I WILL Prevail

I almost had a machining project today, but it looks like I may have to use hand tools instead.

I have a tractor. It has a bucket. There are brush forks on the bucket. They attach with turnbuckles that tighten chains around the bucket.

A turnbuckle (AKA “bottle screw” or “stretching screw”) is a tube with internal threads on each end. One thread is right-handed, and the other is left-handed. Screws go into both ends. When you turn the tube, both screws go in or out at the same time.

At some point in the past, someone with good intentions and not a lot of knowledge applied something like a Vise Grip to one end of one of my turnbuckles. There are matching gouges on two sides of it, showing where the tool was attached. I assume the purpose was to grab the tube and turn it. A pipe wrench would have been better (but still bad) because it wouldn’t have compressed the tube as much. I think. Anyway, it appears that the tube was narrowed slightly by the pressure, and this made it very difficult for the screw to go in and out. Because of this, I could not tighten the turnbuckle properly. I could only turn it so far, and then it became impossible.

I put off fixing this because I wanted to use the lathe. I wanted to grind a 60° threading tool, put it on a bar, run the bar into the turnbuckle, and follow the threads to remove material. This may not be the smartest way to fix the part; a tap would be faster. I wanted to use a machine tool, though. I’ve been deprived of machine tools for so long, I want to use them for everything.

Today I took the part off the tractor, mounted it in my bench vise, and used a breaker bar to remove the bound screw. That’s how tight it was. I had to push so hard, I had to be careful not to turn over my heavy workbench. When I got it apart, I was left with the turnbuckle body, which is the tube part. I chucked it in the lathe, and I found that the runout was something like 3 thousandths, which is fine. There was a lump on one side that went up to maybe 7 thousandths, but because it was only in one area, I assumed it was an anomaly I shouldn’t take into account.

Once I got the part chucked, I saw that it was very hard to see inside it. The part is black inside and out. It will be hard to put a cutting tool inside it and see well enough to register it in the existing thread.

I went to Ebay and ordered a used tap, just for the purpose of fixing the part. It will run me about $12. If I end up using it, the whole job should take under 15 minutes. The tap gives me a plan B. Once I’m done with it, I should never need it again, but $12 is a great price for fixing this part, and it never hurts to have extra cutting tools. I don’t know what a machine shop would charge to fix it, but I would have to drive all over and find someone who had the right tap, so I think going to a professional would be stupid even if it were free.

I may still use the lathe. It’s possible to line a tool up with an existing internal thread. I’ll just have to play around with it. Because it’s so dark inside the tube, I’m thinking of painting the inside. That would make it easier to see. One does not ordinarily paint things before machining them, but this is kind of a bubba job, so I don’t have to be persnickety about it. All I need to do is scrape maybe 10 thousandths out of the part, and it should function again.

I should be all set now. If I can’t make the lathe work, the tap will be here in a few days, and I’ll get the job done. It will be nice to have the fork attached properly for a change.

I Can Machine Stuff

The excitement around here never stops. Yesterday I got my milling machine connected to my phase converter, and today I mounted my milling vise and trammed the vise and mill head.

I thought hooking the mill to the phase converter would be a 45-minute job. I don’t know why I make prognostications like that. It’s like begging to be disappointed.

The job consisted of drilling a hole in the phase converter cabinet, running a power cord through it, connecting the wires inside the cabinet, and putting a plug and receptacle in the cords between the phase converter and mill. It should have been a snap. Of course, something amazing happened and caused a ridiculous delay. The receptacle I bought turned out to be defective. What are the odds of that happening?

Modern receptacles are pressed together when they’re made, so you can’t get inside them to fix them. To attach wires, you run them through holes in the receptacles, and they slide into little clamps consisting of screws and rectangular nuts. The screws are supposed to have upset metal at the ends so you can’t unscrew them completely. I think you can see where I’m going with this. I loosened a screw to make room for a wire, and the nut fell completely off the screw, inside the receptacle. Game over. The screw was defective, so it came right out of the nut.

Right away, I was looking at almost an hour of additional time. I had to go to Lowe’s, return the defective receptacle, buy a new one, and drive home.

I got the mill hooked up, and even though it was not aligned and ready to use, I fired it up just to hear it and know it was alive.

Today I used my precision angle plate to tram the head of the mill. It was a pleasure. Slap it on the mill table, push it against the quill, rotate the quill until it’s flush against the plate, and tighten. Literally a 5-minute job. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do it this way. I can’t find anything wrong with this method.

I stuck the vise on the table and used an Indicol holder to hold a test indicator against it. I decided to use an indicator from CDCO, which is a company that sells cheap Chinese machine accessories. Big mistake.

CDCO is great for things like tool holders, and when I saw their price on test indicators, I decided to give them a try. I have used cheap dial indicators (less precise than test indicators), and they have never given me a problem, so I figured a test indicator was a safe bet.

Tonight, I found that I could not get the numbers on the indicator to settle down. It was as though the indicator was losing its zero. Very strange. I got out an old European Tesatest indicator and used it instead, and I was done in a few minutes. It worked perfectly. So much for cheap test indicators.

It could me that I banged the CDCO indicator on something in the past and messed it up. I don’t know. I can’t be sure it was useless straight from the factory. But I’ve beaten the Tesatest up pretty good, and it works perfectly.

The upshot, tribulations and hindrances aside, is that I now have a functioning machine shop again. I need to level my lathe, but that’s a minor thing. It doesn’t have to be adjusted properly for small work. I should also install a switch on my phase converter so I don’t have to plug it in every time I use the machines. That’s a half-hour job, though.

I mean, it SHOULD be a half-hour job.

I’m learning.

Now I have no excuse not to go to the shop and arrange everything so it’s orderly. It’s obvious what I need to do. I need to come up with another excuse.

I think my first machining project should be to chase the threads on a turnbuckle that holds a fork on my tractor’s bucket. I think someone made the rookie error of putting a Vise Grip on it, tightening the threads on the turnbuckle’s tube. It’s impossible to tighten past a certain point. I would have to find a way to hold the part in a 4-jaw chuck, and I’d need to create an internal threading tool big enough for the work. I also have to figure out what size thread I’m dealing with. The screw part of the turnbuckle looks like it’s over an inch thick.

I guess I could measure the thread and try to find a used tap that will fit. That would save me time. A new one would probably cost somewhere around a hundred dollars.

Anyway, my workshop, though disorderly, is finally stocked with adequate machinery. I feel as though life has resumed.

Adjustments Turn Conversation Pieces into Working Machines

My workshop is a disaster area right now, due to the recent arrival of my compressor, mill, and lathe. The lathe is up and running, although I have not leveled it yet. The other two tools are still waiting for my help. I need to get things squared away, because I moved about half of the stuff in the garage in order to get the additional tools in, and I can’t get to things I would like to use.

Last night I went to Lowe’s and picked up $75 worth of electrical stuff to hook up the mill. I could have gotten out of the store for $33, but I bought two extra parts: a plug and a receptacle, both for the mill.

I have been trying to decide whether to use a VFD on the mill, as I did in the past, or to connect it directly to my 3-phase power supply. The only benefit of the VFD is that it allows me to work without firing up the huge power supply. I have an uneasy, irrational feeling that the power supply (phase converter) is fragile, so I avoid putting unnecessary hours on it. It’s probably bulletproof. It came from a serious company that makes industrial products.

If I use a VFD, I’ll have to run a cord from a wall socket to the VFD, and then I’ll have to run wires to the mill. In Miami, this was an okay setup, because the mill was next to a wall. I was able to put the VFD on the wall, and when I wanted to turn it on and off, I simply reached over and pushed a button. This time, my mill is out on the shop floor, so there is no convenient place for mounting a VFD.

I decided to go with the phase converter, so I have to cut a hole in the cabinet, hook a cord up to the phase converter, and run the cord to the mill. In order to make life simpler in the future, I’m going to put a plug and receptacle on the cord so I can detach and reattach it at will in the future.

I’m going to run the cord over the roof trusses and let it drop down to the mill. This will keep it off the floor.

Once the cord is hooked up, the mill has to be adjusted.

Bridgeport-style knee mills have rotatable heads. They can nod in the xy-plane, and they can turn in the xz-plane. This is a great feature, provided you’re not afraid to use it. In order to use a mill in the vertical orientation, it has to be “trammed,” which means it has to be set up so it’s perfectly perpendicular to the table from every direction. Tramming a mill is a pain in the butt. Generally, people use indicators that measure to within a thousandth of an inch, and they sweep their tables holding the indicators in the spindle. If the reading on the indicator changes when you move the indicator, your head is not perpendicular.

I learned a neat trick for tramming a mill quickly. People get mad at me when I mention it, but it works very well. Even if they can argue that it’s not as precise as a test indicator, which is dubious, it’s a very quick way to get you within half a thousandth.

I have something known as an angle block. It’s a big piece of iron with a handle. It looks sort of like a clothes iron, except it’s rectangular. The sides are square to each other to a high degree of precision. To tram your mill, you put the angle block on the table, lower your quill, and rest the quill against the block. If any light can be seen between the block and quill, the quill is not square to the table, so you adjust it.

My quill is 6″ long. Using this method, I can get it square to the table within half a thousandth over that 6″ length. If you put a light behind an angle block and a quill when they’re pressed against each other, you will be able to detect light coming through when there is less than a half-thousandth gap.

That’s not too shabby for a job that probably takes less than 10 minutes for both axes.

Once you get below a thousandth, it becomes hard to improve things. You’ll get everything lined up perfectly, and then things will move while you’re tightening the mill’s adjustment bolts, and you’ll have to loosen them and start over. How hard you want to work on it depends on how accurate you want to be. The difference between half a thousandth and a quarter of a thousandth (or whatever tiny amount you can manage) is not going to have any measurable effect on your work. No one will ever look at a part you milled and say, “Your mill is off by three tenths of a thousandth.”

Tram problems show up when you use wide tools like fly cutters and face mills. These things put flat faces on parts, and the faces can be two or more inches wide. Let’s see. If your tramming is out by half a thousandth over 6″, it’s off by a twelfth of a thousandth an inch from the spindle’s center of rotation, where a 2″ cutter is going to be most affected by your laziness. Hmm. That’s even more accurate than I thought it was.

To machinists, a twelfth of a thousandth is the same thing as zero. It’s an incredible degree of precision. A machine that can hold a tenth is considered top notch. No one in his right mind tries to do better than that on ordinary machines. Once you drop down close to a tenth of a thousandth, you’re getting into the territory of precision grinders, and you’re leaving mills and lathes behind.

I have used the block to tram my mill and then produced a faced part that appeared to have a perfect finish, so the process seems pretty reliable to me.

According to the video I embedded above, anything within a few thousandths is good, so it looks like the angle plate method is the way to go. The man who made the video is a respected machinist.

I have been told that a real expert will tram his head so it’s not quite square in the xy-plane, to allow for deflection when the work is under pressure, but that’s too much aggravation for me.

Milling machines are usually used with vises, just like drill presses. You can use clamps instead, but they’re a lot of work. Most machinists leave their milling vises on their tables all the time, except for unusual jobs. The big problem with using a vise is that it, like the mill’s head, has to be trammed. You don’t want a vise which is angled to the table.

I don’t know of an easy way to tram a vise. You put your test indicator on your spindle, you rest the tip on the vise’s rear jaw, and you move the vise back and forth while watching the dial. You bop the vise with a soft hammer until the dial stops moving. It’s maybe a 10-minute job. Again, as in the case of the mill’s head, everything will try to move when you tighten the vise down, so sometimes there is a lot of repetition.

I guess it will take 45 minutes to wire the mill up, and I would budget half an hour to get everything trammed.

Once all this is done, I can feel like a machinist again, and I may even have the motivation to start arranging my welding area.

Introducing Beer Cheese

It may be that there are people out there who think Eastern Kentucky has not produced any delicacies. This is far from true. Eastern Kentucky produces the best molasses (actually sorghum) on earth. People there cure fantastic hams. The most popular soft drink in Eastern Kentucky is Ale-8, which is made in Winchester, and it’s wonderful. Finally, there is beer cheese, which was allegedly invented in the same city.

I guess the list is not impressive, but it’s something.

According to Wikipedia, the Kentucky legislature has declared Clark County (home of Winchester) the birthplace of beer cheese, and–get this–Queen Elizabeth loves it. She took some home with her after visiting Lexington. She probably puts on furry slippers, rocks back in her La-Z-Boy, pops a cold Busch, turns on Keeping up With the Kardashians, and packs the cheese away.

I don’t really know what beer cheese is, except that it’s a spicy cheddar cheese spread. It’s flavored with beer, obviously. Bon Appetit’s recipe, which is almost certainly bogus, calls for flat brown ale. I am pretty sure no one in Kentucky knows what ale is, unless it’s Ale-8. They drink the cheapest beer imaginable. Stroh’s is probably the top seller, although I have known a number of Natural Light fans. All the drunkenness with none of that pesky beer flavor.

I remember beer cheese from my youth. At some point in the Seventies, I would guess, my relatives started raving about it, and from then on, it was a staple.

Some believe beer cheese was invented at Johnnie Allman’s restaurant. I don’t know anything about this place, but my aunt apparently does, because when she came to visit me over Christmas, she brought two containers of hand-packed beer cheese from Allman’s. She also brought one container of “Kentucky Beer/Cheese” from Evans Gourmet Foods. I guess she thought beer cheese was so important, it was crucial to have alternatives from which to choose a favorite.

A lot of people my aunt knows have recipes, but she sneers at them. She really looks down on the people who use Velveeta. My mother, one aunt, and my grandmother were good cooks, but there are a lot of bad cooks in Eastern Kentucky. There are people who use Bisquick and margarine.

I just found the Allman family’s website, and it says Johnnie got the recipe from his brother, who lived in ARIZONA! I wonder if that’s true. It would be a big blow to Kentucky’s culinary legacy.

It’s hard to say which brand is better. I found myself gravitating toward the Evans product, so I suppose it probably wins.

Before my relatives arrived, I went shopping, and I picked up some crackers to go with the cheese I was planning to serve. My local Winn-Dixie was selling Ritz crackers two for one, so we were in good shape when it came time to open the beer cheese. I didn’t know beer cheese was coming when I bought the crackers. They’re the ideal beer cheese substrate, so it worked out well. Saltines aren’t nearly as good.

When it comes to beer cheese, my recommendation is to stay away. I would guess that it has 50 calories per dip, and you are not going to stop after the first cracker. Once you start eating, you will continue much longer than you originally intended, and by the time you manage to pull yourself away, you may be 2000 calories heavier.

Anyway, I enjoyed the beer cheese tremendously, and I wish my relatives had taken the leftover cheese with them, because now it’s taunting me from the fridge.

I’m sure I could come up with a better recipe than Evans Gourmet Foods or the Allmans, but I’m not going to try, because I don’t want to die trapped in a recliner surrounded by empty beer cheese containers.

I feel like I should throw the remaining cheese out, but it’s hard to throw out a delicacy someone brought in their car from over 600 miles away.

The food worked out very well this Christmas. Disturbingly well. I now find myself with pounds and pounds of irresistible leftovers. The prime rib was perfect. The scalloped potatoes were impossible to stop eating. The cheesecake was magnificent. The Texas trash could not have been much better.

The Caesar salad was not all that great. I’ll say that. The dressing recipe I use is not satisfactory, even though it’s supposedly the original. I need to fix that.

I thought I was making a reasonable amount of food, but I still have more than I know what to do with.

I still can’t figure out why I have a talent for cooking. Is it a gift from God or a curse from the enemy? I would be happy if the food I made were merely good, but it’s so good it’s impossible to stop eating it. I have to be careful what I cook, because I sometimes end up with food that is too good to leave alone. It sounds like a joke, but it does bother me. I try to fix things that are okay but not great, in order to avoid problems.

I must have a pound of scalloped potatoes on hand. I really need to throw those out.

I still have a quarter of a cheesecake.

Maybe I’ll muster the strength to put things in the trash.

This was my first Christmas without my dad. His birthday is nearly the same day as Christmas, so he always had a birthday celebration as well as Christmas itself. I used to take him out to expensive steakhouses for his birthday, but we reached a point where that was not practical because of his dementia.

Was it sad to have Christmas without him? No. I was too busy to think about it. I was very busy all month with a difficult real estate closing, and there are still one or two things to deal with, so I had a lot on my mind. I also had to get the house ready for my relatives, and once they were here, there was a certain amount of drama, so I didn’t have a lot of time to dwell on my loss. Frankly, I am still enjoying the freedom of not being a caregiver, so that also factors into things. I didn’t have to follow my dad around and clean up after him. I didn’t have to cook for him. I didn’t have to observe him to keep him from defiling the holiday food. I didn’t have to drive him to any doctors or to the emergency room. I didn’t have to do his laundry or help him shower and dress. I was able to leave the house and run errands.

I don’t care how much you love your parents. If you take care of one for several years, and then he or she dies, you will feel relief, and you will love your new freedom. Even if you’re grieving at the same time, you will feel like you’ve dropped a huge weight, even if you’re too dishonest to admit it.

It’s not easy being chained to a disabled person or to live in a smelly house or to be blindsided over and over again with emergencies you could not have anticipated. When it’s over, you will savor your new freedom for a very long time.

Maybe things are different for people who have help from relatives, but I didn’t.

The house I sold was a gigantic burden to me. I have other properties down south, but they’re not houses. A house is a big obligation. The taxes are high. The maintenance is very expensive. You have to endure several hurricane scares every year; hurricanes are harder on houses than any other type of property. You also have to be concerned about opportunists harming themselves on the property and suing you. Other types of properties are much less difficult to handle. Commercial properties are a breeze compared to houses. You should never, ever own a house for investment purposes. You get all the same benefits from a commercial property, with many fewer headaches. Also, it’s easier to evict a commercial tenant.

Now that my dad is gone and I have no houses in Dade County, I should have a great deal more freedom than I used to. It just dawned on me yesterday that I can travel now. I can put the birds in a boarding facility and take off. I could leave for a month if I wanted to. I wouldn’t need to be in front of my computer, talking to my realtor, my house sitter, and tradesmen.

Sorry I can’t give you a good beer cheese recipe. You’re probably better off, though.

Three-Dog Nights

I’m back. I was busy with Christmas.

I have an aunt. I will call her Polly. She has a lot of problems, and she has been rejected by the family. She has been divorced for many years. Her daughter, whom I will call Mabel, has also suffered a lot of rejection, as has the daughter’s son, whom I will call Larry.

When I took my dad’s ashes to Kentucky earlier this year, I spent a fair amount of time with Polly and Mabel. All three of us felt we were no longer integral parts of the overall family circle. A few years back, my other living aunt called during the fall and told me how she, four of my cousins, and their families had gotten together for Thanksgiving, and she apparently didn’t think about the fact that she was talking to someone who hadn’t been invited. My dad and I didn’t make the list, which seemed odd. Since then, I have had the impression that we no longer had insider status.

While I was in Kentucky, I told Polly and Mabel they were welcome to visit me over Christmas, and I said they could bring Larry, too. I figured I would probably be entertaining friends as well. In the end, some of my friends could not make it due to work conflicts and another could not be here due to difficulties with an interesting parent, so I only expected Polly, Mabel, and Larry. They had committed to come 9 months ago, so I thought they were serious.

Not long ago, I talked to Mabel, and she said Polly had suddenly changed her mind about coming. She has arthritis, and she didn’t want to travel. At this point, it was starting to look like attendance was going to be limited to me, my parrots, and the squirrels.

People change plans. This is normal. It’s a little out of the ordinary to announce you’re calling off a holiday trip right before it’s supposed to happen.

I wanted them to come. In Kentucky, Mabel and I had talked a lot about God, and she had accepted Jesus. I prayed for her in her mom’s driveway. I told her about the benefits of baptism, and she said she wanted to do it. I suggested she go to a Last Reformation event, but she insisted she wanted me to do it. I thought this was a bad idea, because you should be baptized as soon as you receive salvation, but it was what she wanted. I let her know about some events she could attend, but she didn’t go. I ended up pinning my hopes on the Christmas visit, and it looked like it was not going to happen.

I prayed and encouraged them to come, and they decided to do it. I didn’t understand what I was asking them to do. The only decent car they had belonged to Larry, and it was a mini-SUV. They had two golden retrievers and an Australian cattle dog, and they weren’t happy with the boarding options that were available at the last minute. They had to jam three adults and three dogs into a pretty small car.

They didn’t want to put three large dogs in my house, but I told them to bring them. I was not going to give up that easily. Baptism is important.

When it came time to leave, Polly said she had a bunch of errands to run, and they were determined to make the 11-hour drive in one shot, so they ended up arriving at 4 a.m.

Polly and Mabel both smoke, and the dogs are big, so it was an interesting time. No one smoked in the house, but when you smoke intensely, you can change the atmosphere in a house just by being in it along with your belongings. The dogs behaved, but you can’t have three big dogs in a house without issues.

I didn’t care. I wanted to get the baptism done. How often do people with dysfunctional families get to fight back with real weapons?

Polly has some firm views on religion, and she tends to take a dim view of new things. I had told her about TLR in March, and since then, she had done some Googling. TLR and its leader, Torben Sondergaard, are getting very intense persecution from a wide variety of nutcases here and overseas, so there is plenty of unflattering slander out there for anyone to read. My aunt got the impression that I had joined a cult, and she thought Torben was a wanted criminal in Denmark. Maybe he is, if full-gospel Christianity is a crime. The authorities passed a ridiculous new law because he and his friends were casting demons out of people.

I don’t belong to TLR, and Polly and Mabel had been told this. I think TLR does a lot of good work, but I don’t join denominations or churches, and I think there is a strong chance that TLR will become corrupted and overly regimented soon, as virtually all other denominations have. Polly already had her bad impression, however.

I have Googled TLR a lot this year, trying to find out if they have ever done anything wrong, and all I have seen is prevarication and innuendo. The people who attack them are just like the people who attack Trump. I’ll post a video I found, to give you an idea what I’m talking about. It’s basically hysteria.

That’s a video in which some person uses a video of a completely different ministry to “debunk” TLR.

Here’s an even weirder one. You will see TLR’s own footage, which they post for the purpose of ATTRACTING people, used for the purpose of “exposing” Torben. It’s truly bizarre. Torben and TLR want people to see this footage, so clearly it’s nothing that makes them look bad. It’s Torben and others, helping kids receive deliverance. The kids are happy as they can be when it’s done. No one is forcing them to do anything. They’re glad to participate.

When I was at the TLR event in Raleigh, I was part of a group of people who cast a spirit out of a woman who foamed at the mouth and screamed. Two little girls came over and got involved. I don’t think the oldest one was older than 7. They were working right along with us. They weren’t disturbed at all. Afterward, they accompanied my group on an outing in which we healed people. They continued to pray for people, and they performed some healings. It was their own idea, and they had a great time. The idea that you should hide Christianity from children is a little hard to understand, especially when you consider the fact that we routinely expose them to toxic things like occult videos, Halloween activities, violent entertainment, video games, and the Internet.

The people who post these things appear to be unbalanced fanatics. They evoke visions of torches and pitchforks. There are a lot of truly ill and dangerous people among the ranks of the charismatic-haters.

It’s unusual to see enraged charismatics, but the people who are against charismatics are often extremely angry, to the point of being out of control. There is a reason for that.

The TLR saga is a very interesting thing to watch. The irrationality of the critics is an indicator of a supernatural cause, and this is characteristic of persecution, the flames of which are lit and fanned by spirits.

I fixed prime rib, scalloped potatoes, cheesecake, and Texas trash for Christmas, and we did as well as we could. Things were complicated by the dynamic between Polly and Larry. They had always gotten along in the past, but for some reason, Polly was laying into him over various things, and Larry kept reacting by going to his room and staying there with a video game device. He would come out the next day early in the afternoon, which made group activities difficult.

My understanding is that he spent a lot of time contacting friends, trying to get someone to buy him a ticket home.

My take is that Polly was 70% responsible, with the remainder of the fault belonging to Larry. Polly refused to give an inch, and Larry didn’t do a lot better. It’s a shame, because she won’t be around forever, and they should be trying to create better memories. Larry has a great deal of potential, but he needs to take on the responsibilities and attitude of a man.

I talked to both of them, but I didn’t make significant headway. It’s a shame, because until recently, they had a very warm relationship. Larry has a heart deformity, and he had lots of problems as a kid, and Polly was always there for him, fighting to get him what he needed.

Pettiness is extremely destructive, as I have learned from practicing it. It seems like modern Americans don’t understand how forgiveness works or why it’s necessary. They also don’t understand the principle of the extra mile. It’s okay to let yourself be wronged a little.

Anyway, you know it’s a real family Christmas when people keep making things awkward with what appears to be very little justification. It could have been worse. All over America, cops responded to domestic violence reports on Christmas. Ho, ho, ho.

Our challenges were compounded by my refrigerator’s sudden decision to fail, with many pounds of holiday food in it. Luckily, my spare refrigerator was already turned on. Mabel got down on the floor with a tiny shop vac and cleaned the fridge’s coils, and then I got on the web and figured out what was wrong: the bearing in the circulation fan motor was going, so the fan flopped around and got stuck. With Mabel’s help, I removed the fan and motor, and I used my belt grinder to make the fan’s blades smaller so they didn’t catch on things. The fridge resumed working, and I ordered a new fan and motor which should arrive on Monday.

Speaking of pettiness: really, Satan? You went after my refrigerator?

Last night, Mabel started talking to Polly about baptism for some reason, and they got into a very long conversation about doctrine. Polly made some veiled jabs at my beliefs, and I didn’t respond. I just waited. And waited. I would say she went to bed at around 12:00, which is two hours later than I like to go to bed. I stayed up, avoiding participation in the conversation, because I was determined to get Mabel baptized if at all possible.

When Polly went to bed, Mabel started talking about her reservations and problems, and I told her what I knew. Eventually, she decided her baptism didn’t have any relationship to her mother’s progress as a Christian, so she changed clothes and got in the pool, which was freezing. I had suggested the jacuzzi tub, but she wanted the pool. It probably took her 15 minutes to get into the water because it was so cold.

In the end, we got it done, and Larry was there to witness it. Finally. I guess I got to bed at 2 a.m.

I didn’t care about anything but the baptism. It was done, so I was happy.

They wanted to start driving home today. Polly has a green thumb, and she was not happy with my plants, so when I strolled out at maybe 10:30, after compensation sleep plus prayer and a shower, I found Polly and Mabel fixing up the plants on my patio, which was very nice of them. They also insisted on cleaning their linens and straightening up the house. Larry came downstairs at around 1:15.

I didn’t know what to think. If I had a long drive to make, I would want to leave in the morning, but they do things differently. They had things in the washing machine, so I knew they weren’t leaving for a while. I offered to take them out for barbecue, which I did. I would guess they got off my property at 4:45 p.m.

Until I saw them pack the car, I didn’t realize what they had gone through to get here. There were things stuffed in the footwells. It was very tight. If they have an accident, the EMT’s will need the jaws of life to get them out, even if the car isn’t damaged. With those big dogs in the car, they don’t need airbags.

Whatever. Mabel got baptized. That’s the important thing. Now maybe she can mature and work with Polly, who is extremely unhappy.

Long before all the difficulties arose, I told Mabel to expect Satan to throw everything he had at her to prevent her from coming, and boy, did he come through. But he lost. I prayed, and she prayed, and God listened.

They Complete Me

Today I machined something. It was nothing great. Let’s be honest; I faced the end of a piece of aluminum and put two steps on the end. Whoo hoo. But I felt great anyway. I haven’t done this in over two years.

I’ll post a photo of my amazing achievment.

My mill and lathe arrived here on Tuesday. I’ve been so busy with a house closing and getting my workshop together, I have had very little time to do anything resembling using tools. I still have maybe 300 pounds of junk in my truck.

Yesterday I got the machines sort of ready to work. The lathe needed to have its connections to the phase converter restored, and I had to mount the DRO. That was about all I got done. The mill has a rotating head, like all Bridgeport-style mills, and in order to make moving the machine easier, I had rotated the head down onto the table, so I had to crank it back up.

I located my milling vise and 3-jaw lathe chuck so I could install them. They have been here less than two weeks. Of course, they had already started to rust. I don’t know what it is about this area. Everything rusts like crazy.

I cleaned them off and oiled the daylights out of them, and I did the same things to both machines. I would rather have oil everywhere than rust anywhere.

By the time I got done with all this, it was too late to do anything more.

Today I went back out, and I mounted the chuck on the lathe. I also mounted the wooden shelf unit I made to go on the headstock. This thing is very handy. It holds a chuck plus a load of toolholders and other doodads.

I also had to put the jaws back on the chuck. When I left Miami, the chuck had soft jaws on it, so today I reinstalled the hard factory jaws.

When the lathe was more or less together, the first thing I did was to turn it on, just to hear it spin. Wonderful.

I grabbed a piece of aluminum and turned steps into it with a carbide insert. It’s a little rough. I think the insert needs to be rotated.

The only thing I have to do now, lathe-wise, is to install the cast pucks it sits on and then level (straighten) the lathe. I have a Chinese precision level for this purpose. I don’t know how well it works, but I am reasonably confident.

The mill is going to be more annoying. I have to tram the head to the table, which is tedious. Then I have to mount the vise and tram it to the head. Equally tedious. I may put my rotary table on the mill table next to the vise. This is a smart idea if you mainly cut small parts. Moving a rotary table on and off your mill is a pain, so it’s nice to leave it in place. If you need to mill something big in the vise, you can just move the rotary table.

Once all the tramming is done, I have to connect the mill to power. I have two options. I can run a new wire to the phase converter, or I can reinstall the VFD I used in the past. The problem with the VFD is that it has no place to live. I used to keep it on the wall by the mill, but now the mill is far from the wall, so the wall won’t work. I could make some kind of stand, I guess. That would be strange.

If I wire it to the phase converter, life will be somewhat simpler, but I’ll have to run the huge phase converter every time I use the mill.

It’s probably the best way to go.

When I’m done, I’ll have a spare VFD. I already have a beautiful 2-HP motor gathering dust. You can guess what I’m thinking. I know you can. New belt grinder! Sure, I already have a belt grinder, but if I had two, I could keep two belts mounted at once, saving me precious, precious seconds when I want to change grit.

I would like to make myself a belt grinder simply because I feel bad about buying a prefab grinder the first time around. I fell prey to doubt. People talk about grinders as though they’re hard to build, but the truth is that they’re very crude, very simple machines. As I have often said, you could build a fine one from two-by-fours and plywood, plus aluminum pulleys.

My grinder is very nice, and it was cheap. I bought an Oregon Blade Maker (now Original Blade Maker), which is basically a steel box with two pulleys and an arm. It works just as well, and will last just as long, as an expensive industrial grinder. But you can’t turn it sideways to orient the belt horizontally. This is a bummer. Sometimes turning a grinder 90° can make life much simpler.

People like grinders with welded bodies. The truth is that you don’t need a welded body at all. A grinder held together with fasteners is just as good, and you can break it down when you need to move it or modify it. I would like to weld a grinder body together, but I’m not sure it’s the smart move. It may be more elegant, but a bolt-together grinder gives you more options.

I would like to do more stuff tomorrow, but it appears that my aunt, my cousin, and the cousin’s son are going to be here over Christmas, so I have to get the house ready. The garage is a total disaster right now because I’ve been pulling things off the truck and throwing them on the floor so I can get to other things I need. Luckily, my relatives aren’t picky.

I’m hoping to help them get closer to God. They are rejected, oppressed people.

Maybe I can squeeze out time to get the mill running. That would be beautiful.

Anyone who can Make Miami Bearable MUST be God

I have made two trips to Miami in connection with the sale of a property. I wrote about my first trip. God told me I had to forgive the whole city, so I did, and I found I didn’t hate being there the way I used to. I still want nothing to do with the place, because it’s a sick area under demonic control, but I can visit without feeling miserable.

On my second trip, God gave me something else. While I was driving, I felt the presence of Jesus. I talked with him all the way down the Turnpike.

The presence of Jesus is not quite like the presence of the Holy Spirit, which is not comfortable information for people who say God is a single being. The Bible makes it clear that Jesus talks to Yahweh, and it makes it clear that the Holy Spirit is not Jesus, because he descended on Jesus when Jesus was baptized. The Holy Spirit descended, and Yahweh spoke, saying, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased,” foreshadowing the way he would see every person who was properly baptized in the future.

One of the psalms says, “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Seat yourself at my right hand.'” Obviously, if God is one being, he can’t sit beside himself, and he has no reason to talk to himself. The oneness of God refers to a oneness of heart and purpose, not to a state in which one being, in one location, displays three different personalities at different times.

Anyway, the Holy Spirit is generally very subtle, whereas Jesus is more obvious. Also, the sensations of love and peace that come from Jesus are stronger.

I was rolling along, and I felt the presence of Jesus within and beside me. The sensation was not as overwhelming as it was when he visited me years ago, but I knew it was him.

I prayed for people all the way to Miami. I prayed a lot for other drivers. Driving brings out the worst in people. It seems like it never occurs to us to let ourselves be inconvenienced for a few seconds in order to help someone else. We’re always pushing to make sure we get everything we’re entitled to. I made a special point of praying for people who were rude in traffic.

I asked if I could pray for entire lines of cars, and I felt I had the go-ahead, so I did that.

Christians are supposed to give alms and be generous. You can’t always give people money or things, but you always have the power to pray for them, which is more powerful and more important. Praying for people is a sacrifice, just like giving them money and goods. It takes effort and time. It’s not nothing. When Peter healed the beggar at the temple, he said, “”Silver and gold have I none, but what I have, that I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, get up and walk.” I’m sure the beggar would not have traded that for spare change and used clothing.

You shouldn’t feel like praying for people is a cop-out or a dodge. It’s the best thing you can do for them, most of the time.

I am now trying to pray for people whenever I have a spare moment. I can’t run around handing people five-dollar bills all day, but I can do this.

Ordinarily, I get fatigued when I drive, because the rudeness wears me down. People tailgate constantly, even when I’m speeding. Tailgaters will drive behind you for miles, slowing themselves down, instead of passing you and moving on. It shows their real motivation is malice, not a desire to move faster. I hate having to make decisions all day. You can’t just sit in the right lane and let the people who drive way below the speed limit. You have to spend a certain amount of time in the fast lane, and that draws tailgaters. For that matter, they also tailgate in the slow lane.

I want the presence of Jesus. I really want it. I have wanted it for ages. While I was driving to Miami, I kept ridding myself of negativity so I could hold onto him. I felt much better about the experience. I was able to avoid being provoked, which was a relief. During my time in Miami, I continued. If you can keep calm in Miami, it has to be a miracle.

I also felt as though something else in me was very upset. Some spirit or other. I don’t feed them the way I used to, so they were having a bad time. Here I was, starving them while welcoming their worst enemy; the terror of their existence. Several times, I felt things leave me.

It’s a shame we don’t admit we have demons. We think they’re for special people. Trust me; you have demons. If you think you don’t, you should start the process of deliverance by fighting dishonesty and pride.

While I was driving, I thought of all the bad things I had done, and I wondered exactly how many spirits I had accumulated. I’ve done bad things all my life, including this fall. It’s not like I became perfect when I chose to be a Christian, many years ago.

Deliverance is a very big deal. We should be seeking it as hard as possible. Instead we make fun of it.

The other day I heard Mark Hemans talk about the connection between sickness and sin. He said sin invites demons and causes sickness. I’ve been saying this for years. Christians hate the message. They hate it because demons tell them what to think, and demons want to protect their business.

When you ask a sick person if he wants to confess, and repent of, anything that might have caused his illness, Christians will be all over you like a pack of piranhas. They will insult, slander, and torment you without mercy, as though you’re the one who caused the cancer or whatever it is. They’ll say you’re blaming the victim. Let me tell you something: there are no adult victims. You have sinned, and you deserve whatever you get. That’s just how it is. When you go to God for healing, you’re not asking for justice. You’re asking for mercy. The disease is the justice.

Christians will say you’re condemning people if you suggest they confront their sins and demons. They don’t know what condemnation is. It’s a final decision. Identifying sin and demons is diagnosis; it’s a necessary part of recovery.

Imagine this. You go to your doctor and ask why you’re 300 pounds overweight. He says, “You eat too much. We need to change your diet.” Then you say, “HOW DARE YOU CONDEMN ME?” That’s how we treat people who help us acknowledge our self-destructive sins.

We know sin causes disease. Even atheist doctors admit it. Fornication causes VD. Smoking causes cancer, heart attacks, strokes, and COPD. Drug abuse causes hepatitis and AIDS. Gluttony causes obesity and circulatory problems. Anger causes high blood pressure and ulcers. Atheists can see these things, but we see ourselves as helpless, innocent lambs who have been attacked without cause, and we expect to be healed and kept well without repenting.

The Bible says envy rots the bones. That’s very literal. It says a cruel person troubles his own flesh.

It’s too bad we’re all perfect. If we had things to confess, maybe we could get rid of some diseases.

I don’t want evil guests living in my house, making my personality like theirs and damaging my flesh. I invited them and made them comfortable, but now I want them out. The desire to hold onto the presence of Jesus is great motivation. It’s an excellent reminder. When you think about what you’re getting, you care a lot less for what you’re losing.

We do care for our bad traits. We love them. We take pride in things like stubbornness, anger, childishness, cruelty, excessive sexual appetites, and so on. We think they’re cute. They may seem cute now, but when you’re standing before God, you will wish you had felt differently about them.

A lady who says she toured hell with Jesus says the dead were like skeletons with enormous maggots tunneling through them. She said they felt the maggots chewing their bones. That’s a picture of the things we allow to live in us.

The houses I sold had to be cleared of junk in stages. I feel that I’m the same way. God doesn’t necessarily empty a person of all baggage and filth immediately. I suppose we lack the knowledge and spiritual gifts to get the job done that way. He removes things incrementally, and he adds things the same way. Maybe when we have more knowledge, the process will go more quickly. Satan fights sound doctrine, calling it self-righteousness and hate, so he prevents us from using the right tools.

I’m going to try to hold onto what I have. I like feeling this way. It’s much better than the way I felt before. I would prefer having my entire personality replaced to being what I was.

Miami Umbilical Cord Finally Snapping?

I made what I hope will be my last trip (in this lifetime) to Miami over the weekend. It has been a tough month so far. I visited twice, and I had to put an enormous amount of junk out for the garbage people, in addition to making trips to the dump. It’s surprising how a house that seems empty can yield tons (literally) of junk. On the up side, I have moved my machine tools north, so now I can feel technologically complete again.

I threw out hundreds of dollars’ worth of things. I could not sell them, and I had a hard time giving them away. I put my mother’s patio furniture, which was expensive and in very good shape, in the trash pile. I had advertised it, and people responded, but they didn’t have the gumption to come get it. At least one lady asked my house sitter to deliver it. Thank God, a couple of Cuban trash-pickers came by in a pickup and grabbed it.

It may surprise people to see that I’m not writing about the Trump impeachment vote. I’m not that interested. I will say that, fundamentally, it’s not politically motivated. It’s motivated by spirits that hate God and every friend of God. The Democratic Party could almost be called “the body of Satan” these days. Don’t be surprised that what they do doesn’t make sense. When things don’t make sense, a supernatural force is usually at the root. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath–which would have been a felony, had the Paula Jones case not been dismissed–on camera. He was also forced to give up his law license, after being turned in to the Arkansas Bar by a federal judge. That’s the kind of thing that grounds a real impeachment. Trump’s enemies had to make up a new charge (“abuse of power”) because there was no good evidence that Trump broke any existing law. What we are seeing is a continued effort to make conservatives afraid to run for office, and it goes back to Newt Gingrich, who was shown to be innocent. If you want to read more about it, Alan Dershowitz is probably a good source.

To get back to what I really want to write about, I’m dying to machine something. I don’t even care what it is. Even I just put a steel rod in the lathe and turn the radius down a quarter of a inch, I’ll be happy.

I watch tool videos all the time. For over two years, I’ve been watching people put metal in their machine tools and do things to it, and I couldn’t do it, myself. I’ve had a lot of jobs I could not do or which I had to do with inferior tools. Life without machine tools is primitive and restrictive. I’m glad it’s over.

It’s very disturbing, watching a forklift raise a 2-ton lathe so high the underside is 6 feet off the ground. My baby was sitting on two steel forks; nothing more. She wasn’t even very close to the forklift. She was way out at the bouncy ends. Every time she swayed back and forth, I braced for the devastating sight of $16,000 worth of very heavy machinery plummeting face-first onto the asphalt.

Machine-moving accidents are pretty nasty. There is a guy in Kentucky you has a huge machine shop, and he posted a video of an accident he had. He has a huge bridge crane in his shop. This is an overhead transverse beam mounted on two beams running the length of the building. The transverse beam has a trolley with a winch on it. He bought a drill press which must weigh at least three tons, and he tried to use the crane to lower it onto a freshly created concrete slab he had poured.

He backed a semi holding the drill press into his shop, and then he used the crane to lift the drill press a few inches off the trailer. He moved the drill press so it was suspended over the pad, which was about 3 feet beneath it. He was standing on the trailer next to the drill press when the cable holding it up snapped.

The drill press dropped instantly, breaking his new slab as well as part of the main casting of the drill press. If he had been under any part of the drill press, he might have been squashed like a grape. And he was alone! What was left of him could have been pinned to the ground or the truck, or parts of him could have been pinned to both, and nobody would have found him until suppertime.

He must have spent a lot of money on the crane, because he decided not to buy new cable before he used it. That’s why the drill press fell.

I’ll post the video here. If you’re in a hurry, skip to about 6:05. Expect profanity.

I read a story on a forum about a man who sold machine tools He had a lathe on a truck, and it rolled off onto his son-in-law. That was the end of him. Terrible story. Probably not a clean death. Imagine what it did to the family.

The riggers did an excellent job with my machines, and the experience taught me a great lesson: I need a trailer. Moving machinery with a semi is insanely expensive. One of the rigger told me to look into air-bagged trailers. These have platforms held up by air bags, as you might guess. Let the air out, and the platform drops to the ground. They lie flat, like sheets of plywood. There are no ramps. To put a lathe on one of these things, you just put it on skates (not difficult) and roll it onto the one-inch high platform. Then you pump up the air bags, and you’re ready to go.

The giant bonus is that you don’t need a forklift or a forklift operator. Simply putting three machines on a trailer costs about $1800, as does taking them down, if you use riggers. Even if you risk death by renting forklifts and doing the job yourself, you will spend $1000 or so for the two days you will need them.

If I get an air-bagged trailer, I’ll be able to move my tractors, my golf cart, and all of my machinery. The next time I move, I may have to make a few trips, but it will definitely be better than paying whatever it costs to move all my stuff across several states.

I haven’t machined anything since arriving home because I haven’t had time. I had to work on unloading my own truck today; it was (still is) full of Miami junk. I also had to bring my birds home from the boarding place, where they are a huge hit. Marv now has a girlfriend named Jessie. She’s a big silvery Congo African grey who occupied a neighboring cage. Sadly, they will not be seeing each other again any time soon. I don’t think Marv cares. He seems immune to negative emotions.

I couldn’t use my tools last night because they were wet. The weather was dry for most of their journey, and then there was a blinding rain near the end of the trip. I had to wipe the machines down, blot up water, and blast them with a solution of lanolin and mineral spirits. I took a big can of WD-40 and poured it onto my mill table. I soaked a rag with Mobil Vactra 2 way oil and oiled things heavily. I was determined not to let the machines rust.

Rust is a big problem north of Miami. It’s surprising, but machines don’t rust at all in humid Miami if they’re indoors. Humidity doesn’t rust machines. Condensation does. When a machine is in an area where the air cools and warms up a lot–meaning all of North America north of South Florida and maybe parts of Texas–it ends up being cooler than the surrounding air many times a month. In humid areas, this causes water to condense on it. Then you get rust. In Miami, machines don’t get very cold very often, so condensation is not a big problem.

My table saw rusted over during my first Ocala winter, and that taught me I had to look out for condensation. Fortunately, a little rust doesn’t really harm a table saw. Even light rust will ruin a lathe, and it’s not great for mills, either.

If you watch machining videos, you will see a lot of people proudly “restoring” rusty lathes. They’ll pay good money for metal lathes that have been sitting outside in the rain, and they’ll scrape the rust off the bed ways, use Evaporust on the moving parts, paint everything, and claim they’re done. They have no idea what they’re doing. Once you have thick rust on a lathe’s ways, the precision is gone, permanently. If you want to bring it back, you have to pay someone to put it on a giant grinder, or you have to be a genius who can use scraping tools to restore flat, true, parallel surfaces. Basically, it means you’re done, unless you just happen to know someone who is willing to load your junkyard beauty on a grinding machine for nothing. The cost of grinding a lathe bed pretty much destroys the purpose of buying a cheap, rusted lathe.

Wood tools can be restored. Take off the rust, paint everything, make sure the motor turns, and you’re off. That’s because wood tools are not precise. If your table saw has a dip 10 thousandths deep in the middle of the top, no one cares. If rust takes 10 thousandths off your lathe’s ways in random places, it’s time to forget about metal and start turning wooden table legs with it.

The funny thing is that most machining hobbyists would probably disagree with me. They’re wrong, though. They’re just caught up in a bit of stubborn mythology born of the natural reluctance to accept bad news.

Another problem with “restored” lathes is that rust and grinding can remove the hardened part of the ways. Many lathes made during the last hundred years have flame-hardened ways, which means they were exposed to high heat after they were made. The hardening doesn’t go all that deep, so even if you scrape or grind your old lathe, you may end up with soft ways which will wear out and lose precision again quickly.

Bottom line: a rusty machine tool is generally going to perform badly, even if you try to restore it. It will be okay for certain purposes after you sand the formerly precision surfaces, but it will not perform like a machine that hasn’t rusted. Preventing rust is important, and rusty machines are not bargains. They are scrap.

Our government puts nice machines out in the rain all the time. It’s horrifying. If you go to government websites that list used machines for sale, you’ll see machines that are largely red. You may see a photo of a machine that cost $40,000 new, stored outdoors without a $5 tarp or even a layer of oil. I don’t know who buys these things. I wouldn’t go near one even if it were free.

Before the machine is put outdoors, it’s worth $8000. A month later, it’s worth the scrap price.

It shows how much government employees care about spending our money wisely. Shocking.

I’ll post a photo of a lathe our government is trying to sell. The bidding is up to $1550.00. I think I can tell you who is bidding on it. Retirees who want a new hobby and don’t know anything about lathes. Either that or people who know it’s ruined and don’t care about precision.

I’ve spent a lot of time on machining forums. Many of the people who participate are middle-aged guys who want a new hobby, and they get very bad advice from everyone else. People encourage them to buy old machines that are in very bad condition, and they make them think “a little rust” is no big deal. I guess a terrible lathe is better than no lathe, but I can’t imagine using a machine that has been stored in the rain. I don’t know what it would be useful for, apart from woodworking.

To get back to my story, my machines are as dry and greasy as I could get them. Maybe tomorrow I can connect the power and start doing something. I have to put my vise back on the mill and tram it, and I may actually level the lathe. A lathe that isn’t “leveled” (actually straightened) may produce tapered parts instead of straight ones. It doesn’t matter all that much if you’re making short parts, which I usually am, but longer parts will be affected more.

I don’t want to spend the whole evening blogging, so I won’t go into the way God has changed my life during my two trips to Miami. He made big changes in my heart. The changes are so great–dare I say it–the unpleasantness of visiting Miami seems well worth the pain. I’ll try to write about them tomorrow.

I’ll say this. I believe the difficulty I’ve had in separating myself from Miami, and in separating myself from financial interests in Kentucky, is related to things inside me that needed to be changed. Our problems here on earth tend to be reflections of the problems God has with us.

Pray the house closing goes well and that I don’t have to look for a new buyer. I am ready to cut that place loose.

Gay Firebrand Sounds the Alarm for Carnal Conservatives

It’s funny how little things indicating the end of the age pop up on your instruments.

Today I was looking at Youtube, and it recommended a ChuckE2009 video. I used to subscribe to his channel. He’s a young man who has worked very hard to build a career and a Youtube following. He came from a broken home. He managed to put himself through welding school, and he started working. He ended up with a farm in Texas. He posted a lot of great videos about welding, tools, farming, and traditional values. Then he started going to a crazy racist church, and now he’s a hard core white separatist. He talks about “precious European blood,” and he posts videos on Bitchute, which is a service I learned about today.

I learned about it by watching the video Youtube recommended. ChuckE2009 linked to Bitchute. When I went to Bitchute, I saw that he had made a bunch of bizarre videos about his odd beliefs. He thinks America is being overrun by non-white people, which is arguably true, and he seems to think that Brenton Tarrant, the guy who murdered Muslims in a New Zealand mosque, is a martyr.

The problem isn’t that the people who move here are not white. It’s that they don’t belong to Jesus. Give me non-white Christians over white leftists any day. I would much prefer life in an all-black country that served God to live in a place where white people serve Satan. I would rather see America become very dark-skinned if the alternative were to see it stay white and move farther from God. The white separatists don’t seem to understand that race is not the problem.

There are only two races, which are also nations and families. One is the children of God, and the other is the children of Satan.

I watched a little bit of one of ChuckE’s videos. It was not healthy stuff, but the comments were worse. They were packed with blatant, unapologetic, lugubrious racism. You really have to see it to understand what I mean. The people over there really hate blacks and Jews. I don’t mean they disagree with them on some issues and are therefore called “haters.” I mean they actually hate them, in the pre-snowflake sense of the word “hate.”

I went back to Youtube, looked for ChuckE2009 videos in my feed, and clicked “Do not recommend this channel.” Maybe they’ll get the message. Unsubscribing alone didn’t get me free.

While I was doing this, I came across a Steven Crowder video. Crowder is a gay conservative, which automatically makes him a treasure to the secular conservative establishment. He seems like a great guy (I don’t really know much about him), but he’s clearly not a child of God. He is not one of us at the moment. He may agree with us about a lot of political issues, but religion is not politics. They’re connected. You can’t be Holy-Spirit-led and be a leftist. But conservatism itself is not godliness, as ChuckE proves.

Crowder is huge as Youtubers go. He has millions of subscribers. People with that kind of traffic make millions of dollars per year from Youtube. Except for Crowder, who got demonetized. He said some mean things to a gay man, and the man complained. Youtube obeyed.

Oddly (not really), Youtube doesn’t mind making money from Crowder’s continued presence, even if they won’t give him any of it. They continue recommended his videos. Don’t argue that they’re not making money because they don’t put ads on his videos. They make money from him because he draws people to Youtube, where they see other videos that do have ads. Youtube is completely hypocritical, which is normal for a leftist…anything.

I don’t know what he said. My guess is that it was overblown, because had it been anything serious, even people like me, who avoid politics, would probably know.

Gays are always snippy to each other. This is not new. They love edgy, biting humor; remember Mr. Blackwell? They call each other fags and homos. Maybe Crowder did something like that. I don’t care; it’s a digression.

Crowder just posted a video warning of a “Youtube purge.” He says Youtube is about to change its social engineering/censorship guidelines again, “moving the goalposts,” in his words. He says that videos that were considered acceptable in the past may get people banned in the present. Bad news if you’ve posted a thousand videos, as some people have.

I looked at other sources, and here is what Youtube says. It’s going to go after anyone caught producing content that “maliciously insults someone based on protected attributes such as their race, gender expression, or sexual orientation.” That language comes from Youtube’s blog.

Youtube told the BBC, proudly, that they will not just consider individual acts of free speech. They will look at “patterns” of behavior when they ban people. In other words, if they can’t really prove you did anything wrong, they have a catch-all policy that will still get you banned.

Who decides what is offensive? Of course, the easily offended. Google is staffed by leftists. Who decides what a “malicious insult” is? The same demographic that thinks seeing a Republican win an election is a genuine trauma that warrants the creating of special rooms where victims can play with therapy puppies.

Not good.

This is a combination of things I’ve seen coming for years. The odd sensation I feel now is the surprise of not being surprised. I expected all this, but still…what a spectacle, when it actually comes to pass.

The Internet encouraged us to speak our minds in ways we never could in the past, and much of what we spoke was not nice. We thought Internet anonymity, which may or may not have ever existed, would keep us safe. We also published a lot of thought which was not popular enough make it into mainstream outlets. Conservatives got a lot of exposure.

Now all that stuff is out there, and it is subject to evaluation and punishment by people who keep changing the rules.

Saw it coming. Didn’t do much to protect myself. Still. Saw it coming. Wrote about it.

In the law, there is a doctrine called “ex post facto.” It means…something in Latin. “From after the fact,” I guess. The idea is that you can’t pass a law making past behavior illegal. It’s a very respected doctrine, and the reason is obvious. If we were all punished for things we did in the past which are now illegal, nearly everyone over the age of 10 would be in prison.

Youtube does not have to observe this doctrine. Neither do any of the other tech giants.

For a long time, I’ve been writing about the privatization of our outlets of expression. We used to rely on the First Amendment to protect us when we expressed ourselves. That protection had some power, but the First Amendment only applied to the government. Your local constable could not tell you not to curse, on pain of having your mouth washed out with soap, because he was a government agent. Your boss in the private sector, on the other hand, could control your speech. If you wrote screenplays, movie studios could control you. Businesses can forbid their employees to tell obnoxious customers how they actually feel about them. They can make them wear 37 pieces of flair. The Bill of Rights has very limited power over private entities.

Satan knew he would one day have to shut Christians up. The Bible says Jesus will not return until the gospel of the kingdom is taught to every people, and here we are with a medium that allows us to preach online, globally, for nothing or very little. He had to find a way to shut us down, so what did he do? He privatized the media and nullified the First Amendment. Why is it that no one but me talks about this?

Google, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, and the others do not have to let you speak. They can ban you for any reason that pleases them. They can make a rule that no one who owns red socks can publish, and it will be completely legal.

It’s a wonderful thing for Satan. The Internet is used to spread all sorts of filth and idolatry, and these are powerful tools. If he can work it out so spreading truth is not so easy, he will have a monopoly on public thought, at least in many areas. The Internet will be able to infect but not cure.

Is there an answer? I suppose so. We could demand that the government buy Youtube. I don’t think that will happen, though. Of course, if it happened, Youtube would stop working, it would lose a great deal of money, and it would immediately stop hiring white males. It would turn into the Postal Service.

The disturbing thing is that people think they can fight this politically. It’s a bad idea. It seems like a political squabble, but it’s not. On the surface, it’s political. Underneath, it’s supernatural. Satan, the god of this world, is behind the censorship. The same spirit that got Popes to burn dissidents alive is still at work, and it still wants to keep the gospel quiet.

It’s fine to vote for conservatives, but you need to get to know God, right now. You need to be baptized with the Holy Spirit. You need to give your life to God and start hearing from him. He is helping his children move away from leftist-controlled areas. He is setting up little ark-like areas for us. We won’t live in complete bliss, and they will still come after us eventually, but we will be much better off than stubborn Christians who insist on living in places like Los Angeles and Miami.

We need to be transformed and become more effective in changing the hearts of people who are on the wrong side. They’re in much more trouble than we are. They will overcome us in the short term, but God is not mocked. They will pay terrible prices in the end.

People say they’re going to shoot FBI agents when things get bad. That’s not going to make God happy, and it won’t defeat the enemy’s troops, either. God commanded the Hebrews to kill their enemies in the Old Testament. That’s not how he works now. The human beings the Hebrews slaughtered back then represent the spirits we are supposed to defeat under the new covenant. Jesus said those who live by the sword will die by the sword, and he meant that people who rely on carnal solutions will not get as much help from God as his children. When you rely on carnal tools, you’re telling God, “Don’t help me. I can handle this.” You can’t do that all your life and then call on him to take over suddenly when your mess overwhelms you.

We have to get God’s love and forgiveness flowing through us so we will be prepared to forgive and refrain from violence when the temptation is at its worst.

All the things I foresaw are coming true! God really did show me these things, just as he showed them to others. We really are going to be treated like Jews in Nazi Germany. We really are going to be excluded from commerce. Our homes will be confiscated. We will be slaughtered. It’s really going to happen, here in America. We’re already getting the Nuremberg Law treatment. The parallels are obvious and undeniable.

I know a guy who insists he’s fixing Miami. God didn’t tell him to do that. He’s just stubborn. If he doesn’t watch it, he will still be there when the mobs rise up. Noah didn’t stay to fix his compatriots. Abraham didn’t stay to fix Haran. Lot didn’t stay to fix Sodom. Sometimes God tells you to leave, and you better do it.

Steven Crowder sounds like he’s advising people to get guns and fight. Startling advice from a modern homosexual. It’s not helpful. We’re going to lose, and we need to get God’s help on handling it the best way possible. Vote as you wish. Say what God tells you to say. Just don’t waste your time with political or violent solutions. They will just put you in the other camp, whether you know it or not.

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Commenters are pointing out an important fact: Steven Crowder is not gay.

I was positive he was gay. I had thought of him as a gay conservative for so long, it didn’t occur to me to check. I wish I could remember where I got this idea.

Anyway, correction posted.

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I think I have the answer.

I must have seen this and drawn the wrong conclusion.

Stay Connected

Here is one of my favorite Bible verses: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusteth in you.” It’s Isaiah 26.

The phrase translated “perfect peace” is “shalom shalom.” I am told that in Hebrew, words are repeated to emphasize them. In English, you might say “the highest degree of shalom,” but supposedly, Hebrew doesn’t work the way English does, so Hebrew speakers repeat things.

Many people say “shalom” means “peace,” but that’s not right. It means a state of being that includes peace and other things, such as wellbeing and prosperity. It comes from a root meaning “completeness.” It is also said to describe a state that is permanent.

You know what that sounds like? It sounds like what I felt the two times Jesus visited me. I felt his love radiating through me, and I also felt a kind of peace that could not even be challenged, let alone destroyed. I was totally assured that everything would be all right. No evil could touch me.

Permanence is a big deal in the Bible. Evildoers are not able to receive permanent blessings. Jesus said they were like men who built their homes on sand. When rain and winds come, such houses are washed away. Righteous people are like those who build their homes on rock. They can withstand anything.

The word translated “stayed” means “supported.” The English word “stay” doesn’t necessarily mean “remain in place.” We use it that way today, but it can also mean “support.” This is why collar and corset stays are so named. If your mind is stayed on God, it means God is supporting your mind, like a tentpole.

Isaiah 26 has to do with standing, like a house built on rock. This world is full of evil forces and voices, and they act like storms. They puff and threaten constantly, and much of the time, we believe their puffing, and we give in and lose. Children of God who know their rights can overcome the wicked by focusing on God.

I’m writing about this because, as I predicted, Miami is not letting me go easily. I knew I would get a Satanic backlash. I’m moving possessions out, and I’m getting rid of the last really troublesome property I have, and Satan is trying to make it painful.

I got a $4000 quote to move my machinery up here. I moved two machines myself, and then I asked for a new quote. They nearly doubled the price. I found a new rigger, but I’ll still have to pay more than I wanted. A meddlesome neighbor turned me in to the city for having a dirty roof and walls, so now, right before closing, I have to pay a handyman to clean and perhaps do touch-up painting, to the tune of at least $750. My house sitter hired two guys to help him move old furniture out to be picked up by the city, and they didn’t show up, so either he will have to do it alone, I will have to help him, or I’ll have to hire a junk hauler. Now the buyer’s attorney is demanding my LLC’s operating agreement, which is none of her business. You don’t need a document like that to sell a house. I sold a house earlier this year without it. It’s confidential. I told her paralegal they weren’t getting it, and I said I would send other things to prove my ownership and authority.

None of these attacks will stop me.

The other day, I thought of Isaiah 26:3, and God filled my heart with a new understanding of it. He showed me I should direct my attention to him and remember all the strongholds he had broken for me. People don’t decide what happens to me; he does. He breaks their will and makes them fail when they trouble me. He does the same things to the spirits behind them.

I threw out a ton of things when I visited Miami, and many of them were valuable. I didn’t care. I’m putting valuable things on Internet selling sites for nearly nothing, just to make them move. I don’t care. It’s worth it to be free.

I think I understand why God told us to turn the other cheek and agree with our enemies. Sometimes, when Satan demands something of you, the thing he tries to take is extremely trivial compared to what God has set in front of you. It’s like having your pocket picked while you’re waiting to get on a lifeboat. Do you really want to chase a thief and drown?

Early Christians had to give up their very bodies, but they knew it was a bargain for them and a bad trade for Satan and his children.

The things I’m losing are junk. There will be new things for me later.

I look forward to having ALL ties to Miami cut.

I can’t tell you how many times someone has stood in my way and told me something I wanted to do was impossible, only to see them knocked out of the way by God. It’s not a rare thing. It’s a way of life for a Christian.

I needed to get a tax document for my dad’s last return. I called the local IRS office. A man answered and said I needed a birth certificate. My birth certificate, not my dad’s. Who keeps a birth certificate lying around in 2019? I have had passports. I have a Homeland-Security-approved driver’s license, which is the best ID you can have. No one with any intelligence respects a birth certificate. You can falsify one in 5 minutes. No one is going to dip your feet in ink and see if they match the prints on your birth certificate.

I prayed and drove to the office anyway. They called my name to go to a window. I was ready to argue with them. I sat down, told the IRS employee what I needed, and showed him my driver’s license. He printed out the necessary document and handed it to me. Could not have been nicer. This is what it’s like when God breaks a stronghold.

The government is particularly bad about strongholds. “You can’t start this business.” “You can’t build this house.” “You can’t have prayer meetings here.” They throw up ridiculous obstacles all the time. It’s the nature of bureaucracy. If you’re not a Christian, you will probably be blocked. If you know God, however, you have a friend who is better than a man on the inside, and he will break walls for you.

Brother Andrew is a famous preacher who smuggled Bibles into countries (such as leftist-dominated nations) where they were banned. He risked imprisonment over and over. When he started out, he hid his Bibles. Eventually, he got bold and left them on the front seat of his car, in plain view. Guards at checkpoints looked right past them, and Andrew drove on. God does things like this for his children, but you need to focus on him and remember all the times he has delivered you in the past.

When I think about God and his deliverance, I feel peace and invincibility. They seem to radiate down to me from his throne. I want to get better at it, and I want to spend more time in that state.

I’m going to be free of the house I’m selling. I am free from the power of the spirits that rule South Florida. They can’t stop me. They are like ants before my God.

I look forward to blogging from the other side, when my machines are here, the house is out of my hands, and I no longer have to think about lawn people, pool people, hurricanes, insurance, and taxes. It’s a done deal, and it will happen shortly. I just have to wait.

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My realtor texted me. The lawyer who wanted my private documents caved in, after arguing with me and then her. Of course. She was completely, obviously wrong.

Glory to God.

I always hope for a day when I can go 20 continuous minutes without anyone insulting my intelligence. Maybe I’m crazy, but I keep dreaming.

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When you have a testimony which seems solid, and then you find out it’s not so solid, you’re supposed to say something. God doesn’t need people to make excuses for him. One of the church’s big problems is that we clap when someone testifies or prophesies, and then when it turns out something is wrong, we ignore it.

I said I was being pestered for unnecessary documents for my upcoming closing, and I said the other side had caved in. This was true, as far as I knew. I later found out they were not going to be reasonable after all, so I sent them things they had no right to. The closing is still moving along.

Take it how you will.

It has Many Shiny Buttons

Christmas has arrived early in northern Florida.

Last month I started brushing up on complex analysis, which is an esoteric form of calculus based on complex numbers. For those who don’t know, a complex number is a combination of a real number and an imaginary number. An imaginary number is a multiple of i, which is the square root of -1. The word “imaginary” got attached to the class by Rene Descartes, who is said to have thought imaginary numbers were useless. Imaginary numbers are used in physics to calculate results that can be observed in the real world, so “imaginary” is, maybe, not the best word to use to describe them.

I also started browsing through a new mechanics book: Introduction to Classical Mechanics: With Problems and Solutions by David Morin. People on the web wrote very highly of the book, and I could not resist taking a look at it. I’m always trying to find time to recapture the knowledge I lost after college, and most physics books are useful only as instruments of torture, so it’s good to find anything that can actually be understood.

While I was poking through problems in complex analysis and mechanics, I found to my horror that I had to deal with…I hate to write the filthy word…numerals. I mean what most people call “numbers.” Things like 5, 354, and 42. Nasty little things. To a physicist, being forced to deal with numerals is insulting. I can only imagine how offended a mathematician would be. It would be like asking him to do a calculation that isn’t totally useless.

I could not restrict myself to clean, shiny, odorless variables. I had to find arcsines, resultant forces, and so on, so I needed a calculator.

I already had a TI calculator of recent vintage, plus a Hewlett-Packard 35S I got a couple of years back, plus my ancient HP 32S. The 32S used to be an extension of my arm. I could more or less think calculations into it. My mind worked in reverse Polish notation. Unfortunately, the screen on the 32S pooped out and could not be made to work well enough to bear. This is why I got the 35S and the TI.

Hewlett-Packard used to make great calculators. They cost hundreds of dollars, and HP liked to tell people you could run over them with cars without hurting them. The 35S was not like that. It had a cheap case and floppy buttons that rolled when I pushed them. On top of that, there was no manual. The booklet that came with the calculator said HP would mail me a manual for nothing if I called, but when I called, HP told me to drop dead. They simply decided not to honor their promise. I didn’t feel like using their PDF manual, which required printing out something like 500 pages, so I was disenchanted with the whole thing.

Also, and to be more honest, I can’t find the 35S. I’m sure it’s here somewhere. Or maybe I got mad at it and threw it out.

Hewlett-Packard was once a neat company that made all sorts of electronic equipment. They made power sources, frequency generators, bench meters, and lots of other things. Something happened to them. Now they make cheap junk that belongs in Wal-Mart.

I went to Ebay to look for a 32S in good condition. I discovered the 32S II. People seemed to like it better. Also, it had a “II” in the name, so obviously, it was superior. I found a good deal on one somebody had used very little, and I ordered it. It arrived yesterday. I just took it out of the envelope and disinfected it. It looks new.

Now I can relax again, until the screen on this one goes bad. I’m actually considering buying two more, taking the batteries out, storing them, and waiting for the days when I need them.

I learned complex analysis from a book by two men named Ruel Churchill and James “the Godfather of Complex Variables” Brown. It’s a standard, but it could be better. I still have it. I also have a differential equations book by a man named Raymond Redheffer. It’s fantastic. It reads almost as though a human being wrote it. I decided to see if Redheffer had written anything else, and that’s how I found out he had written a complex analysis text.

I looked at the book on Open Library, and sure enough, it was very good. I found myself a copy in “like-new” condition and ordered it. That was weeks ago. It still hasn’t arrived.

I ordered it from Abe Books, which is a good resource. I pestered the seller, and they told me they could not find a record of the shipment. They gave up and refunded my money. That was annoying, because similar copies were selling for $30 more. After a few days of wishful thinking, hoping the book would still make it, I ordered another one, and the replacement is supposedly brand new. We will see. Book sellers have a tendency to send scuffed-up review copies and call them new.

The main thing is that it has to be in good repair and free of notes and so forth. That’s what I’m hoping for.

Redheffer also wrote a book on math for physicists. I found a copy selling really cheap, so I ordered it. Haven’t seen it yet.

I tried to replace one of my reference books a few weeks back. It’s called Mathematical Methods for Physicists, or, as physicists call it, “Mathews and Walker.” It’s a very popular book, so, of course, the publisher refuses to print it any more, and they have not licensed it to Dover Books, which prints paperback copies of old technical books major publishers are tired of. My copy is basically in excellent condition, but ants ate part of the spine, and it bothers me.

Do I use the book? Of course not. I just hate seeing my old STEM stuff destroyed, and I do plan to use it in the future.

I found a “new” “hardback” copy online for an unbelievable price, so I ordered it. I received a horrible, mashed-up paperback which was probably printed for the Indian market. I had to send it back, and then the seller didn’t refund my money. I had to sic Amazon on him. He had the gall to charge nearly $90 for that piece of junk.

I’m now considering buying book-repair tape and doing a fancy repair job. I’m sure Youtube University can help me.

It occurred to me that I was running into what appeared to be supernatural resistance in my STEM pursuits, so I asked God about it, and I believe he said the problem was coming from Satan, not him. I started using my supernatural tools to overcome it.

At first, I was thinking maybe God wanted me to leave STEM things alone. Scientists tend to take a dim view of Christianity. The folks at CERN made a comedy video (I assume it was comedy) showing robed figures sacrificing a woman at their headquarters, which shows that scientists are aware of the tension between Christians and scientists.

I thought maybe God wanted me to forget all about that part of my life. It appears that this is not the case, however.

The CERN video was filmed before a statue of Shiva, a form of the Hindu “god” Vishnu. In the Bhagavad Gita, Vishnu becomes Shiva in order to impress someone. Robert Oppenheimer quoted this book while reminiscing about the first atom bomb blast. In the book, Shiva says, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

CERN’s people say the video was a prank, and they also say CERN is full of artwork. They say the Shiva statue is just one of many works. Naturally, one has to ask: how many statues of Jesus and Moses are there at CERN? How many crosses are there?

Here is the video. Lots of profanity in the soundtrack.

The best evidence that this is a fake video is the presence of the woman who is offered as a sacrifice. How would a group of physicists manage to find a woman? They’re usually at home studying, watching science fiction and anime, or reading books like The Modern Physicist’s Guide to Avoiding Eye Contact.

Today I read that Paul Dirac hated religion. He was a towering figure in quantum mechanics. My alma mater, the University of Miami, almost snagged him for their theoretical physics group. I remember a story one of my profs told. Dirac was on campus, and my professor took him a copy of Dirac’s book. He wanted an autograph. Dirac apparently collected stamps, and he had some fresh acquisitions with him. He stuck a couple in the front of the book along with his signature.

Funny; I can’t recall which professor told me that.

Here is what Dirac said:

I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can’t for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards—in heaven if not on earth—all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins.

My suggestion: learn to use paragraphs.

It’s remarkable that Dirac thought rich and powerful people were the force behind the perpetuation of Christianity. Powerful people who agreed with Dirac politically did their best to destroy Christianity during the last century, and they are still at it. The communists have done everything they could to get rid of Christianity, and they certainly wanted “quiet people.” They liked quiet people so much they shot loud ones and pushed their bodies into mass graves. The gulags and Castro’s prisons were built for people who were not quiet.

Before slavery was abolished, many slave owners refused to let their slaves own Bibles or go to church. Dirac would have found that confusing.

Dirac’s positions are another illustration of a simple fact: top STEM people tend to know very little about the way human beings work. In their understanding of human nature, they are often like slow children, no matter how well they can do math. It’s a shame ordinary people think physicists have anything intelligent to say about politics and religion. You might as well ask a chicken.

Dirac was famous for his social ineptitude. He married the wife of physicist Eugene Wigner, and he was once heard to introduce her as follows: “Allow me to present Wigner’s sister, who is now my wife.” When Werner Heisenberg told him dancing was fun as long as the girls were nice, Dirac said, “But, Heisenberg, how do you know beforehand that the girls are nice?”

This was not the guy to talk to about anything involving spirituality.

Niels Bohr supposedly thought Dirac was onto something, so, clearly, he was not a great source of spiritual wisdom, either.

Wolfgang Pauli, who was very funny, supposedly said this: “Well, our friend Dirac has got a religion and its guiding principle is ‘There is no God, and Paul Dirac is His prophet.'”

It makes sense that the best STEM thinkers would be inept about people, because top performance in their fields doesn’t just come from intelligence; it comes from a willingness to sacrifice everything but math and science. They don’t get where they are by working 40 hours per week and having normal lives, regardless of how bright they are. People in other fields work hard, too, but most fields involve a lot more human interaction and require more application of social intelligence. A mathematician can be successful while living in a dog kennel, naked, and refusing to speak except to the people who throw him his food.

Anyway, I have my calculator, and I assume my complex analysis book will get here soon, so I am happy.

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I said something was resisting my efforts to work on STEM pursuits. That was on December 11. It is now December 13. Yesterday, I received a package from a seller who was supposed to send me a manual for the used calculator I bought. I opened the package, and it actually contained a spelling and handwriting pamphlet for elementary school students!

Maybe someone is trying to tell me something. Of course, no one on the Internet has seen my handwriting, so I don’t see what the problem is.

Still waiting for some other books I ordered. Will they make it, or will the forces of darkness send me more books for first-grade students? I almost hope so, because I could KILL first-grade math problems.

I received my copy of the solutions manual for Ruel Churchill’s complex analysis book, but this is a pretty unimportant part of my collection.

Miami’s Grinch Successfully Dumps his Load

I never go online and talk about trips, because I want it to be harder than that for burglars to find out I’m not home. Last Friday, I drove to Miami to work on the last home I’m selling (hooray). I have to get it cleared out reasonably well for the buyers.

I ended up paying a king’s ransom to move my machine tools up here. They were put where they are by Miami Transfer, a big crane and rigging company my dad and I used to represent. They very kindly received my lathe and delivered it in Miami for nothing, so I wanted to use them again so they would finally make some money from me. Months ago, they said they could move everything here for $4000. I called again a month or so ago, and they quoted me nearly $8000. They said the job was harder than they originally thought.

I have no doubt that they’re telling the truth, but naturally, when the price jumped, I felt motivated to look around for better deals. I’m grateful for what they did for me, but…$8000.

Several companies looked at the job, and they always said the same thing: $8000 was WAY out of line. Then they came back with estimates that were not a whole lot better. In the end, I picked a major outfit that has an office in town. I call them at least twice a week to make sure they haven’t forgotten.

I should have bought a trailer and moved the machines myself, but it’s too late to be learning a new skill. I don’t have time. If I had done that last year, I would be a lot better off now. Caring for my dad had absorbed my life, however, so I kept putting the machine move off.

If the machines were here, I would have been willing to play around with a trailer and rented forklift. I can’t do that when they’re 300 miles away. Every day of experimentation would be a day away from my responsibilities here. It seemed better to bite the bullet and get it over with.

“First world problems.” That’s what they call challenges like this one. Some people are in Bangladesh, wondering if there will be anything fit to eat in the local dumpsters tonight, and I’m in America, concerned about the trials of moving expensive hobby machines to my expensive home.

In order to get this sale over with, I threw out and gave away a lot of stuff. I had a fighting chair for a fishing boat. They probably cost $10,000 new. Mine was in pieces and needed some work. I took $75. I could not get anyone to take it for more than that. I threw out all sorts of electronics and cables. I put a good Sony receiver and remote in the trash. I’m selling 5-gallon beer kegs for $10 each. I’m giving away all the patio furniture.

I must have put half a ton of stuff out for the waste people, and I took half a ton to the landfill, known as Mount Trashmore. The view from up there is wonderful. It was also a little disturbing. I saw so many places I had been. I saw areas in the bay and ocean I was familiar with, from years of fishing. It was like having my life unfolded before me, so I could view it from atop a mountain of garbage.

There were some family photos in the house. I haven’t retrieved them yet. I decided to break my visit into two trips, so I’ll be going again when the machine movers are ready, and I’ll grab more things then. I found a framed photo my sister loved. It was a picture of her, of course. She would have been about three years old. I thought she already had it. She came for it a long time ago. She looked at it and said, “I was so beautiful.” Not normal.

In the photo, her eyes are ice-cold, in spite of her age. When you look at it, you can tell something is very wrong. She looks like a future serial killer. I kept asking God if I should keep the picture. I am inclined to throw it out. It will disturb me every time I see it.

My friend Travis wanted to help me with everything, but it seems like there are some things God wants me to do by myself. I had to clean up the house and load everything (but for one item) myself, and I will be unloading alone today. Travis was busy with important things. There was nothing he could do.

I feel much better about throwing out my dad’s golf clubs now. I threw them out with a lot of stuff several years ago, and I was a little uneasy about it. I almost wish I had left the house unlocked and let strangers steal everything.

In situations like this, you can keep everything you think is valuable, move it at great expense and with great effort, and then sell it for pennies on the dollar, or you can dump it early and be free. You can also pay a fortune to move it, only to end up dumping it afterward. That’s the hard truth.

Miami is an interesting town. If you list something for ten dollars on Craigslist, it will take days to get a response, but if you list it for nothing, people will trample each other to come get it. I listed a $170 wheelbarrow that has barely been used for $50, and people are trying to get it for less.

While I was there, I got a great revelation: I needed to forgive Miami.

I always think of forgiveness as something that applies to individuals, but it appears that it can apply to cities, organizations, countries, and so on. That was news to me.

I do not like Miami. The traffic is bad. The people are unpleasant. It’s full of voodoo and sexual defilement. Non-Hispanics are not treated well. People refuse to learn English. There is little to recommend the place. It’s okay to say these things, because they’re true, but I should not harbor hostility toward the people. That harms me and makes me a less effective Christian.

I realized this the morning after I arrived. I was lying on an air mattress in a dusty, nearly empty house, and I could not sleep. God made me understand that I had to forgive, so I did, and I asked him for help in getting his love to flow. I also thought of other big groups to forgive. Churches, cities, and so on. I worked on those. I cast out spirits of anger and vengefulness.

I felt much, much better afterward. I knew this was major progress.

Something strange happened later. Ordinarily, I feel terrible in Miami. It’s as though slimy, stinking worms are crawling on me. I feel unclean. I want out. This is actually normal for people who move away and then have to return. Come to think of it, I used to feel the same way even when I was in college. I felt it when I flew home for breaks. After I forgave, I felt much more comfortable. I still want nothing to do with Miami, but now I can visit and not be as miserable.

I know there is a connection between physical problems and sin. Sin brings iniquity and demons, and then you get things like cancer and arthritis. Yesterday, on the trip home, I heard something which I believe to be revelation: sin doesn’t CAUSE disease; it IS disease. What we see as disease is really just the symptoms. If you smoke cigarettes, which is a sin, you already have COPD, strokes, heart attacks, and cancer. The diseases are in you. They just have not been able to manifest yet. If you have chronic anger, you already have high blood pressure and strokes, even if you haven’t seen proof. The doors are open, and the entities that cause disease can come in when they choose.

Unforgiveness is obviously related to disease. Anger and stress harm your circulatory system.

Here’s something interesting: the Bible says envy rots the bones. That’s pretty clear.

I want to keep moving into deliverance. I don’t care about the cost, which is an illusion. Anything inquity allows me to keep is actually a liability.

In other news, I saw a really wacky video today. Youtube recommended a Zev Porat video about a rabbi who is incredibly angry. I don’t know the man’s name. I’ve seen him before, and I wrote about him. Porat pronounces his name “Vinestein,” but the Internet says his name is Eitan Bagdadi. I assume he’s a fringe nut no one takes seriously, because he is WAY out there.

Porat showed a clip of this man’s teaching. His eyes were wide. He was waving his hands. He was yelling in a high-pitched voice. He said something about God coming in the future to make churches explode. He was looking forward to it.

If he had been wearing a different hat, I would have thought he was a Muslim cleric teaching about jihad. He was completely enraged. Look at the video and see.

The thing I find interesting is that he said the Talmud says Jesus is boiling in excrement. He calls him “the cursed one,” and he says he’s in hell right now. For some reason, he decided to tell us about the composition of the feces. He said it was from people, cats, dogs, lions, and tigers. I don’t know where that information came from. Why these particular animals?

This quotation has been the subject of a lot of argument. If you Google, you will see rabbis denying that it applies to Jesus, but here Bagdadi is, asserting that it does. It would make sense for anti-Semitic Christians to say this, but it’s remarkable to see it coming from a rabbi. Is he hoping speaking in Hebrew will prevent people from finding out? Jews who speak Hebrew put English subtitles on his video. I wonder if that surprised him.

Notice I am not angry about the quotation. I am not saying synagogues will explode. I never get mad when people attack God. It just does not bother me much. I sometimes get annoyed when people lie about Christians or what we believe. Even then, I don’t go off like this guy. He has full-blown conniptions.

He’s extremely angry at Jewish believers who talk to other Jews. He thinks they destroy Jewish souls.

I’m not sure I understand the whole thing. I can understand why rabbis would want the number of Jews to increase instead of decreasing, and I know they see conversion as a threat, but this man’s consuming rage doesn’t seem to make sense. If you cease to be a Jew (as rabbis claim) when you accept Yeshua, is it a catastrophe or just a misfortune? They believe Jews have to be much better in order to make it to paradise, while gentiles only have to obey a few laws. In reality, you would think Porat would be helping people who can’t make it as Jews.

Maybe he thinks converts are damned for some reason.

Porat got his video clip from a messianic ministry called One for Israel. They used it first.

Some pretty weird quotations are attributed to this man. Here’s one: “Do you have an animal? Don’t leave it with a Gentile, he will come and rape your animal, according to the Talmud.”

Is that really in there? Actually, animal rape is considered acceptable in some Latin American countries, and several countries in Europe permit it. There are now animal bordellos in Europe. Maybe Bagdadi is onto something! He’s overgeneralizing, however. It’s actually very unlikely that a gentile will rape an animal entrusted to his care. We don’t see news stories about perverted things taking place when people board their pets.

It turns out Bagdadi isn’t making his rape claim up. Here it is, from a Talmud site:

Said Mar ‘Ukba b. Hama: Because heathens frequent their neighbours’ wives, and should one by chance not find her in, and find the cattle there, he might use it immorally. You may also say that even if he should find her in he might use the animal, as a Master has said: Heathens prefer the cattle of Israelites to their own wives. . .

I would hope that most modern Orthodox rabbis are aware that this is not really true. For all I know, it was true of the gentiles Jews knew when it was written. After all, you can imagine the things a rabbi might write today if he lived in San Francisco. Ancient Babylon was a weird place, too. But gentiles generally are not interested in sex with animals.

There is a lot of rough stuff in literature like the Talmud. Things a smart person would never say publicly, even if he believed them. One for Israel exposes it, on the theory that such secondary sources are inferior to scripture and distance people from God. They have quoted things like this, from 14th-century rabbi and kabbalist Isaac “Ha’ari” Luria: “The Gentiles have neither spirit nor soul and are not even equal to animals considered clean, but rather lower than them.”

Lower than animals? Where did that come from? Did he get mugged by gentiles or what? That’s some pretty impressive bigotry.

Maimonides, who is revered more than anyone except Moses, said this:

“As for Gentiles with whom we are not at war…their death must not be caused, but it is forbidden to save them if they are at the point of death; if, for example, one of them is seen falling into the sea, he should not be rescued, for it is written: ‘neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy fellow’–but [a Gentile] is not thy fellow”

How many Orthodox Jews would live by that? Very few, I would imagine. There are Orthodox paramedics and doctors, and they help Gentiles all the time.

I can’t imagine a world in which Jews tell their kids not to become doctors.

Sometimes you have to look at things you have accepted and ask yourself if you made the right choice. You can invest your life in a religion and then find out the people who teach you are looking in the wrong direction; it has happened to me.

Scripture itself holds up very well; there is nothing in it anyone should be embarrassed to believe, regardless of when it was written. Dubious secondary sources, not so much.

The Mormon “prophets” have taught that dark-skinned people were cursed with dark skin because they were immoral, and they have said that such people will turn white when they become righteous. The Mormons banned blacks from the priesthood until the Nixon era. The Jehovah’s Witnesses taught that Jesus, whose divinity they deny, was coming back on a certain day. Then he failed to appear, so they said he had appeared invisibly. Catholics…don’t get me started. As I always say, the Catholic church was once the most powerful terrorist organization on earth; they burned people or threatened to burn people for crimes like saying the earth orbited the sun. They still teach people to pray to other people, and they say only Catholics go to heaven. Prosperity preachers–right now–make up garbage about God giving people a hundred-to-one returns on monetary donations. There are Christian kooks teaching that Jews run the world and that they aren’t really Jews.

When you get away from the source, you hear a lot of nonsense, and you lose all connection to authority, so you, yourself, lose authority.

I suppose the likely fallout, as information becomes more widely dispersed, is that Jewish nuts like Bagdadi will provoke Muslim and Christian nuts, and then all the nuts will go at it, and everyone else will conclude that all religious people are violent, hate-filled nuts.

You should not have to hide what your religion teaches. God told prophets to speak boldly. Jesus said not to try to prepare when we were called in front of authorities to answer them; he said God would tell us what to say. He said that if we denied him before men, he would deny us before the Father. You shouldn’t provoke people pointlessly, but if you have to conceal your doctrine and claim it doesn’t exist, you must be doing something wrong.

Wild Things Happening in Israel

Over the last day or so, I have seen some interesting videos from a man named Zev Porat. He’s a messianic rabbi who lives in Israel. I have probably written about him before.

His story is remarkable. He comes from a family of rabbis, and he was set to become one himself. He was guaranteed a huge inheritance. Somewhere along the way, he realized Yeshua was the Messiah. He adored his grandfather, but when he told him about his belief, the old man immediately began grabbing plates and throwing them at his head, cutting him so badly he had to get stitches. His grandfather yelled, “Goy! Traitor! Get out of here!”

That was the end of his cushy life and multi-million-dollar inheritance.

When his grandfather died, his family hired guards for the funeral, and they physically removed Porat from the premises. His grandfather left him an inheritance worth over $40 million, but to get it, he had to sign a paper saying he didn’t believe in Yeshua. He refused to sign, so he was disinherited.

He was fired from his job simply because he believed in Yeshua; he was not discussing his beliefs at work. He and his wife ended up living on a beach in a tent. One night, a group of rabbis entered the tent and offered Porat money in exchange for recanting. Porat refused, and the rabbis spat on him and his wife and left. It’s an amazing story. Intelligent clergymen, spitting on people!

Now he does exactly what the rabbis and his boss were afraid he would do. He tells religious Jews about Yeshua. He even does it at the Western Wall, which is Judaism’s most holy site. The place is always packed with Orthodox Jews who are not exactly open to the gospel.

There are a couple of things that surprise me about his story.

First, he successfully reaches religious Jews, including rabbis, who study in yeshivas. The conventional wisdom is that they are hard to get through to. The Christian explanation is that they have been filled with false ideas that make them resistant, and that God has put a veil in front of their eyes. The Jewish explanation is that they are too knowledgeable to be fooled by “missionaries.”

He has had wild success with a number of knowledgeable Jews, and he does it by showing them the Bible. Apparently, they spend a tremendous amount of time looking at secondary sources like the Talmud and the Gemara, but they know very little about the scriptures. That’s incredible. You would think they would know them better than anyone.

He shows them verses like Micah 5:2 and Isaiah 7:14, and they are surprised to learn the verses exist. He shows them Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, too. If they knew the scriptures well, they could not possibly be surprised like this.

One of the funny things that happens is that he will quote a verse, and the person he’s talking to will say, “That’s from the Christian Bible. Don’t read to me from that.” Then he shows them he’s reading from the Tanakh; the Old Testament. That blows their minds.

There is actually an Old Testament scripture that says the Lord will walk on water. That surprised even me. We all know Jesus walked on water.

I digress, but I’m surprised he gets anywhere with Isaiah 7:14. This is a messianic prophecy that says an alma will give birth to the Messiah. It says it will be “a sign.” The traditional anti-missionary argument is that “alma” means “young woman,” not virgin. I haven’t seen anyone throw that back at him, so maybe the anti-missionaries aren’t as thorough as they could be.

Question: how is it “a sign” if an ordinary young woman conceives? It’s obviously not. In the Bible, signs are miraculous things only God can do. If “alma” doesn’t mean “virgin,” then Isaiah 7:14 is wrong, because it calls ordinary conception a sign. It’s like saying, “There will be a sign. A man will walk on dry ground.”

He accosted a prominent rabbi in Ashkelon and showed him some verses, and the man was so shaken, he accepted Yeshua on the spot. That almost defies belief.

It shows that the rabbi was very humble in spite of his exalted status. When you think you know everything, you cease to learn. Learning is impossible without humility.

The second thing that startles me about Porat’s videos is that he shows that one of Israel’s most revered rabbis, who was venerated even by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, believed that Yeshua was the Messiah. He taught his students to accept Yeshua. I did not know this.

The rabbi in question was named Kaduri. He died a few years back. He was over a hundred years old. Before he died, he wrote a note suggesting the Messiah’s name was “Yehoshua,” which is the same name as “Yeshua.” If “Yehoshua” is like “Thomas,” “Yeshua” (which means “salvation”) is like “Tom.”

Kaduri’s son claims the note was forged and that Kaduri was not well enough to write it, but his students say the handwriting is Kaduri’s. I don’t know if it’s possible to determine the truth and prove it conclusively.

Porat has a video in which he interviews one of Kaduri’s students, and the man confirms that Kaduri accepted Yeshua and told his students Yeshua was the Messiah. He says Kaduri was afraid to go public, and this is why he kept it private. That was news to me. It looks like not all Jews with religious educations are immune to Yeshua.

I knew that Kaduri had written the note, but I didn’t know he had accepted THE Yeshua, or that he had taught others they should do the same thing. “Yehoshua” is a common name, so saying the Messiah is named Yehoshua is not the same thing as identifying him with Jesus Christ.

I’m not all that enthusiastic about Kaduri, because he said some things that don’t make sense. For example, he said the spirit of the Messiah had attached itself to a person living in Israel, who would eventually be revealed. Yeshua said he would return in the clouds, and that the whole world would see it. There is no mention of reincarnation. Still, Kaduri’s change of heart is extraordinary.

Something similar happened a long time ago in Bulgaria. Daniel Zion, a man who served for a time as the nation’s chief rabbi, had a vision in which Yeshua appeared to him. He never became a Christian, preferring to hold onto his Orthodox beliefs and practices while accepting Yeshua as savior and Messiah. His colleagues declared him insane based on his new faith and experiences. One wonders what they would have thought of Moses, wandering around in a veil, claiming he had seen God’s back.

He emigrated to Israel. In the 1950’s, he was offered a seat on the Beit Din (rabbinical court), but he was told he would have to keep his beliefs silent. He refused, so that was the end of that.

People try to discredit Zion. They claim, for example, that he was never the chief rabbi of Bulgaria. If you search for lists of Bulgaria’s chief rabbis, you will see they don’t include him, perhaps because of his “illness.” Some lists have gaps during the time when he served. A Jewish reference book written in America in the Fifties says he was, in fact, the chief rabbi. It’s available online. Strange, how his name is so hard to find now. Maybe someone needs to remove that book from the Internet!

Why is it that a seemingly innocuous fact is so hard to prove? Why is so much evidence gone? Surely no one who cares about the truth would try to hide it.

It really doesn’t matter whether that he was the chief rabbi. It’s a big deal when any Orthodox rabbi sees Yeshua and believes in him.

Zion helped save a Bulgaria’s Jews from the Nazis, so it is not possible to erase his name completely. Anyone who might want his name “blotted out,” as the curse goes, will have a hard time.

Here is the uncomfortable part of the story: Zion saved the Jews by mentioning a vision of Yeshua. Bulgaria had a king named Boris. Zion got a letter to him, saying that Yeshua had told him that if he gave in to the Nazis and started sending Jews to death camps in Germany and Poland, God would punish Bulgaria. Boris, though willing to support anti-Semitic laws and internal exile to labor camps, chose not to deport the Jews.

So Bulgaria’s Jews were spared through the efforts of a person their leaders determined to be insane, and the basis of his efforts was the supposed insanity itself!

The Nazis were not fond of Zion. He was flogged repeatedly in front of the community.

It’s not a shock to see that Zion was considered insane. This is not unusual. A friend of mine has a Jewish wife, and she forced him to see a psychiatrist because she believed Christianity was a mental illness. The psychiatrist agrees! Also, Zev Porat’s family tried to make him see a shrink. If you check One for Israel’s Youtube channel, you can find the testimony of a man who says his family had him locked up in an asylum.

He’s a Messianic rabbi now.

It’s strange that modern, educated people act like his family, but it happens.

I suppose we underestimate the power of God and his willingness to move people. We see individuals who seem impervious to persuasion, but when God touches their hearts, our feeble words do amazing things. We just have to know whom to talk to. People are like fruit. You can’t pick them until they’re ripe. We can’t tell which ones are ripe unless we ask God, and often he sends us people we thought were hopeless.

If elderly rabbis who have been soaking in anti-Yeshua teaching since birth can believe, then what group of people is beyond reach? We should even be able to reach many of the Muslims who torture and murder Christians every day. We just need God to put the ripe fruit in front of us so we can avoid casting pearls before swine who will turn and rend us.

Fascinating stuff. I hope Porat’s efforts spread throughout Israel.

MORE

This is remarkable. I watched another one of Porat’s videos, and I saw that the Holy Spirit has told him the same thing he told me.

Isaiah 7:14 says this:

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

Christians who preach to Jews have used this verse a lot. It says a virgin shall give birth, and that points to Jesus. Jews have resisted, saying the Hebrew word “alma,” which is translated “virgin,” really just means “young woman.” Today I was writing about this. I saw that Zev Porat was using Isaiah 7:14 in his conversations with Jews, and I wondered why they were not reciting the anti-missionary claim that “alma” does not mean “virgin.”

I got the answer today.

I saw another of his videos. He was talking to a rabbi. He mentioned Isaiah 7:14, and the rabbi said “alma” meant “young woman.” Porat, an Israeli from an Orthodox family, who had trained to become a rabbi, asked if “alma” meant “virgin” in the Tanakh (Old Testament).

The rabbi told him it did.

Now I see why Porat is able to use this verse successfully.

Apparently, “alma” is like “maiden.” The word “maiden” actually means “virgin,” but because modern women are what they are, we now use it to mean “young woman.” “Alma” seems to work the same way. In Old Testament times, it was assumed that a young, unmarried woman was a virgin, because it was almost always true. Now, women are more debased, so it makes sense that modern Israelis would use the world “alma” differently.

Earlier today, I wondered why anyone would think a young woman giving birth would be a sign from God, because many, many young women give birth, and no one considers it miraculous. In the same video in which Porat got the rabbi to admit that “alma” means “virgin,” he asked the same question I did! He knew the verse made no sense unless “alma” meant “virgin.”

God tells everyone the same things, all the time.

Rich Preachers Low on Supernatural Horsepower

I’ve been thinking about Kenneth Copeland, the toxic preacher who joined a bizarre effort to undo the Protestant Reformation a few years back.

Copeland is an unpleasant guy. I’ll say that at the start. His ministry consists mostly of teaching, and I’ve seen a lot of it. He sneers at his followers, sometimes imitating them in silly voices. He speaks in anger. The Bible says God is love, so Copeland’s hostile demeanor is not a good thing to see in a Christian.

Christianity isn’t about being nice, but a Spirit-filled Christian who is mature will generally be nice anyway because God fills his children with love and patience. God is generally a nice person, and we are supposed to be like him. God has killed a lot of people, and the flames of hell are his anger, but you can’t judge his prevailing personality by the unpleasant things justice requires him to do. If Jesus appeared and taught in a human body, and he was not coming to exact justice, people would be overwhelmed by the love that radiates from him. No danger of that with Copeland.

Copeland’s broadcasts helped me to find God. Copeland is not wrong about everything; that isn’t possible. Back in the early Eighties, I used to watch him, and he taught, correctly, that God helps people. He taught that God heals us and helps us. I got my first miracle healing by applying something Copeland taught. Unfortunately, that gave me the idea that his teachings were generally sound, which is not correct. I was under the spell of the prosperity preachers for a number of years. It seemed that I had a choice: I could listen to preachers from churches which rejected the Holy Spirit, or I could attach myself to preachers who accepted all the fruit and gifts of the Spirit yet who taught evil, ineffective promises about money.

Churches that reject the Holy Spirit are awful. Their teachings aren’t even close to right. People who belong to such churches rarely get help from God. They don’t prophesy. They don’t cast demons out. Their services are worse than jury duty. Unbearable.

The prosperity churches were much livelier, but they pushed the miraculous and the holy aside and talked about money all the time. They assured people that giving them money would motivate God to make them rich. They still do it. They even charge for prophecies. A thousand-dollar prophecy is touted as much better than a hundred-dollar prophecy.

I knew I was supposed to be praying in tongues for long periods every day, but I didn’t do it, so I was easily fooled. When you pray in tongues a lot, God guides you and tells you things. I shut off the flow of information, so I listened to some very sick people, many of whom are probably in hell or headed there.

This shows the danger of charismatic churches that push the money gospel and don’t teach people to pray in tongues daily. People become convinced the money gospel is correct, and once they think they’ve got the real thing, they stop looking for the truth. Because they don’t pray in tongues, they don’t hear God telling them the prosperity pastors are wrong.

It’s bad to lack knowledge of God and know it, but it’s worse to be full of false knowledge you’re sure is correct. If you know you lack knowledge, you’ll look for it. If you think you already have it, you’ll keep digging yourself deeper into the hole of heresy. When people tell you the truth, you’ll drive them off. Or martyr them.

If Copeland does anything for people, I have not heard about it, but he certainly takes. My sister used to give money to Copeland’s ministry. When her life fell apart, she stopped giving. Then they started calling, asking if she was all right. No preacher ever offered to give money back or to give out of his own pockets.

The thing that struck me about Copeland today is that he does so little for people. I’m sure he has some charity operations, but I’ve seen him work many times, and I’ve only seen him lay hands on one person. He told her she was healed of a back problem, but she continued to walk like a person with cerebral palsy. I’ve never seen him cast out a demon or give a true prophesy. I’ve seen him make wrong prophesies, however. I remember him telling a crowd the world was about to hear about people being raised from the dead in Mexico. That never happened.

If all you do is stand far away from people and lecture them, why should anyone take you seriously as a minister?

The Bible clearly says we are supposed to help people one on one. We are supposed to heal the sick, prophesy, raise the dead, work various miracles, and cast demons out. We’re supposed to raise up disciples who do the same things. This does not happen in the money ministries. Not generally. If you watch a money preacher, you’ll see that he stands on the stage and tells other people what they should do. Benny Hinn has been known to bring people up for healing, but does he then have them heal others? I’ve never seen it.

I’ve been watching interesting preachers for the last year or so. They go to malls, accost strangers, and heal them on the spot. Some of them have the people they healed heal others. They try to create disciples. They cast out demons. They use the word of knowledge to tell people things about themselves. They don’t accept money; in fact, they are more likely to give it away. Many of the people they claim to heal really are healed. Some come back with medical reports.

The people who love preachers like Copeland and Joyce Meyer and T.D. Jakes worship them. They think they’re special apostles the rest of us can never match. You can’t tell such people they’re being flim-flammed. They get angry. They’ll say your advice is an attack of the devil. This shows how dangerous these preachers are. They delude people who have good intentions and stunt their growth. They turn them into attack dogs for Satan.

It’s very sad, because if the celebrity-preacher model were correct, it would mean the rest of us had very little hope of being healed or hearing from God except in the presence of a few oily TV stars. It would mean TV preachers were like angels. It would mean they were better than we are.

An angel is an extremely powerful being without human failings, and when they appear to people, they don’t try to teach them to be like angels. They do their amazing feats, and then they leave. That’s not how human beings are supposed to do things. We’re supposed to help others become like God.

If you have to get to a certain human being in order to be healed or helped, you are an undeveloped Christian. You should be able to get God’s help when you’re alone, and you should certainly be able to get it at your local church. You shouldn’t have to hang a calendar and circle the date on which Kathryn Kuhlman will be in your town.

Think of all the famous preachers who don’t do what disciples do. How many times has the pope healed someone or cast out a demon? How many times has John MacArthur done these things? Does Rick Warren ever prophesy? Do any of these men have proteges who do these things? Jesus certainly did, and so did his disciples. How can you represent Jesus if you can’t do anything he did?

Imagine a paramedic who couldn’t put a bandage on you. Imagine him standing there, saying, “If Dr. Chakrabarty was here, he could stop your bleeding! Dr. Chakrabarty is amazing! He can do anything! Give me an offering, and Dr. Chakrabarty will make you rich!” This is Kenneth Copeland, in a nutshell, except that he might also make fun of you.

Even the Old Testament prophets worked miracles. Are we supposed to believe the New Testament is a step backward?

It’s particularly telling when a charismatic preacher like Copeland or Jakes can’t do anything. These are the people who teach that miracles are for today, yet they appear to be powerless. ll they can do is talk, but obscure individuals all over the world are doing what Jesus did, every day.

Jesus said this: “And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” If the TV stars are so special, why aren’t these things happening? If they know more than the obscure people who are doing these things, how can they be doing less?

It’s a very interesting question.

Copeland and another prosperity preacher named James Robison joined an Episcopal priest named Tony Palmer in an effort to convince charismatics they were really Catholics. It was highly disturbing. The Catholic church teaches some very dangerous things. The Protestant Reformation happened for very good reasons, and those reasons still exist. The church had become the most powerful terrorist organization on earth, burning and torturing people on a colossal scale as matters of ordinary business. It teaches the worship of Mary, who was just a woman and who did not die a virgin. It teaches the worship of saints, which is necromancy. It teaches infant baptism, which does not work. The list of corruptions is very long, as Martin Luther proved. It’s not okay to join the Catholic Church. The problems are too great. Copeland should know that, but he wouldn’t know the truth if he saw it. He is blinded by pride and money.

Palmer, a genuinely disturbing individual who was killed in a motorcycle accident at the height of his efforts, was really a Catholic. He was married to a Catholic, and he believed their doctrine. He wanted to convert, but the pope convinced him not to because he served as a bridge between Protestants and Catholics. Palmer stood in front of a room full of charismatics and said, “You’re all Catholic.” That was not pleasant to hear. I felt like a runaway slave who just got caught by the patrollers. I’ve never been a Catholic, but I’m very glad I never had to be.

Jesus prayed his people would be united, and the ecumenicals–the people who want to drop the Catholic net on all of us–cite this as justification. The thing is, Jesus wanted us to be unified under the Holy Spirit, not a pope. The Spirit-led are already unified, which means the followers of Jesus are unified. The people who listen to the traditions of men are AWOL. To join the Catholics would be to join lost sheep instead of rounding them up.

Jesus was a divider. No one likes to talk about that. He said he was a divider. He predicted that Christians would be driven out of synagogues and persecuted by their families. It’s true. Right now, there are Jews who have been disinherited, spat on, beaten, and put in mental wards because their families and rabbis were against Jesus. You can go online and see them talk about what happened to them. Muslims kill converts. People who hear Jesus’ voice are driven out of churches, and the things they say can’t be reconciled with dead-church doctrine.

Division is not the optimal state, but it’s necessary at the moment because hundreds of millions of self-described Christians reject very important truths.

The unification movement is just a way to take the salt out of the church. If they can put us under authorities that discourage obedience to the Spirit of Holiness, while convincing us we’re still good Christians, they can pretty much kill the body of Christ on earth.

Unification was one of the big problems in Rome. The problem Christians had wasn’t so much that they worshiped Jesus; it was that they taught that worshiping other Gods was sin. Instead of accepting unification with pantheists, which would have destroyed the church and nullified the crucifixion, they chose to die in separation, and they were right, just like many of the people the pope’s servants burned over the centuries.

I wish I had never listened to Copeland or any of the Mammon preachers, and I wish I had prayed in tongues more when I was young. I hope the things I write will help others avoid these pitfalls.

Rats are not Pets

My Uncle John had a car dealership.

In 1957, my aunt Mary (not her real name) married John. He lived near Detroit. He owned property used for parking cars. Detroit was booming, so it was not hard to make money selling parking spaces to car-company employees.

John was a very hard worker, and he did well. His business was very simple, so he didn’t have to be a great businessman to make it work.

He saved his money and bought the dealership, which was located in Kentucky, not far from my aunt’s parents. The dealership remained open for several years, and then it closed down. John was not capable of running it.

The dealership was located in Breathitt County, Kentucky, which is a very backward area. John’s employees stole from him. He actually lost money on parts and service. In those days, car dealers made most of their money from parts and service. Parts were disappearing via the back door, and John did not keep an eye on things, so the employees had no reason to stop stealing.

John also had a severe drinking problem. When he was in his seventies, his son said that if he needed to talk to him, he had to call him by 9 a.m., or else he would be too drunk.

John was an extremely carnal person. I doubt he ever had a spiritual thought in his life. Whenever I think of him, the phrase “black-hearted” comes to mind. He was an extreme racist; he even hated Catholics. He stole, and he taught his kids to steal. He threw scary tantrums when he didn’t get his way. I don’t know if he ever hit my aunt, but he always seemed to be on the verge of hitting someone. As far as I know, all he cared about were money, golf, and alcohol.

I can tell you one of the more amazing John stories I heard. His youngest son admired him greatly and tried to be like him. One day John was in the car with his son, and while they were on the road, John saw a ladder beside a house. John said something like, “I see a ladder. No one using the ladder. Must not want it!” He got out and took it. I don’t know how he got a ladder in the car. Maybe it was a pickup. My cousin thought what he did was hilarious. He also did things like stealing sauce bottles from Arby’s instead of asking for packets.

He really disliked me. I was my grandfather’s second-oldest grandson, and the oldest was his son. My mother always thought he hated me because I was the favorite. My grandfather had money, so it would make sense that his sons-in-law would vie for his approval.

As the business failed, my grandfather loaned money to John to keep it alive. He did this more than once. Eventually, he contacted his other children and asked them what he should do. He pointed out that the money was coming from their inheritance.

John used to sweep the dealership and keep it clean, but he didn’t know how to run it, and because of his drinking, he probably couldn’t have done it anyway. GM’s accounting division, GMAC, had a system for dealers to use, but John didn’t use it. He started selling cars cheap to raise cash. He would take a new car to an auction, sell it for a few dollars over cost, and think he had made money.

Eventually, my grandfather came to own the dealership. John and Mary divorced, and John went on to distinguish himself as a divorced dad by teaching his son to curse his mother and ridicule the trailer she and the boys lived in. He was really something.

Last night I dreamed I owned his dealership.

I was in the dealership with a bunch of friends from college. They were young. I felt young. I don’t know how I looked. They were my college friends, but they weren’t real people I actually knew when I was in college. For some reason, they had come to help me clean the dealership up.

There were no cars there. The place was empty. It was going to be repurposed, but I don’t know what the plan was.

There were rats everywhere, or at least there had been. There was rat excrement everywhere.

I saw a steel cabinet on the wall, like an electrical panel cabinet. There were shelves inside it. There were shelves on the floor under it. On top of the shelves, there were a bunch of tight springs maybe 30 inches long. They had been disconnected from something. I kicked at the shelves to see if any rats were still there, and I saw a dark shape scurry away down by the baseboard.

I found a push broom and opened one of the garage-style doors to sweep poop out. One of the girls took the broom, so I had to go find another one.

There was an apple tree growing into the garage through a door. The leaves were shiny and dark. They were very full of life. There was a pile of old brown leaves on the floor. There were no apples because it was too late in the year, but the smell of dried apples was everywhere, as though there were old apples under the leaves.

There was a piece of agricultural equipment out front. It was a long piece of steel with some sort of disks on it. The disks were some kind of reinforced plastic, and they were just about gone. A guy picked it up and asked me if he should throw it out, and I told him to leave it until I figured out what it was. Maybe it was valuable.

I went to John’s office, which was now my office. An older man with a southern accent was going through things, trying to put them in order. He reminded me of many southerners I’ve known. Back in the Sixties, it seemed like the world was full of southern men in their forties and fifties who were building America. They were pilots and engineers. They were military people. They got things done. They were people you could rely on.

Seems like they were always tall, thin white guys with angular features. They spoke with exactly the kind of accent you would expect to hear when a pilot speaks reassuring words over a jet’s intercom.

The office was just a tiny room on the side of the garage. It should have been a closet. The closet-sized office had its own closet, with a little sink where people could wash their hands. I went in and used it. The whole building was filthy. I was worried about getting a disease from the rat dung.

I felt indebted to the young people who were helping me. I had an urge to pull a fifty out of my pocket, put it down on the desk, and say, “BEER,” but I didn’t.

Does the dream mean anything?

In dreams, buildings are people or their offices. I dreamed about Donald Trump and a vacant building, and the building was his new presidency. Maybe the building represented my functions in this life.

Car dealerships are extremely filthy places. They run on fraud and theft. Maybe this is how God sees the person I was.

What are springs? An iniquity is an inner spring. A word the Bible translates as “iniquity” really means “crookedness.” When you take a crooked stick and straighten it, it becomes crooked again when you stop exerting effort. It’s a type of spring. The discarded springs in the dreams may have been the inner springs that used to push me to be a sinful person.

Rats are demons. Rats don’t show up on their own. We leave doors open. We leave garbage in cans. We drop food and don’t pick it up. We choose not to put traps out. We get angry at our demons, and we think we’re their victims, but we’re really just angry at our partners. The Bible says we’re supposed to be partners with God.

Rat dung is what demons spread inside us. They make us unclean. They make us ill. They make us disgusting for righteous beings, like the Holy Spirit, to inhabit.

I’m not sure who the older man was. Maybe he was the Holy Spirit, come with authority to rearrange and cleanse things. I believe the younger people were Christian friends I’m going to make.

Psalm 23 says, “You make me to lie down in green pastures.” In the Bible, green grass symbolizes the wicked. They grow for a season and then wither or are cut down. They are temporary. Most of the people you know now will disappear from your life forever when they die. Often, wicked people are allowed to waste their lives building up wealth so God’s children can have it when they lose it.

The verse says we lie down in green pastures. It doesn’t say we plant them or even that we have to stand and cut the grass for ourselves. This is a picture of inheritance. The Bible calls us heirs too many times to count. We’re not supposed to work hard at carnal tasks. That’s for the damned. We’re supposed to receive good things they’ve worked to build. Eventually, we will receive the whole earth.

I received a big building in the dream, ready to be cleaned up and made useful. Maybe it shows how Spirit-led Christians are taking ministries over from prosperity preachers and feel-good preachers who filled their churches with rats and dung. I don’t mean we’ll get the churches. We don’t need those. God is operating outside of churches now, through people without titles.

I used to be a member of Trinity Church in Miami, and their building was full of rodent dung. They had a big room beside the kitchen, and it had a cabinet along a wall. The cabinet was waist-high, and the drawers were full of thousands of pieces of unused flatware. Trinity always took anything anyone offered, so I guess someone gave them flatware.

They never cleaned the room. The drawers were packed with mouse dung.

For a while, I made pizza for Trinity, to be sold in their cafe. I had to set a table up in the storage room. Before I got to work, I insisted on getting rid of the dung. I got some kids, and we emptied all the drawers and cleaned everything with bleach. The pastors knew about the filth, and they should have been aware that it was very dangerous, but they didn’t care. As long as no one could see it, they were fine with it. If I hadn’t taken a stand, people would have made pizzas on a counter just above drawers full of moldering excrement.

Trinity had a kitchen volunteer named Kervin. He had a young son who kept getting sick. He kept getting high fevers. No one knew why. He used to play in the storage room. I told people the mouse excrement might be his problem. No one cared.

We were expected to pray for this kid, but anyone who talked about cleaning up the excrement was being “negative.”

I hope he’s okay.

I would be astounded to learn that the drawers were not full of dung right now. The Wilkersons and their cronies never learn. Their pride makes them stupid.

When my sister succumbed fully to addiction and hate, her house filled up with dung. She had a dog she never housetrained, and she didn’t mop after him. Her floors were coated with a varnish of urine and feces which accumulated, undisturbed, over a period of years. Rats came in, and she left things like big bags of beans in her pantry. Eventually, rat exrement was everywhere, and when you walked into the house in the daytime, I could hear panicked rats running around in the pantry, looking for places to hide. When I opened the door, I saw opened packages gnawed by rats. Meanwhile, my sister lived in the master bedroom, on a tiny bare place on a filthy mattress with no sheets. The rest of the house belonged to bugs and rodents.

Pests were given to us for a reason. They teach us what we become when we let demons live in us. They show us why repentance and casting out demons are necessary. But many of our big churches teach us to feed the demons instead. They say demons don’t exist. They give people the idea they can sin all they want, because they have Eternal Security. They say fornication is not a problem, as long as you’re a nice person. They say homosexuality is part of God’s plan. They don’t warn people about idolatry. They even teach meditation and yoga.

When a prostitute loses her looks, she has to come up with a new bait, and she has to lower her price.

What is it the new hipster churches DO warn about? “Judgment.” That’s the only sin left, as far as they’re concerned. Anyone who tells you the ship is sinking is a divider and a pharisee.

I suppose the Great Whore of Babylon in the Revelation must be the modern church. The prophet Hosea was told to marry a whore, and she kept running off with other men. She was still his wife, but this is how she behaved. The whore of the Revelation must be a group of people who are supposed to belong to God. If she were not supposed to belong to God, she would be something else, like an armed soldier on a horse. A whore is someone who betrays and sells out.

The modern church is filling itself up with idolatry. Pastors teach mindfulness, which comes from Hinduism. They teach yoga. They teach positive thinking divorced from scripture. They teach self-worship. There is a bride of Christ, and there is the great whore which persecutes God’s children.

People say Kenneth Copeland, possibly the most poisonous prosperity preacher, is trying to start a new religion combining Catholicism, Islam, and charismatic Christianity. If that’s true, it makes perfect sense. The Antichrist will be a religious leader, and he will be someone who comes from Christianity. John said the antichrists of his time “went out from us but were not of us.”

The prefix “anti” doesn’t just mean “against.” It means “instead of.” The Antichrist will try to give us a different way. The world is looking for a form of Christianity that incorporates homosexuality and ends the tension between Bible-believers and those who endorse sexual sin. The Antichrist will probably lure people by “solving” that problem.

I saw Mark Hemans say something very interesting. He was looking at a stained glass window in a cathedral. It showed two men in a bed. He said the Holy Spirit told him this would be the world’s new religion.

I hope God is cleaning me out. I hope he is preparing me to do useful things. I don’t want to be a disgusting environment for the Holy Spirit any more.