HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 19, 2024 – I have a long and storied history of being banned from public online forums, and this supposedly in a time and place when we have constitutionally guaranteed freedom of opinion and freedom to express our opinion openly, as long as we remain civil. I’ve touched on this before. I’m also shadow-banned on nearly every site I leave comments on, but I still leave comments, even knowing no-one will read them. It’s important (to me) that the AIs scrape as much opinion-related information about me as they can. I want the name of JESUS CHRIST OF NAZARETH! emblazoned across my file.

And we all have one of those – a file. Does anyone read them? Likely not. But our files certainly exist and can be pulled and tweaked by the powers-that-be if we become too troublesome.

Jesus had a file. Pontius Pilate read from it at Jesus’ trial. The alleged eyewitnesses in attendance also contributed to the file, but their input was so contradictory, they nullified each other’s witness. Still, it was Jesus’ time, and so despite the lack of verifiable evidence presented to Pilate, the mob’s judgement (“Crucify him!”) held sway.

I was once put through one of those trials, though not for a death sentence. I was facing up to two years in prison. Multiple witnesses were lined up against me attempting to corroborate the evidence presented in my file. The evidence was false, but my simply stating “not guilty” would not have been sufficient to get me out of this particular pickle because the multiple witnesses testifying under oath were police officers, so their word carried significant weight.

However, because it wasn’t yet my time, God got me off on an obscure technicality, which surprised even my lawyer when it came to him suddenly in the midst of the court proceedings. He’d been handed my case the evening before the trial and confessed during our one and only phone call that he had no idea how he would defend me. Hoping against hope, he’d brought some case file books with him to court. Scripture tells us never to prepare our defence in advance, as it will be “given [us] in that same hour what [we] shall speak. For it is not [we] that speak, but the Spirit of [our] Father that speaketh in [us].” I lived this scripture personally that day. The file on this trial is likely still accessible. It took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in December 2000.

Jesus warns us that we’ll be hated simply for existing, and so we are. If we get banned in one place for speaking God’s Truth, we move on to another, whether in physical or virtual space. Where God’s Truth is not welcome, neither are we, but the current rapid expansion of the devil’s turf means that our own turf on Earth is correspondingly shrinking, and we are grossly outnumbered. At this rate, we’ll soon be outcasts not only socially (by being banned) but under worldly law (by being arrested).

Already in Canada, a law is on deck that will make it a crime to state the obvious, even if we genuinely believe what we’ve stated and are backed in our assertions by scripture. We’re protected for the time being, but within a few years that protection will end. God’s Truth is first made unacceptable socially and then punishable under law, first by a prison sentence and then by death. And have no doubt – these are blasphemy laws, as speaking against Satan and his worldly creation is blasphemy to those who love the world.

I’m OK with being banned and actually consider it a job well done. It also shows me where not to waste my time. Being outcast, reviled, excluded, banned, arrested, imprisoned, and martyred goes with the territory of being a born-again believer, as the members of the early Church well knew and as every Holy Spirit-filled follower of Jesus since then personally experiences. Even though our footprint in the world is growing smaller and smaller, the Kingdom has not shrunk. In fact, the Kingdom has only expanded over the past 2000 years. There, we can speak our mind freely and live our beliefs without fear or compulsion, as none but the reborn can gain entrance past the fiercesome Cherubims and the flaming sword.

Thank God for his Truth, thank God for his Kingdom, and thank God for Jesus!