spirit.
And we should pray the same for others. When we pray for them to avoid their tests and punishments, we’re not helping them. These are not charitable prayers, to help people avoid what they need to go through. In fact, such prayers serve the devil’s purposes, not God’s. We need to pray that people have the strength to endure whatever God needs them to endure and to come out the other side victorious.
Every test and punishment that we overcome through patient endurance makes us spiritually stronger and better able to help ourselves and others. More importantly, everything we successfully endure brings us closer to God and Jesus and closer to Home. The only test that Jesus taught us to pray to avoid is the test of the Tribulation. This is something that we can with God’s full blessings pray to avoid.
So the next time someone asks you to pray for them, pray for what they’ve asked for, but also pray that God will give them the strength to endure whatever they have to endure and come out victorious and stronger in the end. And if you pray to God on your own behalf, pray the same thing – not to avoid the tests and punishments that are coming your way, but for the strength and grace to endure them.
This should always be our prayer – to align our will with God’s and to have his supernatural strength to “endure to the end”. If we make this our guiding prayer, I guarantee you that God will immediately answer it with a loud and resounding “DONE!”
SEEING THINGS: THE DOPPELGANGER PHENOMENON
CHARLO, New Brunswick, July 28, 2023 – We know that when we convert, we become a particular target of the devil.
He wants us back.
I’ve known this ever since I was reborn 24 years ago, but lately I’ve come to know it especially intimately.
A very strange phenomenon started occurring shortly after I was born-again. I didn’t really pay much attention to it at the time, as I thought it was just people “misremembering” or getting their dates and other facts wrong. But lately it’s been so in-my-face, I’ve had to consider where it’s coming from, and why.
Here’s the phenomenon – people swear they see me in places I haven’t been, saying and doing things I haven’t said or done. It goes something like this: I meet someone for the first time, and he (it’s almost always a “he”) tells me we’ve met before and names the place. I tell him I’ve never met him before and have never been to that place, but he insists that I must be wrong. He swears I must be wrong.
Now, having a look-alike is nothing new. Nearly everyone has at least one somewhere in the world. But the problem is that my “evil twin” is, well, evil. She does bad things and says bad things, and it gets the guys all riled up. Sometimes she’s incredibly rude, and sometimes she’s lascivious. So when I meet these guys for the first time, they’ve already informed a very strong opinion about me because they think I’m her. Their opinion depends on their interaction with my doppelganger.
For example, it led to a taxi driver becoming obsessed with me and following me around everywhere I went when I visited a city a few years ago. He would lurk outside my windows at night, leaving little clues that he’d been there. I was only able to shake him off my trail when I left town early one morning using a limo service instead of a cab (I figured he’d been monitoring the cab calls on his dispatch radio). The night before I left, he’d written my name using little pieces of wood, laid them on the ground in front of my door, and lit them on fire. I have no idea how he found me at that location. Then there was the guy who swore that I constantly swore at him one summer a few years back while we were staying at a university residence. The only problem is I had never stayed at that residence before and I was somewhere else that summer. When I met the guy for the first time last year at the residence, he flew into a rage and accused me of previously verbally abusing him. Based on this false recollection, the guy has since got me banned from all the residences at that university.
As I said, we become targets once we’re born-again. I’ve learned to take everything in stride and acknowledge that if God permits it, it’s either a punishment or a test. Whichever it is, I accept it, submit to God, and learn from it. I only mention my evil twin today because she’s made an appearance again, this time near a small town where I’ve been staying for the past few months. Her reappearance has finally put the phenomenon front and centre for me. I can’t ignore it anymore or just write it off as someone “misremembering”. I need to see it for what it is and accept that it’s part of my life now.
Another taxi driver I just met swears he talked to me last week at a nighttime event I never attended. He got very sullen when I insisted I hadn’t been anywhere near the event. I have no idea what my evil twin said to him, but he was definitely expecting something more from me than just the fare and a tip.
I talked to God about this phenomenon a few hours ago, wanting to clear everything with him before I publish it. He reminded me that Jesus was also falsely accused of things he didn’t do, and that his accusers contradicted each other with their claims. The same thing happened to Paul and other followers of Jesus, including the disciples. That part of scripture always kind of bothered me because I couldn’t tell whether the accusers were purposely lying or had simply “misremembered”.
Now I believe they were subject to the same spiritual phenomenon as all the people who swear they’ve met me before. Not being under God’s protection, they’re easy prey of the devil. What they’re seeing is not me (obviously) and not even a person: it’s a spiritual hallucination or vision. They think they’re seeing me, but it’s not me. It’s not anyone. Hallucinations and visions can seem very real to the person experiencing them and interacting with them, which is why the guys get so angry with me when I tell them I’ve never met them before. They think I’m playing them for fools.
This phenomenon occurs in every culture in the world and goes under various names like “doppelganger”, “evil twin”, “nemesis”, and “apparitions”. Unfortunately, the appearance of these visions will likely plague me, as a born-again believer, for the rest of my time on Earth. They’ll also likely get increasingly compromising: I have no idea what my evil twin will get up to next. Like I said, Jesus and others in the Bible had to deal with this same issue; it’s just part and parcel of being a child of God. Now that I know what it is, I’m aware of it and I fully trust God to protect me from it.
Again – if God permits it, he wants us to submit to it and learn to deal with it knowing that he’s always got our back.
So, if you happen to see me out and about, saying and doing things that are decidedly unchristian, it’s not me. It’s my evil twin.
Just ignore her. d:
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 